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John 15:9-13

Could we with ink the oceans fill

And were the skies of parchment made

Were every stalk on earth a quill

And every man a scribe by trade.

To write the love of God above

Would drain the ocean dry

Nor could the scroll contain the whole

Tho' stretched from sky to sky,

O, love of God, how rich and pure

How measureless and strong!

It shall forevermore endure

The saints and angels song!"

"LOVE SPANS THE WIDEST OCEAN."

Ephesians 3:18, "May be able to comprehend what is the breadt".

John 3:16 says, "God so loved the world."

Ephesians 5:25, "Christ also loved the church."

Galatians 2:20, "The son of God who loved me."

This is one fact that is born out by the Bible, and that is, that if you are to be lost, it will not be God's fault, it will be your own fault.

Love is such a broad subject(2,040,000,000 for love (0.10 seconds - GOOGLE) and has various meanings(24 entries in the Merriam Webster Online Dictionary.

Define love:

1 a (1): strong affection for another arising out of kinship or personal ties <maternal love for a child>

(2): attraction based on sexual desire : affection and tenderness felt by lovers

(3): affection based on admiration, benevolence, or common interests <love for his old schoolmates> b: an assurance of love <give her my love>2: warm attachment, enthusiasm, or devotion <love of the sea>

3 a: the object of attachment, devotion, or admiration <baseball was his first love> b (1): a beloved person : DARLING -often used as a term of endearment (2)British -used as an informal term of address

4 a: unselfish loyal and benevolent concern for the good of another: as (1): the fatherly concern of God for humankind (2): brotherly concern for others b: a person's adoration of God
The word love has many different meanings in English, from something that gives a little pleasure ("I loved that meal") to something one would die for (ideals, family).

Imagine having a child and not being able to touch him. A little boy in Texas had a rare disease which rendered his body incapable of resisting any germ, virus or infection. Since his birth, he had to live in a closed environment. His parents had to touch him with only rubber gloves. He could only venture outside his closed environment in a special life-support suit developed through space research. Many people suffer as untouchables in the realm of relationships. Jesus put love into action by touching the untouchables, the leper, the Samaritan, the religiously unclean; and no one was beyond His touch or is today beyond His touch.

Romans 8:39
Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Romans 11:33
O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!

There are 442 Bible references to the word love. Beginning with:

Genesis 22:2

And he said, Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of.

Ending with:

Revelation 3:19
As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten: be zealous therefore, and repent.

There are many expressions of love illustrated in the world today. There is:

The love of a mother
The love of a father
The love of children
The love of a husband/wife
The love of a companion

Related words: affection, attachment, devotedness, devotion, fondness, passion

When I think of the depth of the love of God it is beyond what I can imagine. When I think of the depth of the oceans and I think of the vastness of the universe and relate that to the love of God it gives the human mind some understanding of the depth of God's love.

The Apostle Paul spoke of the virtues of the characteristics of God and could simply conclude:

"O the depth…………….how unsearchable………his ways are past finding out!"

His love takes in everybody. From the rich man's palace to the poor man's abode, up the rickety tenement stairs and down into the vicious brothel, behind every prison bar and into every asylum, and then across the fields to every village and farm. His love reaches into the snow wall huts of Greenland's icy mountains, over the sea to China's teeming millions and down to India's coral strand, across the trackless waste and into the pathless jungles of the world's dark continent, out to the lonely islands of the Pacific where the dark-skinned mother sings her lullaby to the accompaniment of the ocean waves, and then to every unexplored nook and corner in the universe of God. Then, lest somewhere his eye had not lighted on some poor burdened soul of humanity, I think he would take a pencil of fire and write in blazing letters across the sky these words, "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life."

Ephesians 3:18, "May be able to comprehend what is the length."

Paul traveled roads; but every road he traveled ended. But the road love travels never ends. It is eternal. It is the road of eternity. How do you define eternity? I can tell you what time is. Time can be defined because it is measured by the revolution of the planets and the aspects of the stars. Because having a beginning and an end, the past can be increased and future decreased. Because it has parts and these parts sustain relations to each other and to the whole, and any one can be selected out of the whole and given a name, such as century, decade, year, hour, minute, second, whatever. Because these are parts, these parts can be analyzed.

But eternity cannot be defined. Its beginning-less and endless cannot be measured. It has no past, no future, no end, no middle, no parts. You cannot analyze it. It is something which always was, and is, and always will be. Eternity is contemporary with God, began when He did. It is un-originated, beginning-less, endless, measureless, indescribable, incomprehensible, un-definable thing. It is as old as God and yet no older now than when world, sun, stars and angels were made, and never will be any older, yet never younger. Oh, eternity! All language begs at that footstool for one word of description, and all science piles all of their symbols at your feet for one illustration as to your length. And God says, "I have loved thee in everlasting love."

"O the depth of the love of God!"

God loves you before you were ever born. God loves you now, and He never will stop. Friends may stop, but He won't. Family may also stop loving you; but He will continue to love you. When the explorer Manson, tried to measure the depth of the ocean in the far north, he used a long measuring line. When he discovered that he had not touched the bottom, he wrote in his record, "Deeper than that." The next day he tried a longer line, only to write again, "Deeper than that." Several times he tried until finally he fastened all of his lines together and let them down; but his last record was like the first, "Deeper than that." He left without knowing the depth of the ocean at that point, except that it was deeper than so many thousand feet. Thus, may we try to know the love that transcends all knowing. We may know what a young child's love may be, or that of a growing son or daughter, or brother or sister, or husband or wife, or parents for their children, or the patriot for his country, or of a Christian for his God; but in each case the measuring line will be too short. We may even add all of these measurements together and still we cannot measure fully this love of the Lord. We may have relative knowledge only. We must say, "It is deeper than that." God so loved the world!

