I am so thankful for the study we've been doing in Ephesians over the past several weeks and a couple of months here. Our hearts have been turned to the gospel many times. And we've rehearsed that and it's been a joy to rehearse the truth of the gospel. And then today to just see it come alive in our music and just the songs and the lyrics that are there. What a wonderful morning to praise our God. Friday evening was a wonderful, wonderful day, wonderful evening where we gathered together to sing in a sober yet victorious way, just thanking God for his unspeakable gift. What a wonderful morning or evening we had together. And we'll learn just why Good Friday is actually good. And here we are today, sitting here in this place this morning together, and we find our hearts stirred by the glorious triumph of the risen king. What a wonderful day to be together. Death has been literally rolled back. It's been defeated. Death, light has overcome darkness. Evil has been overthrown by righteousness. And Jesus is alive. God's love wins. And here we are today. Death and brokenness will not have the final word. And we're gonna look in 1 John chapter four this morning. So I'm gonna invite you to take your copy of the scriptures and turn there to 1 John chapter four. And we're gonna take a few moments to explore some of this depth of love that God has for us. We've heard it throughout our songs this morning. And what a beautiful message we've sung there. A message about the deep love of our God. There's some, from our opening hymn, the choir sang, there's some lyrics that I want to read back to you again, just for you to grasp the grandeur of God's love. Oh, the deep, deep love of Jesus, vast, unmeasured, boundless, free, rolling as a mighty ocean in its fullness over me. Underneath me, all around me is the current of his love. leading onward, leading homeward to his glorious rest above. These original lyrics were penned in the 19th century by a London merchant. He later became a lay preacher, but his name is Samuel Francis. It was on the screen there. As recorded by his biographers, in his teenage years, he had a serious bout with depression and sadness. And he found himself one night walking along the Thames River in London, crossing the bridge, and he looked down and the voices of sadness and depression in his head called out to him, just jump, jump into the icy waters. End it all, it's not worth it. But thankfully, the Holy Spirit intervened, intersected his life, and pushed away those thoughts, and said to him, reminding him of his amazing love of the Savior, Jesus, his Messiah. And Samuel Francis went through a transformative spiritual renewal and it led to the writing of those very lyrics years later. And he went on to write many poems and hymns. I am thankful today for those words, the depth of Jesus' love. I'm thankful for the reminder to everyone in this room of how much he loves us. It's an echo of what Paul the Apostle wrote to the dear saints of the church at Ephesus. When he wrote in chapter three, he says, I pray that you being rooted and firmly established in love may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the length and width and height and depth of God's love. And to know Christ's love that surpasses knowledge so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. And he wrote a similar thought to the believers in Rome as well when he said, there's nothing, there's absolutely nothing that's gonna separate you from God's love. The love that he has poured out on you and has demonstrated to you. Nothing's gonna pull you away from that. In fact, from Genesis to Revelation, the entirety of scripture is full of God's love. A good description, a full description of the beauty and the wonder of the love of God. The book of Psalms has many verses, many verses that would help us capture the essence of God's love. He writes, the psalmist writes, your love, Lord, reaches to the heavens, your faithfulness to the skies. It's boundless, it's limitless, it's amazing. He goes on to write, how priceless is your unfailing love, oh Lord. We can't afford it. It's beyond cost, it's priceless. He writes, you Lord are forgiving and good and abounding in love to all who call upon you. The prophets of ancient times, the poets, the psalmists of biblical history, the disciples and the apostles of Jesus, all, all of these wrote about the amazing deep love of God and they experienced it in their own life. They were enamored by it. And Jesus himself, the very essence, the very physical demonstration of God's love, demonstrated that in his own words and deeds when he lived among his creatures. In fact, the deep love of God for everyone in this room today is revealed and made clearly known through Jesus, through the one and only Son of God. I believe people are yearning to be loved. I believe people are learning, yearning and desiring an affirmation. I wanna hear the words from someone else that says, I care about you and I love you. I think that's what you want in your own life. You just wanna be loved and affirmed. Now I don't know what your feelings are about God. I don't know what your experience has been, with God, but I want to say to you right now, right here in this place today, that God sees you. God knows you, and God loves you, and His love is boundless and free. It's an amazing deep love for you. How can I be so confident in saying that? Well, on a simple side, it's a verse from a chorus of a children's song. The Bible told me. The Bible revealed it to me. And this morning, I wanna look at what the scripture says about how God has revealed his love, this type of love, where he knows you and sees you where you are. So in our text, 1 John chapter four, I'm gonna read two verses, verses nine and 10. Follow