20220703 The Love of God in John's Gospel part 2

psalm136:1-8; 23-26

Tomorrow is July 4 Independence Day

I was at a concert last night at Mt Hermon, and when Point of Grace began to sing God Bless America, we all just stood together.

"God Bless America" is an American patriotic song written by Irving Berlin during World War I in 1918 and revised by him in the run up to World War II in 1938.

God bless America, land that I love Stand beside her and guide her Through the night with the light from above

From the mountains to the prairies To the oceans white with foam God bless America, my home sweet home

Independence Day should also remind us of our need to live in total dependence on the Lord. To seek Him in prayer and to rely upon Him each and every day.

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name; thy kingdom come; thy will be done; on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation; but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory, for ever and ever. Amen.

In our changing world, more than ever, we need to live in total dependence upon the Lord. The sovereignty of the Father, the sacrificial death of the Son, and the regenerating power of the Spirit.

As we begin this morning, I want us to understand the downward moral decline of our society, our culture, our country.

I would then like to show this morning that the God we worship, the Lord of the universe, is not only sovereign, He is also good and loving. While the world may be in decline, while the world seeks to live up to the simple truth of Isaiah 53:6

Isaiah 53:6 ESV

6 All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

The Lord, who does not change, who is the same yesterday, today, and forever has revealed in the Scriptures his unchanging character and his unchanging plan of salvation.

The term “morality”

Miriam Webster Dictionary

Definition of morality

2a: a doctrine or system of moral conduct b moralities plural : particular moral principles or rules of conduct; “we were all brought up on one of these moralities”— Psychiatry 3: conformity to ideals of right human conduct 4: moral conduct : VIRTUE; morality today involves a responsible relationship toward the laws of the natural world— P. B. Sears - American ecologist and botanist who died in 1990 at the age of 99

The downward spiral from biblical morality to a mob driven cultural morality

Can we trust the God of the Bible to lead us, deliver us, give us hope for the future?

To answer that question, we need to see the difference between biblical morality, where the Lord is King, and the morality of humanism, where there is no God and man is the author of his destiny.

Billy Graham

Humanism has taken on the form of religion; glorifying self and taking God out of His rightful place. Humanism is the worship of self. A London magazine carried a story that said, “No more subtle enemy has ever faced the Christian church than this one which dethrones her God and replaces Him with His [creation].” The Baby Boomer generation became acquainted with Julian Huxley, who claimed that if humanism is to acquire a wider appeal, it must become a religion. Humanism has become for many a polite name for a vocal and aggressive movement against God’s truth to advance its own brand of social influence. Humanism isn’t new; it emerged in the Garden of Eden and is the yielding to Satan’s first temptation of Adam and Eve. He told them they could be gods (Genesis 3:5). Mankind continually rejects the revelation of the Bible concerning the true and living God, substituting gods of man’s making.

Philip Yancy

“I would prefer, I must admit, to live in a country where the majority of people follow the Ten Commandments, act with civility toward each other, and bow their heads once a day for a bland, nonpartisan prayer. I feel a certain nostalgia for the social climate of the 1950s in which I grew up. But if that environment does not return, I will not lose any sleep. As America slides, I will work and pray for the kingdom of God to advance. If the gates of hell cannot prevail against the church, the contemporary political scene hardly offers much threat.” Philip Yancy ~The Jesus I Never Knew

There is the need to understand the need for a Biblical morality to address the needs of the human spiritual condition and to point to the need of all men and women to find salvation in Jesus Christ

As believers we need to see the moral character of the God of the Bible, the God who fully and eternally exists in each of the three persons of the trinity - God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit

Once we see the moral character of God and as believers become convinced that he is perfect, holy, sovereign and good, we can then rest in the moral guidelines that he has given to those who are in Christ.

If the Lord is perfect, holy, sovereign and good, then his word is perfect, holy, sovereign and good and that which the Lord allows us to do are perfect, holy and good and that which the Lord restricts we understand would, by doing these things, lead us away from holiness, Christlikeness and goodness.

The Gospel of John displays fully both the divine nature and the human nature of Jesus. Jesus is fully God and fully man. 100% divine and 100% human.

Written in Ephesus around 80-90 AD, after Peter’s death in 68 AD.

Purpose:

John 20:31 ESV

31 but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.

The verb “to believe” is used nearly 100 times, more than twice as much as Matthew, Mark and Luke

John wants his readers to know that those who “savingly believe” in Jesus will receive eternal life.

