{"id":33185,"date":"2005-08-26T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2005-08-26T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/preaching\/sermons\/sacred-romance\/"},"modified":"2005-08-26T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2005-08-26T00:00:00","slug":"sacred-romance","status":"publish","type":"sermons","link":"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/preaching\/sermons\/sacred-romance\/","title":{"rendered":"The Sacred Romance"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-audio\"><audio controls src=\"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/19\/2005\/08\/19093.mp3\"><\/audio><\/figure>\n\n<p>Simone Weil once wrote that there were only two things that pierce the human\nheart: beauty and affliction. <\/p>\n    <p>Five weeks ago my best friend and partner was killed in a climbing accident.\nBrent and I had taken a group of men up to the mountains for a time of\nspiritual search and renewal, and the weekend took a tragic turn. Tragedy is a\ndramatic invitation for us to wrestle deeply with the truest and the most\nimportant questions of our hearts. Why? Why do we long so deeply for happiness,\nfor joy? Why are we so full of dreams&#8212;for our children, for the future&#8212;when\nlife seems to be so disappointing, so unpredictable? <\/p>\n    <p>The real tragedy of postmodernism is what it has done to the human soul. We\nare now in the postmodern era. We ask postmodernism to answer the deepest\nquestions of the human heart. Postmodernism responds with, &#8220;We don&#8217;t know.\nIt&#8217;s unanswerable. There are no answers to why you long for a different life\nthan the one you have.&#8221; Christianity was supposed to be the answer to the\nriddle of the earth. It was supposed to speak to the deepest issues of the\nhuman heart in a way that captured our hearts and drew us up into something\nlarger, but because Christianity did not escape the trend into postmodernism,\nwhat we have left is not the gospel. What we have left is a Christianity of\ntips and techniques: three steps for a good quiet time, four habits for effective\nmarriage communication. It does not take your breath away; and if Christianity\ndoes not take your breath away, something else will. <\/p>\n    <p>A little boy of 11 or 12 once wrote a letter of contrition to C. S. Lewis.\nAs many of you know, C. S. Lewis was the author of the Chronicles of Narnia, a\nseries of children&#8217;s stories in which there is a hero, the Christ figure in the\nform of a lion named Aslan. The little boy wrote to Lewis and said, &#8220;I\nlove Aslan more than Jesus.&#8221;<\/p>\n    <p>Lewis very wisely wrote back to the boy, &#8220;No, all that you love in\nAslan is Jesus.&#8221; <\/p>\n    <p>All that people are searching for is the gospel, but we fail to see that\nbecause postmodernism has caused the total loss of the story. So, in response\nto postmodernism, in an effort to recapture the gospel, and as part of an\nhonest wrestling with my own faith, I want to retell the story of our lives.\nWhat is this tale? The Gospel in Four Acts.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading is-style-article-subhead1\">The story begins with the eternal love of the Trinity.<\/h2>\n    <p>In the beginning&#8212;once upon a time. All good stories begin like that, don&#8217;t\nthey? <\/p>\n    <p>&#8220;Once upon a time there was a land named Narnia.&#8221; <\/p>\n    <p>&#8220;Once upon a time there was a kingdom called Camelot.&#8221; <\/p>\n    <p>&#8220;Once upon a time there was a prince and a princess.&#8221; All good\nstories will follow this pattern, because they borrow from the true story. <\/p>\n    <p>And so, in the beginning, once upon a time&#8212;your thoughts probably go to\nGenesis 1. &#8220;In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.&#8221;\nYou can&#8217;t start there. That&#8217;s Act III. This shows you how much we&#8217;ve lost the\nlarger story. <\/p>\n    <p>The story really starts in John 1. &#8220;In the beginning was the Word and\nthe Word was with God and the Word was God.