GOD IS LOVING AND GIVING
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1 JOHN 4:8 James 1:17
1 JOHN 4:8 James 1:17
Last week:
God is absolute truth, absolutely.
His Word is the compass pointing towards absolute north.
Do all that you can to think about God.
Isaiah 26:3 (ESV)
You keep him in perfect peace
whose mind is stayed on you,
because he trusts in you.
We talked about setting your mind and heart on God’s word. Love truth. Love His word. Read it, Meditate on it. Hide it in your heart.
We talked about how science can now physically prove the benefits of a mind set on Christ.
This week, I want to give you an attribute about who God is for you to set your mind on this week. I want to help us practically do this!
Remember our goals for this study.
To see Him for who He really is. So that, you can see yourself how He sees you.
Our focus point to set our minds on this week is
GOD IS LOVE AND GIVING
GOD IS LOVE AND GIVING
1 John 4:8 (ESV)
Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.
James 1:17 (ESV)
Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.
Our God is loving and giving.
I want you to think about this ball. I want you to imagine all of creation. Being this ball.
You are in here.
This world is in there.
Our sun and all the other plants in our solar system is in there. It take sunlight, traveling at the speed of light obviously, 4 hours to get from the sun to Neptune. That’s half of our solar system. So our solar system is in here.
Our sun and solar system is
one of 200-400 billion systems in the Milky Way galaxy. And it is in there.
And then there is billions and billions of galaxies in the universe. And it is in here.
Everything as far as you can imagine in all directions through space is in this ball.
And our heavenly Father exist outside of all of that. Like all of it is as a small ball in His hand.
Our God is infinitely larger than this ball.
The old kid’s song. I got the whole world in His hands.
All that He is and all of His attributes are infinite.
There is such a gap between what our little minds can comprehend and the infiniteness of our God.
To describe ANY attribute of God will always fall short of the truth of who He is!
But that does not stop the infinite Lord from attempting to reveal who He is to us. He wants to be known! and it should not hinder us from pursuing more and more knowledge and understanding about who He is. About how loving and giving He actually is!
I believe the Lord has in multiple ways been trying to communicate His loving and giving nature for us!
Let’s take a look at two of those ways. In fact two different types of laws.
THE BIBLICAL LAW
THE BIBLICAL LAW
The law in God’s word is not a list of rules and requirements. Its a way for the Lord God to show the world His loving and giving nature and attributes. And give us Himself!
Matthew 22:37–40 (ESV)
And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”
Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.
So, the biblical laws could be called the Laws of Love. Its fulfilled by love. Its a reflection of God’s love! The law opened man to have a relationship with Him! His love is so great for His people that He put the law in place to be able to express His love for His people. Not for His good but so that He could dwell with His people!
Something that you can see throughout all of scripture is that the Lord is consistently giving of Himself to man.
God’s love is expressed to us through His giving to US!
John 3:16 (ESV)
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
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.
In order to express love, you must give!
Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.
Our God is love! His love is as infinite as He is. And He chose to express His love through the law and through giving of Himself to us!
We can also see His love/giving in the design and laws of nature.
THE LAWS OF NATURE
THE LAWS OF NATURE
For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.
Psalm 19:1–7 (ESV)
The heavens declare the glory of God,
and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.
Day to day pours out speech,
and night to night reveals knowledge.
There is no speech, nor are there words,
whose voice is not heard.
Their voice goes out through all the earth,
and their words to the end of the world.
In them he has set a tent for the sun,
which comes out like a bridegroom leaving his chamber,
and, like a strong man, runs its course with joy.
Its rising is from the end of the heavens,
and its circuit to the end of them,
and there is nothing hidden from its heat.
The law of the Lord is perfect,
reviving the soul;
The law of the Lord is describing the laws of nature that declare and proclaim God!
Nature itself is designed by God to reflect the nature and love/giving of God.
All throughout creation, He created cycles of loving/giving.
The rain cycle.
The pollen cycle.
O2/CO2 cycle
Electricity
Every single one of these are examples of cycles or laws of giving found in nature. God wrote them into law and nature abides by them.
He wrote them as an example of His loving/giving nature.
He put into place the same cycle and laws into our lives and in our relationships with Him.
Look at the cycle of love and giving in out relationship with Him.
God started it!
but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
He chose to love sinners. He chose to love us first!
We love Him in response to Him loving us first!
We love because he first loved us.
Jesus said, the whole law is summed up into loving the Lord with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength.