Who wrote the Gospel of John? The writer was John

John, the disciple whom Jesus loved

The word love in the writings of John the apostle

116 times in the Gospel of John, the three letters of John, and Revelation, the word “love” is used.

According to the Book Study Concordance of the Greek NT,

44 times in John he uses agapao , to love or agape, love

13 times philew

ἀγαπάωa; ἀγάπηa, ης f: to have love for someone or something, based on sincere appreciation and high regard

25.33 φιλέωa; φιλία, ας f: to have love or affection for someone or something based on association—

This morning I want to focus on God’s love for us. Not our love for God, not our love for others. But God’s love for the lost, God’s love for the believer, God’s love for the struggling believer.

And I want to point out 4 ways in which God loves you from the Gospel of John:

God’s love for me is a Sacrificial, a Saving, a Serving, and a Seeking love.

Say it with me

(1) The Sacrificial and Saving Love of God

John 3:16 ESV

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

Sacrificial - For God - the Father gave His Son. Notice the link to Abraham and Isaac, his only Son, God will provide a lamb (Genesis 22)

Saving - that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life

(2) The Serving Love of God

John 13:1 ESV

1 Now before the Feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.

The washing of the disciples feet

John 13:34 ESV

34 A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.

(3) The Seeking Love of God

John 21:15-21 - Jesus restores Peter.

John 21:3 ESV

3 Simon Peter said to them, “I am going fishing.” They said to him, “We will go with you.” They went out and got into the boat, but that night they caught nothing.

Peter had denied the Lord, Peter had gone back to fishing. Jesus comes to shore and speaks to Peter. Just as Peter had denied Jesus three times, Jesus asks him to declare his love three times.

Then Jesus says, Follow Me!

The sacrificial, saving, serving, and seeking love of God for the child of God.

gods love is sovereign

We are commanded to love. But we can’t love like God. We need to sit back and bask in the glory of the greatness of God’s love. We need to create as great a gulf as possible between the failed love and imperfect love of the people in our lives and see God’s love for what it is: always patient, always kind, never irritable or resentful. When you think of how much God loves you always realize that in our imperfections, in our sinfulness we are unable to love like God. And rather than filling our hearts and minds with what we can’t do, these passages force us to look at the Lord in his beautiful perfection and worship him and rejoice in what He is able to do.

Edited from sermon:

the nation of Japan, and in particular to the city of Osaka in Japan where a major court has handed down a rather stunning decision. That court has upheld Japan's legislative ban on same-sex marriage. This had come after other courts had ruled otherwise there in Japan, and it came after at least some form of a gay rights movement or an LGBTQ movement in Japan was pressing for the elimination of the ban, the overturning of the ban on same-sex marriage. Or you might put it another way. This is actually the positive way to put it, Japan does understand what marriage is and has legislated that marriage is and can only be, in Japan, the union of a man and a woman. And the family is defined out of that union.

Now let's just point out, that is completely consistent with the natural law. That is consistent with creation. That is consistent with the Christian understanding that the west has been abandoning in the face of a secular onslaught.

NPR reported:

The Osaka court on Monday said freedom of marriage in the 1947 constitution only means male-female unions and does not include those of the same sex, and therefore banning same-sex marriages is not unconstitutional.

Judge Fumi Doi said marriage for heterosexual couples is a system established by society to protect a relationship between men and women who bear and raise children, and that ways to protect same-sex relationships are still undergoing public debate.

It's also really interesting to see a report from the associated press that tells us two things. And both of these things, the associated press thought it had to report in this case. Number one, it says that Japan is the only member of the Group of Seven major industrialized nations that does not recognize same-sex unions. So we are told the continuing chorus and refrain from the secular authorities and the progressive powers that be is that if you are not forcing sex marriage, you are just not with it, you are not part of the modern age, you are not a modern industrial economy. You don't belong in the Group of Seven. So here Japan is being in effect shamed for being the only member of the Group of Seven that doesn't have the legalization and recognition of same-sex unions. So Japan's the outlier. But then here is the last sentence of the same article, presumably by the same reporter who is not named, "Taiwan is the only Asian nation or territory that is legalized same-sex marriage."

But wait just a minute. Earlier in the article, Japan was supposedly the outlier because it's the only member of the Group of Seven, that is the major industrialized nations of the earth, that doesn't recognize saying sex marriage. But then at the very end of the article, it's as if the ship turns all the way around and Japan is with virtually every other Asian nation, every other Asian nation with the singular exception of little Taiwan, which is the only Asian nation too have legalized same-sex marriage.