Does God love us ALL?

**H_O** · 02-16-2011, 10:23 PM

Re: Does God love us ALL?

I love them that love me; and those who seek me early shall find me"-Proverbs Chapter 8 verse 17

I love those that love me,,,,so if you dont love God-he doesnt love you back?

**H_O** · 02-17-2011, 01:08 PM

Re: Does God love us ALL?

i guess no one has an answer cuz nowhere in the bible god says he loves everyone

**evanovitch** · 02-17-2011, 01:33 PM

Re: Does God love us ALL?

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: H_O</div><div class="ubbcode-body">i guess no one has an answer cuz nowhere in the bible god says he loves everyone </div></div>

"For God so loved the world that He gave etc etc etc

**evanovitch** · 02-17-2011, 01:36 PM

Does God Love the World?, Part 1

Does God Love the World?, Part 1
Selected Scriptures

Well, as was told to you this morning and indicated in the Grace Today, I want to talk about the love of God. We had been doing a study of doctrines and doctrines that are controversial, doctrines that are often misunderstood. And we started some months ago addressing the issue of eternal security and the fact that we are saved forever and that once saved our salvation is guaranteed forever because in the end it is wrapped up in the decree of God and that got us into the doctrine of election, and then the doctrine of election, sovereign predestination, got us into the doctrine of the extent of the atonement, for whom did Christ actually die, and that raises the question about God loving the world. And that question certainly was raised by a number of you in the midst of our previous study some weeks ago.

If we are saved forever because God predetermined to do that before the foundation of the world, if Christ died to provide a salvation only for those who believe and those who believe are the ones whom God chooses to believe and empowers to believe, then the question comes...does God really love the world? The Bible says God so loved the world. How are we to understand that? And we actually looked at that passage and a number of other passages, but it is fair to ask the question about the love of God.

It was a number of years ago when the publisher for whom I do most of my books came and said, "You know, John, you have written some controversial books. You have stirred up issues with people. We would like to write a book that's not controversial. We would like you to write a book that everybody will like, everybody will enjoy and we think that you ought to write a book on something very simple and very universal like the love of God. Everybody is happy about that idea. And you won't need to be controversial, everybody knows God loves us and loves us unconditionally and that ought to be a book with wide appeal."

And that idea is certainly loose out there in the world. I remember Father Manning on Larry King one night saying, "My Jesus loves everybody." And that is a pretty typical perspective of people within the framework of Christianity. And it makes us realize that while some people may approach this issue of the love of God simplistically, it is far from a simple subject. And I know when I finish the book which was originally called "The God who Loves," and I think now the title has been changed to The Love of God, or the reverse of that. The publisher was scratching his head saying, "Well this isn't really what we expected." But if you expect a biblical look at the love of God, you have to deal with what you get.

So setting aside popular ideas, setting aside simplistic ideas, setting aside an over-simplification of the issue at hand, I want to talk about the love of God in its broadest sense and its highest sense, its deepest sense and its widest sense. It is a very profound and far-reaching subject and the best way to sort of break it down is to take it in three categories. One, God's love for Himself; two, God's love for the lost, the world; three, God's love for His own. And immediately from the vastness of this great subject, we've been able to parcel it out in three slices that make it much more approachable.

<span style="font-weight: bold">Let's begin by talking about God's love for Himself, because this, of course, is where it all begins. This is intra-Trinitarian love, intra meaning inside of, intra-Trinitarian love, this is the starting point to understand the love of God. The Bible says God is love and that is clear as the revelation of the epistle of John indicates. God is love and because it is His nature to love, that love is expressed in the purest essence of His nature which is the Trinity.</span> That is to say the Father loves the Son perfectly, the Father loves the Spirit perfectly, the Son loves the Father and the Spirit perfectly, the Spirit loves the Father and the Son perfectly and they live in this perfection of intra-Trinitarian love.

To help us understand that from the text of Scripture, open your Bible to the fourteenth chapter of the gospel of John. John chapter 14, and I will do my best to give you the Scriptures that help us get as much of an understanding of this as we can, John chapter 14 verse 31, Jesus simply says there, "But that the world may know that I love the Father and as the Father gave Me commandment, even so I do. Arise, let us go from here." And, of course, what He is doing is He's heading for the cross. And He's doing this in order that He might demonstrate that He loves the Father. And the demonstration will come in His obedience even to the death on the cross. We tend to think of the cross only as a point at which Jesus demonstrates His love for us, but it is first and foremost appointed which He demonstrates His love for the Father. You will look down into chapter 15 and verse 9 and you read, "Just as the Father has loved Me, I have also loved you. Abide in My love." What precedes and what motivates His love for us is the Father's love for Him and His love for the Father. Verse 10, "If you keep My commandments you will abide in My love, just as I have kept My Father's commandments and abide in His love." There is love within the Trinity and it is a love that causes the members of the Trinity to do that which pleases each other. If you go to the seventeenth chapter of John, you find very similar statements in verse 23. Jesus speaking here to the Father says directly to Him, "I in them and Thou in Me that they may be perfected in unity, that the world may know that Thou didst send Me and didst love them even as Thou didst love Me." Verse 26,. "I have made Thy name known to them and will make it known that the love wherewith Thou didst love Me may be in them and I in them." Here we find a number of occasions, a number of statements in which Jesus celebrates the love that He has for the Father and the love the Father has for Him. God perfectly loves Himself.

That seems bizarre to us, it actually seems sinful to us. But that's because we are sinful to start with and imperfect and unworthy of love. In the absolute perfection of God in which He exists utterly apart from us and not subject to any limitations imposed upon sinners, God has every right to engage in perfect love of Himself within the fulness of the Trinity.

To further expand the focus of Scripture on the love between the Father and the Son, go back to the fifth chapter of John...the fifth chapter of John. And one could certainly spend a lot of time in this chapter looking at this very subject. But we'll just briefly consider it. In verse 19, Jesus is responding to the hostility that has been generated by the Jews toward Him because He was breaking the Sabbath, verse 18, and worse, He was calling God His own Father, thus making Himself equal with God. And, of course, He was doing that because He is equal to God, He is in fact God. But wanting to follow up on this equality with God, Jesus then says in verse 19, "Truly, truly I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself unless it is something He sees the Father doing, for whatever the Father does, these things the Son also does in like manner."

That is a monumental statement. To simply sum it up it says this, "The Father keeps nothing from the Son." It is a perfect expression of love to give everything to the object of your love. The Father holds nothing back. The Son does everything the Father does because the Father desires Him to do it. You might say this, all the Father's knowledge, all the Father's secrets, all the Father's privileges, all the Father's works He gives to the Son. This is that intra-Trinitarian love that holds back nothing. And so says Jesus in verse 20, "Why is it that the Father holds nothing back but gives everything to the Son," verse 20, "for the Father loves the Son and chose Him all things that He Himself is doing and greater works than these will He show Him that you may marvel." Love is magnanimous, my father always used to say, you can give without loving, you can never love without giving. And if your love is perfect, you give in perfection. And what that means is you hold nothing back. There is nothing that the Father has by way of honor and glory and privilege that He does not give to the Son. The Father raises the dead, verse 21, so He gives the Son the privilege to raise the dead. The Father receives honor so He gives the Son honor and he who does not honor the Son doesn't honor the Father. The Father holds nothing back. The Father has authority, verses 26 and 27, so He gives authority to the Son. And the Son returns to the Father perfect obedience. This is love at its highest, this is love at its loftiest. This is love in its fullness and its glory. Love gives everything it has and love returns perfect gratitude and perfect obedience. To understand God's love at all, you have to start here with the perfect love within the Trinity, most particularly does the Scripture celebrate the love between the Father and the Son.

Now moving one chapter further into the sixth chapter of John, and verse 36, we come to familiar passage which we have dealt with before, but I want to deal with it in this context. In verse 36, we'll start at verse 37 actually, "All that the Father gives Me shall come to Me." Now what I said from chapter 5 is the Father holds nothing back. He keeps nothing from the Son, no secret, no nothing, no privilege, no honor, no authority, no power, no rights, nothing. In fact, in the future the Son sits on the Father's throne and reigns with Him. He is heir of everything the Father has. This is perfect love. And within the framework of giving everything to the Son is included redeemed people. All that the Father gives Me shall come to Me, says Jesus. The Father has willed in giving out of love to the Son to give to the Son a redeemed humanity. That's the point here. This is also what we read in the seventeenth chapter of John, that again Jesus understands that the Father has given Him those who will believe, verse 11. He says, "I am no more in the world yet they themselves are in the world and I come to Thee, holy Father, keep them in My name, the name which Thou hast given Me that they may be one even as we are. While I was with them I was keeping them in Thy name, which Thou hast given Me." Verse 24, "My Father...He says...I desire that they also whom Thou hast given Me be with Me where I am." I want to see them come to glory that You've given Me.

So the whole plan of redemption, the whole story of salvation embracing all of the people who will ever be saved, is really because the Father loves the Son and wants to give the Son a love gift. That love gift is a redeemed humanity. A humanity who will adore Him, honor Him, serve Him and love Him forever.

So to understand the love of God at all, we have to begin in the primary intra-Trinitarian love that leads to all other loves. Because God the Father perfectly loves the Son, He holds back nothing from the Son, including a bride for the Son, a redeemed humanity who literally will make up as it were the bride of Christ. The Son is willing to pay the immense price for that bride, the sacrifice of Himself on the cross, because it is the Father's will to give Him the bride and He in loving the Father perfectly will obey the Father in paying the price for that bride. Even though it meant bearing sin, even though it meant being separated from the Father, He will do it not so much for our sakes as for the sake of the Father. Because He wants to obey the Father and receive the gift the Father wants to give Him, He comes to the cross. God's loving us, God's loving people rises out of God creating people to redeem a bride for His Son, the Son of His love. Now that in itself is a glorious subject study and would, as I said, require a lot more attention than we've been able to give it tonight. But understand this, any love that comes to us in this whole created world is because of this love the Father and the Son share.

