TD Jakes - Bruised Love - Part 1
When John the Writer writes here about God, he says that God so loved. It would be enough to say that God loved because God is love. But he says that God so loved. He had to put an adjective in front of it to modify the noun to make you understand the magnitude of the infinitive capacity of God to so love. The infinite capacity, Peter said, "I pray that you might know the love of God which passeth all understanding". The breadth, the height, the depth of the love of God is incomparable. You can only try to come up with anthropomorphic terms to describe the infinite capacity for God to love. God said, "I have loved you with an everlasting love".
I loved you when you were drunk. I loved you when you were high. I loved you when you were nasty. I loved you when you were wicked. I loved you when you were evil. I loved you when you were fornicating. I loved you when you were stealing. I loved you when you were down and out. I loved you when you were in a homeless shelter. I loved you when you were in a jail cell. I loved you when you didn't have food to eat. I loved you when you was rich. God so loved. God so loved. God so loved. God so loved. God so loved. I want you to drink that. That's hard for you to drink. But if you drink that, that will heal you. God so loved you.
If you drink that, you won't need people as much as you need them. If you drink that you won't be as lonely as you are. If you drink that you won't be as desperate as you are. You don't need somebody to love you. God so loved. And don't buy what the church people say. It didn't say that God so loved the church. It didn't say that God so loved the Christians. It didn't say that God so loved the believers. It said that God so loved. And most of us who preach about him and teach about him can't express that because we are so self righteous and judgmental that we wanna pick who God loves. But you cannot build a wall high enough that God's love will not scale it. It will climb over top of it. It will put a ladder up and reach it.
I don't care what you say. You might not like them. You might not like them. You might lock them out. You might lock them out. There are people that... God loves your enemies. God loves the people that did you wrong. God loves the people that you wanna get even with. I know you don't wanna hear that because you want God to destroy them. But that person is God's child too and God loves them. The crazy ones, the foolish one, the spiteful ones, the vicious one, God so loved the world. The world, the world, the world, the world.
God has fallen in love with a fool. God has fallen in love with a fool. God has fallen in love with the world who he says its heart is continually wicked and every imagination in it is evil and still... I've fallen in love with a world that doesn't come home at night. I've fallen in love with the world that's drunken off of success. I've fallen in love with a world that's narcissistic. I've fallen in love with the world that doesn't communicate with me. I've fallen in love with the world that will not praise me. I've fallen in love with the world that's locked up in a strip club. I've fallen in love with the world that's practicing witchcraft. I've fallen in love with the world. Not the church. God so loved the world. He so loved, he so loved the world.
Stop thinking that you earned it. Stop thinking that you earned it. Stop thinking that God loves you because you're smart. Stop thinking that God loves you because you're talented. Stop thinking that God loves you because you can sing. Stop thinking that God loves you because you can preach. God told Jeremiah, "Before I formed thee in the belly, I knew thee. I ordained thee and I sanctified thee to be a prophet unto the nation".
Before you open your mouth or cried your first cry or hit your first note or learned your first scripture, I loved you. I loved you. I loved you. While you were learning your ABC's, I loved you. While you were trying to stand up and learning how to hold your head up, I loved you. While you were bobbing your head and your mama had to hold your neck, I loved you. While you were living in sin, I loved you. While you were in the gutter. How could you get saved and then think that I don't love you. I loved you when you were blasted. I loved you when... O God, don't, don't, don't.
See, we don't preach about love. We don't preach about the love of God. The love of God. And because we don't preach about it, it does not manifest in our character because anything that's not preached about is not planted in our character. So what we have is a situational love. I love you if I like you. I love you if I agree with you. I love you if you vote like me. I had a woman hit me up on Instagram the other day said, "I used to love you". Hallelujah. I thought, "O God, then you never did in the first place". If something I said could kill your love that quickly, it wasn't real love because love suffereth long and is not puffed up. How can you be broken hearted? You don't even know me. You never met me. Have you lost your mind?
I want you to see the inequity of this statement. Not that God so loved the righteous or the church. The inequity of the statement is that God so loved a fool. Have you ever fallen in love with somebody that was crazy? Let us go back and understand that Satan, Lucifer, I'll call him by his angelic name. Lucifer knew the love of God. So when he was cast down out of heaven, he wanted to get even with God because he knew that God loved man and hated sin. And as long as what God loved, which is man, was separate from that which God hated, which is sin, God had no problem in his own emotions. But if he could get man to sin, then man would be filled with what God hated and put God in a dilemma that if he reacted to what he hated, he would kill what he loved.