along with me. It says, God's love was revealed among us in this way. God sent his one and only son into the world so that we might live through him. Love consists in this, not that we love God, but that he loved us and sent his son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. This text tells us that we can know the love of God because he's revealed it to us. He's opened it up. He's shown it to us. Now you think about your interpersonal relationships, people that you know, and you sometimes you might wonder, do they love me? Maybe their actions aren't showing that or they just keep you guessing and you're not sure. You don't really know how they feel about you. But God made his perfect love known to every one of us in this room today. Everyone listening online and watching there. He did it in an obvious way. He didn't do it because we loved him, is what the text says, but he just loved us. We have no capacity to love him outside of his grace. So how did the God of all creation reveal his love? How can you and I see and experience the depth of his love today? I want you to think with me about four things this morning, very quickly, just four quick things. We can tell the depth of the love of God that was revealed to us by what it cost Him. God, the Father, gave His one and only Son. It cost Him His Son. And Jesus, the Son, gave His life. He gave everything. He gave up, his song says, he gave up, emptied himself of everything and came to earth to live among his creatures and he died. He lived here willingly and sacrificially and he died for us. And in the text, Jeremy read, greater love has never been demonstrated in any other way than that a man would lay down his life for his friends. Jesus said that himself. He didn't just sacrifice a little. He didn't just go partway for us. He gave it all. He gave everything. Took on flesh to ransom Mophs. So the depths of his love is founded by what it cost him, but also by how little we actually deserve it. If, now this is a big if, if you were able to treat him well your entire life, If you were able to obey his commands perfectly for your entire life, if you were able to do everything he expects of you, then maybe, maybe you would deserve his love. And it really wouldn't prove out to be anything special because you've earned it. But the truth is about us, we have offended him. We have shunned him. We have marginalized Jesus in our life. And because we're fully depraved men and women, there is nothing good in us. Nothing at all. Nothing worthy of his love. And that what makes his love all the more deep and glorious and amazing. It's because we actually don't deserve it. Romans 5, 8. Paul says, God loved us in this way. This is how he loved us. While we were still sinning, while we were dead in our sins, he loved us. And he died for us. So the depth of his love is found in what it cost him. And by how little we actually deserve it, And that makes the deep, deep love of Jesus all the more amazing. The more undeserving we are, the more amazing his grace and love really becomes. Number three, the depths of his love are revealed in the way that he gives us benefits. What he provides for us through his love. Has another person ever done anything nice for you? Something kind, they've come along beside you and maybe they helped you repair your car. You know, they said they knew you couldn't do it and didn't have the money, so they assisted you with that, or they helped you find a job, right? Maybe they just said to you, hey, come along with my group and come be part of us. We're going to go have some fun. You come join us. All of these things would help you feel some sort of care from someone, and they might even actually help you feel loved by that person, like they actually care for you. Now, what if you needed a kidney? to live. And someone stepped up and said, I'll give you one of mine. Now that would take that love and care to a whole different level, I think, for you. Jesus, in his deep and great and amazing and wonderful love, is offering to you rescue. He's offering to rescue you from eternal torment. But more than that, he's offering to give you a place with him for eternity in his very presence, in his presence with you. Now that is a depth of love that surpasses anything that I could ever imagine. It's an amazing, wonderful love. And God the Father has revealed this to us in the giving of his son. John says in a chapter ahead of what we just read here in chapter three, he says, look at this. He says, pay attention to this. Behold, what manner of love the Father has given to you that what? You could actually be a child of God. He's invited you into his very family. That is an amazing, amazing love. It costs him. We don't deserve it. There's amazing benefits that come from the deep love of Jesus. But there's a freedom in which he gives that to us that he is not constrained by anything. And that's how we know it is such a wonderful and amazing love. If a person does something good for us because they are being forced to do it, does it really mean much? I mean, you think about when someone wrongs you as a kid and they said to him, tell him you're sorry and that you love him. And they said, I'm sorry, I love you. Now, how does that make you feel? Is that genuine? No, usually not. If Geico pays your bill for you because you had a fender bender, I don't think you'd go home and think about, boy, that little green lizard loves me. He cares for me. He paid my bills. No, there were some contractual and financial obligations there for him. Do you know Have you ever thought about what Jesus did for you? Do you know how he demonstrated his love to you? I'm gonna read it to you. I'm gonna tell you what he said to the people watching and listening to him in John