01) Oh How He Loves Us
Notes
Transcript
Introduction
Introduction
Our view of Christ shapes everything. Let me say that again. Our view of Christ shapes everything.
Who we believe Jesus to be, creates the foundation for who we are as a believer and follower of Jesus. If there is any ambiguity or shadowing of the glory of God or in the truth about our savior we will live lives that are at best unproductive and at worst, end in destruction.
A false view of Jesus is a very dangerous thing. An incomplete understanding of who he is, what he has done, and what he is doing will have consequences in our personal, familial, and corporate lives.
Last week we concluded the letter of 1 Timothy with a focus on guarding the the truth of the gospel that has been given to each believer and the church. This is a constant battle to keep swimming against the currents of the culture of the world to hold fast to the only truth that saves. To be secure to the savior for our confidence and hope.
When we have a low or incomplete view of Christ we will either never fully hold to him, or we will take our eyes off of him and start to hang onto other things. We start to cling to our accomplishments, our traditions, our relationships, our jobs, our own understanding. We start to cling to things that are not secure or things that can come and go in an instant.
This week I was able to participate in a local retreat were we live streamed sermons from a conference for pastors. This year there seemed to be an intensity and urgency with calling leaders of churches to be the men that God had called them to be, to care for and lead his bride in these troubling times. There were many warnings and challenges given, many of which were tied to drawing pastors minds up to the the heavenly places and to once again look with clarity on the Son and to help our flocks to do the same.
After Easter last year, Tricia and I were chatting about the Christmas and Easter seasons and the different ways in which the church approaches each of these very important times in the christian life and the life of the church. What seemed to jump out at us was that during the Christmas season, there a focus through advent to spend time really honing in and focusing on what is most important, the birth of Christ.
By looking through the lenses of Love, Joy, Peace, Hope we attempt to drive out all of the other distractions of the season. We try to fight against the commercialism, greed, selfishness, and many other temptations that arise during the Christmas Season. As we look at God in the flesh, the incarnate Jesus we are reminded of his first coming and we look forward to his second coming.
But what about Easter? What if Christmas was the end of the story. If he grew and lived a perfect life before God. Never sinning, just being a great example for us to attempt to copy.
Without the cross, God’s Love would not be fully demonstrated. Without the Cross, there is no true everlasting joy. Without the cross, there is no real peace with God. Without the cross, men and women are left without hope. They are left without any way back to God.
Without the cross there is no forgiveness, no righteousness, no reconciliation, no justification or sanctification, no restoration, no victory, no freedom, no unity.
Without the cross there is no adoption, inheritance, transformation, citizenship, or salvation.
This year we are going to spend about 8 weeks looking at the truth of God’s word about the grand design of God as we approach and celebrate Easter. To dive into the word and see all that has been accomplished. To see our desperate need for him each and every day.
It is my hope that we are stirred up in our minds either to remember once we once knew or to have our minds and hearts drawing up to the one who is Holy, Holy, Holy. The one whose name is higher than any other. The one who is to get all of the glory for who we are and what he has done. To elevate our view and in doing so we will be effected in our worship, our praise, our interaction with his word, our prayer time, our lives. To cause us to take our eyes off of ourselves and to fully place them on the Son.
Today we are going to look at God’s great love.
We will look at the:
The Source of Love
The Demonstration of Love
The Love of God
7 Dear friends, let us love one another, because love is from God, and everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 The one who does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his one and only Son into the world so that we might live through him. 10 Love consists in this: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. 11 Dear friends, if God loved us in this way, we also must love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God. If we love one another, God remains in us and his love is made complete in us. 13 This is how we know that we remain in him and he in us: He has given us of his Spirit. 14 And we have seen and we testify that the Father has sent his Son as the world’s Savior. 15 Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God—God remains in him and he in God. 16 And we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and the one who remains in love remains in God, and God remains in him. 17 In this, love is made complete with us so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment, because as he is, so also are we in this world. 18 There is no fear in love; instead, perfect love drives out fear, because fear involves punishment. So the one who fears is not complete in love. 19 We love because he first loved us. 20 If anyone says, “I love God,” and yet hates his brother or sister, he is a liar. For the person who does not love his brother or sister whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. 21 And we have this command from him: The one who loves God must also love his brother and sister.
The Source of Love
The Source of Love
We speak of love all the time as Christians. We teach about his love and we sing about his love. At the earliest and youngest ages we teach them that Jesus loves them. But as a child what do they picture in their minds when we tell them that God loves them. They have no frame of reference so they take what the hear and have been told in the world around them and then picture in their mind a God like that.
Mom tells the little child that mommy loves you and gives a big hug. Daddy tucks their son in at night and says good night I love you. They take the experiences of their lives where someone used to word love to describe their behavior and this becomes the picture in their mind of how God loves them. God loves them by hugging them and tucking them into bed.
If we are not careful we can live our entire lives defining love of God by how we have experienced what men and women call love. We take out experiences and pour them into our minds eye and we can greatly limit the love that God truly has for his people.
