Happy Thanksgiving and welcome to this week's episode of Trinity Sermons.
This week Rob shares a story about some super-sized turkeys and how these are really just a chicken
nugget compared to the enormous size of God's love.
Keep listening to find out how we measure the width, length, height, and depth of God's
love for us.
Today's reading is from Ephesians chapter 3 verses 14 to 21.
For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth
derives its name.
I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his
spirit in your inner being so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.
And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power together with all
the Lord's holy people to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of
Christ and to know that this love surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled to the measure
of all the fullness of God.
Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according
to his power that is at work within us, to him be the glory in the church and in Jesus
Christ throughout all generations forever and ever.
Amen.
This is the word of the Lord.
Good morning everyone and happy Thanksgiving.
It's great to see you this morning.
We're so glad you're here and a special welcome to any who are visiting on Thanksgiving weekend.
We know lots of people go out of town but other people come into town so we're really
glad that you're with us this morning.
Ladies and gentlemen, I gave you a picture of Jubilee Acres.
This is the place where our family called home in the year 2011 when I was working at
a little church in the Niagara region.
We bought this little hobby farm with this old, old farmhouse and an even older barn
with a leaky roof and this is where we called home for about seven or eight years.
And this gave us the chance to try our hand at farming while I was still serving at the
local church in Port Colborne.
Here's a picture of our family during those years on the farm and when we were on the
farm in those years, we tried all sorts of things.
We raised crops, we raised various creatures and animals because we wanted to make a little
bit of money on the side.
So we sold eggs, we sold chickens.
We even, come Thanksgiving time, we would raise and sell turkeys.
That's right, if you wanted the best and juiciest turkey in all of Niagara, then you came to
Jubilee Acres because at Jubilee Acres, we raised our turkeys outdoors.
They were free range.
We created these big outdoor pens where they could run around and we also raised a heritage
breed of turkey.
It wasn't one of the white turkeys that everybody gets.
No, no, no.
These weren't the, it was called an Orlop Bronze Turkey.
And it was kind of like a black feathered turkey, not unlike a wild turkey that you
might see as you're driving down the road, but they grew bigger.
And so every year we would buy about 50 baby turkeys.
Quick trivia question, what do you call a baby turkey?
Is it a chick?
No.
Is it a nugget?
Is it a gobbler?
No, a baby turkey is called a poult, a P-O-U-L-T.
So here's a picture of one of our daughters holding one of the day old turkey poult's
that we would have received.
And that was just the beginning because then you had to start feeding them every day.
You had to start feeding these turkeys, even though they are free range, they still required
a lot of food.
And I mean a lot of food.
So you would go to the feed store and the first thing you fed them at this age was something
called turkey starter.
And it was a special formulation to kind of help them get through the first few weeks
of their lives.
But after they had gotten to a certain size, then you switched to turkey grower and you
would go and you get these big 25 kilogram bags of turkey grower and you would fill and
they would eat and eat and grow and grow.
And then when they were getting close to being butchered, you would go and you would get
another special kind of feed called turkey finisher.
No, I'm serious.
It was called turkey finisher.
And the turkey finisher was like high in fat.
So it really fattened up your turkeys before you took them to get butchered.
Now normally this process would take somewhere between 14 to 16 weeks, at which point you
would have a turkey with a live weight of something like 20 to 25 pounds, which meant
that after it came back from the butcher, it would be something like 15 to 20 pounds,
which is like the ideal size of a turkey, right?
If you want a turkey for your table.
But the reason I'm telling you all this is one year we ran into a problem.
And that is when I made the phone call to the butcher and there weren't many butchers
who would butcher turkeys from small flock farmers.
When I made the call to the butcher, I said, we'd like to book our date.
He said, I'm sorry, that date is booked.
And I said, okay, what do you got the next week?
He said, that date is booked.
I said, what do you got the next week?
And the next week and the next week.
And I kid you not, we were stuck in a situation where we could not get our turkeys butchered
for a period of time that was like four or five weeks longer than we had intended.
Now the good news was this was still going to allow us to have our turkeys done and butchered
them back to people by Thanksgiving.
But the problem was that we had to keep feeding these suckers for another four or five weeks.