chapter 10. When they were questioning him and they were interrogating him and they were skeptical of him, he said, I lay down my life that I may take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down on my own." Jesus gave willingly everything for you, for you, for me. He gave it all. He willingly gave up his own life. He died a horrible and excruciating death. We read the scriptures this morning. We heard it with our own ears what he endured. He bore the full wrath of God for my sin, for your sin. That is a deep love. And I love the way that Pastor John Piper writes about this. I wanna read a quote to you and you just listen to this. To get to the point where he could die, Jesus had to plan for it. He left the glory of heaven and took on human nature so that he could hunger. and get weary and in the end suffer and die. The incarnation, the coming of the Lord in human form, was the preparation of nerve endings for the nails of the cross. Jesus needed a broad human back for a place to be scourged. He needed a brow and a skull as a place for the thorns. He needed cheeks for Judas's kiss and the soldier's spit. He needed hands and feet for spikes. He needed a side as a place for the sword to pierce. And he needed a brain and a spinal cord with no vinegar and gall so that he could feel the entire excruciating death for you. Jesus' death was one of the worst kinds of torture devised for human pain. So when Ephesians 5.2 says, Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, don't breeze over those words, gave himself up. His love is great in proportion to the costliness of his sacrifice. And his sacrifice was horrendous. That is how deep the love of Jesus is for every person and of the sound of my voice today. And what I've been scribing to you this morning and trying to just encapsulate in what we have heard through the lyrics of the music today, what we've sung together today is a love that really, truly is incomprehensible. I mean, it's really hard to imagine and understand it in our finite brains. It's a supernatural attribute of a holy and a righteous God. And in the Old Testament, there's a word for love that is found over 200 times. It's the Hebrew word hesed. It's difficult to translate that into any other language in one word because it encapsulates so many ideas about the love of our God. It takes the ideas of love and generosity and enduring commitment and puts it all in one. And there's just many, many words that come out in scripture that trying to capture that. Exodus 34, six says, the Lord God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding and steadfast love and faithfulness. Steadfast love and faithfulness, that has said, that amazing love of God. And as we just sing, this is our God, this is who he is, he loves us, he saves us. This is a special word when you try to think about the entirety of God's love for his creatures. Because you can think of it this way, when others abandon you, when others forget about you, when others reject you and leave you in your pain, when others don't care, they don't involve you, they don't include you, they don't come to you, they don't love you and care for you, when you feel as if all hope is lost, this amazing love of God is pure, It's there, he hasn't left you, he's with you. And I ask you, look to Jesus, the risen and living King who loves you deeply, fully, and faithfully. For two weeks in March, I had the privilege to tour some sites in ancient cities, biblical cities in the land of Greece and Turkey. It was just a wonderful trip for us, but in every place we went, there were just ruins of shops. There were ruins of temples and common areas where people would meet together in the old cities. Homes, you know, just piles of rocks, you know, but you could kind of envision what was there in many places. But in each place, we find relics. We find evidence of the people who lived there and worshiped there. And no doubt in those ancient cities, there were believers in the one true God, followers of Jesus that worshiped him. But the overwhelming majority of people in those places were worshiping at pagan temples. They were worshiping false gods. They were looking for help and hope for someone who could not, for something that could not even answer them. And what struck me is all of the temples are destroyed. Centuries of time have washed over them, covered them with dirt. Now the archaeologists are trying to uncover them, but time has marched on. And now all of these gods, if those statues still exist, they're just ancient relics. They're cold. They're in a museum somewhere. No ability to care, no ability to show any compassion and love, no ability to make a difference in the lives of those who worship there. One place in particular in Western Turkey is the ancient city of Pergamon. And they would discover there a place where an Egyptian god was raised but there was a secret tunnel under his stand. And so the priest would go in and under the cover of darkness and they would go into the tunnel and come up and they would manipulate the god to make it appear he was alive and he was responding to the people as they would pray and as they would sacrifice to him. But it was all a ruse. It was all fake. It meant nothing. It was a trick. Now, all of this was to be a nice story for us today, all the things we've talked about today, all the things we've sung about, the depth of God's love, the beauty of his holiness, who he is. It would all be nice, a nice story and some encouraging words, if the object of that love, the giver of that love, the object of our praise, the person we've sung to today, was like those stone gods. dead and in a grave or in a museum somewhere, the depth of his love would be irrelevant. But, praise God, we know from our