Pastor D. L. Moody wanted everyone to hear the truth: God is Love.
But he also knew that even though people may come to a worship service, not everyone is listening! Therefore, he shares:
“We built a church in Chicago a few years ago, and we were so anxious to make people believe that God is love, that we thought if we could not preach it into their hearts, we would burn it in! And so right over the pulpit we had the words put in gas jets, ” God is love,” and every night we had it there.”
R. A. Torrey worked with Moody in that church and became the pastor a few years before Moody’s death. Regarding the message of “God is Love,” he indicates:
Mr. Moody… was so anxious that everybody should always hear this one truth, and was so afraid that some preacher might come and forget to tell it, that he had it put on the gas jets right above the pulpit, to that the first thing you would see when you went in there on an evening was that text shining out in letters of fire.
One stormy night, before the time of the meeting, the door stood ajar. A man partly intoxicated saw it open, and thought he might go in and get warm. He did not know what sort of a place it was, but when he pushed the door open he saw the text blazing out, “God is love.” He pulled the door to, and walked away muttering to himself.
He said to himself, “God is love? No. God is not love. God does not love me. He does not love me, for I am a poor, miserable sinner. If God was love, he would love me. God is not love.”
But it kept on burning down into his soul, “God is love! God is love! God is love” After a while be retraced his steps, and took a seat in a corner. When Mr. Moody walked down after the meeting, he found the man weeping like a child. “What is the trouble?” he asked. “What was it in the sermon that touched you?”
“I didn’t hear a word of your sermon.”
“Well, what is the trouble?”
“That text up there.”
Moody himself indicates:
“I found him there weeping like a child; but as I unfolded the Scripture, and told him how God had loved him from his earliest childhood all along, the light of the gospel broke into his mind, and he went away rejoicing!”
Jesus is the clear evidence to us that God is Love. Jesus came to rescue us from our sin. Jesus ate with tax collectors and sinners. The religious leaders were appalled at such behavior. To their complaints about who He associated with, Jesus explained:
“It is not those who are healthy who need a physician, but those who are sick. But go and learn what this means: ‘I DESIRE COMPASSION, AND NOT SACRIFICE,’ for I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”
Brennan Manning indicates:
This story provides us with a revelation as bright as the evening star: Jesus comes for sinners, for those as outcast as tax collectors and for those caught up in squalid choices and failed dreams. He comes for corporate executives, street people, superstars, farmers, hookers, addicts, IRS agents, AIDS victims, and even used car salesmen. Jesus not only talks with these people but dines with them—fully aware that His table fellowship with sinners will raise the eyebrows of religious bureaucrats who hold up the robes and insignia of their authority to justify their condemnation of the truth and their rejection of the gospel of grace. Are we really that different?
I hope I not only remember that God is Love toward me, a sinner, but also that I am to now share that love with others who are struggling with their own sin.