God is Love
Notes
Transcript
Opening Illustration
Opening Illustration
In the French revolution, a young man was condemned to the guillotine, and shut up in one of the prisons.
He was greatly loved by many, but there was one who loved him more than all put together.
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How do we know this?
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It was his own father, and the love he bore his son was proved in this way:
When the lists were called, the father, whose name was exactly the same as the son’s, answered to the name,...
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And the it was the father who rode out to the gloomy and dreadful place of execution,...
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And on that day it was the father’s head that rolled beneath the axe instead of his son’s,...
A victim to mighty love.
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See Church, here is an image of the love of Christ to sinners; for it was Jesus who died for the ungodly...
It was Jesus who died in our place.
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So, please turn your Bibles to 1 John.
We will be conducting our study in Chapter 4 and focusing on verses 7 through 10.
Our message this morning is called, “God is Love.”
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As you are finding your place in God’s Word, I want to share that today we will be focusing on the great love of God...
This is not just any kind of love...
Or a love as defined by our world...
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This love is sacrificial....
This love is perfect...
This love is unconditional...
And this love can only be found in its fullest degree in God and God alone...
And in this world is only reflected by His followers and his followers alone.
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Opening Prayer
Opening Prayer
Before we consider our text, please join me in prayer...
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Let’s turn to our text for today:
Reading of the Text
Reading of the Text
7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God.
8 Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.
9 In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him.
10 In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
So, let’s look at our first point...
1) Love is From God
1) Love is From God
Verse 7: Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God.
This note from the ESV Study Bible is helpful:
“Love is presented here as a consequence of, not a precondition for, being born of God.
Unbelievers can love others to some degree, but not in the way that God’s indwelling presence enables Christians to love.”
Real love...
Genuine pure love...
Is always only from God.
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And that love that God has for His followers...
That love fills those followers to the point of overflowing.
And it is from that overflowing love that true and genuine Christians love others in a godly manner.
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This impacts every meaningful relationship that a person can have.
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Only the followers of Christ can sacrificially love others and their community purely and without selfish motives.
Only the followers of Christ truly have brotherly or sisterly love for each other.
Only the followers of Christ can have a meaningful marriage where the love of a husband and wife models the love of Christ and the Church.
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The world as desperately as it tries to imitate love fails 100% of the time.
The love you see by unbelievers for their community and for others is rooted in selfish motives.
The love you see by unbelievers for those they consider as close friends and family is rooted in selfish motives.
And even the most romantic love tales of relationships and marriages of unbelievers is rooted in selfish motives.
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The world’s version of love is a knockoff that will never last.
For true love comes from God...
We only love because God first taught us how to love.
Consider the reality of 1 Thessalonians 4:9 when the Word of God says:
9 Now concerning brotherly love you have no need for anyone to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love one another,
God is our teacher of love.
And He teaches us to love in two ways.
First, God teaches His children to love by putting His Spirit in us.
You see Beloved, when the Holy Spirit lives in you...
He starts to change your life...
Good fruit start to be produced that did not exist before.
Good fruit like what Paul lists in Galatians 5:22-23:
22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,
23 gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.
The very first by-product of the Holy Spirit listed in what we just read is love.
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Second, God teaches His children to love by showing us all the greatest act of love...
Because love is an action...
And no greater act of love existed or ever will exist than when Christ died in the place of ruined sinners.
Paul makes this appeal to his own audience when he wrote in Ephesians 5:2:
2 And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.
Church, true love is such unique and distinct sign that we display that it is to act as an identifier to thew world that we belong to Christ.
Pure and selfless love is the kind of love you will only ever find in a born again man or woman.
They not only love God but love one another.
All these truths can be found in the command by the Son of God as recorded in John 13:34–35:
34 A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.
35 By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
I can’t stress enough how hollow and shallow the world’s love is.
All unbelievers, no matter how great they appear on the outside...
Are dead on the inside.
You and me...
Before God had mercy on us...
Where dead on the inside too.
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Our love for others was never genuine...
Our love for others was something we did to bring glory to ourselves...
Our love for others was something we did to make ourselves feel better about who we are...
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That is what the world’s love looks like.
People who are dead on the inside will perform great “acts of love and generosity”....
While bragging about it...
While they record it and post it all over social media with the secret desire that they go viral...
Because without the Holy Spirit living in us...
Our unregenerated flesh keeps telling us we are so awesome and everyone and their mother should know it.
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That is why Scripture has an extreme prescription for the lost...
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You must be born again!
You must crucify your old self!
