SPEAKER_00: This podcast is brought to you by Grand Parkway Baptist Church, helping people to know, enjoy, and glorify God.
SPEAKER_00: For more information about Grand Parkway, visit GrandProquay.org.
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray together, Church.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, I'm reminded today that it is a humbling thing to have someone set their heart on you.
SPEAKER_00: And because you've set your heart on us, we turn now to set our hearts on you.
SPEAKER_00: To love you with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength.
SPEAKER_00: We're not here to put more trust in our experiences, our earnestness, or how much good we've done, but we put our trust in the name of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: We believe that there's power in your name alone.
SPEAKER_00: So it's under your name that we stand today as your people.
SPEAKER_00: We've come to taste and see that the Lord is good.
SPEAKER_00: So guide our heads and our hearts now as we seek to you today.
SPEAKER_00: Holy Spirit, build us up as a better dwelling place for your presence.
SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: And all God's people said, Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Bless you.
SPEAKER_00: You can be seated.
SPEAKER_00: My name is Clyde.
SPEAKER_00: I am the worship pastor.
SPEAKER_00: And today I'm going to be preaching a brief homily, and then we're going to begin receiving the Lord's Supper.
SPEAKER_00: So if you have your Bibles, take them and open up to 1 John chapter 3, verse 1.
SPEAKER_00: While you're looking for that, a brief story.
SPEAKER_00: So a few years ago, my wife and I invited one of her distant cousins and his wife over for dinner.
SPEAKER_00: And during the course of the evening, the conversation kind of turned to spiritual things.
SPEAKER_00: And I began sharing the gospel with his wife.
SPEAKER_00: And things started to get a little bit awkward because I said this that the reason Jesus was sent to die on a cross was to pay for sin.
SPEAKER_00: And if Jesus doesn't pay for someone's sin, then they're punished for that sin by spending an eternity in hell.
SPEAKER_00: By the way, I'm available for all your dinner requests.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not always that intense of a guest.
SPEAKER_00: Now, her problem wasn't with Jesus dying on a cross.
SPEAKER_00: Her problem wasn't the idea that God exists.
SPEAKER_00: Her problem was with the idea that God would send people to hell.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: This phrase, because my God is a God of love.
SPEAKER_00: And a loving God doesn't send people to hell.
SPEAKER_00: And one of the problems I brought up with that view is that the Bible clearly teaches that God is loving, yes, but that He's also holy.
SPEAKER_00: Now at that point, we quickly moved to dessert and coffee and kind of wrapped it up for the evening.
SPEAKER_00: But I thought of that this week when I was studying this passage for today.
SPEAKER_00: Because we as Christians need to be clear.
SPEAKER_00: What kind of love are we talking about?
SPEAKER_00: What kind of love does God love us with?
SPEAKER_00: The world interprets God's love through the lens of our experience, through sentiment, or anything other than the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: But when we see how the Bible defines it, it's so much better than how I or you or the world defines it.
SPEAKER_00: So look with me at first half of 1 John 3:1.
SPEAKER_00: See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God, and so we are.
SPEAKER_00: It's a short verse, so I'm gonna read it again.
SPEAKER_00: See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God, and so we are.
SPEAKER_00: Three things to see from the text today.
SPEAKER_00: The first thing is just that word see.
SPEAKER_00: A better translation would be the word behold.
SPEAKER_00: Behold this love.
SPEAKER_00: Stop and look at this love.
SPEAKER_00: When you pass an accident on the road and you start riding the brakes in the minivan because you want a rubber neck like everybody else, that's what we're saying.
SPEAKER_00: Slow down, pump the brakes, and look at what's going on.
SPEAKER_00: John's telling us here to slow down and look.
SPEAKER_00: Don't just give it a passing glance.
SPEAKER_00: We're not here to think about Jesus' body on the cross.
SPEAKER_00: We're not here just to think about the blood that was spilt for us.
SPEAKER_00: He gives us something to behold.
SPEAKER_00: Today, when you take the bread and the cup, you're meant to taste them, but you're also meant to see them.
SPEAKER_00: See them and remember what they mean.
SPEAKER_00: Because if we're not careful, we'll get distracted.
SPEAKER_00: There's so many things that the enemy wants us to look at when we're hungry, when we're alone, when we're bored, when we're tired, when we're angry.
SPEAKER_00: It's easy for us to look at the wrong things to satisfy us.
SPEAKER_00: The enemy wants us looking anywhere but where we're supposed to.
SPEAKER_00: But you and I were created to taste and see that the Lord is good.