Bu<span style="font-weight: bold">t let's turn from that foundational element of love and talk about not God's love for Himself but God's love for humanity...God's love for humanity. This is the love which God has which is general. It is indiscriminate, it is unconditional, it is unlimited and it is extended to everybody. Titus 3:4, "God's love for mankind," it's called. God's love for mankind. Now God is love by nature, right? God isn't sometimes love and sometimes not, He's always love. God is never so irritated that He stops loving, He always loves. He is always who He is perfectly, His attributes do not come and go, they do not ebb and flow, they do not rise and fall, they do not appear and disappear. He always loves. All of His attributes exist in perfect harmony with all of His other attributes at all times, so God always loves. It is His nature.</span>

<span style="font-style: italic">And He loves generally, He loves mankind in general. It's fair to say that. Look at Matthew 5 verse 44 and 45, because this is an important text to instruct us</span>. In verse 43 Jesus says, "You've heard it said you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy." That was kind of the sort of Judaistic rabbinical approach to love. You love your neighbor and you hate your enemy which justified their hatred for Gentiles. Love your enemies, says Jesus, that's something very different, verse 44. "Love your enemies and go so far as to pray for the well-being of those who persecute you." And then in verse 45 He makes this very important connection, "This will demonstrate that you are sons of your Father who is in heaven."

Everybody knew in Jewish culture, in Jewish thinking that to be a son of something meant to demonstrate the character of whoever's son you were. It meant to share the nature, the disposition. And if you want to demonstrate that you are sons of your Father, then you must share the disposition of your Father who loves His enemies. That's the point. God loves His enemies. He goes on to say in verse 45, "He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good. He sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous." In verse 46, "For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Tax collectors do that." You need to love the way that God loves. Verse 48, "You need to be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect." And part of His perfection is perfect love demonstrated toward His enemies. Does God love the world? That says it, definitely He does...definitely. That's a very broad statement, enemies categorically.

Let's look at a more specific illustration in the tenth chapter of Mark, Mark chapter 10 and verse 17. And here He gets very personal. He's not talking about God in heaven as in Matthew 5, we're talking about Jesus on earth who is nonetheless God. In this verse 17 of Mark 10, a familiar story about a young man who runs to Jesus, kneels before Him, begins asking Him, "Good teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?" You remember the story. The rich young ruler, he is often called, Jesus says, "Why do you call Me good, no one is good except God alone. Do you have any idea what you're saying here? You know the commandments, do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not bear false witness, do not defraud, honor your father and your mother." And he said to Him, "Teacher, I've done all these things from my youth up." That's the...that's the self-righteous answer. "Oh, is that all I have to do to enter the Kingdom of heaven, is that all I have to do to receive eternal life is just keep all the commandments? I keep them all." He was living out the Jewish illusion. Verse 21 says, "Looking at him, Jesus felt love for him." He's not a believer, he wasn't even open to repent. Jesus went another step and said, "Well, there's another element in receiving eternal life, first you have to recognize you're a sinner, you're not going to do that. Secondly, you have to affirm My sovereign lordship over your life, so let me test that. Go sell all you possess, give to the poor and you have treasure in heaven, come follow Me."

"At these words his face fell, he went away grieved cause he owned a lot of property." Salvation is fairly simple. You repent of your sin and yo acknowledge Jesus as Lord. One he wouldn't do, two he wouldn't do either. He went away. But still the key phrase, verse 21, Jesus felt love for him. Jesus is God. He didn't know him, this isn't some kind of earthly affection, this isn't family affection, this is the love of the heart of God toward an impenitent proud materialistic sinner. And I think there's even a sense in which John 3:16, "God so loved the world," is intended to convey to the Jews that the heart of God is bigger than theirs. They had this narrow limited view that God loved them and hated everybody else and that's what was reflected in their...their perspective. Jesus said, "You've heard it said, love your enemies and hate your enemies." They thought that was God's attitude. And when we read God so loved the world, this is a blast at the narrowness, the provincial attitude, the...really the racism of those who thought they were righteous and Godlike in hating everybody else. God does love mankind in a general sense.

The question is then how does this love demonstrate itself? And I want to share four ways that it does, okay? And we'll just work through these four and we'll leave the last category for next Sunday night. <span style="font-style: italic">There are four ways that God's love manifests itself.</span>
<span style="font-weight: bold">Number one is common grace...number one is common grace.</span> "He makes the sun to shine on the good and the evil, He makes the rain to fall on the just and the unjust." God does not discriminate with His grace in the sense of general goodness. In the fourteenth chapter of Acts and verse 15, Paul and Barnabas, probably Paul himself speaking, says, "What are you doing, men? We are men of the same nature as you." They were worshiping Paul and Barnabas as if they were some kind of deities. He says, "We are men of the same nature as you, we preach the gospel to you in order that you should turn from these vain things to a living God who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and all that is in them." And then in verse 17, "And He didn't leave Himself without witness in that He did good and gave you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, satisfying your hearts with food and gladness." That's common grace, that the universal, non-discriminating, unconditional goodness of God to good people, to bad people, on the righteous and the unrighteous. And this is a general reality around the world. If you question the love of God, then ask yourself, "Why He made this planet so universally full of riches and things to enjoy?" Even people who live simply enjoy things. We think, I suppose, that the standard for everybody ought to be the advance scientific technological materialism of western culture. I'm quite sure there are more disillusioned, sad, distraught, depressed anxious people living in this kind of a culture then there are in the simple cultures of the Third World who have very little expectation and find their joy still in a sunset, or a good meal or the love of a family. Common grace extends to the world and it's a demonstration of God's love. If God was not at heart a loving God, why would He create a planet so full of things to enjoy?

<span style="font-weight: bold">There's a second element in God's love for mankind, compassion...compassion.</span> God's love for mankind is revealed in His universal pity and grief over lost souls. Ezekiel 18:32, "I find no pleasure in the death of the wicked." There's no glee in God when a hundred and fifty thousand people are crushed and drowned in a Tsunami. There's no glee in God when a train derails and certain people are asphyxiated, or when a bomb blows up in Iraq and people standing by are blown into eternity. He says, "I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked." To Jonah He said in Jonah chapter 4:11 when Jonah was questioning what God was doing with the Gentiles, Jonah had no love for them, absolutely no love for them, didn't want them involved with His God or getting in on divine blessing and God says, "Shall I not have compassion on Nineveh?" The compassion of God is seen in the good things in this world and the good things in life in the way in which God has provided, medical care and protection, and the support of family and food and even the kind of aid the world is rising to give to help other people, that's a reflection of the scarred and marred image of God in man where still you can see the milk of human kindness reaching out. It comes originally from the heart of God. Believe me, that's not born in an atheistic evolutionary process. God in the book of Jeremiah weeps and wails over the destruction of Moab, wicked, wretched, sinful Moab. Jesus weeps over Jerusalem in Matthew 23:37, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, I would have gathered you but you would not." Then again in Luke 19:41 the same thing.

Now listen, this is not a love motivated by the present value of man because he really has no value. He is a sinner and an enemy of God. It is a love that is motivated by the heart of God who sees the lost value in man. It's the love of pity. The Lord pities His children. It's the love of sadness over the image of God so defaced. It's a pained love, even acts of just judgment.

And that leads to the <span style="font-weight: bold">third element of God's love for mankind, the love of God has demonstrated in warning...warning.</span> I think the heart of God is grieved, I think God weeps when He sees masses of people die or when any die on any given day by the thousands as they do in the world. God finds no pleasure in that and that is why God has given to the heart of every man a law, a standard of what is right and wrong, and He's written it in the heart and He's given a conscience to activate it. That's why He sent Jesus Christ into the world. That's why He sent His Word into the world. God's love for mankind is revealed in incessant warnings of coming judgment, the whole of the Old Testament is filled with these warnings and Israel had the responsibility to declare the judgment of God upon the nations that rejected Him, as we do today. We've just gone through that little passage in Luke 13 where when the people were killed in the temple and they say, "Why did that happen?" And He said, "You better repent, the same thing could happen to you." And the tower fell on those in Siloam and they said, "Why did that happen? What caused that? Where was God?" as the question is often stated. And He said, "You better repent or it could happen to you."

It isn't that people just need a...kept thinking about that when they were talking about we need to have some kind of Tsunami warning system. No, that's fine, I mean that's helpful. You know, people can develop those kinds of things and that's helpful but what's far more important than any warning system that protects your body is a warning system that protects your eternal soul. This is the great warning and the Bible is that warning system. It's that warning system.

You say, "Well what if they don't have a Bible?" Well they have a conscience and they have a Law of God written in their hearts. And if they live up to that, the promise of Scripture is that God will bring them the fullness of His light.

<span style="font-weight: bold">And that leads to the fourth element, the offer of the gospel.</span> What did...what did the Lord say to His disciples at the end of His life when He was leaving? He said, "Go into all the...what?...the world and preach the gospel, take it to the end of the earth and preach it to every creature." Now He didn't say, "Look for the elect and tell them the gospel. Look for those who are predestined and give them the gospel." He said, "Take it to the ends of the earth." Common grace shows that God is a God of love, compassion, the compassion of God manifest through the...even through the defaced image of God in man, you can see that whoever created man had compassion because men have compassion. Warning, the Scripture is loaded with warnings, all through the Old and the New Testament, all of them gracious warnings. And also, the offer of salvation, in the Old Testament and the New Testament, God always offered salvation to the penitent sinner who came, confessed his sin and believed in the Word of God. And we're told to go to the ends of the earth and to preach the gospel to every creature in the worst time in the history of the world. In the future, it's a time known as the Tribulation. It's described in Revelation chapter...basically chapter 4 to the very end. Four and five are actually a scene in heaven where the war machine of God starts cranking up. Start formerly on earth in chapter 6, from Revelation 6 to 19 you have horrific judgments coming on the earth. But with those judgments come warnings. God plucks twelve thousand Jews out of every tribe to make 144 thousand witnesses and He knows who belongs to what tribe even though all the records were lost in the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. God knows who belongs to who and He'll put together that great force. He plucks two witnesses who preach the gospel in Jerusalem and bring about a massive revival in Jerusalem and the world hates what they say so badly that they kill them and they're on worldwide satellite television because it says the whole world sees their dead bodies. And while the whole world is watching, Revelation 11 says, they rise from the dead and stand up. But I think the most remarkable thing in the book of Revelation is that during that period of time there is going to be an angel flying through heaven preaching the everlasting gospel. Now you've seen people doing it with a blimp, or you've seen people doing it with a little airplane with a trailing sign. There is going to be an angel flying through heaven preaching the gospel to the world. Paul says, "I'm not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, it's the power of God unto salvation to everyone who believes, the Jew first and also the Greek." And he says, "I am really under mandate to preach the gospel to the ends of the earth." In fact, he even said in the Corinthians letter, "Woe is unto me if I preach not the gospel." We're to go everywhere and preach this gospel. This is the will of the Father.

