His Great Love
Sermon • Submitted • Presented
0 ratings
· 3 viewsNotes
Transcript
4 But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us,
Introduction
Introduction
Have you ever been reluctant to say “I Love You”? It doesn’t come easily to some folks.
Love should mean something.
What is love?
In our culture we have made love purely romantic and transactional, but to the Greeks there were several levels of love, including agapao love, or “God’s love”.
Paul says agapao love “suffers long, is kind, doesn’t envy, doesn’t boast, isn’t puffed up, doesn’t misbehave, doesn’t seek her own, is not easily provoked, thinks no evil, doesn’t rejoice in sin but rejoices in truth, bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things, and never fails.
8 He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.
Whatever love is, in it’s highest and purest form, God is.
(Illustrate Agapao love)
Shadow of a shadow of a shadow.
That’s what you have, that’s what I have, a shadow of shadow of shadows of agapao love. 60-0518 — Adoption #2
His love is “great love”
great adj. — remarkable or out of the ordinary in degree, magnitude, or effect.
Ephesians 2:4–7 (ESV)
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.
Remarkable, extraordinary love.
This love was proved when He came down on the cross.
He was that great attribute of God called “love”
13 Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.
He died for me, that is great love.
He was wounded for my transgressions, by His stripes I am healed.
His ways are beyond ours. They’re past our understanding. And to think that He would come down from Heaven to visit one poor, lost sinner, is more than I can understand.
How did He ever come down to take on the form of sinful flesh to die to save sinners? Why was He so interested in our healing, that He was striped, and wounded by the Roman lash, that through His stripes and suffering, that we who suffer might be delivered? It’s more than the little finite mind can catch.
Men who, all ages, has tried to explain that great love of God. It’s just as fathomless as the skies is. There’s no way to ever try, to where, any man, to take upon himself, to explain the depths of the love of God. For God is love. His very being is love. He’s the Fountain of love.
And then, to think that He would bring Himself down, and would talk to an individual, would save an individual, that would heal His enemy who was against Him, who had done everything against Him, and blasphemed His name; and yet, He was willing to come down, and to make this atonement, and make it so that we could receive it.
And then there’s one thing that startled my thinking, is, how could a mortal being ever turn down, and reject such Divine love, when you know you’re Eternity-bound, and you’ve got to spend that time somewhere?
And when all preparations has been made for your good pleasure, and your Eternal Life, and then to cast it aside for just a little pleasure of this mortal life. 57-0725 — Hear Ye Him
How could a person who was loved so greatly reject that love? How could that person think they were unloved or un-loveable?
Example: Eve
4 And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:
5 For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.
God, in His great love, had withheld certain things from her understanding, and satan made her think the correction was cruelty and the Word was bondage.
He does the same things today.
3 But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.
Israel in the Old Testament accused Jehovah of not loving them.
2 I have loved you, saith the Lord. Yet ye say, Wherein hast thou loved us? Was not Esau Jacob’s brother? saith the Lord: Yet I loved Jacob,
3 And I hated Esau, And laid his mountains and his heritage waste for the dragons of the wilderness.
They thought He didn’t love them because He allowed them to suffer.
You see, they could not figure out God’s love. They thought that love meant no suffering. They thought that love meant a baby with parental care. But God said that His love was “elective” love.
The proof of His love is ELECTION — that no matter what happened, His love was proven truly by the fact they were chosen unto salvation (because God hath chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth).
He may commit you to death as He did Paul. He may commit you to suffering as He did Job. That is His prerogative. He is sovereign. But it is all with a purpose. If He did not have a purpose, then He would be the author of frustration and not of peace.
His purpose is that after we have suffered awhile we would be made perfect, be established, strengthened and settled. As Job said, “He puts strength in us.”
You see He, Himself, suffered. He learned obedience by the things that He suffered. He was actually made perfect by the things that He suffered. (Hebrews 5:8-9)
In plain language, the very character of Jesus was perfected by suffering. And according to Paul He has left His church a measure of suffering that they, too, by their faith in God while suffering for Him, would come to a place of perfection. CAB-04 — 4 - The Smyrnaean Church Age
The Father loved Jesus
9 As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you: continue ye in my love.
Yet Jesus cried out on the cross “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me”
He loved Him, yet He stood by.
His love for us is so great, that He stands by for our good.
You better listen to what I’m telling you. You might not want to do it, because I’m an “ignoramus.” But I’m not as ignorant, maybe, as you think I am.
I may be. Maybe God has to take something ignorant. See? By His grace, I see it coming. I see the handwriting on the wall. Straighten up, or you’re going out.
That’s a big word for somebody to say. I’m not saying that in myself. I’m inspired to say this, or I wouldn’t be saying it, much as I love men and women, much as I love them.
Over in First John 4:17, we find out, that, rebuking hard is only love projecting itself for the Judgment. That’s right. It’s only because of love. 63-0126 — Investments
17 Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment: because as he is, so are we in this world.
Illustrate: Child in the street.
You would get him in there and, if he did it again, you’d turn him over your arms and give him what he ought to have. Sure. You’d give him such a raking that he’d be afraid to go out anymore.
