SPEAKER_00: I have a uh I have something on my mind this morning that I actually told uh Sister Ann there I had three things on my mind this morning, and that's uh uh it's a blessing to have many things on the on your mind, but it's not as it doesn't feel like a blessing when you have to try to speak.
SPEAKER_00: I can only speak on one thing.
SPEAKER_00: Um in the time allotted, and even that's uh a challenge sometimes.
SPEAKER_00: And it would be so with this uh subject that's on my mind.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna, at this point, we were talking in the car, you just have to pray and then start walking forward in faith.
SPEAKER_00: As is much of our life and our walk of faith, sometimes you don't know exactly which way to go, and you just have to start taking steps and ask the Lord to direct.
SPEAKER_00: Same goes with this.
SPEAKER_00: Um there's some things about this that feel like the Lord might be in the matter, but you always wonder, so I'm praying that that He would bless, even in spite of me.
SPEAKER_00: Um but I would like to examine with you a short verse that is filled with so much that I literally don't have the time or the knowledge really to be able to express all of it to you.
SPEAKER_00: Um but it's on my mind since I woke up this morning and and then a dear brother texted me this morning and and others.
SPEAKER_00: He texts multiple people um every morning.
SPEAKER_00: This verse was in that text.
SPEAKER_00: And and um my my dear daughter yesterday was wearing a shirt that had this text on it, and so there's some things um if you'd like to look with me.
SPEAKER_00: 1 John chapter 4 and verse 19.
SPEAKER_00: 1 John chapter 4, 19.
SPEAKER_00: It's not the shortest verse in the Bible, but it is up there.
SPEAKER_00: I haven't done a comparison to see how many verses are shorter in words than this.
SPEAKER_00: But I also dare say there's not very many verses that are more packed with um deep doctrinal teachings and very practical applications for us in our lives than this verse.
SPEAKER_00: As we read the verse, 1 John chapter 4, verse 19, it says, we love him because he first loved us.
SPEAKER_00: We love him because he first loved us.
SPEAKER_00: Now again, this verse is simple and it's and what it's saying.
SPEAKER_00: It's not hard to understand.
SPEAKER_00: I trust everyone in here of any age of understanding can understand the the order in which this is written and what it's talking about.
SPEAKER_00: Who is the we?
SPEAKER_00: That's you and me.
SPEAKER_00: I trust that to be the case this morning that you and me, we are the we and and the us in this verse.
SPEAKER_00: No, we're not the only we in this verse, we're not the only us in this verse, but I certainly include myself in this.
SPEAKER_00: I hope you do too.
SPEAKER_00: I know you do.
SPEAKER_00: You're here this morning because you do.
SPEAKER_00: It says we love him.
SPEAKER_00: Who is him in this verse?
SPEAKER_00: This him is our Lord Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: It's God and manifest in the Son.
SPEAKER_00: It's God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, it's the Godhead in his fullness.
SPEAKER_00: This isn't just Jesus Christ, but we will find as we look through this that it that love of God was manifest in Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: But we love God.
SPEAKER_00: We love Him.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes I just want to take that in.
SPEAKER_00: Like just for a moment, think about that truth.
SPEAKER_00: I know it's true, I feel that it's true.
SPEAKER_00: I don't always show that it's true.
SPEAKER_00: And there's some ways, if the if time will allow, if the Lord will bless.
SPEAKER_00: We'll we'll get into some ways that the Lord tells us how to show that to be true.
SPEAKER_00: But but just feel it for a moment.
SPEAKER_00: We didn't get up this morning, I trust you did not get up this morning, to come out and to see me.
SPEAKER_00: That I don't think anybody here said, this morning I get to go and listen to Brother Mike talk.
SPEAKER_00: That's not the most exciting thing that you could have done today.
SPEAKER_00: No, we even didn't come just to see each other, though I delight in seeing each one of you.
SPEAKER_00: It's it's a joy of my week to come here and to see every one of you.
SPEAKER_00: Because I do love you.
SPEAKER_00: But really, I came this morning.
SPEAKER_00: I know you did this morning because we love him.
SPEAKER_00: We love God.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, sometimes you should just say that out loud and hear yourself say this.
SPEAKER_00: Profess it to be true.
SPEAKER_00: I love God.
SPEAKER_00: We love him.
SPEAKER_00: Now, what caused that in you?
SPEAKER_00: What for what reason do you love God?
SPEAKER_00: This verse will tell us the first and primary cause of it.
SPEAKER_00: The word because means there is a cause in being.
SPEAKER_00: Have you ever thought about cause and effect?
SPEAKER_00: We think about, I tell the kids all the time, there's consequences for everything, whether good or bad, that you do.
SPEAKER_00: There is a thing that follows after.
SPEAKER_00: Well, the cause is always the thing that starts, an effect that comes after.