God is a God of love and He shows His love in the graciousness that surrounds us in this world, in all its natural wonders which make life rich, the prosperity that we enjoy. He looks on us with compassion. And we live with His compassion. That's why sinners survive. That's why all sinners don't die the first time they sin because God is compassionate, God is merciful. But at the same time, we are warned and warned and warned and warned and warned and warned. And we are also given the solution, the glorious truth of the gospel. In John chapter 6, that same passage we looked at earlier, we're talking about the Father loving the Son and giving Him a bride, it says, "This is the will of My Father, verse 40, that everyone who beholds the Son and believes in Him may have eternal life. And I Myself will raise Him up on the last day." The Father simply says anybody anywhere who believes will have eternal life. This is the revelation of God's grace. The offer of the gospel is to all. Psalm 34:8, "O taste and see the Lord is good, blessed is the man who trusts in Him." Proverbs 1:24, "I have called and you have refused. I've stretched out My hand and no man regarded." Isaiah 55:1, "Come, buy and eat, come and buy wine and milk without money and without price." Isaiah 65:2, "Behold Me, behold Me, unto a nation that was not called by My name, I have spread out My hands all the day unto a rebellious people." This is God calling, reaching out, extending an offer of salvation. Matthew 22:2 and 3, I love this parable. The Kingdom of heaven is like a certain king who made a marriage for His Son, sent servants to call them that were bidden to the wedding and they wouldn't come. The same thing in Luke 14 verse 16 to 18, "A certain man made a great dinner and invited many and sent His servants at supper time to say to them that were bidden, 'Come, for all things are now ready.' And they all with one consent began to make excuses." Jesus said in Matthew 11:28, "Come unto Me all ye that labor and heavy laden and I will give you rest." John 6:37, "Him that comes to Me I'll not cast out." Romans 10:13, "Whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved." Revelation 22:17, "Whosoever will, let him come, take of the water of life freely." This is the extent of the gospel.

You remember what the angel said in Luke 2:10? The angel said this, "I bring you good news of great joy which shall be for all the people." Listen, beloved, in all our understanding of election and all of our understanding of predestination, you have to maintain that...that mystery, that apparent paradox, that irreconcilable reality that a God of love and mercy and compassion and a God of justice and a God of grace has extended Himself in love to the whole world. The good news is available to all. The Law of God is written in every heart. The conscience is there. To activate that Law and a response and to send that person in the direction of God and reason is there, and reason says there is a Creator and there is a moral lawgiver, how can I know Him? John 6, Jesus said He was the bread of God who comes down from heaven and gives His life for the world. He is the Savior of the world. Thomas Boston the Puritan preacher and author used the analogy of a king appointing a physician to be the healer of the people, available to all, the official doctor of the realm. People had to decide whether they wanted to use him or not, but he was the official physician of the realm. And so is Jesus the Savior of the world, declared to be so by God the King and available to all who come for spiritual healing. It was He Himself in John 5 verse 40 who said, "You are unwilling to come to Me that you might have life." You see, you're not going to come unless you know you're sick. That's what Jesus said, didn't He? He didn't come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. Those that are sick need a physician.

God loved the world. He loves the world to the extent that He shows them common grace, compassion, warning and gospel opportunity. He has provided a sufficient Savior for the whole world. But sinners refuse to come and bear the culpability and the guilt for that refusal. Jesus said, "You will die in your sins and where I go you will never come because you do not believe in Me." The responsibility always falls at the foot of the sinner. You say, "I'm not sure how that fits together with election." Oh, I don't know why you would be unsure about that. I'm absolutely positive that that doesn't fit together with election in my mind. But that's very encouraging to me because that means God is a lot brighter than I am. Jesus approached one day in Jerusalem and He wept over the city, Luke 19:41, and He said, "If you had known in this day, even you, even you, if you had just known the things which make for peace, now they're hidden from your eyes." Too late...too late. Yes, God does love the whole world. Yes, anybody anywhere anytime who wants to believe can believe. We know that's a work of God. And yet it's the man or the woman's responsibility to take the opportunity that's offered to them. I know that that doesn't make perfect sense in our minds, but hell is full of people who refused to believe, who held to their sin. And heaven is full of people whom the Lord transformed. But sinners are there because they made their choice. On the other hand, we're in heaven because God made His choice. It's that impossible paradox that exists at every point in the great doctrines of Scripture.

I don't need to sort that out. I don't need to solve that. I just need to be faithful to take the gospel to the ends of the world and beg unbelievers to repent, right? And Jesus did that. We've just been studying it in the gospel of Luke, warning them and warning them, telling them to leave the false religion, to fear God, to confess Him, to commit themselves to the care of the Holy Spirit, to abandon their love of money, to abandon their pursuits in the world and to rush, as it were, to the Kingdom, warning them that they're going to die, that the Lord might come in judgment and it's going to be too late. So while we glorify God for the great work of salvation which is all his work. On the other hand, we engage ourselves in expressing the love of God to the world at every point we can touch the unregenerate world because we've been commanded to do just that.

It makes it pretty simple for me really. I can leave the resolution of the impossible to God and simply be obedient. And isn't that, after all, what loving God is all about? Jesus said this, He said, "I do what the Father tells Me because I love Him." And so as believers we do what the Father tells us to do and that is to take the gospel to the ends of the earth because we love Him. It's not for us to understand all the machinations of the infinite mind of God, but it is for us to be obedient. God is love and therefore within the Trinity exists perfect love. Out of that perfect love comes a desire on God's part to give to His Son a gift of love because He holds nothing back from the Son and so we have what we have in the created universe in order that God can redeem a bride for His Son. And we have been given the wonderful responsibility of being, as it were, friends of the bridegroom, inviting guests to come to the marriage, even to become part of the bride.

There is a third kind of love and we'll look at that next week. It is God's love for His own...God's love for His own. This is that love which He eternally predetermined to set on us. Let's pray.

Father, we thank You tonight for just some time to contemplate these great and deep truths. We..we feel like we're standing at the ocean with a little bucket full of water looking at the vast unchartered sea rolling before us and thinking perhaps that in our bucket we have as much as we can handle of this vastness. Lord, we're in awe of You, we're in awe of Your glory, we're in awe of Your person, we're in awe of Your truth, we're in awe of Your attributes. We're in awe of Your goodness. It is unfathomable to us. And You've never asked us to sort it out, You've only asked us to obey. You have given us good gifts because You love us. And You have asked us in return to show our love through obedience, and that means to spend our lives in this wonderful enterprise of showing Your compassion, warning and grace through the gospel to those around us. We thank You for that opportunity and we ask that You continue to give it to us and may we be faithful simply to throw the seed and leave the results to You. We pray in Christ's name. Amen.

**evanovitch** · 02-17-2011, 01:37 PM

Re: Does God Love the World?, Part2

Does God Love the World?, Part 2
Selected Scriptures

Tonight as we think about the great revelation of Scripture, we return to the theme that we began last Sunday night of the love of God. Does God love the world? For those of you who are visiting with us tonight, or haven't been here, we have been engaged in a doctrinal study and we have been looking at some of the very most important doctrines in the Christian faith and some of those that are hard for some people to understand and handle. And our little trek through these doctrines which began with a look at the perseverance of the saints, or the security of the believer, has brought us all the way to discussing the issue of the love of God. And the Bible says that God is love. He is also spirit. He is also light. He is also life. He is also holiness. But He is love. And this is the most commonly proclaimed attribute of God, it's the favorite attribute of God, it's the popular attribute of God. It makes people feel good to hear that God loves them. It is affirming to hear that. Just a simple recognition that God loves you is an amazing reality.

But it is not by any means as simple as some people make it seem. And so, we have taken a brief look at this love that God has, defining it more carefully and bring it into more sharpened focus. Does God love the world? Yes. He does love the world. Does He love every single person in the world the same way? No. He does not.

I dealt with this in rather careful detail in a book I wrote called The Love of God, or The God who Loves, depending on which edition you have. And at the time, I don't think I even understood fully the character, the nature and the extent of the love of God and so it was a very helpful effort on my part. And I remember years ago when I went through the series, I think I preached seven or eight or nine messages on this theme, so we're giving you a really just a condensed look at it in these couple of Sunday nights. But when we talk about the love of God, we are then forced to look at the love of God in all its categories. And the first category we looked at last Sunday night is that love which God has for Himself, intra-Trinitarian love. The Father loves the Son, the Father loves the Spirit, the Son loves the Spirit and the Father and the Spirit loves the Son and the Father, there is this perfect love, this perfect communion of love inside the Trinity.

And we noted that the New Testament makes it clear that the Father's love for the Son is perfect, that the Son's love for the Father is perfect, and we looked at some Scriptures that indicate that. And, of course, the Spirit is swept up in that love in its perfection as well. It was the Father's perfect love for the Son that caused the Father to seek a bride for His Son. It was the Son's perfect love for the Father that caused the Son to give His life to purchase the bride to please His Father. It was the Spirit's love for the Father and the Son that caused the Spirit then to do the great work of transforming and regenerating those who would become the bride of the Son. Ir is the love of the Father for the Son and it is the love of the Son for the Father that is the primary motivating reality in the history of redemption, only secondary is the love that God has for mankind. The primary issue here is God loved the Son so much that He sought a bride for Him and the Son loved the Father so much that He sought to pay the price for that bride, and ultimately when the Son has received His bride, according to 1 Corinthians 15, He will then turn around and give Himself and His bride back to the Father that God may be all in all. And so we've been learning that within the Trinity is this great expression of love going on, and we are secondary in the sense that God loves us so that He can fulfill His love to Himself within the Trinity. God's loving people rises out of intra-Trinitarian love.