"To write the love of God would drain the ocean dry. Nor could the scroll contain the whole, though stretched from sky to sky."

There are some attributes of God that need no proof, some features of the divine character that are so universally conspicuous as to be self-evident. Think, for example, of God's power. If we believe in God at all, we need no argument to convince of His power. The mighty forces that in-girdle us all cry aloud for that.

The chambers of the deep, the chariot of the sun are stamped with it. The devastating march of the winter's storm, and nonetheless, the time and calling of all of the summer's beauty out of the bare earth, these things, and a thousand other things like these, teach us the power of God. We would not need the cross if all that had to be proved was the divine omnipotence.

The wisdom of God. Is any argument needed to assure us in general of that?

None. Day unto day uttereth speech of it; and night unto night showeth forth its glory. Our bodies, so fearfully and so wonderfully made, our senses linking us so strange into the world without, our thought so swift, so incomprehensible, and all of the constancy of nature, and all of the harmony of part with part, and all of the obedience of the starry worlds, and all of the perfections of the wayside's weed, these things, and a multitude of things like these, speak to the thinking mind, of the wisdom of the God with whom we have to do. That wisdom needs no formal proof.

It is self-evidencing. We would not need the cross if all that had to be proved was the wisdom of God.

Is there some unanswerable proof if we are to believe that God is love. It is that proof that is afforded to us in the cross of Jesus Christ. God commended, or showed, or proved His love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. The one triumphant argument for the love of God is seen in the cross of Jesus Christ. The story of nature may seem to argue against this truth that every heart hungers to believe, and the experiences of life may often seem to fight against it also, but as we read the story of that atoning death, all doubts are done away with. Nothing but love, wonderful love, matchless love, can explain the cross.

Jesus died.

Let me say it again:

"O the depth of the love of God!"

God proved His love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us. Christ died. How broad is His love? Oh, as broad as man's trespasses, as wide as the need of the world can be; and yet, to the need of one soul, it can narrow. He came to the world, and He came to me.

How long is His love? Without end or beginning, eternal as Christ and His life it must be. For to everlasting as from everlasting, He loveth the world, and He loveth me.

How deep is His love? Oh, as deep as man's sinning, as low as the uttermost vilest can be, in the fathomless gulf of the Father's forsaking. He died for the world, and He died for me.

How high is His love? It is as high as the Heavens, as high as the throne of His glory must be; and yet, from that height He has stooped to redeem us. He so loved the world, and He so loved me.

How great is His love? Oh, it passes all knowledge. No man's comprehension its measure can be. It would fill up the world, yet each heart may contain it. He so loved the world, and He so loved me.

Thank God, His love spans the widest ocean, travels the longest road, descends to the lowest valley, and climbs the highest mountain.

CONCLUSION:

In the city of Brooklyn some years ago there was a mother who left her little baby unattended in an apartment house while she went to the store. It is said that she had bought her groceries and was on her way back to the apartment when she heard the fast beating of the horse hooves on the brick pavement, the drawing of the fire engine and the ring of the big bell. It is said that the woman ran screaming, "Where is the fire? Where is the fire?"

When they pointed to the place, she realized it was her own apartment. She threw her bag of groceries down and started to dash up the steps and go into the apartment house; but the fireman stopped her and said, "It is too late. Anyone who goes in there will die." One of the fireman started to go in; but the fire chief stopped him and said, "No, you are not going in either." But the fireman said, "But, sir, I have a little baby at home and I would like to save that woman's baby." Struggling to get free and begging the chief to let him go, the chief said, "Try it if you must."

He disappeared up the steps and into the smoke and flames; and after a while they heard a voice, but could not see him. Then there was great falling as the stairs and part of the building gave way; and they heard him cry, "Can you hear me?" They cried back through the noise of the burning building, "Yes, we can hear you?" He cried, "I cannot save myself; but I can save the baby. I am now going to throw her out of the window." They got the big nets ready and the crowd of fireman stood around, and hundreds of people were lined up and down the street. After a while, the fireman cried, "I am ready to throw the baby." Out through the window came that little bundle all tied up. It fell into the net. In a few moments, they have her to her mother.

After a few hours, they dug the fireman's charred remains out from under the building. It is said that twenty years after that took place, one day there was a young woman in Brooklyn who went to a cemetery. She had a little bouquet of flowers in her hand. She went to a tombstone, got down on her knees and leaned against the tombstone. It is said that someone came and read the man's name and said, "Is this where your daddy was buried?" She said, "No, not my father." They said, "Then was it your brother?" "No," she said, "not my brother." They said,

"Young lady, who is the man that you pay honor to by a wreath of flowers?" She looked up and through her tears of gratitude said, "This is the man who saved my life." I thank God that when I was about nine years old, I brought a little wreath of conviction and tears and knelt at the old rugged cross, and God saved my soul.

Would you allow Him to save yours?

"O the depth of the love of God!"