If you take your Bible and turn with me to 1st John chapter 4, 1st John chapter 4. We'll read the entire chapter, 1st John 4, beginning the reading of God's Word in verse 1. Let's all hear the Lord's Holy Word. Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God. because many false prophets are gone out into the world. Hereby know ye the Spirit of God. Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God. And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God. And this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come. And even now already is it in the world. Ye are of God, little children, and have overcome them, because greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world. They are of the world. Therefore speak they of the world, and the world heareth them. We are of God. He that knoweth God heareth us. He that is not of God heareth not us. Hereby know we the spirit of truth and the spirit of error. Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God, and everyone that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love. And this was manifested, the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world that we might live through him. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another. No man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and His love is perfected in us. Hereby know we that we dwell in Him, and He in us, because He hath given us of His Spirit. And we have seen, and do testify, that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the world. Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God. And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love, and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him. Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment, Because as he is, so are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casteth out fear. Because fear hath torment, he that feareth is not made perfect in love. We love him because he first loved us. If a man say, I love God and hateth his brother, he is a liar. For he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen? And this commandment have we from him, that he who loveth God love his brother also. And the Lord will add his own blessing to that reading from his word, for his name's sake. Could we bow our heads for a moment in prayer, and let's seek the Lord's face together. Our God and our Father in heaven, in Jesus' name, we now pray for that blessing of the Spirit of God upon us. We pray for eyes and ears to be given to us by Him. We ask Thee now that Thou wilt give that gracious liberty, that freedom of heart, to preach the Word this night. Do, Lord, take this preacher beyond the words on paper. Grant that he'll know, even while he's preaching, the mind of the Lord. Fill his mouth with Thy words. Give him grace to apply the word where it needs to be applied. Grant, Lord, that as Thy people listen, they will hear the Lord Himself speak. They will know that there is a God in heaven who sees and hears, a God who loves them. We pray it in Jesus' name. Amen and amen. My text this evening, probably memorized by you all, found in verse 19. We love Him because He first loved us. We love Him, statement of fact, because He first loved us. It would be an interesting study one worth our while to look at this verse and study it as a great theological statement, great doctrinal truth. And the sum and substance of that doctrine would be the sovereign grace of Almighty God. This well-known text clearly teaches us that God's love to us precedes our love to Him. He first loved us. We did not first love Him. And then He responded. He first loved us. That word first takes us way back to eternity, before time began, where we find this same God loving, loving us with what he called an everlasting love. And when we realize that, we learn very quickly that the reason for his choice of us a people to set his love upon was not because we loved him, but because he willed, he willed to love us first. His reasons for loving us, and he does have reasons, he just hasn't told us. The scripture speaks of the counsel of his own will. That implies there's reasons and why God chose to do what he did. But those reasons are known to himself. But whatever those reasons are, and if God will ever reveal to us what those reasons are, why he set his love upon you, why he chose you to be one of his people that he would love forever, Whether or not he does that, one thing we know for sure is the reasons are never to be found because of anything inherent in us. We were chosen simply because, as we saw a number of months ago from Romans 9, God will have mercy on whom he will have mercy. It's a matter of His will. He willed to love you. He willed to love me. It was His sovereign right to do so. He wasn't obligated to love anyone. But it pleased Him to love us. He loved us because He loved us. The gift of Jesus Christ, which must of necessity follow on the heels of God's choice of His people, was too great a sacrifice on God's part to have as its motivating source something He saw in us. I love them and I gave them my only begotten Son because of something I found worth loving in them. Never, never would the highest degree of love in us for God, never would the highest degree of holiness in us deserve such a gift as the only begotten Son of God. Never. You have to understand that that's what you're saying when you say that the reason that God has loved us is because of something he saw in us. That something means it was worthy of his only begotten Son. Not only is that lunacy, But that's heresy. Furthermore, theologically speaking, our redemption, like our election to eternal life, that springs from God's love for us. It's a love that was spontaneous, self-determined, And our regeneration in which we're made partakers of