We move then to the second category, God's love for Himself being first, God's love for humanity in general being second. This is the love of God that is general. This is the love of God that's often referred to as unconditional love. This is the love that is unlimited love. This is the love that is indiscriminate love. This is what Titus 3:4 calls God's love for mankind. This is the kind of love that Matthew 5 talks about God loving His enemies. And so should we.

Now four features characterize this love that God has for everyone. One, common grace. He makes the rain to fall on the just and the unjust. He has provided in this world expressions of His love, expressions of His goodness and His kindness and His mercy and His compassion and His tenderness to all men in just the goodness and the richness of life itself. That's common grace.

Secondly, God loves all mankind with a love of compassion. The Bible talks about the fact that God feels compassion for sinners in general. This love is not motivated by their value, it's motivated by the loss of value that sin has produced.

And thirdly, we talked about the fact that this general love of God is manifest in warning. Throughout the Scripture all sinners everywhere are warned of judgment. Scripture is filled with warnings about judgment, warnings relentless and endless warnings which will be heard by people who never will be redeemed. But God's broad warnings to the world are part of His extended love to mankind.

And finally, the gospel offer is a demonstration of God's love for mankind. There is a legitimate offer of the gospel to anyone who believes. We are told to take that to the ends of the earth and preach it to every creature. And so there is a love that God has for mankind.

But I want to talk tonight about that third category of love, as we prepare for the Lord's table, and that is the love that God has for His own. He does love the world in a way expressed in common grace, compassion, warning and gospel offer. But He loves His own in a very different way, a far different way. God's love for the world, think of it this way, God's love for the world, for mankind in general, in unlimited in extent but limited in degree. God's love for the world in general is unlimited in extent but limited in degree. He...He loves them all but to a limited degree. God's love for believers is limited in extent, but unlimited in degree. God's love for His own is limited to those who believe and they are those whom He has chosen. And so His love for them is limited to them but it is unlimited in degree and in expression. His love for His own is eternal and limitless.

How are we then to understand how God loves us? I was visiting folks in the hospital today and I was talking to the lady who was there by her husband in intensive care and she was talking about last Sunday and she said, "I was so overwhelmed last Sunday because we sang, 'Oh, the deep, deep love of Jesus. Vast, unmeasured, boundless, free.'" and she said, "'In my mind, all I could think about was the Tsunami, this massive flood just sweeping away everything. And I saw in that the image of the overwhelming and deep love of Jesus for me.'" That is a way to understand the love that He has for His own. It is all encompassing, all engulfing and rather than being all destructive, it is all beneficial.

Turn to John 13...John 13. There are many places to go, by the way, in the New Testament to look at this issue. This is one, John 13 verse 1, the feast of the Passover was about to come. This would be the Passover at which the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world would be slain. This was the Passover where Jesus was to be crucified. So it says, "Before the feast of the Passover, Jesus knowing that the hour, His hour, had come that He should depart out of the world to the Father." He's very aware, He is meeting here with His Apostles in the Upper Room. It is the night of His betrayal. His crucifixion is only hours away. He knows it. He looks at the Apostles who are around the table, all of them including Judas were there. And it says, "Having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them," the NAS says, "to the end." Other translations say, "Eternally." Others say, "To the uttermost."

Now here is a kind of love that is unique. "Having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them eis telos...eis telos," He confers an eis teloslove on His own. It is a quality of love, a degree of love beyond anything the world in general experiences. First Timothy 4:10 says, "God is the Savior of all men," in a temporal way, that is He shows love to all men, delivering them at least temporarily from the destruction and the judgment and the hell that they deserve. But that same verse says, "He is the Savior of all men, especially of those who believe." There is a sense in which He is a Savior of all men, physically and temporally, not bringing to sinners what they deserve when they deserve it, but extending grace and compassion and warning and gospel offered to them. But when it comes to believers, He especially loves them. And especially is the Savior of those who believe not in physical, temporal sense, but in a spiritual eternal sense.

What does it mean eis telos? What does it mean that He loved them to the end? And by the way, they weren't being particularly lovable at this moment because if you compare the gospel account, they were arguing about which of them would be the greatest in the Kingdom which was rather a continual argument that they had, fighting for position and posturing themselves with reference to the Kingdom they thought Jesus was going to bring. And so they were about as ugly as they ever got. There wasn't anything particularly winsome about them at the time. But then again, the love of Jesus is not affected about how He feels about them or how they act at the moment. And that's the nature of this kind of love. What does it mean eis telos?

Well in the Greek it means "unto the end," "unto the finish." And it can go a lot of directions. Let me suggest a few. Number one, it can mean completely or perfectly, or fully. He loved them to the maximum of His capacity to love. That is to say He loves them so completely, so comprehensively, so fully that He cannot love them more. And His love is so full and so rich that He cannot hold back anything from them. Therefore Scripture says we are joint heirs with Christ, we inherit everything that Christ inherits. Scripture says we sit on His throne. Scripture says Jesus is not ashamed to call us brothers. Scripture says that everything that is heaven that belongs to God and belongs to Christ will also belong to us. It is that breadth of love, that limitless range of love that causes everything that God has to also belong to us.

It also can mean that He loves us to the end. Eis teloscan be chronologically. He loves us not only completely and perfectly, but to the end, to the last. He loves us right till it's over. This is sort of like Romans 8, "What shall separate us from the love of Christ, tribulation and all those other things that are listed there?" He loves us when we're cowardly, He loves us when we're disloyal. He loves us when we're disobedient. He loves us when we're doubtful. He loves us when we're fearful. He loves us when we're rebellious. He loves us when we are flatly disobedient. He loves us when our love for Him grows cold. The disciples have lived through all of those phases, didn't they? Just like we do. In spite of their doubt, in spite of their lack of love, in spite of their fear, in spite of their disloyalty, in spite of their disobedience, He never wavered, He never wandered away from His love for them. He protected them in the garden from being arrested because He knew they could never survive the arrest and the scrutiny and the interrogation and the punishment, so He never let it happen. He loved them even when they were in disbelief walking on the road to Emmaus, moaning because they had put their trust in one who is now dead and they were overcome with hopelessness. He loved them when they were outright disobedient. He told them to go into the mountain and wait for Him and they went back to their old profession of fishing and He loved them anyway in John 21. And the real test of His love, "Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." And He loved them enough to lay down His life to forgive their sins. His love for them to the end meant that He loved them enough to die for them, even in the midst of their failures, in the midst of their weaknesses. That's what it means to be loved by the Lord. It means to be loved completely. It means to be loved so fully that He couldn't love you more than He loves you, and it means that every benefit that His love can possibly give, He gives. And it means that that love is to the end, to the last, it's never going to be anything other than that.

Sometimes people get a little bit confused and they talk about that as if that's how God loves the world. That is not how God loves the world. He doesn't love them in that way. He doesn't love them savingly. He doesn't love them limitlessly. He doesn't love them permanently, no matter what. But He loves His own that way. And that's what it says in verse 13, "Having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end." That would exclude Judas and that's why a little while later He dismissed Judas. Verse 2, "During supper, the devil having already put into the heart of Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon, to betray Him." Jesus had a little dialogue and dismissed Judas and he went out and betrayed Jesus. And you know the rest of the story.

It means to love perfectly. It means to love to the very end. And thirdly, it can convey the idea of loving forever. Eis telosis a way to express something that is eternal. And the phrase is used to speak of eternity, forever. He loves His own forever. It is not just a general love that expresses common grace that blesses us temporally in this life, it is not just that general love which causes God to feel compassion for us. It's not that general love that warns and gives the gospel. This is a different love all together. It is limited in its extent, but it is limitless in its degree and its quality. This is the love of God that only believers experience. This is the love of God that was predetermined before the foundation of the world in the sovereign unaffected plan of God to choose some to be saved. This is the love of God that was expressed on the cross when Jesus died to actually pay the penalty to those upon whom God had set His love before the foundation of the world. In fact, the temporary brief love that God has for mankind eventually turns to eternal hate when they reject Him and feel His judgment. Psalm 5, "I hate all who do iniquity."

So the love God has for His own is vastly different. It is a...it is a sort of spiritual Tsunami. It is a surge of love. It is a depth of love and a breadth and a height of love that literally engulfs us. And it always turns to salvation, always.

The best way to illustrate this saving love is to look at a couple of Old Testament passages, just briefly. Deuteronomy chapter 7, Deuteronomy chapter 7 and I just...pick it up in verse 6, Deuteronomy 7 verse 6, "For you are a holy people to the Lord your God," he's talking to Israel here, "You are a holy people to the Lord your God, the Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for His own possession out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth." This is divine election. Verse 7, "The Lord did not set His love on you..." Stop right there. That expression is another way to say what verse 6 said. God has chosen you. The Lord did not set His love on you, nor choose you because you were more in number. Why did He choose you? Because He set His love on you. Why did God set His love on just this nation? It was the uninfluenced purpose of His own sovereignty.

Verse 8, "Because the Lord loved you," etc. Verse 9, "Knowing therefore the Lord your God, He is God the faithful God who keeps His covenant and His loving kindness to a thousand generations with those who love Him and keep His commandments." And here you have this picture of God in eternity past loving certain people, Jews, in the little tiny nation of Israel, descendants of Abraham through Isaac and setting His eternal love and covenant on them.

