I'd like you to turn please with me to 1 John chapter 4, which has become so familiar to us as we have been looking at it again and again. I just want to read one verse, verse 16, 1 John 4, 16. John joins his readers. In these words, we have come to know and have believed 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. Let's again seek God's face in prayer. Our Father, we acknowledge again how much we need. We are not asking whether we are Greatest in the kingdom, we do want to have a humble disposition and we know that we need you to work in our souls in order that we may truly be humble before you and gladly receive a low place in order that we may be exalted at your proper time. Now come, As your word declares to us what we are to believe and do, come and make our hearts good soil for your word, we ask through Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen. For a number of weeks we have been considering our duty to love The Brethren, this is one of the main points John is making in this letter, particularly in this section of 1 John 4, 7 to 5, 3. This morning, we want to consider another of the truths that John is bringing forward in this passage. The love of God for His people. It is another important point that John makes by the inspiration of the Spirit of Truth. John wrote these words for us by the Spirit of God, teaching us that God loves His people And again, John understands the way grace works in the soul. And John would have us to understand that we need to grasp his teaching on this other point in order for our love to the brethren to be full and warm. Without understanding the love of God for us, Our love for the brethren will be defective at best. John knows that our love for the brethren is intimately related to God's love for us. Now, there is a popular idea in the world today, very misleading, that you have to be happy with yourself in order to love other people. That's not what the Bible teaches. That's not what John is teaching here. But he is teaching us that it is important for us to understand the love that God has for us. And it will indeed affect the way we love the brethren. And besides, this is a good passage in preparation for the Lord's Supper. because there God proclaims in unmistakable terms the love which God has for his believing people. So my first point this morning is to underscore God's clear, emphatic, repeated declarations of his love for his people. John, writing as the inspired apostle of Jesus Christ, sets before us clear statements about God's love for his believing people, emphatic statements, repeated statements of his love for his people. I mean, the love that God has, again, for Christians, people who truly depend on God's grace in Jesus Christ. God has a general benevolence, a love of benevolence for all men, as the Lord Jesus Christ declared. In Matthew chapter five in verse 45, if you wonder, is it really true, does God love all men? In one sense, yes. In one sense, God shows His benevolence to all kinds of men, and these are the words of Jesus in Matthew chapter 5 and verse 45. He says that we are to love our enemies, verse 44, and pray for those who persecute us, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven, for He causes His Son to rise His sun to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. God is the pattern. God is the template. And God declares His goodness and kindness to all kinds of people. The same fine mist that touched my property in Irvington, New Jersey, has touched everybody else. There was no special cloud that just sprinkled my flower beds. It is God's general benevolence and kindness. Well, in a few minutes, we're going to see the evidence of God's special love for true Christians. It's a distinguishing love, a love of complacency. I like the illustration that Dr. Sam Waldron made to distinguish between God's love for his people and God's love for all men. Compared to a man who has a little girl whom he loves, a little child he loves to be with, and he sacrifices that to go to a prison and to speak to men who are criminals, hardened criminals, and speak the gospel to them. The love he has for those people is called a love of benevolence. He's kind to them. He brings the gospel to them. It's different from the love that he has for his little daughter. He puts her on his lap and showers with kisses. That's a love of complacency, a love of delight. God has a love for all kinds of men. Paul tells the people at Lystra that God did not leave him without witness and that he gave you rain and fruitful seasons, filling your hearts with joy and gladness. That's God's goodness. Every experience that you have that God gladdens your heart with, friendships, blessings of all kinds, these are God's kindnesses to all men. But for Christians, he has a special benevolence, a love of delight, and he shows a distinguishing love to them. Well, you can see in this section of 1 John 4 that God loves his believing people. That's, again, my point right now, that God makes, through John, a clear, emphatic, repeated declaration of his love for his people. You see this in this section of 1 John chapter 4. John appeals to the fact that God has made his love clear to his people. Look at 1 John chapter 4 and verse 9. 