&#8221; In the beginning. <\/p>\n    <p>In other words, in the &#8220;once upon a time&#8221; before all time, there\nwas perfect love. The life of the Trinity shows us real intimacy&#8212;the kind of\nlove that you have been looking for all your life. I think I&#8217;ve been a\npracticing Unitarian for years and not known it. I&#8217;ve always thought of God as\nstrong, sovereign, omniscient, and omnipotent&#8212;but by himself. God has never\nbeen by himself. God has always been a community of persons in the Trinity. For\nGod to be love, as John says God is love, there has to be someone to love. And\nso in the beginning there was the community that every one of us has been\nsearching for our whole lives. <\/p>\n    <p>We live with a memory of Act I, because when the story reaches Act III,\nwhere it says that we are made in the image of God, it says we are made in the\nimage of the Trinity. This is why we are relational at the core of our being.\nNothing will touch our hearts like relationship, either to thrill it or to\nbreak it. Have you noticed that everyone is looking to get back into the sacred\ncircle? Single people think it&#8217;s marriage: &#8220;If I can just get married,\nthen I will have it.&#8221;<\/p>\n    <p>Married couples know that&#8217;s not enough. &#8220;If we could just have\nkids&#8221; or &#8220;If we could just get into the right church.&#8221; <\/p>\n    <p>And if it&#8217;s the wrong church, then it&#8217;s a small group; and if you have a\nsmall group, you think it&#8217;s a different small group. All your life you have\nbeen looking for heroic intimacy because of Act I. <\/p>\n    <p>When I was a boy, my parents would ship me off to my grandfather&#8217;s ranch for\nthree months every summer. I spent three months horseback riding, roping\ncattle, shooting rifles, riding in  trucks. Sunday afternoons, we&#8217;d get\nin my grandfather&#8217;s  and we&#8217;d do what he&#8217;d call &#8220;going\nvisiting.&#8221; We&#8217;d drop in on the other farms and ranches in the valley. We&#8217;d\nvisit third cousins, great aunts and uncles, and people who had become like\nfamily over the years. I recall sitting on the front steps listening to the old\nfolks tell their stories. I remember having a &#8220;settled feeling&#8221;\ninside me&#8212;I felt that finally I was part of something larger than I was. Here\nwas this wonderful life that had been going on for many years&#8212;that had me in\nmind, that was inviting me into it&#8212;but that I didn&#8217;t have to do anything with\nto keep it going. I got to be a part of things. <\/p>\n    <p>That&#8217;s the invitation of the gospel. <\/p>\n    <p>Eugene Peterson says that traditional Christian spirituality is not taking\nbits and pieces of doctrine and putting them to use, but it is entering into\nthe life of God that is already in motion. Once upon a time. True love. Heroic\nintimacy. <\/p>\n    <p>All good love is generous in its heart. It&#8217;s  and .\nGod is generous in his love. This is why married couples want to have children,\nbecause they sense that the love is larger than they are; they want to grow it.\nThey want more souls around the house to share in it. It&#8217;s because of the\nTrinity.<\/p><h2 class=\"wp-block-heading is-style-article-subhead1\">God invites angels into the drama.<\/h2>\n    <p>In Act II, God begins to write other characters into the story he is living.\nHe invites others in; he creates angels. We&#8217;re not given a lot of insight in\nScripture about what it&#8217;s like to be an angel, but notice this: nowhere in\nScripture do you meet a bored angel. Whatever the angels do, they are having a\nball. In Isaiah 6, when he sees the curtains parted in the year that King\nUzziah died, Isaiah says, &#8220;I saw the Lord lifted up.&#8221; <\/p>\n    <p>He sees the rest of reality&#8212;he sees the glory of God and he peers into\nheaven at the seraphim flying around the temple. They are saying, &#8220;Holy,\nholy, holy,&#8221; to each other. It&#8217;s not a hymn. They&#8217;re not singing it to\nGod. They are singing it to each other. They are saying, &#8220;Holy, holy, holy\nsmokes. Do you see what I see?