Turn to Ezekiel 16, here is another more dramatic and more graphic illustration of this. In fact, this is one of the most graphic chapters in all the prophets and certainly the most vivid forceful chapter in Ezekiel, also the longest chapter in Ezekiel, 63 verses. And it's really an amazing chapter. Through the years a couple of times considered this chapter and I...I'm not going to get bogged down but I just want you to get a feel for what's going on here. This chapter demonstrates God's forgiving eternal love to His own. The story of Israel is presented here, really in very kind of vivid and even somewhat distasteful sordid imagery. In fact, it was so ugly that many rabbis forbid this chapter to be read or explained in public. They skipped it because it focuses on Israel in what many of the Jews felt was an unsavory way. Verse 1, "The Word of the Lord came to me saying, 'Son of Man, make known to Jerusalem her abominations.'" Oh that's a bad start as far as the Jews were concerned because it exposed their abominations. "And say, 'Thus says the Lord God to Jerusalem, your origin and your birth are from the land of the Canaanite. Your father was an Amorite, your mother a Hittite.'" That's just a little history. The nation basically was born out of a Caananitish background, Amorites and Hittites. "As for your birth, on the day you were born, your navel cord wasn't cut, nor were you washed with water for cleansing and you were not rubbed with salt or even wrapped in cloths. No eye looked with pity on you to do any of these things for you, to have compassion on you, rather you were thrown out into the open field for you were abhorred, or hated, on the day you were born."

The dwellers in Canaan were generally called Amorites or Hittites. It's talking about the fact that Jerusalem and the Jewish people had pagan origins. And because of idolatry, Jerusalem was acting in a very Caananitish way even at this time. And that's what led to the captivity that Ezekiel was a part of. When the nation came into existence, it was weak and defenseless and poor, it was...it was liable to perish, it was just out there on its own in a field. I guess you could say the field was Egypt. It received no pity from any human source. This was a common thing to do, by the way, in the ancient world. If you didn't want a baby, you didn't necessarily have to abort the baby, just cut the cord and throw the baby in a field. Israel was unwanted and uncared for, thrown out in the field, as it were, in Egypt. Nobody had bothered to cut the navel cord, nobody had bothered to wash with water which was always done to cleanse that baby when it was born, and babies were rubbed with salt to mitigate against any infection and wrapped obviously for protection and warmth. Nobody had any pity on Israel. Nobody cared. There they were, thrown out in the open field of Egypt, hated.

Verse 6, "Then God said, 'When I passed by, I saw you squirming in your blood. I said to you while you were in your blood, Live. I said to you while you were in your blood, Live. And I made you numerous like plants of the field.'" And that's a little bit about the history of Israel and Egypt. They grew to a mighty nation...mighty nation, maybe as many as two million of them that came out of that field. But this is just a start. "I made you numerous like plants of the field, you grew up, you became tall, you reached the age for fine ornaments. Your breasts were formed, your hair had grown...maturity...and yet you were naked and bare, you still weren't complete, you still weren't covered. I passed by and I saw you and you were at the time for love and so I spread my skirt over you and covered your nakedness. I swore to you and entered into a covenant with you so that you became Mine, declares the Lord God." I picked you up out of no place. I picked you up when you were left to die. I picked you up out of Egypt and I brought you back and I allowed you to mature. And then I clothed you and protected you and I bathed you with water and washed off the blood and anointed you with oil. And I clothed you with embroidered cloth and I put sandals of porpoise skin on your feet." Take that, you environmentalists. "And I wrapped you with fine linen and I covered you with silk and I adorned you with ornaments and I put bracelets on your hands and a necklace around your neck."

Wow, you know back in verse 8 it says, "I spread my skirt over you and covered your nakedness." That was tantamount to a marriage covenant. God says I made you My bride, I made you My wife. And then I took care of you and I washed you and I clothed you and I adorned you. Verse 12, "I put a ring in your nostril," not a big bull ring, by the way, but just a little ring was worn often in those days and still in some cultures. "Earrings in your ears, a crown on your head, adorned you with gold, silver, dressed in fine linen, silk, embroidered cloth, you ate fine flour, honey, oil, you were exceedingly beautiful and advanced to royalty and your fame went forth among the nations on account of your beauty." That would be about the time of Solomon, right?, when the kingdom really reached its apex. Lavished goodness from God, I did all this for you.

But...verse 15, "You trusted in your beauty, you played the harlot because of your fame. You poured out your harlotries on every passerby who might be willing." Wow. Every stranger you had an liaison with. And, of course, this is talking about idolatry. There was real adultery going on in Israel but He's talking here about spiritual idolatry, spiritual adultery. You took your beautiful jewels made of My gold and My silver which I gave you, made for yourselves male images, you turned the gold and silver I gave you and you flaunted that and you made idols out of it and you played the harlot, you worshiped the very idols made out of the goods that I gave you. Took your embroidered cloth and you covered them and you offered My oil and incense before them. You took everything I gave you and used it in your idolatry. My bread I gave you, fine flour, oil and honey with which I fed you, you would offer before them for a soothing aroma. So it happened, declared the Lord God.

Verse 20, He asks at the end of the verse, "Were your harlotries so small a matter, you slaughtered My children, offered them up to idols by causing them to pass by through the fire. They got involved in worshiping Molech. And besides all the abominations," verse 22, "and harlotries, you didn't remember the days of your youth when you were naked and bare and squirming in your blood. You forgot, you forgot." And it just goes on. I won't take the time to read it.

Israel is an impudent prostitute without control, without conscience. Eventually you get down to verse 35 to 43 and you have the Babylonian Captivity. God will not be pacified any longer. I'll bring, verse 43 says, I'll bring your conduct down on your own head. Judgment came and it came in the form of the Babylonian Captivity. Slaughter, people taken out of their country, all of this because of your abominations.

And then in verses 46...in 46 and following, He talks about Samaria and Sodom. Samaria, evil, the northern kingdom wicked, taken away into captivity, never to return. Sodom, homosexuality, gross sin, destroyed by fire and brimstone. Samaria and Sodom would have been bywords for the worst, but verse 47 says, "Yet you have not merely walked in their ways or done according to their abominations but as if that were too little, you acted more corruptly in all your conduct than they." Worse than Sodom? Worse than Samaria?

Now where does all this go? Go down to verse 60, "Nevertheless," there's a great word, "nevertheless, I will remember My Covenant with you in the days of your youth and I will establish an everlasting Covenant with you." What? Why? Why? "You will remember your ways," verse 61, "and be ashamed when you receive your sisters, both your older and your younger. I will give them to you as daughters but not because of your Covenant, thus I will establish My Covenant with you and you shall know that I am the Lord in order that you may remember and be ashamed and never open your mouth anymore because of your humiliation, when I have forgiven you for all that you have done, the Lord God declares."

Why in the world is He going to forgive them? Why didn't He forgive Sodom? Why didn't he forgive Samaria? Judah is worse. Why? Verse 60, "I will remember My Covenant with you in the days of your youth and I will establish an everlasting Covenant with you." I made a pledge, I made a promise based upon My sovereign will. This is the essence of the kind of love that God has for those He chooses. He will save them and He will give them salvation no matter how they blaspheme and spurn Him. Eventually they will turn. You will remember, verse 63, you will be ashamed, you will be humiliated, I will forgive you. Sodom was destroyed. Samaria was unredeemed. Israel was worse. Yet God forgave because He predetermined to do it. He set His saving love upon that people. And to this day He is saving a remnant out of Israel, in spite of Israel's horrific apostasy in the past. And some day He will redeem the nation because He has promised to do it. It's an illustration of the fact that His love for His own is perfect, it is complete, it is saving love, it is eternal love and whom He predetermines to love, He will love savingly.

It was said of Solomon, "The Lord loved him." Solomon sinned yet was, it says in Nehemiah, beloved of his God. You see, we are the beneficiaries and the recipients of a sovereign love established before the foundation of the world, set upon us. It is limited to those whom God chooses and those who believe. It is unlimited in its quality and its degree. Ephesians 2 says, "It is a love that forgives, it is a love that gives life. It is a love that promises eternal glory. It is a love that brings kindness forever. It is a love that produces righteousness and it's all of grace." Ephesians chapter 5 says, "It is a love that gives life. It is a love that separates from sin. It is a love that cleanses. It is a love that purifies. It is a love that makes holy. It is a love that nourishes. It is a love that cherishes."

Luke 15 says, "It is a love that forgives and lavishes and rejoices and restores and enriches." Romans 8 says, "It is an inseparable, unconquerable, unbreakable everlasting love." And so it is that God loves His own and He loves us to the extreme end of His love which is really without end. And He loves us through all our lives to the very last, no matter what. And He loves us throughout all eternity. He has saved us to lavish that love upon us.

And I know we go back to the question we talked about months ago...why did God not choose to love everyone like this? Well He didn't, but if you ask me why He didn't, I can't tell you the answer any other than this, because loving this way brought Him glory. God is not obligated to be the unqualified equal-opportunity lover of all people. God is not the prisoner of His love, nor is He the prisoner of man's expectation for His love. And God's love is not separated from all the other attributes which bring Him glory like justice and holiness and righteousness and wrath. Everything God does in the end is for the glory of His name. He loved Jacob for His glory and He hated Esau for His glory. And for the purposes that He Himself knows and are absolutely righteous, God loves the way He loves. We will not understand it. Maybe we'll get closer to understanding it in heaven. But we can certainly rejoice in it.

When you come to this table then, you come to celebrate this eternal love which God the Father set on you before the foundation of the world by which He determined to save you and give you as a part of the bride to His own beloved Son. And it was for you that the Son died, paying the penalty for your sin in order to purchase you to be His bride, some day then to give Himself and the bride back to the Father that God may be all in all. And so, we come overwhelmed, I trust, with this astonishing gift of salvation, born out of God's sovereign love. Let's pray together.