SPEAKER_00: You can't put the effect before the cause.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't work that way.
SPEAKER_00: If you drop something and then it goes to the ground, the cause is like if you let go, the the power is the gravity, but it failed because you let it go.
SPEAKER_00: It didn't hit the ground, and that's why you let go.
SPEAKER_00: It's the other way around.
SPEAKER_00: And there's many examples I could get.
SPEAKER_00: None of them fully examine this because.
SPEAKER_00: This because is truly the first and only cause for its effect.
SPEAKER_00: The effect in the verse is we love him.
SPEAKER_00: Now, it actually even goes more simple.
SPEAKER_00: Just the fact that we love.
SPEAKER_00: Now, interestingly, Maddie's t-shirt yesterday didn't quote this exactly.
SPEAKER_00: It said, we love, comma, because he first loved us.
SPEAKER_00: And you know that is absolutely true.
SPEAKER_00: The cause for any love in this world is the root of all love.
SPEAKER_00: God, who it says in Scripture, is love.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't just mean God doesn't just love in a verb sense that he has the action of love.
SPEAKER_00: God is the very attribute of love.
SPEAKER_00: God is love.
SPEAKER_00: There is no other love, not true love, except that it come from God.
SPEAKER_00: We love because He first loved us.
SPEAKER_00: Like if my love toward you is true and sincere, it comes from God.
SPEAKER_00: My love for my children, as much as I might say, well, I love them because they're my children, which is true, there is definitely not an unconditional love with my children.
SPEAKER_00: There is a conditional love.
SPEAKER_00: They were born, they're my child, and then I love them.
SPEAKER_00: It's not conditioned on things they do necessarily, but it is conditioned on that they're mine.
SPEAKER_00: The fact is, I didn't love them really, not really, until they were born.
SPEAKER_00: I loved the idea of children once upon a time.
SPEAKER_00: I knew that I desired children, I wanted children, and there was this love for the children that God might someday bless me with.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you feel that now.
SPEAKER_00: You're thinking, someday God may bless me with children.
SPEAKER_00: If God will bless me with a child, I'll love that child, but you don't love that child, you don't know that child.
SPEAKER_00: And when they were when they are born, then you love that child.
SPEAKER_00: There's a cause for your love.
SPEAKER_00: Well, here there's a cause for our love, and this cause, this cause is before we were ever born.
SPEAKER_00: When it says we love him and we love him, period, we love each other and we love him because the cause for our love is he.
SPEAKER_00: God.
SPEAKER_00: God is the cause of all the love that we have in this world.
SPEAKER_00: It's the cause of all love that there is.
SPEAKER_00: The love that we share, brother to brother, brother to sister, father to parents, extend the family tree out, friend to friend, the love that flows, like we say, from breast to breast between us, is all rooted and grows out from God.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, the love we have, it is from the very seed of God that's in you.
SPEAKER_00: It's when you are born again of the Spirit of God, it says in Galatians that the fruit of the Spirit, the fruit of the Spirit is love.
SPEAKER_00: It goes on to say other attributes of the fruit of the Spirit, but I want to focus on love.
SPEAKER_00: If you love, it is produced by the Spirit of God that's in you.
SPEAKER_00: Because he first loved you.
SPEAKER_00: Now when, well, let's talk about this word first here, because all the real, to me, the power of this verse is packed in to this word first.
SPEAKER_00: You might say, what does he mean by first?
SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of ways in which the word first can be used.
SPEAKER_00: And this word uses all of them in this verse.
SPEAKER_00: For one thing, the word first could be time.
SPEAKER_00: When did he love you?
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you loved him, you love him actively now, very now present love you have for him, but it's caused by a love he has for you, and that love was first in time.
SPEAKER_00: When did he love you?
SPEAKER_00: When did he love me?
SPEAKER_00: If he loves me now, I tell you he loved me before the world began.
SPEAKER_00: He loved you before the world even began.
SPEAKER_00: Before he said, let there be light, he loved God, loved you.
SPEAKER_00: Individually, personally, not in a nebulous idea that God loved man and therefore he desired to have a family of men, of people, human beings.
SPEAKER_00: He loved human beings, and he's gonna have some of them.
SPEAKER_00: He'll just kind of get a number of them.
SPEAKER_00: You know, it's like I love, you might say, someone loves, I don't love cats this much, but some people love cats so much, they'll just take in any cat.
SPEAKER_00: God does not just love humans, he loved you.
SPEAKER_00: He loved each one of his children in a very personal way.
SPEAKER_00: In a way that scripture talks about that is so intimate that it's a one-on-one situation.
SPEAKER_00: And in Romans chapter 8, he talks about the word for know.
SPEAKER_00: For whom people he did for know.
SPEAKER_00: And that word means have this intimate and loving relationship with before.
SPEAKER_00: Before what?