&#8221; It&#8217;s breathtaking. It&#8217;s captivating. And\nthey are in awe. <\/p>\n    <p>You&#8217;ve had the experience of the angels, often without knowing it. Perhaps\nyou have walked up in the Rockies and come through a break in the woods, and\nsuddenly you come upon a meadow full of wildflowers. Something in your heart\nsays, &#8220;Ah, I wish Mary was here. She would love this.&#8221; Every moment\nof glory is meant to be shared. <\/p>\n    <p>And so the angels are invited into tremendous intimacy, the heroic intimacy\nof God. And they love it&#8212;well, most of them.  <\/p>\n    <p>Something else happens in Act II that&#8217;s crucial for us to understand why\nlife is the way it is in Act III. There&#8217;s a rebellion in heaven. Lucifer, Son\nof the Morning, whom Ezekiel says, &#8220;walked among the fiery stones,&#8221;\ndoesn&#8217;t want to be Best Supporting Actor. He wants to be Best Actor and the\ncenter of the story. So, as Revelation seems to say, he convinces a third of\nthe angels in heaven to turn on this generous love, and there is war in heaven.\n<\/p>\n    <p>The end of Act II is the fall of Lucifer and his demons from the hallways\nand courtyards of heaven. Notice two things at the end of Act II. First,\nLucifer and his demons are not chained, not yet. They are left as characters in\nthe story. Secondly, a doubt has been introduced into the universe&#8212;a doubt\nabout the story that was never there before. Satan suggested, &#8220;Can you really\ntrust the heart of this God? Is he really for you?&#8221; This is one of the\ndeepest doubts of the human heart, maybe the deepest. That doubt lingers in the\nstory now like smoke after the battle is long over, because God wins in Act II\nby power&#8212;and power is not the same thing as goodness. You can be bigger and not\nbe better. Anybody who&#8217;s not a bully knows this. And now the drama is set for\nAct III&#8212;&#8221;In the beginning,&#8221; Genesis 1.<\/p><h2 class=\"wp-block-heading is-style-article-subhead1\">God&#8217;s love is put on trial\nin the creation of humanity.<\/h2>\n    <p>In the beginning of Act III, we see the wild goodness of the heart of God\nbecause he begins by creating what we blandly call the acts of creation. He\nmakes Maui and the French Alps and the African Savannah. He makes mangos and\npeaches and blackberries and cabernet grapes&#8212;go figure. He gives us the whole\nthing like a wedding gift, and he says, &#8220;Here. Do you like it? Take it for\na spin.&#8221; <\/p>\n    <p>He creates us to be his intimate allies. To borrow Allender&#8217;s phrase, he\ncreates us for intimacy with him and with each other and to be his allies on\nthe earth. Why is it that most women long deeply for intimacy? Why is it that\nin the heart of every man there is a longing for adventure? And why do both\ngenders long for heroic intimacy? Because you and I are made to participate in\na far larger story than the little soap operas we call our lives. <\/p>\n    <p>You also see the wild goodness of this God because he gives us freedom to\nreject him. Why? He knows what  beings can do. He has already suffered\none massive betrayal. As Philip Yancey says, &#8220;Power can do everything but\nthe most important thing. It cannot control love.&#8221; The guards in a\nconcentration camp possess unlimited power over you. They can make you kill\nyour mother or eat human excrement. But there&#8217;s one thing they cannot force you\nto do&#8212;love them. This is why God seemed shy to use his power in Act III,\nbecause his heart is on trial and the entire wager of Act III is simply this:\nWill human beings choose God?  <\/p>\n    <p>Well, we kick off the honeymoon by sleeping with the enemy. <\/p>\n    <p>When you live in a Christianity of tips and techniques, you trivialize sin.\nSin is something external. It&#8217;s running stop signs. It&#8217;s drinking too much.\nIt&#8217;s smoking. But God calls sin adultery of the heart. It is what you give your\nheart away to other than the heart of God. <\/p>\n    <p>It is more than paradise that is lost. God comes into the Garden, and in one\nof the most poignant verses of the entire Bible, he says, &#8220;What have you\ndone? Do you have any idea what you&#8217;ve just done? I made your hearts for\nfreedom, for heroic intimacy, and you have given them away in bondage to my\nworst enemy and yours. I made the earth for beauty and for adventure, and you\nhave given it away.