Perfect, Elective, Love
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Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God.
He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.
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.
Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.
No man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us.
Hereby know we that we dwell in him, and he in us, because he hath given us of his Spirit.
And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world.
Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God.
And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.
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.
There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love.
Introduction.
Introduction.
Whatever you do this Valentines Day for your spouse or fiance, it won’t be perfect.
(Necklace)
Bro. Branham says this about the garden of Eden:
126 They were holy veiled. They were safe in God’s pavilion. They were alive. They had no death around them. Hallelujah! They had perfect love one for the other, perfect Life forever.
They had perfect love, perfect understanding of the love of God. They had God’s Word, and kept It. And they were alive and safe in God’s Eden, with no death, at all, around. 65-0829 - Satan's Eden
When he went beyond the curtain of time he makes this statement:
I am more convinced than ever in my life that it will take perfect love to enter that place.
61-0305 - Beyond The Curtain Of Time
Perfect Love is:
1. Elective.
1. Elective.
Many times suffering is misunderstood because we are looking for responsive love. We approach God as if to make Him feel bad about our suffering and if we make him feel badly He will act.
We do have a High Priest who can be touched by the feeling of our infirmities, but He came to us because of the elective love of God before the foundation of the world.
According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love:
His choosing us was an act of His will, not an act of pity.
And not only this; but when Rebecca also had conceived by one, even by our father Isaac;
(For the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth;)
It was said unto her, The elder shall serve the younger.
As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.
He chose to love Jacob.
This love is “Elective Love.” It is His love for His elect. And His love for them is apart from HUMAN MERIT for it says that the purpose of God stands in election which is exactly opposite to works or anything man has in himself.
Because “BEFORE THE CHILDREN WERE BORN” He had ALREADY said, “Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.” CAB 09 - Laodicean
IMPORTANT
(Cracker Barrel)
What does Perfect Elective Love look like when the object of that love is a free moral agent? There is no obligation on the free moral agent to accept the love, even though God knows they will. The only way to ensure it is to study the object, and then overwhelm it in such a way and with such love that it can’t help but love. To create such conditions as will make the free moral agent love Him back. The question is not how did He ever love me, but How did He ever get me to love Him?
Paul tells us how lost we were, and then continues.
But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us,
Great is “many”. Quantity not quality. He loved us in so many ways, and for so long a time.
Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;)
When you make your wife or you husband the object of your love, you overwhelm them with it. Quit being stingy and holding back.
88 Create around you love…Who could deny this great love? Listen just a moment what a great love is. Love will conquer, where hate and malice, and creed, debate, and fuss will drive away. Love will conquer.
56-0422 - Show Us The Father And It'll Satisfy
566 And then He’s a good God. If you want to, certain things your way, you know, God is good enough to do that. He loves to make you happy. He wants to…He is love, and His great love constrains Him to even step down sometime, to let you have the things that you want.
57-0915M - Hebrews, Chapter Six #3
Our love would be perfected if we chose to love.
The term falling in love implies an accident. God’s love for us was not accidental. We love our wives on purpose, not by accident.
We would be much happier in our phileo relationships if we chose to love. The physical and psychological feelings are necessary, but they won’t always be there.
King Abimelech fell in love with Sarah, Abraham’s wife.
And when they got down there: Abimelech was a king down there in the Philistine country. And he was looking for a sweetheart with all them pretty Philistine girls, but when he seen grandma coming, he said, “That’s the one I’ve waited for. That’s her. I fell in love with her.” Now, deny it.
He did fall in love with Sarah and…Is that right? And wanted to take her for his wife, a grandma, hundred years old. No, no, brother, no, wasn’t that. She was a beautiful young woman. He turned her back to a young woman, Abraham to a young man.
61-0226 - Jehovah-Jireh
But God came to Abimelech in a dream by night, and said to him, Behold, thou art but a dead man, for the woman which thou hast taken; for she is a man’s wife.
Isaac chose to love the choice of his father. Who is the right one for you? The one you’re married to. Rest in the choice of your father who knows what you needed in a life companion. Maybe it wasn’t perfect, but it was for your good.
Rebekah had a willing heart to water the Word before Isaac ever met her. He wasn’t looking for someone to change, but for someone who would respond to the Message.