1 John 4, 9. He says, 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. For most of us, there was a time when we did not truly understand this reality. Maybe you assume that God was a nice God in the sky, a great grandfather in the sky who just does nice things to all kinds of people and He blinks at their sins and doesn't care. But when you understood that God takes sin seriously, that God hates sin and He punishes sin, but then He opens your heart to the reality that God has sent His Son in order that we might live through Him. God made it clear. God manifested it. It's a wonderful word, manifested it. It's the idea that God pulled back the circumstances which hid from us the love of God. He pulled away the schemes of Satan. Satan loves to obscure the goodness and kindness of God, even to sinners. even in bringing the gospel to them. And Satan has a great interest in making people discouraged, disenchanted with God, thinking that God does not deal well with them at all, and that God does not love them. He is interested in blinding men with unbelief, And He, God, ministered to us to make it clear, to pull back the veil and make it clear that God loves His believing people. In this, God has manifested His love. He has manifested His love in us, in the place where it matters, in the soul, in the heart. God makes His love clear and plain. He made his saving love known. God made clear his unilateral love to us in the very next verse, in verse 10. In this is love, not that we love God, but that he loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins. God was determined that he would make his love known to those whom he saves. Now, usually, the absence of love in one person causes the other person to hold back expressions of love. Take Jane. Jane loves John, but Jane realizes that John does not love her. And sometimes women make the mistake of saying, well, what I have to do is just tell him, I love him, I love him, I love him. As if somehow she will beat back his lack of care by her profuse expressions of love. But oftentimes that does not work at all. It often results in ugh. So, Jane realizes John has no affection for her, and so it's not wise for her to express her affection for him, certainly not repeatedly. He's not going to say it, she's not going to say it again and again. But God revealed his love repeatedly, and God does what others do not and should not make repeated professions of love. God has revealed His love and He has made His people to know that it is so. Through John, God has said it repeatedly. Verse 9, 4-9, 4-10. If you look down a little bit further at verse 16, you see how God does this. We have come to know and have believed 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. He says, we didn't know. There was a time when we didn't know that God loved us. We certainly didn't have an assurance of God's kind love for us. He has given us assurance of his love. And we see the impact of his love in creating a corresponding love in us. You see that again in verse 19. Why is it? that we, the people of God, who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, love God? Why do we love the brethren? Why do we love God? Well, he says it. We love because he first loved us. God is the initiator. Well, there is much of what God does in creating this corresponding love in us. There are all of these professions of love that God makes to his believing people in 1 John, and there are many other passages. You think about what God did in all eternity in Ephesians 1, verses 3-5. Ephesians 1, verses 3-5. This is what God did. Before ever we were born, before ever we had the first inkling, of God's love and kindness. Paul expresses it in these words, I'm sorry, Ephesians 1, 3, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ. just as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before him. I think the translators of my version are correct, putting a period there and pushing the first two words. In love, in love, he predestined us to adoption of sons through Jesus Christ to himself according to the kind intention of his will. The love of God. for us who are his believing people began before God ever made the world. He had a love that was determined to push his grace to us, make us his people, and make us to understand his great love. And as believers in particular, there are so many evidences of God's love Think about the fact that you were born in this century. Well, some of you were born in the 2000s and some of you maybe were born much later than that. But think about the fact that you were born in this country at this time with all of its privileges and responsibilities. Think about it. Think about the way Jesus told His apostles, and it's even truer for us in Matthew chapter 13. I invite you to turn there, Matthew chapter 13, and verses 16 and 17. Of course, Jesus did His miracles and brought His teaching. And in Matthew 13, 16, he says to his apostles, blessed are your eyes because they see and your ears because they hear. For I truly, I say to you, many prophets and righteous men desire to see the things that you see and did not see it and