SPEAKER_00: So today let's taste, but let's also slow down to look, to behold, and to see.
SPEAKER_00: And that's the second thing from the text is what we've come to see.
SPEAKER_00: What kind of love the Father has given to us that we should be called children of God.
SPEAKER_00: When people say a phrase like, Well, my God is a God of love, remember this verse and just ask this simple question.
SPEAKER_00: What kind of love?
SPEAKER_00: I love my kids in all sorts of different situations.
SPEAKER_00: I love my kids when I make them laugh.
SPEAKER_00: I love my kids when I make them do their chores.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, I love my kids when I discipline them.
SPEAKER_00: I had to discipline last night because they were mad I wouldn't let them keep playing the Nintendo Switch.
SPEAKER_00: Uh my brother, their uncle, gave them a Nintendo Switch like a madman.
SPEAKER_00: And now we just have this thing in our house, we got to figure out how to do it.
SPEAKER_00: So we had a little situation where I had to remind my kids I love them, even if it doesn't feel like I love them.
SPEAKER_00: So if you were to ask my kids, they would tell you, depending on the situation, my love is gonna look very different.
SPEAKER_00: D.A.
SPEAKER_00: Carson, he helpfully lists out five different kinds of God's love.
SPEAKER_00: The first is God's love for God.
SPEAKER_00: We're told in John's gospel that the Father loves the Son and the Son loves the Father.
SPEAKER_00: This has been happening for all eternity.
SPEAKER_00: Very simple.
SPEAKER_00: God loves God.
SPEAKER_00: But the second is the love that God has for all that he has made.
SPEAKER_00: This is his providential love for all his creation, from the rocks and the trees, to the birds and the bees, uh, to you and me.
SPEAKER_00: Everything God has created, he loves.
SPEAKER_00: But a third way we see God's love is in his stance towards a fallen world.
SPEAKER_00: For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whoever believes in him would not perish, but have eternal life.
SPEAKER_00: What's interesting is not that God loves something so big as the world, but that he loves something so bad as the world.
SPEAKER_00: And he still offers salvation.
SPEAKER_00: The fourth way is we see God's love is his love for the elect.
SPEAKER_00: This is where uh God sets his affection on us as a particular people.
SPEAKER_00: He adopts us as his children.
SPEAKER_00: Fifthly and finally is God's conditional love.
SPEAKER_00: We please God with our obedience.
SPEAKER_00: We displease God with our disobedience.
SPEAKER_00: That doesn't change our status as his adopted children, uh, but it's why the Bible tells us things like this remain in God's love.
SPEAKER_00: Keep yourselves in God's love.
SPEAKER_00: Now, I know that may be a lot uh to take in.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, you may just want to take a picture and you know think about it later, but I want to put it before you so you can focus on that fourth one there.
SPEAKER_00: D, God's particular electing, adopting love for his children, because that is what 1 John 3, 1 is telling us to look at.
SPEAKER_00: What kind of love the Father has given us that we should be called children of God.
SPEAKER_00: This is the kind of love that a father has for his sons and his daughters, and he says, mine.
SPEAKER_00: Not because of anything special about us, not because God looked in the future and saw we were going to pray a prayer to become a Christian.
SPEAKER_00: No, this is the kind of love where God chose us before the foundation of the world, and he says there's nothing we can say or do that will ever change his mind about you.
SPEAKER_00: And he doesn't just choose us, he actually acts on our behalf to care for us and to save us.
SPEAKER_00: Now, if you want to picture this, you probably saw it a few weeks ago uh in the news.
SPEAKER_00: There was a Disney cruise ship traveling from the Bahamas, and a young girl fell off the fourth balcony uh and into the sea, and people all of a sudden are yelling, you know, man overboard, but not the dead, because the dead is the one who jumped in after her.
SPEAKER_00: They had to tread water for 10 minutes until someone could rescue them.
SPEAKER_00: Now I don't know what that dad said to his daughter during those 10 minutes, but I know what I would have said.
SPEAKER_00: It's okay.
SPEAKER_00: I've got you.
SPEAKER_00: I love you.
SPEAKER_00: Church, what would it be like for us today as we take this if we just heard our father saying that?
SPEAKER_00: It's okay.
SPEAKER_00: I've got you.
SPEAKER_00: I love you.
SPEAKER_00: Because that's what's on display for us.
SPEAKER_00: That's the kind of love our Father has for us.
SPEAKER_00: Now, how does God show this love to us?
SPEAKER_00: Well, what makes it so particular, so unique, is because of how he acts on our behalf.