&#8221; When Satan comes to tempt Jesus in the wilderness\n(Luke 4), he offers him the kingdoms of the world, because they became his when\nman sinned. <\/p>\n    <p>But the heart of God is about to be revealed at the worst moment in the\nlarger story. He shows us something no one had ever seen before&#8212;grace. God says\nto Adam and Eve, &#8220;I&#8217;ll come for you. Your lives are going to be very hard\nnow, in  ways, but I&#8217;ll come for you. I will come.&#8221; <\/p>\n    <p>What follows is the long story of the pursuit&#8212;God&#8217;s pursuit of a people\nwhose hearts will be his. First in the story of Noah and then Abraham and then\nfor the people of Israel. We see God looking for a people who will turn back to\nhim to be his intimate allies to join him in a far larger drama&#8212;a sacred\nromance. <\/p>\n    <p>But it breaks down. When we read the prophets, Yancey says, &#8220;It&#8217;s like\nhearing a lovers&#8217; quarrel through the apartment wall.&#8221; <\/p>\n    <p>Theologians who talk about the impassability of God, that God is beyond\nemotion, have never read Jeremiah or Isaiah. God says, &#8220;Return to me and I\nwill have compassion on you. I will forgive everything. But you, you are a\nswift  in heat sniffing the wind in her craving, running here and\nthere after other lovers. I said, &#8216;Return to me, and I will love you.&#8217; But you\nsaid, &#8216;It is no use. I love foreign gods and I must go after them.'&#8221; Every\none of us has other lovers&#8212;television, work, sports, food&#8212;something that we\ngive our hearts away to other than the heart of God. <\/p>\n    <p>And then, 400 years of silence at the end of the Old Testament. It looks\nlike God has failed; humans will not choose God. But the story is about to take\nan unbelievable turn. God has something up his sleeve. Here&#8217;s how Kirkegaard\ntells in a parable what God is about to do: <\/p>\n    <p>Suppose there was a king who loved a humble maiden. Now, no king was like\nthis king. Every other ruler trembled before his power. No one dared breathe a\nword against him. And yet, this mighty king was melted by love for a humble\nmaiden. <\/p>\n    <p>How could he declare his love for her? In a way, his kingliness tied his\nhands. If he comes to her cottage in the woods with his whole escort&#8212;the\narmies, the coaches, the banners waving&#8212;it would overwhelm her. If he takes her\nto the palace, clothes her in royal robes, crowns her with jewels, she might\nsay she loved him. But would she really? How could he know? <\/p>\n    <p>So the king leaves all of that behind&#8212;the carriages, the banners, the\narmies. He disguises himself as a beggar, and he comes to her door in the woods\nalone to win her heart. <\/p>\n    <p>It&#8217;s the Incarnation. The Ancient of Days sneaks into the enemy camp\ndisguised as a newborn. The great heart behind the whole story comes into our\nlives as a carpenter from Nazareth. That&#8217;s why Paul says, &#8220;I know. I know.\nThe evidence looks mixed. There is incredible tragedy in this life, but look at\nthe cross. You have never been loved so fiercely.&#8221; <\/p>\n    <p>Can you trust the heart of this God? It&#8217;s the question Jesus came to answer.\nHe came for us just as he promised he would. He&#8217;s calling us to be his intimate\nallies once more. <\/p>\n    <p>Is that the end of the story? Is this it? Do you know what Paul says? Paul\nsays if this is it&#8212;the Christian life that you have now with the promises and\nthe blessings&#8212;if this is as good as it gets, Paul says to go home, bake a cake,\nand eat the whole thing. No, don&#8217;t even go home. Stop at the HSeek and\nget hammered. That&#8217;s 1 Corinthians 15. &#8220;Let us eat and drink for tomorrow\nwe die.&#8221; Do you know why most Christians live with a loss of heart?\nBecause we don&#8217;t have Act IV. We&#8217;ve lost the larger story. There is an Act IV.