But here in this passage John reveals the source of of Love for a Christian. He says,
7 Dear friends, let us love one another, because love is from God, and everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 The one who does not love does not know God, because God is love.
Love was to be a primary characteristic of the church. They are to love one another, because, for this reason, because love is from God.
But wait a minute, don’t all people know how to love. If you were to go down to blooms day and ask every one of the 40,000 people who run the race, Have you ever heard of love? How many of them do you think would have no clue what you are talking about. Could you imagine the look on your face if you were talking to another parent and said that you loved your child, and they stop you and ask you. What do you mean you love your children? What does that mean? It is highly unlikely that you could run into anyone on the street that did not have a personal understanding of love.
So when John says love comes from God he cannot be speaking of the common understanding that the world has come up with. He presses on and says that those that love have been born of God and know God, they are transformed believers. Those that do not love do not know God because God is love. If love is a defining quality that separates believers from non-believers, separates the lost from the saved, then the love that John speaks of here is specific and unique to Christian's and it has only one source and that is God himself.
So how does God love. Turn with me to Exod 34:6-7
6 The Lord passed in front of him and proclaimed: The Lord—the Lord is a compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger and abounding in faithful love and truth, 7 maintaining faithful love to a thousand generations, forgiving iniquity, rebellion, and sin. But he will not leave the guilty unpunished, bringing the consequences of the fathers’ iniquity on the children and grandchildren to the third and fourth generation.
God himself describes himself as one of compassion and grace, slow to anger and abounding in faithful love and truth. The Hebrew word translated as faithful love here is used over 200 times in the old testament. It is a loyal love and is an unfailing kind of love, that speaks of kindness, or goodness. It was used repeatedly in relation to God’s love to the faithfulness of his covenant.
It was a love that would endure based on the character and word of God.
17 They refused to listen and did not remember your wonders you performed among them. They became stiff-necked and appointed a leader to return to their slavery in Egypt. But you are a forgiving God, gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in faithful love, and you did not abandon them.
It is not a blind love that gives the object what ever they want.
10 All the Lord’s ways show faithful love and truth to those who keep his covenant and decrees.
It is a love that is faithful but it provides blessing when the object is faithful and discipline of those that are disobedient.
5 And you have forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons: My son, do not take the Lord’s discipline lightly or lose heart when you are reproved by him, 6 for the Lord disciplines the one he loves and punishes every son he receives. 7 Endure suffering as discipline: God is dealing with you as sons. For what son is there that a father does not discipline? 8 But if you are without discipline—which all receive—then you are illegitimate children and not sons. 9 Furthermore, we had human fathers discipline us, and we respected them. Shouldn’t we submit even more to the Father of spirits and live? 10 For they disciplined us for a short time based on what seemed good to them, but he does it for our benefit, so that we can share his holiness. 11 No discipline seems enjoyable at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. 12 Therefore, strengthen your tired hands and weakened knees,
The love of God is not a push over kind of love it is loyal and faithful but keeps the best interest in mind for the receiver of the love. Just like a loving parent will discipline their child to help in the training of righteousness, the lord does the same because his love cannot contradict his justice.
8 For I the Lord love justice; I hate robbery and injustice; I will faithfully reward my people and make a permanent covenant with them.
28 For the Lord loves justice and will not abandon his faithful ones. They are kept safe forever, but the children of the wicked will be destroyed.
5 He loves righteousness and justice; the earth is full of the Lord’s unfailing love.
The lords love is unfailing and existed before there were people to love.
6 Remember, Lord, your compassion and your faithful love, for they have existed from antiquity.
It is a love with no beginning or end as it is an everlasting love.
2 This is what the Lord says: The people who survived the sword found favor in the wilderness. When Israel went to find rest, 3 the Lord appeared to him from far away. I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore, I have continued to extend faithful love to you.
Over and over again God has shown his everlasting compassionate, just love to the his people. Over and over they rebel against him and he still loves them. Over and over again they turn their back to him but he remains faithful. This love is fully revealed to all of humanity in the cross.
The Demonstration of Love
The Demonstration of Love
9 God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his one and only Son into the world so that we might live through him. 10 Love consists in this: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.
God’s love was revealed or made manifest. It became something that could be seen and understood with the senses. It was revealed in the world in a very specific way. God, the faithful loyal and kind God, reveals his full love in the sending of his one and only Son. The baby born of the virgin, born in a manger, born in Bethlehem is the revelation of the love of God. The son who is loved dearly by the father.
10 As soon as he came up out of the water, he saw the heavens being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. 11 And a voice came from heaven: “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well-pleased.”
The beloved son of God comes into the world so that those that come to faith in him might live.
16 For God loved the world in this way: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.
All who are dead in their trespasses. All who have earned the wrath and condemnation of God that cannot be appeased by any work of their own are shown the love of the Father by sending the son he loves into the world to die in the place of those He loves.