SPEAKER_00: A few verses later, John 4, 1 John 4, chapter uh chapter 4, verse 10, he says this in this is love.
SPEAKER_00: Not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins.
SPEAKER_00: What that means is the sin that separated you from God has been paid for.
SPEAKER_00: All the debts have been canceled.
SPEAKER_00: So, yes, God is a God of love, but he's also a God of justice.
SPEAKER_00: He's a God of wisdom.
SPEAKER_00: He's all these things at once because as a few weeks ago, Neil told us, God is a simple being.
SPEAKER_00: He isn't powerful sometimes, he isn't holy sometimes, he isn't loving sometimes.
SPEAKER_00: He's all these things at once.
SPEAKER_00: Simple.
SPEAKER_00: Sending his son to pay the price for your sin is how God shows what kind of love he has for us.
SPEAKER_00: Now, I used a word there that you may not hear very often.
SPEAKER_00: It's that word propitiation.
SPEAKER_00: Propitiation is what happens when wrath gets satisfied because something has been offered to satisfy it.
SPEAKER_00: Or in our case, someone has been offered to satisfy it.
SPEAKER_00: By coming today to receive the Lord's Supper, what you're saying is that you believe all your sin has been paid for, and there's nothing for you to try and pay for.
SPEAKER_00: That's the good news of communion today.
SPEAKER_00: God has loved you with the kind of love he reserves only for those that he has called and adopted into his family.
SPEAKER_00: And that's the third and final thing from the text today.
SPEAKER_00: Just those four simple words.
SPEAKER_00: And so you are.
SPEAKER_00: This is the kind of love that makes us children of God, and so you are.
SPEAKER_00: We are what we are because God made us that way.
SPEAKER_00: We're not defined by our best moment, we're not defined by our worst moment, we're not defined by our biggest failure or our biggest success.
SPEAKER_00: Your adoption is not yours to earn, to keep, or to lose, because it was all God's doing.
SPEAKER_00: That's why it says in John's Gospel, uh, chapter one, verse 12, but to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.
SPEAKER_00: These last four words, first John 3:1, and so you are.
SPEAKER_00: It's like an exclamation mark, re-emphasizing our adoption.
SPEAKER_00: This is all the ground that you have to boast.
SPEAKER_00: This is our bragging rights to the enemy.
SPEAKER_00: This is what we point to in times of trial.
SPEAKER_00: This is what we're preaching to ourselves today when we take the Lord's Supper.
SPEAKER_00: And so I am, and so you are.
SPEAKER_00: Most of you probably don't know who Pete Weber is, but he won the U.S.
SPEAKER_00: bowling championship a few years ago.
SPEAKER_00: I saw a great example of this.
SPEAKER_00: There was a young man in the crowd, he's kind of heckling him the whole game, uh, and it gets up to the final round.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not advising you to look it up uh because there is some language, but one of the things he says after he bowls the winning strike of the game is he turns around to the crowd and he goes, Who do you think you are?
SPEAKER_00: I am like that.
SPEAKER_00: All that emotion, all that adrenaline comes pouring out.
SPEAKER_00: Who do you think you are?
SPEAKER_00: I am.
SPEAKER_00: And my heart for each of us today is to be so confident about who we are in Christ that when the enemy comes along and he starts demanding, Who do you think you are?
SPEAKER_00: We say right back to him, I am.
SPEAKER_00: I am a child of God.
SPEAKER_00: I am chosen, I am adopted, I am the one who is conquered by the blood of the Lamb and the word of my testimony.
SPEAKER_00: That's who I am because that's who God is.
SPEAKER_00: This is the kind of love we've gathered today to behold.
SPEAKER_00: Because that's who we are.
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray to God.
SPEAKER_00: Just take a moment before we're dismissed.
SPEAKER_00: Ask the Lord, what do you take away from today?
SPEAKER_00: John's just gonna continue to play.
SPEAKER_00: Just ask the Lord, what had your name on it?
SPEAKER_00: I'll acknowledge our service did go a little long today.
SPEAKER_00: That's not an apology, it's just an acknowledgement.
SPEAKER_00: We don't rush moments like this.
SPEAKER_00: We believe that profanes something that's holy.
SPEAKER_00: Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.
SPEAKER_00: Look at this kind of love, receive this kind of love.
SPEAKER_00: And when the enemy says, Who do you think you are?
SPEAKER_00: Point to this truth and say, I am.
SPEAKER_00: In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, God bless you.
SPEAKER_00: You're dismissed.