\nSomething better is coming.<\/p>\n    <h2 class=\"wp-block-heading is-style-article-subhead1\">An eternity of joy and feasting awaits those who accept the invitation.<\/h2>\n    <p>What is the typical evangelical response to the question &#8220;What will we\ndo in heaven&#8221;? We will worship God. And something in your heart says, For\nhow long? 100,000 years? Forever, ever? O heaven? Heaven\nis an unending church service? That&#8217;s getting closer to my picture of the other\nplace. <\/p>\n    <p>How does God kick off Act IV? With a wedding feast. <\/p>\n    <p>You&#8217;ve got to get images of Baptist weddings entirely out of your mind.\nPeople standing around the gym holding Styrofoam cups of punch, talking about\nwhat a lovely couple they are. Imagine this as a Jewish wedding. Push back the\ntables, roll up the rugs. There is feasting. There is dancing. There is\ndrinking. Jesus says, &#8220;I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until I\ndrink of it again with you in the kingdom of heaven.&#8221; In other words, when\nwe get there, he&#8217;s going to pop a cork.  <\/p>\n    <p>This isn&#8217;t just any feast. This is a wedding feast. What goes on at wedding\nfeasts? God takes what was supposed to be the most precious and intimate moment\nof human experience, the wedding night, to tell us what is coming&#8212;real\nintimacy, real adventure.  <\/p>\n    <p>At the end of the Chronicles of Narnia, the last paragraph in the last book\nentitled The Last Battle, C. S. Lewis says: <\/p>\n    <p>&#8220;But the things that began to happen after that were so great and\nbeautiful I cannot write them. For us, this is the end of all the stories. We\ncan most truly say that they all lived happily ever after, but for them it was\nonly the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all\ntheir adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and title page. Now at last\nthey were beginning chapter one of the great story that no one on earth has\nread, that goes on forever, in which every chapter is better than the one\nbefore.&#8221;<em>John Eldredge is Senior Fellow for Christian Worldview Studies\nat the Focus on the Family Institute, where he teaches and writes about faith\nin a postmodern world. He is  of <\/em>The Sacred Romance: Drawing\nCloser to the Heart of God<em>.<\/em><\/p>\n    <p>&copy; John Eldredge\n    Preaching Today Tape #196\n    <a href=\"http:\/\/www.preachingtodaysermons.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"\">www.PreachingTodaySermons.com<\/a>\n    A resource of Christianity Today International <\/p>\n    \n    <h2 class=\"wp-block-heading is-style-article-subhead1\">For Additional Preaching Today Resources:<\/h2>\n    <p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.preachingtoday.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"\">www.preachingtoday.com<\/a>\n    Perfect web site for Pastors! Get  sermon illustrations, relevant articles, preaching tips, and more!<\/p>","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":0,"template":"","tax_ctp_audience":[306],"tax_ctp_authors":[2004],"tax_ctp_categories":[165],"tax_ctp_field_guide_subcategory":[],"tax_ctp_field_guides":[],"tax_ctp_format":[170],"tax_ctp_multimedia":[412],"tax_ctp_point_editor":[],"tax_publications":[140],"tax_ctp_sermon_series":[],"tax_ctp_tags":[4085,4400,4667],"tax_ctp_topics":[],"class_list":["post-33185","sermons","type-sermons","status-publish","hentry","tax_ctp_authors-john-eldredge","tax_publications-ct-pastors","tax_ctp_tags-gospel","tax_ctp_tags-love-of-god","tax_ctp_tags-postmodernism"],"acf":{"scripture_references":[{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null}]},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Sacred Romance - CT Pastors<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/preaching\/sermons\/sacred-romance\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Sacred Romance - CT Pastors\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Simone Weil once wrote that there were only two things that pierce the human heart: beauty and affliction. 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