If they don’t respond to the gifts of God now, they won’t later. If they don’t go to church now, stay away from them. See what they’ve done with the opportunity they have been given.
And they called Rebekah, and said unto her, Wilt thou go with this man? And she said, I will go.
254 And Rebekah had to make the choice, ’cause he said, “She is the maid; let her make the choice.”
255 And as soon as it was made to her, quickly her mind was made up; she said, “I’ll go.” And she mounted upon the camel and went to meet the…Look, the very camel she watered was the camel that packed her to her bridegroom and all of her success.
And the very camel, the very power of (that beast in the Bible represents power)…And the very Power that we give water and praise to (Amen! See?), water, life, praise to, the Word, is the very thing that packs us into the Gloryland to meet the Bridegroom. Yes, sir! Amen! 64-0830M - Questions And Answers #3
And Isaac went out to meditate in the field at the eventide: and he lifted up his eyes, and saw, and, behold, the camels were coming.
He made Himself visible.
And Rebekah lifted up her eyes, and when she saw Isaac, she lighted off the camel.
256 And remember, Isaac had left the tent and was standing out in the field meditating in the late afternoon. (Amen!) When he saw Rebekah coming…And she’d never saw him and he’d never saw her, but it was love at the first sight. She fell in love with him and he with her, and she was even veiled. Amen! Oh, my!
257 And look, when she seen him, her heart was so full of joy. She didn’t know who she was going to marry, but by faith. Amen! And remember, Jesus will leave the Kingdom, and we’ll not meet Him in Glory, we’re to meet Him in the air, between heavens and earth, where it’s expanded to redeem us.
And he met Rebekah in the middle, between her home and his home. Amen! Took her into his home, and married her, and fell heir to everything his father had. Amen! Oh, perfect, just perfect. All right. 64-0830M - Questions And Answers #3
Many times God’s choice for you is revealed by the circumstances of your life.
Moses was running after he killed the Egyptian.
Now when Pharaoh heard this thing, he sought to slay Moses. But Moses fled from the face of Pharaoh, and dwelt in the land of Midian: and he sat down by a well.
Now the priest of Midian had seven daughters: and they came and drew water, and filled the troughs to water their father’s flock.
And the shepherds came and drove them away: but Moses stood up and helped them, and watered their flock.
And when they came to Reuel their father, he said, How is it that ye are come so soon to day?
And they said, An Egyptian delivered us out of the hand of the shepherds, and also drew water enough for us, and watered the flock.
And he said unto his daughters, And where is he? why is it that ye have left the man? call him, that he may eat bread.
And Moses was content to dwell with the man: and he gave Moses Zipporah his daughter.
God took him back in the back, in the wilderness, to learn him some human weaknesses. He took him back to learn him what it was all about. So well did he learn! Oh, my, did he ever get a lesson! God must have had a time with him back there!
You know, Moses had a temper; and God give him the wife by name of Zipporah, she had one, too. So I imagine everything wasn’t so pleasing back on the backside of the desert for a while, when both of their tempers got out of control at the same time.
162 I suppose his intellectual conception of how psychology ought to control a person didn’t do much good, because, when he was on his road down to Egypt, I see Zipporah still had a temper. She cut the foreskin of her son off and throwed it before Moses, said, “You’re a bloody husband to me.”
163 And God was so angry with him He…looked for him in the inn, if He could have found him He’d have slayed him. I guess there was a little things God had to teach him back there, see, that he was a human.
All of his wisdom of Egypt and all of his powers of intellectual, God could not use a one of them. 61-1119 - Perfect Strength By Perfect Weakness
185 God said, “Forty years out here I’ve had you and Zipporah fussing and carrying around out here in this wilderness, whether you could find out there’s human weakness or not, where you’re standing up there as a big prince, ‘Hello, Doctor Moses. Good morning, Reverend, Sir. Yes, sir. Moses, you’re the coming prince.
We all think of you.’ Now you’re out here in the desert with a bunch of sheep and a high-tempered wife.” See? That fixed him up. Yes, sir. Moses in an awful shape, but He said, “Now I can use you, when you realize that you’re nothing. Now come on up here by this burning bush, I want to send you down yonder.” Oh, my!