SPEAKER_00: Well, before they loved him.
SPEAKER_00: The love they have for him is caused by the love he had first in time.
SPEAKER_00: Also before they were born.
SPEAKER_00: Yea, in Jeremiah's case, he said, before you were formed in the womb, before I, God said, before I formed you in the womb, I knew you, knew thee.
SPEAKER_00: He loved Jeremiah before he even made him in the womb, and he loved you as well, even before you were in this world naturally, even before the world began.
SPEAKER_00: And not only did he love you, he acted upon that love.
SPEAKER_00: He made, he was moved by that love to do some things for you, even before the world began.
SPEAKER_00: That he, whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his son.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, he did everything necessary so you would be with him in glory.
SPEAKER_00: In Ephesians chapter 1, it says, according, he's blessed us according as he has chosen us in him from before the foundation of the world.
SPEAKER_00: That we should be holy and without blame before him in love.
SPEAKER_00: So that love that God had for you first in time before the world even began, moved God to move on your behalf, to do what is necessary for you and everything necessary for you to be right where he is in love.
SPEAKER_00: In time, but also first can be in place.
SPEAKER_00: Have you ever heard like you be first place to be first in place?
SPEAKER_00: God loved you first in a in a place, in a real place, in fact, in the place where he was before the world even began.
SPEAKER_00: You were on his mind, in his heart, his purpose, his will was toward you in the very heavens and immortal glory that he created when he made all things, and there was a place prepared for you where you would be with him someday.
SPEAKER_00: It says in Matthew chapter 25 that someday when the Lord comes again and he gathers together all nations and divides out as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats, and he says to those on his right, his sheep that he loved before the world began, he says, Come, ye blessed of my father, those that are his family, his children.
SPEAKER_00: Come, ye blessed of my father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.
SPEAKER_00: There's a place that he is prepared for those he loves to be before him in love.
SPEAKER_00: It's not, it's not just a thought or an idea, it's a physical, physical truth that God is on a throne in heaven, and those that have already passed away from this life that he loves, and two at least that did not pass from this life that he loved.
SPEAKER_00: Enoch and Elijah, they are there where he is in his presence in a real place.
SPEAKER_00: Not in a fantasy, not in an imagination, in a reality.
SPEAKER_00: Their soul and their spirits, and Elijah and Enoch's bodies, are right now in the presence of God, and they are seeing the fullness of the love that God had for them in that place before the world even began.
SPEAKER_00: So he loved you first in time, but also in a place.
SPEAKER_00: And his love is placed above all other loves.
SPEAKER_00: It's the cause of all love.
SPEAKER_00: So it's the it's in first place.
SPEAKER_00: It's the preeminence of love.
SPEAKER_00: In order.
SPEAKER_00: It can mean in order, like first, second, third, you know, God's love is first.
SPEAKER_00: God's love for you was first in order, in order and in ranking, as it were.
SPEAKER_00: Like his love supersedes all love.
SPEAKER_00: So we even in our love that we have that comes from the cause of God's love, it has its falters, it has its flaws.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, some of the love that we have, we don't exercise it as we ought.
SPEAKER_00: We don't follow the commandments of the Lord and love one another as we ought.
SPEAKER_00: Indeed, the greatest commandment of all, when Jesus was asked about the commandments, they were trying to get Jesus to say something that they could trip, that would trip him up, that they could accuse him for, and they asked, What is the greatest commandment?
SPEAKER_00: Like maybe maybe he would say, keep the Sabbath day, and then say, Oh, what about this commandment?
SPEAKER_00: They they were trying to trip him up, kind of like a dear uh brother and father of the ministry of mine did.
SPEAKER_00: One day it was right here.
SPEAKER_00: And by you, it was he asked me, What's the bet what's your favorite article of faith?
SPEAKER_00: And that was a trap.
SPEAKER_00: Um, if anyone, if he ever asked you, if anyone ever asked you, what's your favorite article of faith?
SPEAKER_00: Um, the answer is uh that we believe the scriptures are the inspired word of God.
SPEAKER_00: By the way, that's that was his answer that he wanted from me.
SPEAKER_00: But when these disciples or these Pharisees were asking Jesus the greatest commandment, they didn't know that they were dealing with the writer of the commandments, they were dealing with the very author of all the commandments.
SPEAKER_00: So he summarized them into these two great commandments.
SPEAKER_00: And he says, to love thy God with all thy heart, thy soul, thy mind, thy strength.
SPEAKER_00: That's the greatest commandment.
SPEAKER_00: And the second, he gives them a bonus, and it wasn't just a bonus, it's there's a reason he gave it to him.
SPEAKER_00: He said, The second is like unto it to love thy neighbor as thyself.
SPEAKER_00: Then he says, on these two hang all the law and prophets.
SPEAKER_00: Love toward God is the greatest commandment of all.