scripture reading this morning, we know from the historical evidence, we know from the eyewitness testimonies that Jesus Christ not only willingly gave himself to die, on that cross, but the hallmark of our faith, the bedrock of our faith is the resurrection, that Jesus Christ is alive today. He's alive and well. He is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. And those eyewitnesses accounts saw him walking, talking, eating, cooking breakfast, laughing. And the only thing they could say is, he's alive. He's alive. He's alive. And today we say that together. And that's why we can say with confidence that our Redeemer lives. So we've gone through a lot this morning. The cost of God's love that revealed the depth of it because it cost him so much. We actually don't deserve it. We don't deserve any of it. He gave it freely. He gave it willingly. And he's inviting us with some wonderful benefits to be in his presence forever. That is the deep, deep love of God. And perhaps today you're sitting here and you've never actually contemplated this. Maybe you've heard it before. Maybe you've heard the story before, but maybe this is the first time you've ever hearing it. Are you like the author of the song, the lyrics that I read, that you're looking for hope? You're wondering what's really going on in this life? I want to ask you to consider the truths you heard today through the songs, through the scripture reading, through the things I've shared with you here in this moment, as a personal appeal from the God of heaven to look again, to think again, to think through what you've heard today and understand that this is a real God. This is real love that can be yours. And much like Samuel Francis did while he was standing on that bridge in the 1800s, turn to Jesus. Turn to him. Listen to his voice. Give him your life. Let him change you. It doesn't matter who you are. It doesn't matter what you've done. None of that has any bearing. We've already established we don't deserve it anyway. but he loves you. He wants to change your life. And he's inviting you to share in the eternal blessings with him and to be part of his family. So I appeal to you, accept this gift of love from Jesus. Turn to him for your healing and your hope. Now, I would say probably for the majority in here, this is nothing new. You've heard this before. This is something that you believe and you hold onto. and you understand the depths of God's love for you. But maybe you've just kind of forgotten how sweet and how deep and how good it is to rest in the love of God. Maybe you're just busy with life, just trying to do good things, trying to make sure you do everything right and just want to, you know, you want to kind of keep things good between you and the Lord. You're taking care of your family. But you're not really living in daily rest with him and not really saying, God, I want to love you more. I want to know you more. So I'm going to ask you to think about the depths of God's love for you and open your heart and mind to him and allow him to restore your soul and to renew the joy of your salvation and just rest in him. Turn to Jesus. Give thanks today that He fully loves you, graciously loves you, and He is steadfastly committed to holding you to the end. What a blessing. What a comfort. What a joy for the believer. So no matter what challenges or sicknesses, relational issues you are facing today, you're not alone. He is with you. He will hold you. by the power of His love and grace and mercy, He will strengthen you. And it's all because of His faithful love, His loving kindness. So rest in Him. Now, I'm going to give you a brief moment here because I want you to contemplate personally all the message you've heard today, the entirety of it, from the very first song all the way to this moment, what you've heard today about God's love for you. And I'm gonna give you a moment to just pray, speak to the Lord yourself, and ask Him to make it known to you, to make it real for you, to understand that you can understand the depths of His love. And then I'm gonna pray for you. The praise team's gonna follow, they're gonna come up and sing a song about the precious love. And then we get to sing together again before we celebrate some baptisms this morning. It's a wonderful day here. I will tell you, after the service, I'll be a pastor down front. Pastor Robert and I will be in the atrium. And if you have questions about anything you've heard today, we wanna help you. We wanna try to answer those questions for you. Maybe there's some gaps missing, some things you don't know, some things you don't understand. We wanna help clear that up for you. But we want you to pray. So I'm gonna give you a moment now just to go to the Lord, and then I will pray. Oh God, thank you for revealing your love to us, for not keeping it hidden, for opening up to us the wonder and the beauty of your love, your mercy, your grace. And God, I thank you that for those in this room here today, you're not done. You're chasing after us. You're pursuing us with your love, moment by moment, day by day. The words we heard this morning, there's no shadow you won't light up. There's no mountain you won't climb up. There's no wall you won't kick down, no lie you won't tear down. Your love is chasing me. You're fighting for me. You're looking for me. You're looking for us. We don't deserve it. We could never earn it. But in your overwhelming, never-ending, deep, deep love, you gave yourself away. You gave yourself for us. And oh God, we thank you. I pray that you will allow that truth to change us radically. We thank you, Father, for your gift. We thank you, Lord Jesus, for your sacrifice, your atoning work on our behalf. And we praise you today, our living and risen King.