186 God, give us some more of that kind, give us some more weaklings. That’s what we need, some weaklings. Sure! 61-1119 - Perfect Strength By Perfect Weakness
Was Zipporah the right one for Moses?
Notice, he failed, miserably failed, and run into the desert for another forty years while God had him back on the backside of the desert, where he married this Ethiopian woman: Zipporah.
And she was high tempered. Moses was too, so I guess there was some little trouble on the backside of the desert once in a while. Don’t turn your wife down ’cause she’s got a little temper.
Maybe that’s your cross. God might’ve give it to kinda keep you lined up: same thing with you women to your husbands. Stick together: promised God you would, so stay with it.
Notice, I’m a person don’t believe in marriage and divorce. You know that, so…Look, my brother. If you went at that more prayerfully, there’d be less of it. 56-0615 - An Exodus
And Moses took his wife and his sons, and set them upon an ass, and he returned to the land of Egypt: and Moses took the rod of God in his hand.
They have a little trouble on the way.
Then Jethro, Moses’ father in law, took Zipporah, Moses’ wife, after he had sent her back,
He sent her home to Daddy.
And Miriam and Aaron spake against Moses because of the Ethiopian woman whom he had married: for he had married an Ethiopian woman.
And they said, Hath the Lord indeed spoken only by Moses? hath he not spoken also by us? And the Lord heard it.
72 And there, one day, we find out that even Miriam, a prophetess, and Aaron, the high priest, made fun of Moses’ wife because she was an Ethiopian, and thought, “Wasn’t there enough women of our own group, to marry, instead of going down there and marrying that woman?”
That wasn’t Moses’ choice; that was God’s choice for Moses. And when they made fun of it, that angered God in such a way until He struck Miriam, the prophetess, full of leprosy, Moses’ own sister. What about that? 61-1015E - Respects
She was God’s choice for Moses.
Perfect Love is Redemptive, Elective Love.
I say therefore to the unmarried and widows, It is good for them if they abide even as I.
But if they cannot contain, let them marry: for it is better to marry than to burn.
And unto the married I command, yet not I, but the Lord, Let not the wife depart from her husband:
But and if she depart, let her remain unmarried, or be reconciled to her husband: and let not the husband put away his wife.
But to the rest speak I, not the Lord: If any brother hath a wife that believeth not, and she be pleased to dwell with him, let him not put her away.
And the woman which hath an husband that believeth not, and if he be pleased to dwell with her, let her not leave him.
For the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband: else were your children unclean; but now are they holy.
But if the unbelieving depart, let him depart. A brother or a sister is not under bondage in such cases: but God hath called us to peace.
330. Brother Branham, how am I supposed to show my wife that I really care for her and yet play…or stay with the Word (That’s)—stay—stay with the Word, but still having a question like this said: “Why don’t you practice what you preach or believe?”
114 Well then, if the wife, if the wife is saying this to you when she’s…has a right to say it, you better get right.
Then if she is saying it just to be evil, remember, the Bible said, “It was better that a millstone was hanged at your neck and drowned in the depths of the sea than even to offend the least of these, my little ones.” Now, that’s just your…?…
115 And may be that this wife is not that type of person. Maybe she’s a different. Maybe she’s a good person. Maybe she’s just testing you to see what you’ll do.
116 Now, stay in love with her and let her see Jesus in you. You do that. See? You just go on. 64-0830M - Questions And Answers #3
Tell story of woman who received the Holy ghost but her husband was a drunk.
One drunk looked at the other one, said, “She’s a Christian; she’s got it!” And that little woman led her husband, plus these others to Christ that night. See? Why? See? Just be real sweet. Just remember, He knows all about it.
121 So, sister, or brother, whoever it might be, or brother, it is here, ’cause he asked about his wife, you just be salty; she’ll get thirsty if there’s anything in her to thirst for.
If it isn’t, remember, if you got the wrong person, you’ll get the right one in the Millennium. You just keep on going; all wrongs will be made right there. 64-0830M - Questions And Answers #3
Just because they are hard to live with doesn’t mean they are the wrong one.
Conclusion.
Conclusion.
Perfect Love casts out fear, and is perfected by manifestation.
Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.
No man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us.
The Love of God.