SPEAKER_00: But then he says, love to your neighbor is second and like unto it.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna hold how they're how they're tied together, if time permits, to the end.
SPEAKER_00: But that's our greatest commandment.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus was telling us the greatest commandment from God to us is to love God.
SPEAKER_00: That would make that first in order as far as our love goes.
SPEAKER_00: But above that would be God's love to us.
SPEAKER_00: It is first in order of ranking.
SPEAKER_00: God's love to us is above our love to Him.
SPEAKER_00: It's above any love.
SPEAKER_00: We can love God with all our soul, our heart, our mind, our strength, which Jesus said is the greatest commandment.
SPEAKER_00: But even then, it will not even touch the love that God has to us.
SPEAKER_00: Because God's love is first, it is higher.
SPEAKER_00: If his thoughts are above us as far as the heavens is above the earth, his love is equally as far above our love as the heavens is above the earth.
SPEAKER_00: God's love is higher than anything we can imagine.
SPEAKER_00: Now, one day, I believe, when we are conformed to the image of Christ, when he's changed our vile bodies to be made like unto his glorious body, I think that our love will rise to a level of order, to a level of ranking that's heavenly, that's perfect, that's without flaw, without sin, without blemish, and we'll be able to love God.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if it's still gonna reach the level that his love for us is, but it's gonna be a higher order.
SPEAKER_00: It's hard for me to say that we could ever love God like he loved us.
SPEAKER_00: How could I think that?
SPEAKER_00: But I know I'll love him more in heaven than I love him now.
SPEAKER_00: But but I when I think about the fact that I do love God now, that's overwhelming in itself.
SPEAKER_00: But it's because his love's higher, his love is ranked above mine, it's first.
SPEAKER_00: Also, the word first can be importance.
SPEAKER_00: And God's love is far more, it's far more important that God loves us than that we love him.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not meaning to diminish the importance that we love him.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm not talking just about a feeling of love.
SPEAKER_00: Now I'm gonna move into action, but it is far more important.
SPEAKER_00: It is first in importance that God loved us.
SPEAKER_00: In the chapter here that we're looking at, where he writes this, it's almost a summary of verses about God's love to us that come above this verse.
SPEAKER_00: It's like this verse comes in at the end and summarizes everything he had said.
SPEAKER_00: And when he goes back to John to the third chapter in the first verse, John writes, Behold, what manner of love?
SPEAKER_00: The Father hath bestowed on us.
SPEAKER_00: Now that's when love goes beyond a feeling and into an action.
SPEAKER_00: He has placed love on you.
SPEAKER_00: And John says, just to behold that for a moment.
SPEAKER_00: Like think about the way, the manner of love, just the not just what he did, but and also why he did it.
SPEAKER_00: And what came out of it.
SPEAKER_00: Think about the love God has placed on you, that he's bestowed on you.
SPEAKER_00: It caused something that we should be called the sons of God.
SPEAKER_00: His love toward us as a father to his children, the action that he did in love brought about the fact that we're his children.
SPEAKER_00: It's really, when we think about how children come into the world, we should, because God designed natural things, and God used those in his word to tell us about our relationship with him, we should understand the connection.
SPEAKER_00: Now, certainly it is higher, and it's uh God, God's ways are above our ways, and we can't fully understand this.
SPEAKER_00: But children do not choose their parents.
SPEAKER_00: That is a knowledgeable fact.
SPEAKER_00: Everybody knows there isn't a single one of you in here who said who went to the parent row.
SPEAKER_00: You looked in the glass.
SPEAKER_00: Now, normally parents look in the glass and they see their children.
SPEAKER_00: It's not the other, you don't look out and say, I want that parent.
SPEAKER_00: Nobody chose their parents.
SPEAKER_00: Your parents, they brought up you about.
SPEAKER_00: Now God created you.
SPEAKER_00: God is the one who formed you.
SPEAKER_00: God created formed before I formed thee in the womb, he said, I knew thee.
SPEAKER_00: But understanding that the action that brings about children is parent, not child.
SPEAKER_00: Same thing with God.
SPEAKER_00: Behold, what manner of God bestowed on you that we should be called the sons of God.
SPEAKER_00: He chose you, and he did what was needed for you to be with him, to be his child.
SPEAKER_00: God loved you, and then he moved with love to you to bring you to his family.
SPEAKER_00: We have adoption in our modern way of doing things.
SPEAKER_00: It's not always the way adoption has ever been done, but the idea of adoption has been around forever.
SPEAKER_00: The idea that you would take someone that was not naturally in your family and through all legal means bring them into your family, and they would be, as it were, your child.
SPEAKER_00: In our American legal system, it's irrevocable.
SPEAKER_00: When you have adopted a child, they are your child as they changed the birth certificate and say that documented you were born to this person.