Father, as we come now to this table, we really are overwhelmed. This is just too mysterious. We're no better than others. We're no different than others. We're no saints on our own. There's nothing in us to be commended. There's nothing in us particularly lovable, how in the world could we ever assume that You could find something lovable in sinners when You are perfectly holy? But out of the grace and mercy of Your heart and out of Your immense love for Your Son, You determined that You would love some of us and that You would love us to the max and that You would love us to the end and that You would love us through all eternity because it serves Your purpose in loving Your Son. And that Your Son would love us because it served Him in showing His love for You. And that the Spirit would join in by redeeming us to a mighty work of transformation so that this great love could be complete. We think of the words of Jesus who talked about how the Son loves the Father and the Father loves the Son and how He longed that all who believe would enjoy participating in that same love. And we will forever enter in to the love that is unique to the Trinity. O God, this is so vast and so marvelous and we know that being loved finds its highest moment at the cross where the price is paid to make Your own those You determine to love. So we come to the cross so grateful, so thankful and again to be reminded of the sacrifice that our Lord made there.

**evanovitch** · 02-17-2011, 01:39 PM

Re: Does God Love the World?, Part3

The Love of God, Part 3

Well, these are special days and I think just sort of slowing the pace a little bit and cranking back from the level of involvement we have in the world and sitting back and thinking about those things that are precious to us really are important moments and important hours as we spend them together with our families and those we love. But as we think about Christmas, we hear a lot of talk about the spirit of Christmas and the spirit of love. In fact, somebody said to me just last week after one of the messages I gave, "I'm surprised you didn't talk about the fact that we're to love each other. After all, isn't that the whole point of Christmas?" And it struck me that for most people that probably is what they think, that the whole point of Christmas is all about people loving people.

Somebody else said to me, "Shouldn't we be showing love to others, isn't that the real meaning of Christmas?" That does express popular sentiment. Popular sentiment is all about loving each other and being kind to each other and being good to friends and family and even good to strangers and giving gifts and showing affection. We constantly hear that defined as the spirit of Christmas. Somebody does something of some benevolence to someone else and that's the spirit of Christmas.

And I don't want to be the grinch that stole Christmas by any means, but that is not the spirit of Christmas. That is not the significance of Christmas at all. Human kindness is a very lovely thing and a very desirable thing and certainly it's even commanded in the Bible that we do good to all men, especially those that are of the household of faith, that we be tender hearted and forgiving as God is, that we be kind to one another and merciful and we love each other as God loved us. I'm not decrying that as a reality, that is a very important commodity, loving each other and being good to each other and giving gifts and making sacrifices and showing mercy and kindness to troubled people in a troubled world is very, very important. But that is not what Christmas is about.

What Christmas is about is not people loving people. What Christmas is about is God loving sinners. Christmas is, of all things, the event that focuses on divine redemption. Christmas is not about people to people, it is about God to people, in fact, God loving sinners who are utterly unlovable and unworthy of the least of His affection. The birth of Jesus Christ is the testimony to God's love, that's what it's all about, "God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son," as we've been learning in this series we're in on the love of God. God commended or proved His love toward us, Romans 5:8 says, that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us. Jesus came into the world not to be ministered unto but to minister and give His life a ransom for many.

So the birth of Jesus Christ signals God's love for unworthy sinners. It is not about people loving people, it is about God loving sinners, God loving unworthy sinners, undeserving sinners and God loving them in such a magnanimous way as to do the noblest act of love, according to the words of Jesus, is when a man lays down his life for his friends.

And we've been looking at this whole matter of God's love. That is the theme of Christmas. We've been talking about it now, this will be our third week and we'll talk some more about it next week, in examining the kind of love that God has demonstrated. John 3:16 says, "God so loved the world," and we've looked at how God loved the world. The love of God to the world is manifest in His common grace, as theologians call it, or His general goodness. Skies are blue and the grass is green and the flowers grow in the garden of even the unregenerate people and music comforts our hearts and gives wings to the expressions of our emotions and we can enjoy a little child and we can enjoy the fruits of love and labor. And all of that is common grace, common to all people and is manifestation of God's love.

And then God manifests His way to the whole world in terms of His compassion. He pities. And we showed in Scripture how God has compassion even to the point where Jesus wept as He looked at the plight of people. We saw the compassion of God also in the healing ministry of Jesus as He touched them in the time of their great need.

And God's love to the whole world is seen in warnings. All through the Bible God warns about sin and its effect and its consequences and eternal judgment. We see God's unlimited love in the gospel as it is to be spread to the whole world and people are to be told that if they'll come to Christ their sins can be forgiven and they can have the hope of eternal life in heaven forever. That's all God's unlimited love.

And so we said that God's love is unlimited in its extent. But the second proposition we started last week and we'll continue it this morning is that God's love is limited in degree. While He loves the whole world He does not love them to the degree that He loves His own. Those who belong to the Lord are the special objects of His love. He had for them a love that is beyond the love that He has for the world. In fact, we must remind you that the love God has for the world is temporal, that is it exists only in the framework of time. It exists only in this life. It is temporary. And eventually, for those who refuse Jesus Christ, that love turns to hate, that hate results in eternal judgment. God does love the world in a temporal temporary way bound by space and time, in the physical realm that love turns to hate and judgment for those who reject Him. And the sad truth is that while God loves the world, extends compassion toward the world, common grace, warnings about judgment and the gospel, Jesus said you will not come to Me that you might have life. Men refuse the gift that God offers, therefore God's love turns to hate and judgment.

But to those who receive God's love, to those who come to Christ, to those who accept Christ as Lord and Savior, believing in His death and resurrection and committing their lives to obedience to His will, to those people God brings a love that is beyond the love that He has for an unregenerate mankind. He loves His own with a love that is far beyond anything that we could ever imagine or fathom and even all eternity will not be able to fully exhaust the demonstration of God's love toward His own. He loves His own with a love that reaches to the fullest of His capacity to love, as we saw last time. And no one has expressed that better than the Apostle John who said, "Having loved His own who were in the world," John 13:1, "He loved them eistelos, and that phrase can mean He loves them completely, perfectly, fully, it can mean to the end, to the limit, to the max, to the last. It can mean undying, eternal, ever lasting and it means all of that...all of that. The Lord loves His own in a way that is going to be demonstrated throughout all eternity, and as I said, even all eternity can't exhaust the expression of that love.

When John sums it up he does it in these simple words, "See how great a love the Father has bestowed upon us?" See how great a love, and he doesn't exhaust a half a dozen or a dozen adjectives because they wouldn't even come close to saying what needs to be said. He just says how great a love that we should be called children of God, 1 John 3:1. It is that great love with which He has loved us. And it is that love that causes us to be called His children. Remember now, He set that love upon us in eternity past before the world began just as He did the nation of Israel, the predetermined sovereign uninfluenced desire and will to love us while we were not yet born and knowing that when we were born we would be unlovable sinners. By God's own choice we are His beloved, according to Romans 1:7 and Romans 11:28. We have been designated as the beloved of God by His own eternal choice.

John again says it as well as it can be said. First John chapter 4 verse 9, you might want to turn to this chapter, I want to comment on a couple of verses. First John chapter 4 verse 9, "By this the love of God was manifested in us that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him." God first loves us. Because God loves us He sends His Son into the world so that we might live through Him. Verse 10, "In this is love." There is love manifest in the gift of Christ, not that we loved God but that He loved us and sent His son to be the covering for our sins.

Down in verse 16 John says, "We have come to know and believe the love which God has for us, God is love and the one who abides in love abides in God and God abides in Him." And then verse 19, "We love because He first loved us." Let's get the sequence right. God determined to love us before the world began. God loved us when we were yet in sin. God loved us when we were not lovable. And it was that predetermination to love us in spite of what we were, that is the essence of God's great redeeming love.

The message of Christmas then is God loves sinners and sends His Son into the world to redeem them. To those who believe and accept that redemption He pours out a love that knows no limits forever and ever and ever. It is demonstrated, first of all, that He was willing to die for us and then spend the rest of eternity pouring out expressions of that love upon us.

It's mystery. How can we ever expect to understand why He would choose to love us in such a way? Why is it that God at best didn't just say, "Well I'm going to concede to you, you're a bunch of wretched sinners, I'm going to let you into My heaven, you can enjoy a few things but don't expect a lot?" And why isn't it that there's some minimal expression of God's love to those of us who have sinned against His holy name? Why doesn't He express the maximal levels of His love for the holy angels who never fell and who faithfully throughout all of time have been loyal to love the God who made them? He damned the angels who fell with no hope of redemption, why would He redeem man? We don't know the answer to that except that He predetermined to love us and by loving us to draw us to Himself.

Daniel Widdle(?) wrote the poem for a song that I've sung since I was a small boy. The words express the question that must be on all of our hearts, "I know not why God's wondrous grace to me He hath made known, nor why unworthy Christ in love

redeemed me for His own. I don't know why but I known whom I have believed and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I've committed unto Him against that day." We don't know why, maybe in eternity we'll never know why. Why would God love us? There was nothing in us to love. We're no different than anybody else, as we saw last week in Ezekiel chapter 16, God said to Israel, "You are worse than Samaria, you are worse than Sodom, Samaria and Sodom perish in judgment and Israel...He says...I will forgive you." Why? "Because I've chosen to love you." It's an immense incomprehensible mystery, but God loves His own. And because of that He sent His Son into the world to die for us that we might become His children.

Now when we become His children by faith in Jesus Christ, what kind of love do we then enjoy? Let's not talk about His love that is unlimited and extent to the world, let's talk about His love that is limited in degree to the world because the full

is degree of His love belongs to believers. Let's talk about the love He has toward us. And that's really what I want to share with you this morning. Nothing profound, nothing new, but just a reminder of the way in which God loves His own which is really what Christmas is all about, God manifesting His love toward those who would come to faith in His son.

Let's begin by looking at Luke chapter 15...Luke chapter 15, a very familiar chapter in which is included the parable of the prodigal son, as it's called. It really is the parable of the forgiving father...it is misnamed the prodigal son, it's really the story of the forgiving father or the loving father. Let's look at Luke 15 and verse 11.

