Good morning, CHURCH!

Welcome to FFM where we love God and love people.

Are you ready to be equipped today?

Let me see your Bibles.

Let’s Pray

Lord, help us to see you as new and fresh through your word today?

Lord, help us to see truth where we have believed lies?

Lord, speak to us through your word today.

Most of all, help us to love you and others more.

Let’s go to the book ofMothers for this week’s wisdom Vaccination.

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This Week’s Wisdom Vaccination

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Today’s opening shot of wisdom is this.

Mothers are a special breed created by God.

I want to open with this.

If your mother is no longer with us, our prayers go out to you because this may be one of the toughest days of the year for you.

For those who still have your mother in the land of the living and playing a role in your life, I prepared a little something for you.

When all things are working properly, (Mental illness is not a factor or something like that) a mother has special innate abilities to love, care for, protect and teach their children.

Mothers are usually the greatest comforters.

The best place to find comfort is a good cry is in the arms of a mother.

When a child is young A mother is usually your first go to when you’re sick, hurt, or in trouble.

And for many that continues into adulthood.

Mothers are the best helpers and their hope for their kids never fades away.

Your youth made fade away, friendships may even fade away, but a mothers hope usually never wains.

It doesn’t matter what her child has done.

Mothers are often left to raise kids alone.

More than a third of all children are raised in single parent homes and the majority of them are mothers.

I don’t stand before you today supporting this particular artist but Tupac had an amazing few lines in a song.

“I finally understand / for a woman it ain’t easy tryin to raise a man

You always was committed / A poor single mother on welfare, tell me how ya did it

There’s no way I can pay you back

But the plan is to show you that I understand / You are appreciated”

Boyz II Men

“Never gonna go a day without you

Fills me up just thinking about you

I’ll never go a day without my mama”

Let’s give a thunderous round of applause for all the real mothers.

Today we’re continuing our series about the Love of God.

Why should I love God? Wk.2

Last week we discovered, He’s simply the best.

His love for us is unquestionable.

However some will still question it.

God should not be questioned by us as weather He is loving or not, as if we can judge Him under some independent standard of our own.

The way it should be, is that as the created, we understand that God himself defines love for humanity.

God himself is the very definition of love.

Anything or anyone that resembles love, resembles some attribute of God.

Anything or anyone that does not resemble love, does not resemble God.

In fact they don’t know Him.

1 John 4:8 NIV

Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.

God is love.

And God’s love is a communicable attribute in that it is to be imitated by humanity.

Communicable attributes of God are those that humans can also possess, although only to a finite extent.

If something is communicable, it is able to be communicated or transmitted to others.

(Humans can give grace, mercy, goodness, truthfulness, rational thought, can be relational etc.)

Incommunicable attributes of God are those attributes exclusive to Him.

(God is omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, sovereign, transcendent, immutable and self-existent.)

As recipients of His divine love, we are to return love albeit in a limited human fashion, both to God and to others.

By His own actions, God teaches the world to love actively and sacrificially.

Matthew twenty-two listing the two greatest commandments says:

Matt 22:39–40 NIV

And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

We know the first was to love God with all your heart, soul, and mind.

We should not just be loving those within our own family or race but even our neighbors.

Matt 5:44-45 NIV

But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.

If we are a part of the family of God, we should act like it.

Our Father doesn’t hold back His love from the unrighteous, so this is showing us that we are to love those we like and those we don’t.

It is very unfortunate that the world at large doesn’t know our Father the way He has revealed himself to those that follow Him.

And because they don’t know Him, they are easily led astray.

And in today’s message we will discuss some of the theological tensions related to the doctrine of God’s love that are used to lead people astray.

Today’s message title is:

Love is more than what I feel.

Tell your neighbor:

“Friend, your feelings can lead you astray.”

What we’re going to talk about today is important I feel, because the enemy constantly uses them to deceive people from getting to know the God of love who is the God described in the Bible.

#1

How can God be loving with all the evil and suffering in the world?

Isn’t it something that people can be challenged by a statement like this, but when you ask them do they love the person they are in relationship with they say, “Yes.”