21 But now, apart from the law, the righteousness of God has been revealed, attested by the Law and the Prophets. 22 The righteousness of God is through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe, since there is no distinction. 23 For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; 24 they are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. 25 God presented him as the mercy seat by his blood, through faith, to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his restraint God passed over the sins previously committed. 26 God presented him to demonstrate his righteousness at the present time, so that he would be just and justify the one who has faith in Jesus.
The one who has faith in Jesus is the one who is saved. Is the one who God’s love is revealed. As a sinner comes to see the depth of their rebellion, as God revels in his heart that they are far from God and draws him to himself, the sinner comes to see the need to be saved, finds that place of desperation that there is no life without Christ. They see the love of the cross as God’s love demonstrated for them. True love is revealed, not all of this worldly fleeting feelings and emotions but everlasting powerful majestic love. Love that has no equal.
10 Love consists in this: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.
Jesus is their substitute as he hung on the cross for their transgressions. Died in their place. What kind of love does this demonstrate, how far are you willing to go to demonstrate your own love. Can a person give anything more than their life? In human terms it is the last thing you can give, the most precious thing to us is our own life.
9 “As the Father has loved me, I have also loved you. Remain in my love. 10 If you keep my commands you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love. 11 “I have told you these things so that my joy may be in you and your joy may be complete. 12 “This is my command: Love one another as I have loved you. 13 No one has greater love than this: to lay down his life for his friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command you. 15 I do not call you servants anymore, because a servant doesn’t know what his master is doing. I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything I have heard from my Father. 16 You did not choose me, but I chose you. I appointed you to go and produce fruit and that your fruit should remain, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he will give you. 17 “This is what I command you: Love one another.
While on earth Jesus spoke about his love and the love of the father and the love that the disciples were to show each other. The disciples walked with the manifestation of God’s love. They would have see compassion like no other man, faithfulness like no other man. His speech, his miracles, his care were bathed in love. as he would bend down to speak with the tiniest child or the filthiest beggar, the most diseased outcast. They would have witnessed love like no other and on that cross when he was caring for his mother and the criminal beside him and praying in strangled breath “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do”.
7 For rarely will someone die for a just person—though for a good person perhaps someone might even dare to die. 8 But God proves his own love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
While we were sinners. Let us sit here for just a minute. Close your eyes… Think back on this morning, or the last week, or years. Think of the sins that you have commited in the recent past and over the course of you lifetime. The things we said, the things we thought, the things we did or did not do. The times of rebellion. As your mind sits there the list starts to grow and gets longer and longer and longer. We find that list has no end. each and every one revealing the sinfulness of our hearts. Each and every one earning the just punishment of death. And yet, before you were ever born, before you had ever committed a single action from the darkness of our hearts, God in his love sent his beloved son into the world. To willingly be the greatest demonstration of Love that you will ever receive in your life time.
Every single sin you have ever committed and will ever commit was set upon the person of Jesus and took on and paid the full penalty for each and every one of those sins, each and everyone deserving of death. No love in this world will ever compare to the love on the cross. He died for you, to save you, bring you to the father.
Pray
The Love of God
The Love of God
This is a love that we can only comprehend at the lowest of levels. But one that should fill our minds with love for him. It is my hope today that we are reminded of the love of God.
16 I pray that he may grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with power in your inner being through his Spirit, 17 and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. I pray that you, being rooted and firmly established in love, 18 may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the length and width, height and depth of God’s love, 19 and to know Christ’s love that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
A love that cannot be bound by human measures. And a love that is more secure than any other thing that we have in this world.
35 Who can separate us from the love of Christ? Can affliction or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? 36 As it is written: Because of you we are being put to death all day long; we are counted as sheep to be slaughtered. 37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
If we turn back to our text in verse 11. I am going to read the ESV version
11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us. 13 By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. 14 And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. 15 Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. 16 So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. 17 By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world.
Four times John speaks of God abiding in a Christian.
If we love one another, God abides in us, and his love is perfected in us.
By our love, we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit.
Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God.
So we have come to know and to believe that the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God and God abides in him.
If there is any love in us it is because…
19 We love because he first loved us.
Conclusion
Conclusion
God’s love has never changed from before the world was spoke into existence. Creation demonstrated God’s Love. Life breathed into Adam and Eve showed his love. His covenants, and the law showed his love. But in the Son it was made manifest through the cross. Jesus was and is the full revelation of his love. and brother and sister his saints are to continue to reveal his love to the world.
What does your love toward God reveal about your view of God’s love? The higher the view the greater the response to his word, and to him.
If God loves you this much, then
does your love for time with him reflect that,
does your time getting to know him reflect that,
does your time speaking to him in prayer reflect that,
do your actions and words reflect that,
does your love for his people reflect that.
A man or a woman would empty themselves over everything they have in the pursuit of of here on this world. Why are Christians so reluctant to give up even the smallest part of their life for the God who gave his life for yours.
A low of God’s love is the answer. Oh christian raise your eyes and look at your loving savior in the eyes today and see his love face and fall into his loving embrace.