SPEAKER_00: Well, there was legal means to make that happen.
SPEAKER_00: It was bestowed, it was acted upon in a legal sense.
SPEAKER_00: God, you know what it is if you take a child that you love so dearly, um, and you just take them with you because maybe they were in a bad situation and you want to rescue them from, so you take them and you go somewhere safe, and that you could have them with you in love, and you could care for that child and make sure they're safe because you love them.
SPEAKER_00: You know what they call that legally?
SPEAKER_00: That's kidnapping.
SPEAKER_00: It's not, you can't adopt a child without doing all that's necessary.
SPEAKER_00: And we have been adopted into the family of God.
SPEAKER_00: You've you've been born into the family of God because you're born of God, but but he also adopted you.
SPEAKER_00: We were in another family.
SPEAKER_00: We were in the family of sin, of Adam, and he's done everything legally needed.
SPEAKER_00: So there is no charge that can be laid not only upon you, but there's no charge that can be laid upon God that he's unjust in bringing us into his family.
SPEAKER_00: He's done everything required that you would be his child, and the enemy could never say, That one's not yours, God.
SPEAKER_00: No, he says, I have bought and paid for this with the blood of my son Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: He has adopted you into his family.
SPEAKER_00: That's a bestowing of love.
SPEAKER_00: Now, how did he bestow that love?
SPEAKER_00: We um get back into the fourth chapter, and we say, um, let's start with, I'm gonna say, uh, well, I want to skip the seventh verse and back up to it a little.
SPEAKER_00: But he says, verse 9.
SPEAKER_00: In this was manifested the love of God toward us.
SPEAKER_00: That's a bestowing of love.
SPEAKER_00: That's love moving in a direction, God to us.
SPEAKER_00: And it says, in this was manifested it.
SPEAKER_00: God's love was always toward you, but it was now visible and open to see.
SPEAKER_00: Because that God sent his only begotten Son, that's Jesus Christ, God sent Jesus Christ into the world that we might live through him.
SPEAKER_00: There is a the bestowing of the love of God toward us, you can see it openly in the person of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: He goes, herein is love.
SPEAKER_00: So herein, in this action is the embodiment of the love of God toward us.
SPEAKER_00: In this action, not that we loved God, remember, because your love is second.
SPEAKER_00: Your love is second in time, absolutely, because you weren't even there.
SPEAKER_00: Your love is second in place.
SPEAKER_00: You love God here.
SPEAKER_00: He loved you in heaven before you were even here.
SPEAKER_00: It's in order and ranking.
SPEAKER_00: God's love is first and in importance.
SPEAKER_00: It's more so much more important that God loved you in this case.
SPEAKER_00: He says, Not that we love God.
SPEAKER_00: That is not true.
SPEAKER_00: It is true that we love him, but that's not where love is defined.
SPEAKER_00: That's not how love is embodied or encapsulated, our love toward him.
SPEAKER_00: Here is love, herein is love.
SPEAKER_00: He loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins.
SPEAKER_00: Now, all of that is love.
SPEAKER_00: You can't leave off the second clause and see the love of God.
SPEAKER_00: So the love of God is not herein is love that God sent his son.
SPEAKER_00: That's not love, that's the movement of love toward us.
SPEAKER_00: But if we don't see the finality of Christ as the propitiation for our sins, we're not looking at the love of God.
SPEAKER_00: The love of God is not just that he sent his son.
SPEAKER_00: He did, he showed love to people, everyone he met.
SPEAKER_00: He, I mean, you might say he didn't show love toward those Pharisees that he called hypocrites and generation of vipers, but those were not his.
SPEAKER_00: He said, Ye are not of my sheep.
SPEAKER_00: But see, he showed his love to the poor, to the lame, to the blind.
SPEAKER_00: He showed his love even to the dead, and that he raised the widow's son from the dead, he raised Lazarus from the dead, he raised Jairus' daughter, uh, who was about 12 years old from the dead.
SPEAKER_00: He showed his love in many ways in a temporal blessing, but the encapsulation, the fullness of the love of Jesus Christ, which is the love of God toward us, is found when he died for our sins.
SPEAKER_00: Don't forget the part about it's for our sins, too, because he didn't just die on the cross.
SPEAKER_00: Many people had died on the cross.
SPEAKER_00: There were two other people dying on the cross at that very moment, but neither of them were dying as a propitiation for sins, as a satisfaction.
SPEAKER_00: That's what that big word means.
SPEAKER_00: Like a not only uh to cleanse the sin, which is ex, I forget that word.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not big on the big words.
SPEAKER_00: Propitiation is not just expiation, that's that's the other word.
SPEAKER_00: Expiation is like the cleansing of the sins, to expel it, to get it out of here, right?
SPEAKER_00: But propitiation involves more than that.
SPEAKER_00: It also involves the uh making holy and without any guilt or blame.