Or as Romans 6:6–7 puts it:
6 We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin.
7 For one who has died has been set free from sin.
We are all born enslaved to sin...
And the old self must die!
And only then can we be set free from sin.
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You see Church, I was 32 years old when I was saved.
During those first 32 years of my life...
Every act of kindness and love...
Was a cheap lie.
Even though on the outside it looked like I did things for other the reality is that I did it for me.
To make myself feel good.
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By in the summer of 2017 God blew up my stone heart and gave me a hear of flesh.
And the love I now do is just the outpouring of the love God saturated me with.
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Although the details may be different...
Every follower of Christ has the exact same story to share.
And we have nothing to boast about for that love we now have is only their because God Himself is love.
And this takes us to our next point.
2) God Himself is Love
2) God Himself is Love
Verse 8: Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.
John, in typical fashion, does not hold back.
He is very black and white and leaves no grey area to turn to.
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If one claims to be a believer but does not love...
He or she is a liar an simply put does not know and has never known God.
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The reason this is the case is because a servant can’t be radically different from his Master.
Since God is love...
His followers must reflect love.
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Saying God is love is a major proclamation of His character.
Take for instance what the MacArthur Study Bible has to say on the matter:
“As [God] is spirit, light, and a consuming fire, so He is love.
Love is inherent in all He is and does.
Even His judgment and wrath are perfectly harmonized with His love.”
God being love does not in any way conflict with His judgement of wrath.
Many people try to pit these attributes of God against each other but that is pure foolishness.
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When God judges....
He judges lovingly.
When God purse out His wrath...
He does it lovingly.
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This is no better witnessed than at Calvary.
Every sin must be paid for in blood.
God’s Justice won’t allow for exceptions.
God’s wrath won’t allow reduction of the penalty.
But it was by God’s love that He sent His Son to take our place.
Jesus was crushed for our sake because God is perfectly just, executed wrath perfectly, and ultimately loves perfectly.
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The ESV Study Bible provides another helpful note:
“The person who lacks love shows himself to be unchanged at the core of his being by the gospel message.
John is not saying that God is only love (he has numerous other attributes), nor that love is God (a statement for which there is no scriptural support).
‘God is love’ means that God continually gives of himself to others and seeks their benefit.
There was eternal love between the persons of the Trinity even before the world was created, and God’s love is the ultimate source of any love that Christians are able to display.”
As we covered 1 John 1:5 which was reviewed earlier in the study of this book:
5 This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.
God is altogether good.
There is not a fragment of darkness in Him.
He is both in control of everything and kind in all He does even if we don’t understand His ways due to our finite minds.
As Psalm 145:17 says:
17 The Lord is righteous in all his ways and kind in all his works.
I love what the Scriptures say in Jeremiah 31:3 too:
3 the Lord appeared to him from far away. I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you.
The Lord has an everlasting love for His own and is always faithful until the end.
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Regarding God Himself being love, I came across another great explanation of this by John MacArthur.
He actually breaks this down into four points so I want to share this with you even though it is a really long quote:
“God by nature is love, and therefore He defines love; it does not define Him.
People constantly impose on God a human view of love, but He transcends any such human limitations.
That God is love explains a number of things in the biblical worldview.
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First, it explains the reason He created.
In eternity past, within the perfect fellowship of the Trinity, God the Father purposed, as a love gift to His Son, to redeem a people who would honor and glorify the Son.
Thus, though God existed in perfect Trinitarian solitude, He created a race of beings out of which He would love and redeem those who would in turn love Him forever.
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Second, the truth that God is love explains human choice.
He designed sinners to know and love Him by an act of their wills, though not apart from the work of His Spirit.
God’s greatest commandment is that people love Him with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength.
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Third, the reality that God is love also explains His providence.
He orchestrates all the circumstances of life, in all their wonder, beauty, and even difficulty, to reveal many evidences of His love.
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Fourth, that He is love explains the divine plan of redemption.
If God operated only on the basis of His law, He would convict people of their sin, and justly consign everyone to spend forever in hell.
But His love provided a remedy for sin through the atoning work of Jesus Christ on behalf of all who repent of their sin and trust in His mercy.”
And this takes us to our next and third point.
3) The Love of God
3) The Love of God
Verse 9: In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him.
The phrase “only Son” is also translated as “one and only” and also as “only begotten Son.”
This carries the meaning that Jesus is God’s Son from all eternity, as the second person of the Trinity.
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The most wellknown verse in all of Scripture on the love of God is found in John 3:16:
16 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
The love that God had for His sheep is so great.