to hear what you hear and did not hear it. How true it was for those apostles. They were called by Jesus Christ himself. They went with him throughout Galilee, down to Judea, and they saw his miracles, and they heard his teaching, which many former prophets did not hear. They did not see. And Paul refers to that, I'm sorry, Peter refers to that, 1 Peter, he says, These are things into which angels long to look. You, Christians, have been brought in this time when revelation is completed, when the rich teachings of the word of God have been freely distributed. You live in a country where you can open your Bible anytime, You're free to read your Bible. Nobody knocks at the door and says, any Bibles here? Any Christians here? There are countries where Christians have to go through roadblocks and checkpoints. And they fear for their lives. But you and I, we have this church. We have one another. We have the Word of God. God is very kind to us. to let us hear the gospel, to let us hear the word of truth. These are great blessings. We partake of many common blessings at the time and place where we live, but God demonstrates his love for us in his saving grace in Jesus Christ. And God tells us clearly, emphatically, repeatedly, that he loves his believing people. You should actually never doubt it. If you are a Christian, you should never be asking the question, does God love me? If you have seen your sins, and you have repented of your sins, you have brought them to God, you have owned them, you have asked for forgiveness, and you have asked God to pour the blood of his son upon your soul, The hymn writer puts it wonderfully, Lord I confess to thee, sadly my sin, all I am tell I thee, all I have been. Lord, let the cleansing blood, blood of the Lamb of God, pass o'er my soul. That's Christian language. You wonder, how can I know that I am a Christian? Can you say that to God? I tell you my sins. They're grievous, they're awful. Everything I tell you, and I ask you to pour the blood of Christ. Of course, spiritually, invisibly, Lord, let the cleansing blood pass over my soul. Then, the next part of the hymn goes, then all is peace and light, this soul within. Thus shall I walk with thee, the loved unseen, leaning on thee, my God, guided along the road, nothing between. When that, when you have that relationship with God through Jesus Christ, that is what it means to be a Christian. And that is the clearest evidence you will ever have. Heaven will not be a surer recommendation of the love of God than true faith in Jesus Christ. So God makes it clear. in his word by emphatic, repeated declarations, particularly of 1 John, his love for his believing people. But consider also the extraordinary nature of God's love to his people. It is I want to make a big long sentence out of that point, but I've reduced it to just the extraordinary nature. It's remarkable. It is extraordinary. It is astonishing. The internet is full of all kinds of interesting things. There are phenomena of nature where people take videos of red skies and they take videos of volcanoes spewing various things. It's very interesting, very fascinating, very remarkable. It can't compare with the love of God. God's love is extraordinary. It's divine love. It's pure. There's nothing dirty about it. There's nothing unclean about it. There's nothing misleading about it. It is pure like God himself. It is infinite. God's love is infinite love. The videos online of various phenomena take a little while, and then they're done. God's love is infinite, eternal, unchangeable. It is beyond every other love which is seen in all mankind. Some people may think that they know what God's love is like because they've had a strong love for someone else, or someone else has had a strong love for them. This is a mistake. It'd be very interesting for you, instructive, to ask people what love is. What, after all, is love? If our generation is any indication, this is the way they would define love. They would say, love is my feeling towards someone or something that I find attractive, pleasing, desirable. So I look at this person, and this person is attractive, pleasing, desirable, to put it more bluntly, I love what I want for me. That's this generation. And I won't say that that's not a part of real love. Because love should find the object of their love attractive. Should be pleasing. It should be desirable. Granted. But the love that I've described terminates on self. It's what I want for me. So you young ladies should always be suspicious at the professions of love. You need good evidence that this is not a selfish love, but a self-sacrificing and self-giving love. But there's an aspect to it, that's my point. There is an aspect in a natural love. Jesus tells us that this love is the love of the worldling. He said, if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even tax gatherers do the same? I don't know if you have watched The Princess Bride. It is an interesting movie. And then you have a scoundrel of a king, Prince Humperdinck, and you have the Count, and they're about to go into the pit of despair. The count asks King, Prince Humperdinck, are you going down with me today? He says, well, you