And pretty soon these 25 pound turkeys were 30 pound turkeys, were 35 pound turkeys, were
40 pound turkeys, were 45 pound turkeys.
I kid you not, they were 50 pound turkeys as we kept feeding them and feeding them and
feeding them.
In fact, they were getting so big that we ran into the time when the Wayne Fleet Fall
Fair is held.
And so we took a couple of our turkeys to the Wayne Fleet Fall Fair and they both won
first prize because they were massive.
In fact, I even kept the ribbon.
This was the grand champion ribbon for our tom turkey at the Wayne Fleet Fall Fair.
I mean, we could have entered them in the horse show and they would have won first prize.
These suckers were massive, massive.
Finally the day came when we took them to get butchered and sure enough, the hens, the
females came back like finished weight 25 to 30 pounds plus.
And the toms, the toms came back at something like 35 to 40 plus pounds each a turkey.
Now something I didn't tell you is that people ordered these turkeys months in advance and
they agreed to pay us $3.50 a pound, which meant that now people who are coming to pick
up their turkeys were like owing us like $150 for these massive turkeys.
Don't worry.
We didn't make any money in the end.
The suckers like they ate so much food and that meant that your cooking time for a turkey,
which is something like 15 minutes per pound was now going to take you like eight hours
to cook this massive turkey.
But the biggest problem was the biggest problem was is that they were so big people couldn't
like handle them.
They couldn't figure out how to fit them into their ovens or into a pan.
And this was a real, actually a real problem.
They were super, super heavy.
They didn't fit into a roasting power.
Now what we had to do actually in that case is some of the bigger ones, we had to freeze
them solid and then we took them to a friend of ours who had a band saw and he ran the
turkeys right through the band saw until they split into two half turkeys.
I'm not even joking.
Two half turkeys, each of them weighing about 20 pounds and then they were able to kind
of get them into the pan and get them into their oven.
And you know, in the end, I got to tell you though, they were massive but delicious turkeys.
And when we sat down to our Thanksgiving dinner that year, we all had a little bit of a smile
on our face because we knew there's a whole bunch of people throughout town who were also
sitting down to these massive turkeys or half turkeys that were going to make their Thanksgiving
something to remember and was going to make that meal the talk of the town.
Now listen, today is Thanksgiving Sunday and most of us have shown up here today and we
are thankful.
We're joyous, you know, but not all of us, not all of us.
For many, for many people, Thanksgiving is kind of a hard time or at least there's nothing
special about it.
It could be that you're not sitting down today to a table with a 42 pound or a lot bronze
turkey on it.
It could be that actually you're sitting down to a plate full of problems, to a plate full
of struggles, health struggles, financial struggles, relationship struggles, other things
that are going on in your life.
You've got a lot on your plate and it's not turkey.
And so while some of us came to church this morning, we were totally revved up.
Others of us may have come and we're feeling actually a little bit unthankful and that
is okay.
Why is that okay?
I want to set a table for you and I am going to serve you something that is going to make
your Thanksgiving the best one ever.
You see, God wants to give you this morning a huge, a massive, an enormous gift, something
even larger than a 40 plus pound turkey.
What God has for you this morning is so incredible.
It's so huge.
That when you see it, when you sink your teeth into it, your hopes will be lifted and your
lives will be changed.
What am I talking about?
I am talking about the great, big love of God.
2000 years ago, Paul wrote these words.
He said, I pray that you being rooted and established in love may have power.
Now get this to grasp how wide and how long and how high and how deep is the love of Christ
and to know this love that surpasses knowledge.
Paul is trying to describe the supersized love of God.
God is so big that God's love is so big that he is trying to use three dimensional language
to talk about.
And God's love has got length and height and depth and width.
It's almost like the only way he can communicate the vastness of it.
The only way he can communicate the enormity and the greatness of God's love is to, is
to imagine it as this big three dimensional object.
In fact though, Paul is so excited about this that he actually creates a little bit of an
oxymoron.
He says, I want you to know this love that surpasses knowledge.
How do you know something that can't be known?
How do you define something that can't be defined?
How do you measure something like the love of God that is clearly immeasurable?
It's true.
The love of God is beyond all calculation.
It's beyond all computation and it can't be measured.
And yet today we're going to try, today we're going to try.