If he reacted to what he loved, that he would have to love what he hated. That's why salvation is not about you. Salvation is about God, his right hand and his holy arm have gotten him the victory. Salvation is of the Lord. It's not about you. It's not about your doings. It was God's dilemma and it was Satan's trick to work God's love against him. He said, I'll put what you hate in what you love and say how you like them now? And God had warned man, the day you eat of the tree you shall surely die. And so now God is in a dilemma, do I come into the garden and kill him? But I love him.
So the doctrine of substitution is born in the dilemma that Satan has placed God in. That God paces the floor, the voice of the Lord walking through the cool of the garden. God paces the floor trying to figure out how to save what he loves and kill what he hates. And he says, "Adam, where art thou". And Adam is standing wrapped up in fig leaves hiding in trees and God is pacing the floor and God goes back and forth and says, stay right there. You can't fix this. This is above your pay grade. You can't get yourself out of this. You can't sew nothing on yourself that will cover you well enough to make you righteous enough. And if I let you live, I will have lied. And I'm not a man that I should lie or the son of man that I should repent.
So if I let you live, I can't wink at your sin. 'Cause if I wink at your sin, then Lucifer will have tricked me into lying. So I gotta do something about it. But I don't wanna kill you 'cause I love you. Stay right there. And the Bible said that God went out into the garden and found an innocent lamb and he took that lamb and took the sins of the man and placed it on an innocent animal and he slayed the lamb and the lamb became a substitute for the man so that the man might be free so God could go back to Lucifer and say, "I did kill Adam in the animal".
And then I took the life of the animal and covered the wretchedness of Adam so that Adam stood there with blood running down his legs just from the fresh kill body of the animal. And the life that he now lived in the flesh he lived by the faith of the animal that died in his stead that he might live. Justice is satisfied, mercy is victorious. God has been glorified and his Word has not been broken. God so loved the world.
Oh my God! The price he paid to love you. When we read about the cross in the book of Acts, the Bible says after his passion, he showed himself alive with many infallible proofs. And when I look at Calvary, I see pain. I see execution. I see cruelty. I see injustice. I see death. I see abuse. But when he looks at Calvary, he called it passion.
I never will forget the "Passion Of The Christ". Anybody see that movie? I saw it one time. I bought a copy but I never played it again. It was not a scene I wanted to see again. It was not a movie I could enjoy. It was not a movie where you ate popcorn and sat up and watch it. It was not entertaining. Watching somebody beat to death till their skin was hanging out was not my idea of a pleasurable evening. It is not my idea of a passionate evening. But God calls it passion because he was giving his body to his bride. But a body hast thou prepared for me.
Now I can give her my body. And all of a sudden I have to challenge how I define love, how I understand passion. Because when I think of passion, I think of pleasure. When God thinks of passion, he thinks pain. When I think of love, I think of a wonderful feeling. When God thinks of love, he thinks of bruises. He was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement of our peace was upon him and by his stripes, by his stripes, we are healed. We are healed. We are healed, not just healed, we're made whole. Like the ten lepers, nine of them got healed, but one of them was made whole.
In order to go from heal to whole, you gotta come back. Y'all come to church one time, come to the altar call, and go on about your business. You think you got something. You didn't get nothing, you got healed but you're not whole. You get whole when you keep coming back. When you keep coming back to say, thank you for what you did for me. Thank you for how you changed my life. Thank you for how you picked me up. Thank you for how you looked over my sin. Thank you for how you made a way of escape. Thank you for how you loved the unlovable, touched the untouchable, reconciled the unreconcilable, redeemed the unredeemable. I owe you the praise.
You good little two-shoe people who never did anything, I understand why you don't praise the Lord 'cause you think you righteous. But I cannot understand all of you dirty, low-down, filthy people that know you was a wretch undone. How you can sit there with your cute dress on and not praise God for his mercy towards you because God took bruises. He took bruises for you and every animal that was ever slain was just a stand in for him.
When we do movies and the actors, they're setting up the set and they're getting ready for the scene and the director is trying to get the shot right, he has substitute actors that come in and fill in for the real actors so that the actors won't spend themselves. Every bullock and goat that was slain until Jesus went to the cross was a substitute actor standing in for the legitimate one who would go to the cross and die for the sins of the world. They were filling in for bruised love.