That’s the way God does His. You don’t say it to be mean. You say it for love. People has got all things mixed up, thinking love is just some little puppy dog something. Love is straight. God is love. God rebukes and chastens because of love. 63-0126 — Investments
As many as I love, I rebuke.
The great lie of the enemy today is the devil saying the little things don’t matter, and that if God loved us He would let us get by with it.
I heard a young man tell me not long ago, he said, “You know, God loves me so much, Brother Branham, He just lets me do anything I want to. He don’t care.”
I hear so much today about God being a good God. He is. I’m not disputing that. He is a good God. But He is also a God of wrath. His Holiness requires righteousness. His law requires judgment.
If there is no judgment to law, law is of none effect. What good would it do to say, “It’s against the law to run this redlight down here,” without being a penalty behind it? See, it would be no law.
There is a penalty for transgressing God’s laws, and, it will, you’ll have to pay to the utmost farthings before you’re brought out. 64-0215 — Influences
In Revelation Chapter 9 John sees 200,000,000 demons released from the river Euphrates. They were released on the Jews, and in the church realm.
Notice, there she is. Now, she’s loosed, to call all these little loose ends, “Oh, well, don’t make any difference, anyhow.”
That’s what Satan said to Eve, “Don’t make any difference. It’s all right. Surely, God is a good God. He loves us all.” He doesn’t.
You hear so much about It being a good God. He is a good God, but, being good, He has to be just. There is no goodness without justice. There is no justice without no law, without punishment, penalty. So we’re in that hour, that we’re living. 64-0719M — The Feast Of The Trumpets
Satan hates this Message, and will do everything he can to discredit it to you, because the God of this evil age has been unmasked, telling the same lie He told Eve.
Notice, he preached it in Eden, to who? To Adam’s bride. And she fell for it. He deceived her into questioning one of God’s Words.
Let’s see what he might have said. He must have said, “It is not scientific to die, in this holy church.” Or, “You will be schooled and educated, not to believe in such unreasonable things as death. I don’t care if God’s Word did say it; it’s unreasonable.”
Oh, look at him today. “God is a good God. You’re in His holy church; why, you cannot die.” But God said you would, and that settles it. See him today? “Oh, just belong to church. It ain’t what you do, or this, that, or the other. Just come to church and be a good member.
Cutting your hair, that’s nonsense. And wearing shorts, and putting on paint, and going to dances, and a little beer once in a while, won’t hurt you, as long as you don’t indulge in it. Frankly, I wish you children would take it, so that they could learn whether they liked it or not.” There he is, the god of this age, this evil age.
“God is a good God.” I’ve heard that so much till I get sick. God is also a God of justice. He ain’t an old dotty grandpa that can be pushed around, and His grandkids don’t have any sin.
He’s a God of justice and holiness. He proved it in the garden of Eden, by His first children. You cross that line, of one of His Words, you’re dead. Same thing applies today.
And notice, he preached that kind of a scientific, social, educated, progressive gospel to Eve, and Adam’s bride believed it. And he has succeeded in filling the so-called bride of Christ, the church of the Second Adam, with the same arguments. That’s right.
“Oh, it’s not for God; God is too good to do it. Why, as long as you go to church. ‘If thou believest.’” The devil believes; not make-believes, but he actually believes. He is not saved. 65-0801M — The God Of This Evil Age
You must believe unto salvation, you must be born again.
How can that be love?
God rich in Mercy because He loved us so much, sent His son to die for our sins, and sent His Word so we could love Him.
Condemnation is not what God wants, the law is a schoolmaster to bring us to Christ.
9 In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him.
19 We love him, because he first loved us.
15 If ye love me, keep my commandments.
21 He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him.
10 If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father’s commandments, and abide in his love.
How do we keep His commandments? We can’t do that on our own.
No man can keep the law. You can’t live this Message without the Baptism of the Holy Ghost.
His Great Love made a way.
God, rich in Mercy because of His Great Love, provided a way.
1 There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.
2 For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.
3 For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh:
4 That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.
How could He love us more than He already has?
We could stand in the darkest moments of our lives and say “Thank You Lord for loving Me”.
He already loved us. He already paid the price, and He is ever interceding for my past, present and future sins.
He already did that, because He loves me. There is no greater love than that.
16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
“God so loved the world, He gave His only begotten Son.” His love constrained Him to do it. And when a love is constrained, then sovereign grace projects its object.
May I say that again: When Divine love is projected, grace produces its object. And God loved the world so much till sovereign grace projected a Saviour to the world.
17 For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.
And when you love God so much, sovereign grace will project to you the baptism of the Holy Ghost to make you live, and love, and to be a real Christian. 57-0324 — Why Some People Can't Keep The Victory
Conclusion
Conclusion
“The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us”
Illustrate: Julia Grant
"the light of his glorious fame still reaches out to me, falls upon me, and warms me."
If the Message of the Hour feels like bondage, if the Bible seems like a Book of rules, why don’t you fall in love with the author.
Sing “I Love the Man in the Middle”