Even as broken and sinful people...
Even as His enemies...
God loved His children.
He loved us so much that He sent is one and only begotten Son.
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We did not earn His love...
We did not act in a way to make us lovable in any way.
In fact, while we were considered repulsive...
He still loved us.
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And along with thew Father’s love we see the love of the Son...
Who did not have to laid down His life but voluntarily gave up His life for us..
As He loved us to the very end as it says in John 13:1:
1 Now before the Feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.
So, we see the love of the Father and the Son for the sheep.
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God may have loved us as His enemies but He did not leave us their.
He loved us so much He circumcised our hearts when He put the Holy Spirit in us.
And now we are able to love God with all our heart as we see first commanded back in Deuteronomy 30:6:
6 And the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring, so that you will love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live.
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So in review of the plan of salvation...
We see that we where dead in our trespasses...
We were walking dead...
But God was and is rich in mercy...
But God was and is full of great love.
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That is why we as believers say that we are saved by grace alone through faith alone by Christ alone for the glory of God alone as it according to Scripture alone.
So, meditate on Ephesians 2:4–7 brothers and sisters:
4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us,
5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—
6 and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus,
7 so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.
And with that let’s take a look at our final point.
4) God Loved Us First
4) God Loved Us First
Verse 10: In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
The New American Commentary on the Epistles of John says:
“All our love is but a reflection of his and a response to it.
The origin of love lies beyond human effort and initiative.
Left to ourselves, we would not love him.
We would hate him and oppose him.
It took his boundless, sacrificial love to break our hearts of stone and bring us to himself.”
The arrogance one must have to think that they loved God first.
No, that is pride speaking...
We did not seek Him of love Him first.
God has always been and will continue to always be the initiator of a relationship.
John puts in bluntly as usual just a few verse down from our passage we are studying today.
In 1 John 4:19 he says:
19 We love because he first loved us.
Doesn’t get any clearer than that.
He loved us first.
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But pride is a notorious enemy and sin and even when one concedes that God loved us first...
Some like to think that God saw something in us...
Something we would do...
And that is why He chose us...
But the word of God has something else entirely that it says:
Just look at Titus 3:4–5 when Paul writes:
4 But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared,
5 he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit,
Or to put it more bluntly as it says in Romans 5:8:
8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
So, God not only loved us first...
God loved us for no other reason than by His mercy and grace.
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As we commonly see in Scripture...
God makes it clear we have nothing to boast about that to boast in Him.
Closing Illustration
Closing Illustration
As this message comes to a close, I want to share this illustration from one of my favorite preachers...
The Prince of Preachers...
Charles Haddon Spurgeon.
He said,
“I have heard of an emperor casting eyes of love on a peasant girl.
It would have been monstrous for her to have first looked up to him as likely to be her husband;...
Everybody would have thought her to be bereft of her senses had she done so.
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But when the monarch looked down upon her and asked her to be his queen, that was another thing.
She might take leave to love from his love.
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Often my soul says,
‘O God, I cannot help loving you, but may I?
Can this poor heart of mine be allowed to send up its love to you?
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I, polluted and defiled, nothingness and emptiness and sinfulness, may I say, ‘Yet do I love you, O my God, almighty as you are’?
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‘Holy, holy, holy,’ is the salutation of the seraphim, but may I say ‘I love you, O my God’?’
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Yes, I may,...
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Because he first loved me.
There is love’s license to soar so high.”
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I am and will forever be marveled by the will of God.
As I meditated on this awesome truth this week...
I thought about a hymn and a passage.
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The hymn is “How Deep The Father's Love For Us” by Stuart Townend
And the line I keep dwelling on is this...
“Why should I gain from His reward?
I cannot give an answer.
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But this I know with all my heart.
His wounds have paid my ransom.”
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The passage is Isaiah 53 which says:
1 Who has believed what he has heard from us? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
2 For he grew up before him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground; he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him.
3 He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
4 Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted.
5 But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.
6 All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
7 He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth.
8 By oppression and judgment he was taken away; and as for his generation, who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people?
9 And they made his grave with the wicked and with a rich man in his death, although he had done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mouth.
10 Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him; he has put him to grief; when his soul makes an offering for guilt, he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days; the will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.
11 Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied; by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities.
12 Therefore I will divide him a portion with the many, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong, because he poured out his soul to death and was numbered with the transgressors; yet he bore the sin of many, and makes intercession for the transgressors.
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To God be all the glory.
Amen.
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Please join us for one more song from the Praise Band.