Cause some of the greatest spiritual thinkers in all of history has spent their lives trying
to comprehend and understand even a smidgen, even a taste, even a drumstick of the love
of God.
But even then, then they do so they're only just scratching the surface of it.
It's like, it's like we can't fit the huge Turkey of God's love into the small little
roasting pans of our brains.
But today we're going to try.
We got to try.
We're going to try to jam as much of it in there as we can, as much of it into our hearts
as we can.
And here's why, because it's Thanksgiving.
And the more you know about God's love, the more thankful you'll be.
And the more joy you will feel in your life.
The more you grasp hold, the more you can grab a hold of this great thing, the more
you'll realize, you know, everything's going to be all right.
Even if you've got struggles and even though you've got worries and even though you've
got problems, they all kind of fade away when you compare it to the measurements of how
big God's love is.
Guys, do you know that one day you are going to spend all eternity staring at and marveling
at and gazing at the enormity of God's love, but you don't have to wait until then we can
get started now.
So that's what we're going to do today.
That's what we're going to do.
We're going to take our rulers and we are going to try to measure how wide and how long
and how deep and how high is the love of God.
I've created some sermon notes that you can kind of follow along if you want to keep track
of where we're going.
First let's try to measure the width of God's love.
How wide is it?
Have you ever thought about how wide God's love is?
Have you ever thought about how widely God extends his mercy?
You know, the thing is many of us consciously or unconsciously, we put limits on God's love,
right?
We're pretty sure that God's love is only for people like us, right?
Those who think the way we do, those who believe the way we do, those who look the way we do.
We're pretty certain that God's love is only reserved for a select few.
Maybe our family, maybe our community, maybe our kind of religious background, maybe our
nation or our set of politics.
We restrict God's love to my circle, to my little tribe.
You know, the Jewish people in Jesus' day, they couldn't figure out how God's love could
be so wide.
They had it restricted.
They understood that God's love was to the Jewish people.
God's salvation was for the Jewish people.
God's love was through the Jewish people, but it was the apostle Paul that showed them
how wrong they were.
Paul comes along and says, there is neither Jew nor Greek.
There is neither slave nor free.
There is neither male nor female.
You are all one in Christ Jesus.
Do you know how important a phrase like that is in our divided and polarized world today
to know that God's love is so wide, it extends to all.
That's how wide it is.
Do you know even how important this is for us living in Mississauga?
Mississauga, which is filled with people from different countries and different continents
and different cultures and backgrounds.
God's love is so wide, it includes all of us.
I mean, gosh, sometimes we get fixated on our little lives, on our little church, on
our little people, on our little group, but all that changes when you step back and you
consider the wideness of God's love.
John 3 16 says, for God so loved me.
No, for God so loved my friends.
No, for God so loved my church.
No, for God so loved my community.
No, for God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son.
God's love breaks through all the boundaries that you or I try to set on it.
God doesn't just love the people that fit into our neat little roasting pans.
No, his love is wide enough to encompass the whole world.
It reaches beyond borders.
It breaks through all the different divides and across cultures and across countries and
belief systems.
It's wide like Christ's arms are wide open on the cross.
That's how wide God's love is.
And if you don't believe it now, one day you will believe it because the Bible tells us
that one day in heaven we will see a great multitude that no one can count from every
nation and every tribe and every people and every language standing before the throne
and before the lamb.
Sometimes we say, Oh, you know how many people will be saved by God or what is it?
How wide is God's love?
And I don't know the precise answer, but I think the Bible makes it pretty clear that
when we actually see it, we will be astounded at the width of his love.
So guys, if you're here today and you're feeling a little bit depressed, a little bit sad,
a little bit unloved, remember the width of his love and his mercy.
Take a look at that and your heart will be lifted up knowing that you too have been included
in this great multitude of people that he loves.
That's just the width.
That's just the width of it.
We also got to talk about the length of God's love.
How long does God's love last?
You know, even the biggest turkey in the world has got a beginning and an end has got a head
and a tail.
But when we speak of the length of God's love, we're talking about endless everlasting love.
Now you have heard that phrase so many times, the everlasting love of God, but I don't think
we really get it.
The Bible says things like his steadfast love will endure, say it with me forever.