By the way, you can't have bruises without blood. A bruise is made out of blood so the impact, the bond, the pain, the point of impact is over, but the bruise remains. He took my bruises. He took my bruises so much so that even after he rose from the dead, he still bore the scars in his body. The scars were still there for the price he paid for you to have a chance. While you complain about parking places and you can complain about coming out in the cold and you complain about driving too far, he carried his cross up Golgotha's hill and let them inflict him with bruises that even the resurrection couldn't take away. He rose from the dead and still didn't rise from the bruises. And you sit up here talking about, "When will somebody ever love me? I'm just wondering how long will I have to go through this before I find somebody who loves me like I need to be loved. I'm just not being loved like I needed to be loved and I refuse to settle for anything less".
If God refused to settle for anything less, you would go to hell. I'm gonna say it again for the people in the back. If God refused to settle for anything less, you would go to hell. So you have more right to be loved than God? God so loved the world. The problem with us is we think more highly of ourselves than we ought because we have romanticized love. That's why you're 30 and been married 3 times. We have romanticized relationships that the moment it gets uncomfortable, we get out. And the moment we don't like what you say and the moment you lost your job, I'm through with you. Yeah, it's about the Benjamins baby. No, it's not about the Benjamins, with a job without a job. Up or down, sick or well. Dialysis, kidney machines, oxygen tank. I don't care what it is. There is a love, there is a love that endureth all things.
It may get bruised but it will never back away. It is the love of God. The only way we can do it, and I'm gonna stop here because I see I can't get through my message. The only way we can do it is that the Bible says that the Holy Ghost is shed abroad in our hearts by the holy, the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost. The only way you can love like God is to be filled with God. And when you get filled with God, you can love like God. Until you get filled with God, you can't love like God. You can't do it out of your emotions. You can't do it out of your head. You can't do it because I preached it. You gotta be filled with God to love like God.
The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost. And if you really got the Holy Ghost, the real sign of the Holy Ghost is not speaking in tongues. The real sign of the Holy Ghost is when you love your neighbor. The real sign of being filled with the Holy Ghost is when you love people who mistreated you. The real sign sign of the Holy Ghost is when you love people after they have done you wrong. The real sign of the Holy Ghost, I'm not talking about letting people make a fool out of you. You may have to love them at a distance but you still love 'em.
The real sign of being filled with the Holy Ghost is that you love them with an everlasting love. And I'm sick and tired of people preaching about something that they don't have. Teaching about something that they don't have. Worshiping with was something that they don't have. How can you be a worship leader and can't be speaking to the people you're worshiping with and yet you wanna bring glory down in the house. The devil is a liar. Until the love of God is shed abroad in your heart by the Holy Ghost there will always be something missing out of your message, out of your soul, out of your business, out of your life.
There is something that God is about to do in your life that means you're going to have to have a makeover. You're gonna have to have a makeover. You're gonna have to get rid of your old filthy garments and your own hateful opinions and your stiff-necked attitudes. And you're gonna have to humble yourself at the cross and first receive the love of God into your heart and into your spirit and then emanate the love of God into the way you treat people and handle people. This is how we know.
"By this shall all men know that you are my disciples that ye have love one toward another". You'll never be my disciple because you wear long dresses. You'll never be my disciple because you don't wear makeup. You'll never be my disciple because you shout all over the church. You are my disciple when the love of God affects how you treat the people around you. You are my disciple when you learn how to forgive. You are my disciple when you can't hold a grudge. You are my disciple when you love people for which you have nothing to gain. You are my disciple when you don't get nothing back out of it and you still do it anyway. You are my disciple when you love people who are downtrod. You are my disciple when you love people who stink. You are my disciple when you love people who can't live like you live or go where you go or eat what you eat and you still love.
You are my disciple when you love the homeless. You are my disciple when you love people with mental problems. You are my disciple when you love people who are handicapped. You are my disciple when you love people who are fornicators and whoremongers. You are my disciple when you love people who do things you don't like. You are my disciple when you can feed somebody and can't stand the smell, but you feed them anyway. You are my disciple when you serve. You are my disciple when you carry the bruises of love. What it ought to do if you're honest is humble you. What it ought to do is make you so grateful... that God could love me. It's so grateful.