Yet and still they say evil things to them sometimes.

They get angry and yell at them sometimes.

They get triggered and respond in hurtful ways sometimes.

They get into inappropriate relationships with others sometimes.

Seems as if we should ask them, how can you say you love the person you’re with, when you do all these things to them.

The enemy uses the difficulty of reconciling a God of love with a broken and suffering world.

There are a lot of people walking the earth with this train of thought.

“I used to consider myself a person of faith, but the hopeless and sad state of our suffering world has left me questioning whether God cares or even exists.”

“If God is all-powerful and all-loving, why doesn’t He do something about the mess on earth?”

Actually, God has done something about the mess on earth.

1. He once flooded the earth and destroyed all the wicked people and saved one righteous man and his family along with the animals. He promised not to go that route again.

2. He sent his son to redeem as many who would choose to follow him, so that they will be able to spend eternity with Him.

John 3:16-17 NIV

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.

3. He sent you to be a change agent in the world.

As you lead more people to become followers of Christ the world changes from evil to blessed.

With every person that chases after God, that is a person that changes teams from Satan to God.

We are not currently experiencing at large the world that God desires for us to experience.

We are experiencing more of the world that has been influenced by human sin.

Every since Adam chose to disobey God and follow his wife by eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, we have seen sorrow, pain, suffering, disease, hatred, birth defects, weariness, and burdensome toil.

Still, some may question, “Why is God taking so long to bring an end to sin and evil?”

Here is where God’s love is more like the love of a mother.

If you love your children even if they are going astray, you don’t want them to die in that state.

You want them to repent and turn to God.

When it’s not your child and someone has gone the route of evil, you want God to strike them dead or open the ground and swallow them up.

Well guess what, the person you want God to destroy is someone else’s child.

And on top of that we are all God’s creation.

Some are His obedient children, and some are His wayward children.

His love and patience for them causes Him to allow the evil to exist.

#2

How can God be loving when he eternally punishes those who rebel against Him?

The enemy uses this dichotomy between God’s love and His justice.

Can God be loving when he eternally punishes those who choose to disobey or not follow him?

God desires that every person spend eternity with Him.

1 Timothy 2:3-4 NIV

This is good, and pleases God our Savior, 4 who wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.

2 Peter 3:9 NIV

The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead, he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.

But He will honor your decision to accept or reject Him.

Anyone who desires to can go to heaven.

John 1:12 NIV

Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.

Jesus already paid the price for our salvation, but we must accept that gift and transfer ownership of our lives to Him.

Luke 9:23 NIV

Then he said to them all: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.

When you ask me the question of how God can be loving if He eternally punishes those who rebel against Him, I will choose to respond to you with a question.

Does love give another person a choice or does love force?

If love gives a choice, then my response to you would be, how could God be loving unless he eternally punishes those who choose to rebel against Him?

What it all boils down to is that we can choose to trust in Jesus’ payment for our sin, or we can choose to pay for our sins ourselves.

But please remember that the payment for sin ourselves is eternity in hell.

C. S. Lewis said it this way:

“There are only two kinds of people in the end.

Those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done.’

And those to whom God says in the end, ‘Thy will be done.’”

#3

How can God love us if He’s never suffered with us?

The enemy uses the tension between God’s love and the doctrine of divine impassibility.

Can God be said to be loving if he does not “suffer” with his creation?

It’s the thought that if God is spirit and has no body, how can He feel like us.

But the scriptures tell us that God through Christ did suffer with his creation, and the Bible proclaims the love of the cross to be a more powerful force than anything in existence.

1 Peter 3:18 NIV

For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive in the Spirit.

He has felt pain.

John 15:13 NIV

“Greater love has no one than this, to lay down one’s life for his friends.”

Despite some ongoing mystery remaining in the three tensions, we talked about today, Christians place their faith in God’s revealed character.

Believers can be assured that God’s love is neither diminished nor threatened by any unanswered questions.

In conclusion, God himself has demonstrated that true love is inherently self-giving.

If you’re watching online or here in the building, I have a very important question to ask you.

What is the Holy Spirit saying to you right now?