know, I have a lot of things to be worried about. I have my wife's murder, I have a war to plan, and I'm swamped. He says, go get some rest. If you don't have wealth, if you don't have your health, you don't have anything. So the count is interested in the well-being of the king. But that's just tax gatherer love. That's just tax gatherer love. If you love those who love you, that's far inferior to God's love. God's love for His believing people. How different is God's love? God's love precedes everything that would feed it. His is a self-originating love. He first loved us. A simple truth. That's God's love. It doesn't begin when you first begin to realize that you were doing some things that needed to change. It's not where God's love began. God's love is the first love. He loved us in Christ before the worlds began. In love he predestined us to adoption of sons through Jesus Christ to himself. And this divine love is entirely unlike human love, for all human love sees something attractive in its object, even when no love comes forth immediately. When God set his love on us, there was nothing worthwhile or attractive to draw his love. He first loved us. And it would be good to remember whom John is speaking of. Many times human love grows when someone sees a person of rank. Right? They say that a woman finds a man in uniform attractive. because there's something about that majesty, that uniform, which draws her attention and admiration. A young woman may have her affections kindled by strength, wisdom, stature, or rank. He's noble. A man may love a woman whom he finds admirable and superior. At any rate, a man who loves a woman who is superior to him in some way hopes that her love may be returned because they are of the same nature. He's a man made in the image of God. She's a woman made in the image of God. They're of the same nature. He may improve himself and become worthy of her. But listen. Think about the love of God. Here's the great wonder. The being who loved us is God. Infinitely unlike us, indescribably above us. God loved his believing people. The invisible loved the visible. Now, I just, you might say, but don't we think that the visible is more real than the invisible? Yes, that's the way we think and it's all wrong. It's all wrong. The invisible God is most real. And us, we are limited and confined by our physical corporeal nature. God, God is not. He is infinite and we are finite. We are limited in our physicalness and we are limited in all of our powers. In my current age, I realize that my powers are slipping away year after year. Why should God love a weakling creature like me? Why should God love someone so far inferior to him? He is omnipotent. He is almighty. We are impotent, relatively impotent. He is the all-wise God. Sometimes, you know, we convince ourselves that we're pretty smart. It's an illusion. It's not true. God loved his foolish, weak creatures, his wandering, straying sheep, and he loved us first. You know, sometimes Christians, as they progress on in their Christian life, They make improvements. I remember when I was first attending an evangelical church, and I knew nothing, nothing about the Bible, almost nothing. Every sermon, simple sermons, opened my eyes to wonderful truths. And as time goes on, you learn more. And you learn not to say the stupid things that you said when you were first exposed to the gospel. I remember those days when I was with other Christians and I barely knew anything. I didn't know that some people played with rook cards versus poker cards. I didn't know that, but they did. And they regarded that as an important difference. I didn't know, didn't know any better. When we didn't know any better, when we didn't know the first ABCs of the Christian faith except for faith in Jesus Christ, God loved us. And again, that word us, God loved us, is very significant. John uses that word. Here in verse 10, let me get back to 1 John 4, 10. Here it is. This is love. Not that we love God, but that he loved us. and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins. How significant is that word, us? Because we are sinners, entirely undeserving of his love, entirely deserving of his wrath. It'd be one thing if we could say, well, I used to sin and now I no longer sin. But the fact of the matter is that the us that God loved are still sinners. Still, we say things we should never say. We do things we should never do. And yet, this is the us God loved. Paul said it this way, he says, God commends his own love toward us. And that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. That's who we were when grace met us, when we first heard the gospel. We were sinners committed to rebellion. And the natural mind is enmity with God. At best, the natural man uses God to get what he wants. And God knows that, all that about us. He knows it all. He knows it better than we know it. And yet God loves us. You're a Christian. God loves you. If you are not a Christian, God is very kind to you. The greatest kindness God does for you before you are converted is to send the gospel. sent the news of Jesus Christ who lived the perfect life that we needed Him to live for us. Because we