And that I have loved you with a, say it with me, everlasting love.
But I don't think we really, even the way you just said that, I don't think you really
believe it.
I don't think you really understand what it is you're saying.
You see God's love is not confined by time, right?
In fact, his love for you began before you or even the world ever existed.
You know, theologians have this thing they like to talk about, which is called the covenant
of grace, which is just a fancy schmancy way of saying that, that before the foundation
of the world, there was an agreement that happened.
The father, the son, and the Holy spirit before the foundation of the world, that they got
around and they made an agreement together.
They knew that one day humankind was going to need rescuing.
And so they made this agreement.
They said that, you know, before one human being had taken a breath, before one human
being had ever fallen into sin, they made this agreement that when the time came, they
would rescue all humanity by sending the son, by sending Jesus to come and save us.
But amazingly, here's the amazing thing.
All of that happened before time ever began.
Before we were created, God's love was already reaching out to us.
He had already planned to rescue us.
The love of Jesus did not start at the cross.
The love of Jesus did not even start at creation, but it extends back into the depths of eternity
long before we ever knew we needed it.
The Bible tells us that our names are written in the lamb's book of life before the foundation
of the world.
This is one of the most staggering things you can ever contemplate that I was known
and I was loved before I was ever created.
That is the length of God's love for us.
And you realize what dignity that gives to every single human being who has ever walked
the world, knowing that God has set his heart on you eons ago, right?
That Jesus' affection for you began back in eternity.
That's the beginning of the length of his love for you before time.
But God's love doesn't just have a beginning in eternity.
It also aims and lasts past the end to eternity.
God's love stretches from eternity past to eternity future.
His love never fails.
It never fades.
It never runs out.
What began at the foundations of time will continue till the end of time and will not
change.
Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.
Therefore his love is like a straight line.
It doesn't go up.
It doesn't go down.
It doesn't break.
It doesn't wobble.
It doesn't matter whether you've been very good or very bad.
It doesn't matter whether you're a Pharisee or a prodigal son.
Doesn't matter.
Even when we turn our back on him, his love still remains.
That's why God says, I will never leave you.
I will never forsake you.
And this is so important for us to understand because I guarantee there's going to come
a time in your life where you're going to think that God has forgotten about you, where
you are going to be going through some struggles or going through some difficulties and you're
going to say, where is God's love now?
But now we know it is there the whole time and nothing can stop it.
Elsewhere Paul writes, I'm convinced that neither death nor life can stop it.
Neither angels nor demons can stop it.
Neither the present or the past nor powers nor height nor depth nor anything else in
all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
It's unstoppable.
It's unbreakable.
If God has set his affections on you, it will never cease.
Nothing will ever pluck you out of his hand.
All hell could break loose on your life and that wouldn't change a thing.
His love stands firm.
That's the length of his love.
That's the length of it.
Before time began, it will last until time ceases to exist.
Are you guys starting to grasp the enormity of this thing?
Are you starting to see how wide it is and how long it is?
But we're only, we're not done yet because now we got to talk about how deep God's love
is.
If Jesus's love is so immense, then how low would he go for us?
Well, imagine, imagine you took a plum line and you dropped it down, down, down.
You wanted to see where the bottom of God's love is.
So he kept dropping it down and down and down.
I tell you, you would be astounded.
Actually, the apostle Paul did this once.
He kept, he kept dropping saying, where is the bottom of this?
In Philippians chapter two, he was trying to see just how low God would go, how deep
Jesus love would go for us.
I don't think we appreciate actually how deep down he went.
He went from the highest heights of heaven to the lowest depths of death and hell.
You see, we read that he didn't, he didn't cling to his divine status, but he made himself
nothing, but he went even deeper.
He stepped down from his eternal throne to enter into the frailty of human flesh.
He went down even deeper, right?
He descended into the womb of the Virgin Mary and he, he took on the form of a servant,
but he went even deeper, right?
He took on the humility of a poor carpenter, but he went even deeper.
He endured hatred and scorn from the very people he came to save, but he went even deeper.
He had to endure hunger.
He had to endure thirst.
He had to endure persecution and rejection, but he went deeper.
He was arrested.
He went deeper.
He was beaten.
He went deeper.
He had to bear the weight of his own cross on his shoulders.