"He said, A certain man had two sons and the younger of them said to his father, Father, give me the share of the estate that falls to me. And he divided his wealth between them. And not many days later the younger son gathered everything together and went on a journey into a distant country. There he squandered his estate with loose living. Now when he had spent everything, a severe famine occurred in that country and he began to be in need. And he went and attached himself to one of the citizens of that country and he sent him into his fields to feed swine." Not a proper occupation for a good Jewish boy. "He was longing to fill his stomach with the pods that the swine were eating and no one was giving anything to him. When he came to his senses he said, How many of my father's hired men have more than enough bread but I'm dying here with hunger. I'll get up and go to my father and will say to him, Father, I've sinned against heaven and in your sight. I'm no longer worthy to be called your son, make me as one of your hired men. And he got up and came to his father but while he was still a long way off his father saw him and felt compassion for him and ran and embraced him and kissed him over and over and over." Stop at that point.

The father is God, the son is the irreligious worldly sinner. Every sinner has in a created sense God as a Father. And every sinner has privileges because he is a created...created in the image of God. This young man pictures the sinner who squanders those privileges in a dissolute irreligious life. He took all of the good things that God had given him by virtue of being created in God's image and he went out and wasted them in loose living, immorality and drunkenness and all that you could conjecture. He comes to a point in the midst of his debauchery he realizes he has hit bottom. He's serving pig slop and having to eat his own meals from the same. And he realizes that this is not the way to live. And so he decides to come to God. Here is the penitent sinner and he comes back to God. And he's coming sorrowful over his wasted life, sorrowful over squandering all of the wonderful gifts that are his by virtue of being created in the image of God. He's wasted his time and all of his opportunity. But he knows where he is. He understands his iniquity. He understands his wickedness. He wants to go back and make things right with his father, with God, and he heads back.

In verse 20 then you see God's love demonstrated toward a penitent sinner. While he's still a long way off, he's still down the road, he hasn't even been able to reach the presence of his father, his father saw him because he was looking. And he felt compassion for him and ran and embraced him and kissed him over and over...is the indication of the Greek language. Here you have a picture of the character of God's love. And the amazing thing about this love is that it's given toward one who is utterly undeserving, one who has wasted and squandered opportunity and privilege and yet the father sees him, feels compassion for him and runs to meet him and throws his arms around him and repeatedly kisses him. Here is tender mercy. Here is forgiveness. Here is compassion. Here is a father treating the son as if there were no past, as if his sins had been buried in the depths of the deepest sin, removed as far as the east is from the west and forgotten. Here is effusive affection. There is not a reluctance that says, "Well, you know, you've really lived a wretched life and I'm going to let you into the kingdom but I really shouldn't do that" attitude. There is no past. It is gone. It has disappeared. And all that the son experiences is embracing and repeated kissing and hugging and the joy of the father is overflowing. And this is emblematic of how God loves the penitent who comes to him, He loves him lavishly, He loves him grandly, greatly, affectionately.

And the son is so shocked by this, in verse 21 the son said to him, "Father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight, I'm no longer worthy to be called your sin." It's almost like he pushes him away and says, "Wait a minute, do you understand what I've done? Do you understand what I'm like?" It's almost as if he can't deal with this. This is perhaps the profoundest humiliation. Coming to God is a humbling experience. And the first thing that humbles you when you come to God is the awareness of your sin. He was humbled while he was eating the pig slop. He became very much aware of a wasted and squandered life. He knew what was available to him from the father. He went back, he confessed his sin against heaven and in the sight of his father. He is a true penitent. He is turning from his sin, turning from his wasted life and he comes to God and he is humbled, first of all, by his sin.

But then secondly and perhaps more profoundly, he is humbled by God's grace. What is more humbling than the awareness of one's sin is the awareness of God's grace. That is...that is far more humbling. And he wants to push God away, as it were, and say, "Do you really understand what I've done? You're just pouring out love and affection on me, do you know who I am?" That is even more humbling. But such is the love of God toward a penitent sinner. It is rich, lavish, effusive, exalting love. The father doesn't even respond to his hesitant questions in verse 21. The father just says to the slaves, "Quickly bring out the best robe and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand and sandals on his feet and bring the fattened calf, kill it and let us eat and be merry." There's not even a regard for the queries of the young man about whether he's worthy or not, he just says start the party, folks. "This son of mine," verse 24, "was dead, has come to life again, was lost, has been found, and they began to be merry." And that's...that's the picture of the love of God toward a penitent sinner. It is not minimal, it is maximal. It is lavish.

Turn to Romans chapter 8 and here is another picture of the character of this love. Romans 8 verse 35, this too is an absolutely crucial understanding to give us the greatness of God's love. Verse 35, "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?" Paul asks the rhetorical question, "Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution or famine or nakedness or peril or sword? Just as it is written, For thy sake we are being put to death all day long, we were considered as sheep to be slaughtered," that's taken from Psalm 44. Paul says, what's

going to separate us from the love that God gives us in Christ? I mean, we're being put to death all day long, he lived on the brink of death constantly, as we all know. He was always being considered as a sheep to be slaughtered by somebody who wanted him dead. That was his pattern of life. Is that going to separate us? Tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, sword?

Verse 37, "But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who...what?...loved us." You see, this is personal experience. Paul says I've been through tribulation, God didn't stop loving me. I've been through distress, God didn't stop loving me. I've been through persecution, I've been through famine, I've been naked, I've been in peril, every peril imaginable... you can see all of this in 2 Corinthians chapter 12...I've stood on the edge of the sword, I've been through all of that and I can tell you, in it all the one who loved me never, ever, ever, severed that love. "And so I'm convinced...verse 38...that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, or things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." The second thing we learn about God's love toward His own is that it is unbreakable, inseparable, unconquerable and ever lasting love. It never fades, it never wavers, it never wanes, it never grows cold and it never changes. God loves us with an everlasting love. And you're back to the eis telosagain, Jesus having loved His own who were in the world loved them to the eternity. It is a love that will never die, never grow cold, never diminish, never fade. A love from which we can never be separated, nothing can separate us, nothing, not death, life, not anything angelic, not anything in the present, not anything in the future...no thing that's created. And everything was created except God Himself. Nothing in existence can separate us from that love.

He loves the world with a temporal love. He loves with world with a love of compassion, a love of goodness. He loves them enough to warn them. But that love is bound by time and when time ends for them, so does that love and they enter into hell and judgment. But His own who believe in Jesus Christ and have come to Him in repentant faith, He loves them with an everlasting love that cannot ever be broken.

Look at Ephesians chapter 2 and let's see another passage that defines for us the character of this love. Ephesians chapter 2, some more reminders that I know you're familiar with. Verse 4, and here Paul uses the same term that John does, "His great love with which He loved us." Everything starts out of God's love. This great love with which He loved us. And then he goes on to define this love. "He loved us so much that even when we were dead in our transgressions," there again is that emphasis on having loved us when we were not worthy, "He made us alive together with Christ by grace you have been saved." He loved us, first of all. He loved us in our transgression. Out of that love He sovereignly made us alive together with Christ. That is He placed us in Christ by our faith in Christ we were placed on the cross spiritually, we died with Christ, we rose to walk in newness of life so that He literally dealt with our sins and gave us new life through grace.

Verse 6, "He then raised us up with Him." We came out of the grave with Christ. "We are now seated with Him in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus." What does that mean? That our real home is in heaven, that our real life is in spiritual dimension that is beyond this world. That's what He did for us. He loved us so much that even when we were dead in our transgressions He made us alive with Christ through grace, He raised us up out of the grave to walk in newness of life. He seated us permanently in the heavenlies, that's now our home, that's our abode, that's where our life is.

And why did He do this? Why would He save dead sinners? Why? Verse 7 gives you the reason for all of it. "In order," and that's a purpose clause, "for the purpose that in the ages to come," that's through all eternity, "He might show the surpassing riches of His grace." How's He going to show the surpassing riches of His grace toward us? "In kindness." What? What does that mean? That means God saved us when we were dead in our sins so that He might be able forever to show us His kindness. That's astounding.

You say, "We don't deserve His kindness?" That's the whole point. That's why He gets so much glory from showing kindness to us. Forever and ever we'll not only thank Him for His kindness but we'll thank Him for His kindness because we know we never deserved it. But that's the point. He loved us so much that He wanted to show kindness to us forever.

You say, "What is heaven?" What is heaven? Heaven is where God will show us kindness out of the surpassing riches of His grace forever. You say, "You mean, we're going to go to heaven and God is just going to spend forever being kind to us?" That's right. Now that is a love that transcends. It is a love that gives life. It is a love that promises eternal glory. It is a love that pledges eternal kindness.

The eternity of heaven is God being kind to us...kind to us forever and ever and ever. And people sometimes think about heaven and they think, "Oh I don't know, it might be boring up there." Now remember this, God has an infinite mind and God has an infinite number of ways in which He can demonstrate His kindness. And so eternally we will just have exploding on us one experience of God's unsurpassed kindness after another, no two of which would ever be the same. That's how much He loves us, while we were yet sinners.

Look at Ephesians chapter 5 and look at another area of this love and that is its purifying aspect. First it is a lavish love; secondly, it is an unbreakable love; third, it is a love that shows eternal kindness; and here it is a purifying love. It says in verse 25, "Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her." Why? "In order that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the Word that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and blameless." So now we find another purpose. Not only does He want us to experience kindness forever, but He wants us to experience eternal holiness. Christ loved the church enough to die for the church in order to sanctify, that is to separate the church from sin, to cleanse the church by the Word, to bring the church into heaven in all her glory without spot, without wrinkle but holy and blameless.

Now the amazing reality of that is there's only one being in the universe that's holy and blameless...who's that? God. He loved us enough to make us exactly like Him. That's why John says we'll be like Him when we see Him as He is.

It's an incredible thing. God loves us enough to separate us from sin, to cleanse us, to purify us, to bring us into glory without spot, without wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. I mean, the transformation is incredible...from being dead in trespasses and sins to being alive in holiness and perfection. And all of it due to nothing of our own...no worthiness in ourselves, no desirability in ourselves, no achievement in and of ourselves, nothing but God's free grace.

