The Passionate God (1 Sam 13:8-14; Philippians 2:5-11)
Billy Milton - November 21, 2004
Here’s a strange thing – we have called our sermon this morning, “The Passionate God” and guess what? The Bible never calls God passionate. In fact nearly every time we read the word passion (or passionate) in the Bible it’s used in rather a negative sense, such as ‘lust’ or ‘earthly desires’. What do you think of when you hear the word ‘passionate’? GET SOME FEEDBACK Yes, we tend to think of a ‘passionate kiss’ or someone who is ‘passionate about’ sport, or music or whatever. Given these ideas it almost seems wrong to have ‘passionate’ and ‘God’ in the same sentence.
However, I hope today that we will go away convinced that we serve a passionate God. Interestingly, the word ‘passion’ has its roots in the Latin word passio – suffering. It shares a common origin with the word ‘patient’ as in someone who is in hospital. Although an alternative translation in 1 Cor 13:4 to ‘love is patient’ is ‘love suffereth long’. So even here the connotations of ‘patient’ have suffering overtones. So, to be passionate is to be so engaged that one suffers. In other words, loving, caring until it hurts. So, given that definition, is God passionate? If there is one thing we can be utterly sure of it’s that God is willing, God is ready to love us until it hurts, ‘to love us to death’ – literally. We serve a passionate God. And a passionate God is looking for passionate followers!
Did any of you receive an email from Simon Guillebaud this week? Let me read you a couple of paragraphs from it. READ HIGHLIGHTED SECTION Two phrases stuck out for me in his letter. The first was, “Sanctified resignation has become the new abiding place of contemporary Christians.” And the second, “God help us to say no to ‘sanctified resignation’ and to aspiring to being ‘nice’ or ‘inoffensive’.
Many of us who met Simon earlier on this year were struck by his enthusiasm and his compassion for the people of Burundi and his passion for Jesus. Let me ask you a serious question – What are you passionate about? PAUSE One of my favourite memories, which always makes me smile, is the sight of Jonathon Edwards almost jumping out of the sandpit to break the world triple jump record and then his face breaking into the biggest smile and him leaping up and down the side of the track with his arms whirl winding around him. Passion released! What are you passionate about? What makes you come alive?
Let me read you a few paragraphs from Pete Watson’s most recent email from Zambia. READ THE EMAIL. Do you sense Pete’s excitement as he sees God moving through his preaching? Are you not just a little jealous when you hear his stories of God moving through him? Do you find yourself rationalizing it away quickly – oh its fine for him, he’s young; he doesn’t have a family; a mortgage etc., etc. NO, NO , NO , NO! Don’t do that! Don’t resign yourself to a humdrum life of surviving and building your bank balance. “Only one life, ‘twill soon be past. Only what’s done for Christ will last.” God needs people who are prepared to buck the trend and to be passionate. He loves passionate people because he is a passionate God.
Think of David in the Old Testament in the passage that *N read to us. In 1 Sam 13:14 God refers to him as, “..a man after God’s own heart.” In what sense was David a man after God’s own heart. R.T Kendall has written a book called precisely that, “A Man After God’s Own Heart”, and in chapter one he explains why he thinks David was such a man. He says David was:
1. A ‘found’ man. Acts 13:22 “I have found David,..a man after my own heart.” Think of Luke 15.
2. A ‘feared’ man. 1 Sam 18:6-9
3. A ‘fallen’ man. 2 Sam 11 This is great news! God loves fallen people. God is passionate about sinners! Think of the great King David – adulterer, murderer by proxy; poor father. Without doubt a fallen man, a man who we might not trust if we knew his background. But God calls this man, “a man after my own heart.” There is no excuse for any of us not to be active for God – if David can, you can. David was also…
4. A ‘forgiven’ man. Psalm 51
Whilst I agree with all that RT Kendall has said there, I also think that the main reason that God would call David “A man after my own heart” is that David was a passionate man. Whatever he did, even in his sinning, he did it with passion. And when he repented, he repented with passion!
I said at the beginning that the root of the word passion could be found in the word for suffering, and as we draw to a close I want to return to that thought of passion and suffering being irrevocably linked. In Phil 2:5-11 we are left in no doubt how passionate Jesus is for us. He doesn’t shrink back, but offers himself. Why? Because he has emptied himself and “become obedient unto death, even death on a cross.” His emptying allowed his Father’s perfect love to shine through – the Lord became transparent in his passion and as a result we have beheld God’s glory.
God could have revealed His love and glory in so many ways. Why take this difficult path? This ‘path of passion’? Eusebius of Caesaria put it this way: “Read the record of his compassion. It pleased him, being the Word of God, to take the form of a slave. So he chose to be joined to our common human condition. He took to himself the toils of the members who suffer. He made our human maladies his own. He suffered and toiled on our behalf. This is in accord with his great love of humankind.” Our passionate God identified with us and now knows all aspects of our life, not just as the Creator, but also from the inside.
If we serve a passionate God, how passionate are we in God’s service? How much of a difference do we make in this world? How much of God’s love shines through us – or is it blocked by our failure to empty ourselves of self-centeredness? Cyril of Alexandria said, long ago, “Jesus humbled himself, according to the Scriptures, taking on himself the form of a slave. He became like us that we might become like him. The work of the Spirit seeks to transform us by grace into a perfect copy of his humbling.” How far along are we in being made perfect copies of such unselfish, perfect love? How passionate are we? God has loved us with a passion, through a passion. Doesn’t a passionate God deserve a passionate response?
Let me close by reading you one more email that I received this week. This time it was from Claire Hodgeson who has given me permission to read a couple of extracts but wishes to apologise in advance for use of the word ‘groovy’ in the first sentence. READ IT
Ezek 36:26 “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you.”
My prayer today is that God will give us soft, fleshy, passionate hearts. That we will nail everything that doesn’t reflect God’s love to the cross and then rise with Christ – a new creation. It’s possible, you know, because we serve a passionate God.
“Only one life, ‘twill soon be past. Only what’s done for Christ will last.”