SPEAKER_00: Not just the consequences are gone, but the cause of them too.
SPEAKER_00: He didn't just pay for the sins you commit, he paid for the very sin in you.
SPEAKER_00: He took away sin itself.
SPEAKER_00: It is true that he paid for every single sin, not a single, what you might think is small sin, will miss him.
SPEAKER_00: He's not gonna, oh, he missed that sin.
SPEAKER_00: He got every one of them, but he also took care of sin itself.
SPEAKER_00: He conquered sin, death, hell, and the grave.
SPEAKER_00: He conquered it all on the cross.
SPEAKER_00: This that God's love toward you was that Jesus Christ did everything necessary that you would be with him someday before him in love as his child.
SPEAKER_00: So this love that God has toward you, its importance, it far exceeds anything that we can offer back to him.
SPEAKER_00: But the next verse does tell us what we should do with this love.
SPEAKER_00: Remember, the importance is that he loved us.
SPEAKER_00: So if we don't do this next bit, it's not gonna undo the love of God.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, in Romans, he says, Romans chapter 8 says, What can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus?
SPEAKER_00: And the answer is nothing.
SPEAKER_00: There is nothing that can separate you from the one who loved you first.
SPEAKER_00: But what can separate my heart, my mind from feeling the presence of my God here?
SPEAKER_00: He goes, beloved, if God so loved us, if that's the manner in which he loved us, if that's the magnitude.
SPEAKER_00: The word so has two meanings, and and I'd have to start the clock over to talk about this, but um, the word so can mean in the manner, like behold what manner of love.
SPEAKER_00: God so loved us in this way, but it also can mean in a magnitude.
SPEAKER_00: He so loved you in such a big way, right?
SPEAKER_00: And it means both.
SPEAKER_00: Just like the word first means all four of these things, the word so means both.
SPEAKER_00: He loved you in this way, and he loved you in this magnitude.
SPEAKER_00: And it ties in with John chapter 3, verse 16.
SPEAKER_00: God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son.
SPEAKER_00: This is how much and in what way he loved you.
SPEAKER_00: His son came, Jesus Christ came into this world to redeem you from your sins.
SPEAKER_00: And he completed that work.
SPEAKER_00: He laid down his life for you, and that's how he loved you in the action he did.
SPEAKER_00: He goes, if God loved us that way, and with that much, he says, we ought also to love one another.
SPEAKER_00: That ought means you owe it.
SPEAKER_00: You owe a debt.
SPEAKER_00: We sang a song this morning as Jesus paid it all, all the debt I owe.
SPEAKER_00: There are some of our hymnals that have slightly different wording, and I like them both.
SPEAKER_00: And I like them both for this reason.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus did pay all the debt I owe to God for my sins.
SPEAKER_00: He washed me white as snow.
SPEAKER_00: But another way that some of the hymnals say is Jesus paid it all, all to him I owe.
SPEAKER_00: And I certainly feel that to be true.
SPEAKER_00: I owe him everything.
SPEAKER_00: I can never repay it fully.
SPEAKER_00: You know, you you feel the same way.
SPEAKER_00: You can't repay God for the love he has bestowed upon you.
SPEAKER_00: But God's given us how we ought to pay.
SPEAKER_00: How we owe him, what we owe is this that we love one another.
SPEAKER_00: And how do we love one another?
SPEAKER_00: The way we can't love him to the magnitude that he loved us, but we can love him the way he loved us.
SPEAKER_00: We can love in the way that's sacrificing for others, that's esteeming others better than self.
SPEAKER_00: That's not self-serving, looking for how I can benefit, but how I can serve others.
SPEAKER_00: Um, we'll go to John's gospel account and read some of the words of Jesus to us.
SPEAKER_00: As he writes in the 14th chapter, and in verse 15, he says, If you love me, if ye love me, keep my commandments.
SPEAKER_00: Now remember the two commandments that Jesus said, all of the law and prophets are wrapped up in, encapsulated in love God and love your neighbor.
SPEAKER_00: Those two things fulfill the will of God.
SPEAKER_00: He says, if you love him, do that.
SPEAKER_00: Do that thing.
SPEAKER_00: Now, the question is not then flips to where he says, Well, if you don't do that, you don't love God.
SPEAKER_00: That's not the reason for the if-then statement.
SPEAKER_00: It's more of a um self-proving.
SPEAKER_00: God is not looking at your com your keeping his commandments to figure out if he loves you.
SPEAKER_00: God loved you first.
SPEAKER_00: God loved you first in place, in time and place, in order and in importance.
SPEAKER_00: But God is looking at our actions so that whether he might say to us, Well done.
SPEAKER_00: You know, there's rewards.
SPEAKER_00: He says to the servant, Well done, thou good and faithful servant.
SPEAKER_00: Enter into the joy of thy Lord.