What love! No wonder John said, "What great love the Father has bestowed on us that we should be called the children of God." It is a love that lavishes, it is a love that is unbreakable, it is a love that will demonstrate itself in eternal kindness, it is a love that will demonstrate itself in eternal holiness.

Look at Hebrews chapter 12...Hebrews chapter 12. This too is an important aspect of His love. God always wants the best for His children and He knows that the path to the best is always the path of obedience. Did you get that? God knows that the path to the best is the path of obedience. You know, it's like a parent. A parent says, "Well, I really love my child, I really love my child," and doesn't discipline the child, I question the love. Because if you don't discipline your child you're really programming that child for the worse. Love doesn't seek the worse, love seeks...what?...the best. And so love learns to discipline because discipline becomes then protection and the guarantee of blessing. And God says I love you too much not to discipline. We've said that as parents, haven't we? Bend over, this is because I love you...and you get a quizzical look from the kid who says, "Sure." But in the end it is and they learn.

But God loves us enough to discipline us. Why? To push us back into the path of blessing. Chapter 6...or chapter 12 verse 6, "For those whom the Lord loves He...what?...He chastens," He disciplines. "And He scourges every son whom He receives." It is for discipline that you endure. God deals with you as with sons. "For what son is there whom his father doesn't discipline? If you are without discipline of which all have become partakers, then you're illegitimate children and not sons." If you're not being disciplined by God, you don't belong to Him because if you belong to Him He'll discipline you because He loves you so much.

"We have furthermore," verse 9, "earthly fathers to discipline us, we respected them. Shall we not much rather be subject to the Father of spirits and live? Our earthly fathers disciplined us for a short time as seemed best to them. But He disciplines us for our good...here it is again...that we may share His holiness." Not in eternity, that's already going to happen, but in time. "All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful but sorrowful, yet to those who have been trained by it, it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness."

God loves you enough to discipline you. It is a love that corrects. It is a love that rebukes. It is a love that reproves. It is a love that chastens. It is a love that trains. It is a love that disciplines toward righteousness, toward godliness. This is the saving, justifying, sanctifying, glorifying love that God has for His own and only for His own--those who believe in Him. How great a love...great enough, said Paul to the Thessalonians, to give us eternal comfort and good hope.

And, you see, that's what Christmas is all about. It's all about God demonstrating this immeasurable and immense love toward those who believe in Him through His Son. It's really impossible to grasp the fullness of it. I've made a feeble effort this morning to give you some sense of the greatness of this love. Let me take you to one other passage that may sort of finalize your thinking with regard to the greatness of this love. Ephesians 3 verse 17, and I'll look at just three verses here with you, Ephesians 3:17 to 19.

Now Paul is praying here for the Ephesians and, of course, for all believers. And he's praying in verse 17 that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. That is more than a prayer for salvation, obviously it encompasses that. The word "dwell," katoikeois a word that means...it has the word home and to settle down combined, it means to settle down and be at home. When Christ settles down and is at home in your heart, or to put it another way, when Christ has unrestricted access to every area of your life, when Christ is in control...it's not just that you're a believer, it's that Christ has settled down. He's not having to be up fixing things, you know. When you're committed and devoted to Christ and He has unrestricted access to your life, then Paul says you are being rooted and grounded in love.

In other words, you will be solidly, firmly fixed in the love of God when your life is fully yielded to Christ. When every area of your life is yielded to Him and He has that unrestricted access to every part of your life, you will be solidly fixed in the love of God. You will experience that love. That's what Paul meant in Romans 5:5 when he said, "The love of Christ is shed abroad in your hearts." That's what Jude meant in Jude 21 when he said, "Keep yourselves in the love of God." What did he mean? Stay in the position of devotion, dedication and obedience in which you will rooted and grounded in love. If you want to experience the fullness of God's love, then let Christ have unrestricted access to every area of your life. Keep yourself in the love of God. It doesn't mean keep yourself saved, it means keep yourself obedient and devoted to Christ so that you're feeling the full benefits of God's great love.

And when you do that, verse 18 says, you will be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth and you will be able to know the love of Christ which surpasses...what?...knowledge. The point is the love that we're talking about here is unknowable. It's unknowable by human reason...it's unknowable. The human mind cannot know it, the unregenerate can't know it. It is incomprehensible. It surpasses knowledge. But you can know it, he says, you can know the love of Christ which no one else knows, you can comprehend it in its breadth and its length and its height and its depth when you are rooted and grounded in it. And that happens when Christ has unrestricted access to every area of your life, when Christ fills your life...you can go back to John 14...then the love of God will fill your life. When Christ has every part of your life then the love of God fills your life and then you will comprehend it.

The point is, you can only comprehend it when you've experienced it. That reminds me of Louis Armstrong the great jazz trumpeter who was once asked to explain jazz. And his classic answer was, "Man, if I've got to explain it, you ain't got it." Now we understand that love is a little like that. If I have to explain it, you ain't got it. But the love of God shed abroad in our hearts through Jesus Christ by faith in Him, if I've got to explain it to you, then you're not experiencing it. But if Christ has unrestricted access to every part of your life, you will be rooted and grounded in love and you will comprehend with the saints, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth and you'll know the love of Christ which otherwise is absolutely incomprehensible and unknowable.

Some old saint looked at that verse 18 where you have the love of God cubed...do you see it there? It's just the love of God cubed. I mean, just to show the vastness of it. How long is long? How wide is wide? How high is high? How deep is deep? Well one old saint took the cross and said, "The cross is the symbol, the upper arm points to the height, the lower arm points to the depth, and the two cross piece to the breadth and length and they're endless."

How broad is God's love? It's to all who believe. How long is His love? It's from eternity past to eternity future. How high is His love? High enough to enthrone us in the heaven of heavens. How deep is His love? Deep enough to reach to the deepest pit of sin and rescue us. There is the sum of it all. It's a love that is broad and long and high and deep and we've seen something of its character in the other passages. And this is God's love that leads to verse 20 and you can't really look at this section without verse 20. Verse 20 says, "Now to Him who is able to do exceeding abundantly beyond all that we ask or think according to the power that works within us, to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen."

What is that? That is a...what?...a doxology, isn't it? Well what is causing Paul to burst into a doxology? What is causing it is because he has just comprehended as much as is humanly possible the love of God in Christ and he bursts out in praise. That's Christmas love...that's Christmas love. God loving sinners so much that He makes them His own, forgives them all their sins, pours out kindness for all eternity, makes them as holy and blameless and perfect as He Himself is...by granting to them His own righteousness in Christ. That's His love.

And my prayer for you, my prayer for anyone this Christmas season, is the prayer of 2 Thessalonians 3:5, listen to what Paul wrote, "May the Lord direct your hearts into the love of God and into the steadfastness of Christ." May the Lord direct your hearts into the love of God and into the steadfastness of Christ.

Have you noticed how love in this world is fickle? People talk about love but oh is it fickle. We're not talking about that kind of love...questioning whether it even is love. There's a lovely hymn written by George Mathison(?) called "O Love That Will Not Let Me Go." Sad story behind that hymn. George Mathison, the writer, was to marry the love of his life. When he announced to her that he felt God's call to missionary service she said I don't want to be a missionary and left him, refusing to marry. All alone he wrote these words, "O love that will not let me go, I rest my weary soul in Thee, I give Thee back the life I owe that in Thine ocean depths its flow may richer, fuller be." God loves you this much. Can you say with Mathison, I give Thee back the life I owe to such love that in Thine ocean depths its flow may richer, fuller be? That's the question.

To understand Christmas is to experience God's undying, full, rich love in Jesus Christ and to do what 1 John 4:19 says, we love Him because He first loved us.

Father, we thank You for this wonderful time of year and for the reminder again of your love to us. And we've just touched so lightly on this great truth and yet to just touch its surface is so enriching, so thrilling and we're so grateful. You love us with a love beyond our comprehension and it will take all eternity and even that will not exhaust its expression. Thank You that while we were yet sinners You loved us enough to send Your Son to die for us. Father, we express to You our gratitude for all Your good gifts, only the first few of which we've begun to experience...the fullness awaits our future in Your presence. We pray this morning for those who may not know Christ, those who have no knowledge of this love who are loved in a temporal and temporary sense but will feel the wrath of Your judgment some day if they don't come to Christ. Father, may You draw them to Yourself, may You draw them to Christ...like the prodigal, may they see their sinful condition and come to you, believing in Jesus Christ as the one who died and rose again for them that they might have life. For those of us who are Christians, may we keep ourselves in the love of God as Jude said, may we be so devoted to Christ that He has complete access to every area of our lives so that we might comprehend the greatness of this love and bask in its glories. And may we even today, Lord, realize that when we love you as we should, we will love one another. We know that that's the fruit of this love, that's the result of this love because God loves us, John says, we ought to love one another. But it all starts with You loving us. May this be a day in which we express our gratitude for such love in our Savior's name. Amen.

**H_O** · 02-17-2011, 03:04 PM

Re: Does God Love the World?, Part3

2 John 1:10

If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not receive him into your house or give him any greeting,

thesselonian 3:14
If anyone does not obey our instruction in this letter, take special note of him. Do not associate with him, in order that he may feel ashamed.

**evanovitch** · 02-17-2011, 03:38 PM

Re: Does God Love the World?, Part3

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: H_O</div><div class="ubbcode-body">2 John 1:10

If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not receive him into your house or give him any greeting,

thesselonian 3:14
If anyone does not obey our instruction in this letter, take special note of him. Do not associate with him, in order that he may feel ashamed. </div></div>

<span style="font-weight: bold"> The love promoted bythe New Testament is not a free-styled, all-embracing, blind acceptance of every wind of <span style="font-style: italic">doctrine</span> for the sake of conversation. It is, in fact, just the opposite.

Biblical love always goes hand in hand with truth. That's why <span style="font-style: italic">false doctrines and those who teach them are condemned </span>in no uncertain terms.

<span style="font-style: italic">Your Bible verses taken in context r answered above</span>
</span>

Does God love us ALL?

Does God love us ALL?

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

ads