He went so deep and then as if he couldn't go any deeper at all, he descended into death
itself and there he was lying dead in a grave.
The one who was above all descended to the lowest of lows.
Why?
Why would anyone do that?
There's no incentive.
There's no motivation.
There's no reason, no other motive other than he loved you.
He loved you that much that it took him to the darkest places to endure the worst that
humanity and hell could offer all to rescue you all because he loves you.
You know, Jesus once said, you know, greater love has no one than this.
And they laid down their life for his friends.
Well, that's, that's great.
But here's the thing.
When Jesus laid down his life for us, we weren't even friends.
We were rebels, right?
We were his enemies.
And so it's an even greater love because God shows his love for us that while we were still
sinners, he was willing to die for us despite our unworthiness, despite our rebellion, he
still went that deep for us.
That is the depths of Christ's love.
It is immeasurably deep, unfathomably deep.
And he did it all for you.
He did it all for you.
His love is so wide.
It extends to all the world.
His love is so long.
It stretches from eternity to eternity.
His love is so deep that it descends into death to save us.
But we can't stop there.
Jesus didn't just come to descend to the depths for us.
It wasn't just about the forgiveness of our sins.
It doesn't end down there.
He doesn't leave us down there.
No, if you do that, you know what?
You're missing the height of God's love.
He also raises us up way beyond you could possibly imagine to renew us and to make us
into a brand new people.
Just think for a moment of all the ways that we are lifted up.
First, he lifts us up and he makes us part of his family.
He calls us, you and me, brothers and sisters, sons and daughters.
But then he lifts us up even higher.
He makes us into heirs, co-heirs with Christ, his only begotten son.
Then he lifts us up even higher and he puts his own Holy Spirit, the same Holy Spirit
that rests on Jesus now rests in us.
Then he lifts us up even higher and he actually unites us to himself.
So we're made part of his body.
That's pretty high.
And yet he lifts us higher.
Still, he lifts us up to Christ until, as the Bible says, and I don't fully understand
it until we are seated with Christ in the heavenly realms.
I don't know if you remember, but in the very last prayer that Jesus prayed, he said, he
said this, he says, father, I want those you've given me to be where, don't, I want those
you've given me to be with me where I am, to see my glory.
He loves you so much that he wants us, you, me right there where he is in glory for all
eternity.
I mean, when you love someone, you want the very best for them, don't you?
And the same is true of God in Christ.
He loves us so high and so much that he won't stop lifting us up until we're totally transformed,
until we're completely made new, until we are a holy and radiant, until we're without
stain and without wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.
And there will be shining with his glory.
That is the future that he has planned for you.
Just to be renewed and perfect, that's the height to which he is going to raise us.
So guys, guys, it's Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving.
I don't know.
I don't know how big of a table you're going to have today or this weekend for your Thanksgiving
dinner.
You may have a lot, you may have a little, you may have a big old Turkey on the table.
You may have no Turkey at all.
It really doesn't matter.
It's all miniscule.
It's all just a chicken nugget.
When you consider the main course, the entree that Jesus places before us today, his immense,
enormous, immeasurable love.
So wide, it includes us all.
It's so long that it never stops.
It's so deep that we're totally forgiven.
It's so high that we're made brand new.
What we just did, I just tried to give you a taste, just a taste, but my best efforts,
just like a little appetizer compared to Christ's love for you.
It's bigger than you can hold.
It's bigger than any pen can contain.
It's bigger than the world can hold.
So today, maybe you came in here and you were feeling a little bit down, a little sluggish,
a little unthankful even.
Maybe you came unsure if you even wanted to come to church today at all.
Maybe you're feeling stuck in life or defeated.
I don't know.
Maybe you got caught up in all the small stuff going on these days, all the small things
in your life, but now I hope you'll see.
Set your eyes on something bigger.
Look at the love of Christ that is set before you.
He loves you.
He set his affections on you.
And if you ever doubt it, just look at how wide it is, how long it goes, how deep it
descends, and how high it climbs.
Thanks be to God for his amazing love.
Amen.
Thank you for joining us for this week's episode of Trinity Sermons.
This episode was recorded at Trinity Church, Streetsville in Mississauga, Ontario on October
13, 2024.