SPEAKER_00: I want to enter into the joy of my Lord.
SPEAKER_00: I want to feel his smiles down upon me.
SPEAKER_00: As a parent that is pleased with their children, I don't want to feel the distance that never separates you from God.
SPEAKER_00: But the there's a distance between me and my dad when I wasn't in doing right.
SPEAKER_00: And that distance, I don't want to feel that with God.
SPEAKER_00: He tells you, you want to, if you love me, if you love God, and I say, I do love God, I love him.
SPEAKER_00: He says, Keep my commandments.
SPEAKER_00: We move forward into the 15th chapter of John.
SPEAKER_00: And in verse 9, he says, As the Father hath loved me.
SPEAKER_00: Christ says, As the Father hath loved me, so I have loved you.
SPEAKER_00: Continue ye in my love.
SPEAKER_00: Now, again, this is an aspect of right here in this life and feeling the love God has for you.
SPEAKER_00: Continue in it.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't mean like if you don't do these things, his love for you goes away because that can't happen.
SPEAKER_00: He's talking about whether you're walking in it or not.
SPEAKER_00: If you're feeling it or not, he says, He loved you, so continue you in my love.
SPEAKER_00: If you keep my commandments, you shall abide in my love.
SPEAKER_00: That's like being in the house, okay?
SPEAKER_00: You abide in the house.
SPEAKER_00: When my kids are off and doing all their various activities, they are still in my family.
SPEAKER_00: They're still in my household, but they're not in the house.
SPEAKER_00: I want to be abiding in the love of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: I want to feel his love in my life.
SPEAKER_00: That's what he's saying here.
SPEAKER_00: If you keep his commandments, you abide in his love.
SPEAKER_00: These things I've spoken unto you goes on to say that your joy might remain in you, and your joy might be full.
SPEAKER_00: This is my commandment, that ye love one another as I have loved you.
SPEAKER_00: So that's talking about again in not only the fact that he loved us first, we love him because he first loved us, we love each other because he first loved us.
SPEAKER_00: He also says that we should love in the way he loved.
SPEAKER_00: And the next verse, verse 13, says, Greater loveth no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.
SPEAKER_00: He says, Ye are my friends if ye do whatsoever I command you.
SPEAKER_00: Now I want to point out that he's already proven that he's your friend.
SPEAKER_00: He proved he's your friend by laying down his life for you.
SPEAKER_00: But now he says, You are my friends if you do what I command you.
SPEAKER_00: And his commandment is that you love one another in this way.
SPEAKER_00: Now it does not mean, it doesn't mean, and it doesn't only mean, I guess, that if you're called upon at some point to rip to lay down, to risk your life and maybe even lay it down for someone else you love.
SPEAKER_00: That's not, it's like only if that event happens.
SPEAKER_00: Because I pray that no one in here and no one I know, no one I love ever faces that mortal danger to where they actually are called upon to be in harm's way for the ones they love.
SPEAKER_00: There are people who live their life whose profession is such that that is a possibility and sometimes it's called on them.
SPEAKER_00: But this has to mean something to me today, not just maybe someday.
SPEAKER_00: This, I want to abide in the love of Christ every day.
SPEAKER_00: Now, how can I do that?
SPEAKER_00: He says, I have to lay down my life for my friends.
SPEAKER_00: I have to lay down my life for the Lord, who I am his friend if I do this.
SPEAKER_00: How do I lay down my life daily?
SPEAKER_00: Well, there's another phrase that the Lord says, anyone that would follow me, take up his cross, deny himself.
SPEAKER_00: Well is that taking up your cross sounds a lot like laying down your life like the Lord did.
SPEAKER_00: You can't do it to the magnitude he did, but you can do it in the manner.
SPEAKER_00: We lay down our lives when we deny self.
SPEAKER_00: Deny the things that are self-interested.
SPEAKER_00: Not just that, that doesn't mean like, oh, you shouldn't eat.
SPEAKER_00: You gotta take care of your food, you gotta eat, you gotta um live healthy, get some sleep, you know, do the things that will keep you healthy, uh, get have a job, do the job, work for your family.
SPEAKER_00: That's not what he's talking about.
SPEAKER_00: Deny all natural needs.
SPEAKER_00: He's talking about deny the desires of self over the anyone else.
SPEAKER_00: Deny that I'm looking out for me.
SPEAKER_00: You know, so many people want to look out for what they call number one.
SPEAKER_00: Well, number one is the one who loved you first.
SPEAKER_00: I love there, there is a movement out there where people say I'm second.
SPEAKER_00: And I like that.
SPEAKER_00: I love seeing a professional athlete saying, you know, I'm second.
SPEAKER_00: Because Christ is first.
SPEAKER_00: He is first, he loved me first.
SPEAKER_00: And so anything I do is second.