couldn't live it. We couldn't obtain righteousness. We couldn't obtain God's favor by how much we do. Doesn't matter how many times you go to church. Doesn't matter how many times you pray. None of it deserves God's favor. None of it. And yet, as God knows, all of our deficiencies God loves his believing people. He loved us as we are, as we were entirely unworthy. He loved us first. Now, many of you will know that there's a lot more to say about God's love that could be said, which I cannot take the time to say now. I have one more point to make, and that is God's practical love. We, I have said that God's clear, emphatic, repeated declarations of love for his people is what we were looking at. And we have looked at the extraordinary nature of God's love to his people. He who is so infinite, so gracious, so powerful, so pure, and we who are so sinful and weak and limited. My third point. is God's practical love. God's practical love. All real love is revealed in actions. All real love is revealed in actions. John tells us how the perfect, infinite, eternal God manifested his love for his believing people. Again, that word manifested. God unveiled his love. He made it unmistakably clear And look at that verse 4-9, 1 John 4-9. By this the love of God was manifested in us, that God sent his only begotten Son into the world so that we should live through him. We were dead in our trespasses and sins. We had no hope of being raised from our spiritual death apart from Jesus Christ. But that's what God did. He made his love clear by sending his son, sending his son so that we might live through him. We were dead. Amen. Those saying, you can't beat a dead horse. Actually, you can try, but it's really so much you can do with a dead horse. You might make some dents in his fur. You might break a couple of bones, but he's not going to come back to life again. You can't beat a dead horse. But God took those who were dead in their trespasses and sins, and he made us alive together with Christ. He sent his son so that we might live through him. And the Lord Jesus Christ, of course, filled the office of a true friend in his redemptive work so that we would have life, real life. I came that they might have life and have it abundantly, John 10, 10. And this is the aim of the triune God. This is how his love worked for us. We were dead in trespasses and sins and he made us alive. Alive. aware of God, aware of His grace, aware of its application to ourselves. This is what He did. It was practical love. What could we do? What could we be apart from the grace of God? But God did love us, and He worked for us. His same practical love, again, extravagant love of the Father, is He sent His Son to die on the cross. Let me ask you this question. Who would pay a price like that? I have two sons. Who would dare to give their son up to die for someone else, who would give their child up. And Jesus was the only begotten Son of the Father. God had no other son like Jesus to give. He was God from all eternity, and God and Him enjoyed unbroken fellowship in the ages of eternity. He was in the bosom of the father. Now you think about that imagery, it's that language of the family when the child sits upon daddy's lap and they hug each other and they bask in one another's love. God took that one, his eternal son, and he sent him into the world for us. Us who are His believers. Us, some of us here, hopefully will become His people, His children, and then we'll really know God's love. But God gave His Son. He so loved the world, His enemies, that He gave His Son. And the Lord Jesus Christ demonstrated His love and that He came and did this for us. Jesus, in obedience to His Father, yes, but also out of self-sacrificing love for His people, Jesus came to die, to live and to die for His people. You'll remember some of this language from Romans chapter 5. Romans chapter 5. And verse 8. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, and that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more than having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him. For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more having now been reconciled, we shall be saved for His life. Jesus Christ came to die for us. Again, I am compelled to read these words. While we were still helpless, at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. For one will hardly die for a righteous man, though perhaps for the good man someone would even dare to die. But God demonstrates his love toward us, and that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us, and Christ demonstrated his love. Who would you die for? Who would you be willing to die in their place? A criminal? Who? you know, changed people in his basement and enslaved them and did evil and then they caught, the person's caught and he has to go and he has to be executed and he asks you, you know, I've been your good neighbor, would you go and die for me? You say, no man, you did the crime. Now, you need to pay for it. You need to pay for it. You did it, I didn't do it. I won't give my life, the best of my years for you. But that's what Jesus actually did. 33 years old, a man with strength and youth, a man who never