Do you see the love cycle in our relationship with Him?
What about the giving cycle?
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
He loved you so much that He gave you His Son!
Tozer quote from Prayer book pg 120
We could look through scripture and find promise after promise that we can look forward to but we miss it all if we don’t understand and appreciate that God loved us so much that He gave us Himself and there is nothing greater on the face of this Earth or anywhere that is better than that.
And just like the rain that falls from the sky, His love came down and He gave us Himself on Christmas morning to give the love of God to us.
And just like water evaporating from the ocean, the cycle continues with our love for Him.
We are called to love Him because He first loved us.
Just as He gave to us Himself, in order to continue the cycle, we must also give of ourselves.
And calling the crowd to him with his disciples, he said to them, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it.
Galatians 2:20 (ESV)
I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
He gives us all that He is and the cycle or law of giving shows that we must give Him all that we are in order to follow Him!
We must be willing to give all that we have to Lord. We must be willing to lay down our lives in response to Him loving and giving us all that He is.
His love for you is as infinite as He is!
Now, we can not ignore that verse after verse tells us that because He loved us and gave Himself to us, we must also love and give of ourselves to others!
One of the most practical ways that God gives and shows His love for you is through the love and sacrifice of another believer!
Just listen to these verses.
Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God.
Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.
We love because he first loved us.
By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
See because the love of God is in us, we can’t help but love others!
And to love others is to give to others!
There are examples of this all throughout the gospels.
Talk about rich, young ruler, not willing to give.
Talk about Niccodemus. Willing to give back 7 times that which he took.
Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.
In Acts chapter 2, we see that the early church, have all things in common. They sold possessions and gave to all who had need.
This is a cycle of loving and giving to each other that is all through scripture.
Do you see it? Do you see the cycles of love and giving in God’s Word, God’s example and in God’s creation?
The example of love is the Bible is “I love you so much that I would die for you”. The example of the world is “I love myself so much I would kill you for what I want.”
The problem comes when we become selfish and break the cycle.
The cycle is broken when God loves us and we don’t love Him back.
The cycle is broken when we don’t give of ourselves back to all that God has given us.
The cycle is broken when we refuse to give to other who are in need.
When instead of loving or giving back, keep to ourselves or refuse to love others.
Think about this.
Electrical circuits are broken when the cycle is broken. When there is a ground in something and the cycle is broken.
Think about the O2/CO2 cycle. Imagine if you decided not to give back the CO2 to the plants. How do you do that? You put a bag over your head. See how long you last.
Think about the water cycle. In Isreal, the Jordan river runs and gives life to all that touch it. It feeds into the Sea of Galilee. Giving life and food to all that come to it. Then the Jordan feeds into the Dead Sea. A sea that doesn’t give to anything else. It doesn’t flow to anything else. It holds back and is dead. no macroscopic aquatic organisms such as fish or water plants can live in it. Its dead.
See, the cycle of love and giving are broken by selfishness and death is the result.
When we take and take and give nothing back, we can gain the whole world yet lose our souls.
We can not be afraid to love and give. We can not be afraid that the Lord will not continue to love and give of Himself to us.
Look, if this cycle is broken its not going to be from His end.
His love and giving are infinite!
We, however, allow fear or selfishness to interrupt the cycle of love and giving back to God. Or to others.
But 1 John 4:18
There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.
My prayer for us today is that we would see how infinite His love is for us.
That we would remember that the greatest gift that He could give us is Himself.
And that we should love and give of our full selves to God and to others.
Let’s pray.
Lead in guided prayer and meditation.
Pray and think about these truths with me. (Go slow)
Father, your love for me is infinite.
Think about the ball. The difference between You and me.
I was an enemy to you but you loved me anyways.
Loved me enough to die for me.
The greatest gift you have ever giving is Yourself.
All throughout my life, I have searched for more, something to satisfy me. But you are the greatest gift that I have searched for.
Father, help me to love you more than I love myself.
Father, help me to love you more than the things of this world.
Father, help me to let go of all fear in your love and trust you with all that I have.
Lord, I give you everything.
Everything I am. Everything that I have.
Everything good that I have is a gift from you already. I give it back to you.
Lord, help me to love others like you love me.
Help me give to others without condition.
Lord, your perfect love cast out all fear.
In Jesus’ name, Amen
Can you practice stopping and think about these things this week, everyday?
Do all that you can to think about God! Set your mind on things above.
Meditate on His word.
If you love Him, you will keep His commands.
Let’s practice this church.