SPEAKER_00: But you know what?
SPEAKER_00: Scripturally, you're not second either.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not second.
SPEAKER_00: At best, I'm third or maybe fourth, you know?
SPEAKER_00: Because God gets all my love and everything I do should be for him.
SPEAKER_00: And to do that, I have to love my neighbor.
SPEAKER_00: And that's why the two chapter, the two commandments are tied.
SPEAKER_00: When Jesus, they asked what's the greatest.
SPEAKER_00: They didn't ask him what's the second greatest, but he threw that one in, not because he just gave extra, but because they're intrinsically linked.
SPEAKER_00: Or, in other words, that's a big fancy word for saying, you can't separate.
SPEAKER_00: If you're gonna love God by denying yourself, taking up your cross, laying down your life for God's for God, you can't do it, and according to Jesus' words, if you're not loving your neighbor as yourself, if you're not laying down your life for others.
SPEAKER_00: Philippians chapter 3 tells us this was the mind of Christ, and we should let that mind be in you, which was also of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: What was the mind?
SPEAKER_00: That he esteemed other better than self, that he looked to the good of his brethren, that he came to die for.
SPEAKER_00: That's the way in which he loved you.
SPEAKER_00: Now, his love was in a magnitude that saved you from.
SPEAKER_00: Your sins, and you can't do that for yourself or anyone else, but you could deliver your brother from his sorrows or his depressions or his troubles.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you can James, the apostle James tells us that you can actually love by giving them the things they need, and that if you don't do it, then that you haven't actually done love.
SPEAKER_00: You say, I be warmed and filled, but you don't actually give them any clothes or food, then what good did say in it do?
SPEAKER_00: There's an action that should bestow that love, manifest that love, show that love in a way that moves.
SPEAKER_00: But that love is second to the love of God.
SPEAKER_00: But if you don't do that, how can anyone say he loved God?
SPEAKER_00: Back in John's epistle, where we were, the like the next verses say, um, that's Ephesians.
SPEAKER_00: Let me get all the way to John.
SPEAKER_00: The next uh um we'll go to the 20th verse.
SPEAKER_00: If a man say, I love God and hateth his brother, he is a liar.
SPEAKER_00: You see the connection John puts it, we love him.
SPEAKER_00: That's something we know to be true.
SPEAKER_00: It's caused by his love for us in time, in place, in order, and in importance.
SPEAKER_00: And if we say we love God, but then we hate our brother.
SPEAKER_00: And that's that, by the way, hate, don't read that throughout scripture as a feeling, it's also an action.
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: Hating your brother is sometimes done without you feeling any animosity.
SPEAKER_00: You can hate someone and not even have that what you feel burning in you, right?
SPEAKER_00: That's like I hate that guy.
SPEAKER_00: Well, if you say that, that's not good.
SPEAKER_00: If you feel that, I pray that God remove that feeling.
SPEAKER_00: But the worst hate that I've ever done to someone, I didn't even feel anything animosity against them.
SPEAKER_00: I just disregarded them as if they weren't there.
SPEAKER_00: Did not show love toward them.
SPEAKER_00: I just maybe even cut them out completely.
SPEAKER_00: And you might feel like that's okay because I didn't, I didn't hurt them.
SPEAKER_00: But that was not showing the love of God.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus told us, you've heard it said, love your uh friends, hate your enemies, but Jesus said, I tell you, love your enemies and do good unto them.
SPEAKER_00: That's the love of God being manifest in our lives.
SPEAKER_00: And if any man's, if I say, if I say, I'm gonna make it personal, if I say I love God, but then I hate my neighbor, then I'm a liar.
SPEAKER_00: At that moment, I need to repent and I need to turn back to doing the will of God in my life.
SPEAKER_00: Then I will feel the abiding in God's love.
SPEAKER_00: I can feel that I'm there in love with God.
SPEAKER_00: Um, I'm gonna close with this, but only because of the time's sake.
SPEAKER_00: But he does say, if I don't, I don't want to leave it with he's a liar if he does this, but verse 21 says, in this commandment have we from him that we, he who loved God, loveth God, love his brother also.
SPEAKER_00: So instead of leaving it on the when I don't do it, I'm gonna leave us with the thought that if I love God, let me show that love.
SPEAKER_00: It's a love comes from God to me, and then second is from me to God and me to others.
SPEAKER_00: And when I do that, I can feel the love of God that He's had for me.
SPEAKER_00: So we'll close with that, and if there's any that have a desire to come and join Grace Church so that we can together walk in love as a church body, and you can walk with us in fellowship and in love, let me know.
SPEAKER_00: Just say I'd like to join the church, or so we stand and sing what hymn?
SPEAKER_00: Sing 326.
SPEAKER_00: 326.
SPEAKER_00: I'll sing this to the to the my soul of joy and perfect.