sinned, and he took our place. You remember, in the garden, they said, who are you seeking? He said, who are you seeking? They said, Jesus. He said, here he is, here I am. He didn't have to go to the cross. He wasn't constrained to go. They didn't have Him. He took it willingly. He died for His people. He showed His love. This is the practical love. God did not want it to be a secret. It would be wonderful. Sometimes this happens. It happened to a guy. There was a girl in his school who loved him. He didn't know until the final yearbook came out and she put words over her picture in the yearbook page expressing her love, a secret love. God was not satisfied with a secret love. God wanted it to be made known. That's why he manifested it to us. He made known to us his will, his determination. Well, I have tried to say some things that would be helpful for us as we come to the Lord's Supper to think about God's love. He is emphatic and repeated in his declarations of love for us. It's extraordinary that God should love us at all. And we've seen it is a practical love. God sent his son. God gave us life through him. God gave us the forgiveness of sins and his own love So there are a couple of things I want to say by way of conclusion. Actually, three simple things. Let me say to you that God's love is the very best blessing we can have. It's the very best that we can have. People don't think this way. They should. I think the best thing would be to have riches. If only that shrinking investment in your fidelity login page, if that shrinking investment would suddenly balloon and you'd have 10 times the amount of money invested that you had when you started. It's not likely to happen in our lifetime, I don't think. If you said that would be great. Yeah, that would be great if I didn't have to worry about how much the house is going to cost. If I didn't have to worry about whether or not I could send my children to college. If only I had enough for everything I would like to do, that would be great. But it wouldn't be near so great as having the love of God. People think if I had more friends, if I had people who really cared about me and would do anything for me, if I had real friends like that, that would be the greatest for me. If I had health, undiminishing health. People think those are the greatest things, but they are not. The greatest thing to have is the love of God. And the problem with people is they think because God hasn't given them wealth, health, prosperity, friendship, that God's not very kind, and God's not very good, actually. And people say, well, I would like a loving God. John doesn't quote God loving. He says, God is love. It's not just loving, God is love. A much more profound thing. True Christians know that God is love. And He is, to use a hymn writer, too wise to be mistaken, too good to be unkind. That's number one. Number one, I want you to understand God's love is the very best blessing you can have. So if you are a Christian today, in a sense, you may congratulate yourself. And you may go home and fall before God and give Him praise and honor from the depths of your being that you know the love of God. Second thing, by way of conclusion. Perhaps you think that you're too sinful for God to love you. Why are you not a Christian today? Why? Why, why? You might say, Too many sins. Too gross. My sins are too gross. And my sins have gone on too long. I have actually despised God and hated God. You mean like Saul of Tarsus? Is that the kind? He hated God. He hated the people of God. He hated the gospel of God. Don't you understand what it means to say that God is love? We sang it. O love of God, how deep and great, far deeper than man's deepest hate, self-fed, self-kindled like the light, changeless, eternal, infinite. If you think that you are too sinful for God to love you, you just don't understand God. You just don't understand love. You don't understand infinite love. Cry out to God to reveal what you cannot see. Plead with God. Oh God, you've done this for many of these people here. You've done this for many of these people here. You first loved them and you revealed your love to them and you created love in them. Create love for you in me. Create it in me. Cry to God. to make you see what you cannot see. Lastly, do you believe, can you bask, bask in God's assured love? You know, one of the things that frustrates me sometime about me is my cold heart. I ought to love God much better than I do. So we need to continue seeking His love, seeking His loving favor. I meant to say this before, I say it now. Assurance for the Christian is the norm. Many times people treat assurance of salvation as exceptional. You know, only the super spiritual get to have assurance that they really know God. That's not the way the Bible speaks. Assurance is the norm. And one of the purposes of the Lord's Supper is to bring before you the Gospel. so that you may be assured of the love of Jesus Christ and the love of God, and you may have true assurance. And that is my prayer for you all. Well, please take your hymnal once again. We're going to sing in preparation for the table Hymn number 246, we'll stand and sing. Two, four, six.