divine blessings in Christ was not of us. It was of Him. We were not converted because we were already wanting to be converted, because we were already inclined to be that way, neither were we regenerated, born again by the Spirit of God, because of something that God saw good was in our nature. But we owe our new birth entirely, entirely to His love. I don't know that we often think about regeneration and a new birth in that fashion. We were born again by the Spirit of God because He loved us. That's the source. And we were turned from death unto life and turned from our sin unto God and turned from our idols to love Him because He first loved us. We were born again not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. And the The heart of this text before us tonight is that God's uncaused love, that which he originated himself, has been the sole means of bringing you and me into a place in our lives where we can say, with Peter, I love you, to God. I love you. I don't know how it was with you in your courting days, but it was a very big thing in mine when I first heard my now wife tell me, I love you. I kept waiting and waiting and waiting. Because in my mind, you see, I'm old school. We're the old generation. When you told someone you love them, it meant commitment. I knew then, I've got her. She knew and I told her, I love you. She had me. It's a solemn thing to tell God, I love you. And mean it. Mean it from the heart. I love you. But it's an even greater thing for God to say to us, I love you. Although that is the theological slash doctrinal truth found in this text, that's not the path I want to take tonight in verse 19. We'll see that same truth. It'll be from a standpoint of how this truth works itself out in our experience. It's the experience of it that I want to talk about. How this theology becomes more than theory for us, more than something to be discussed in theology class, but something that we have tasted and seen for ourselves. Using that as our guide, we actually find that the statement in this text is simply this, a sense, a sense of the love of God to us, is the main cause. It is the driving force for our love to Him. When we believe, when we know, and when we feel, and I do not bypass that word lightly, believe we must, and know it for a fact, But if it is simply a matter of intellectual assent to a truth and a knowledge that we have because it's told us here in 1 John chapter 4, we're not going to have that experimental theology that we need. So it's believe and know and feel that God loves us. We will As sure as there is a God in heaven, we will naturally love Him. In proportion, as our faith and our knowledge and conviction that we really are loved by God grows, is perfected, to take the word here you find in 1st John 4, then so will our love for Him grow and deepen. This text is simply about the Christian's love for God. We love Him because He first loved us. The first thing I want you to see is the utter necessity of loving God. The utter necessity of loving Him. There are some graces of the Spirit that are not absolutely necessary to the bare existence of spiritual life. They are important if we're going to be spiritually healthy and if we're going to grow and look more like the Lord Jesus. They're important for that, but there are some graces that aren't just vitally necessary to the very life itself. But this is not one of them. Love to God. What we're going to see here is that love to God, it must be in our heart or else there is no grace in our heart. I didn't say it had to be perfect love. I didn't say it had to be overwhelming love. But it's got to be real. If any man loved not God, he's never been born again. Love to God is a mark he will always set upon his people. It's a mark of divine ownership. a mark he never sets on anyone else but his people. It will never be found anywhere else but upon those whom he has loved from the foundation of the world. First, I want you to see that because love to God is necessary a necessary mark of regeneration or the new birth. Look at verse 7, would you? Beloved, let us love one another for love is of God and everyone that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. Everyone that loveth is born of God and knoweth it. The conclusion is, is it not, we do not have any right to believe that we have been regenerated, that we have been born again, unless we truly, from the heart, sincerely love the Lord. You see, the question goes around, is it not, in our minds, do I love Him? Do I really love Him? Do I really love God? Because I can't be saved if I don't love Him. I haven't been born again if I don't love Him. I'm still lost in my... I'm still dead in sin. I may have a garb of religion about me. I may know certain facts and certain doctrinal truths from Scripture, but if I don't love God, I've never experienced a new birth. The text is teaching right from the get-go, when you are born by the Spirit of God, the Spirit of God indwells you and you will love God and you will love others. It's no use to point to a church membership that you hold somewhere. It's no use to point to your baptismal certificate or decision card that you may have signed when you walked an aisle as a child. You haven't been born again if you don't love God. If I have been born again by the Spirit of God, I know I am not perfect. And I know that my love is very deficient. But one thing I can say, Lord, Thou knowest all things. thou knowest that I love thee." There are no exceptions to this rule. If a man loves not God, he is not born of God. That's like trying to show me a fire that doesn't have any heat to it. It's utterly necessary. We also see it in that love to God is a mark of knowing God. Verse 8, He that loveth not knoweth not God. For God is love. The reverse is true. He that loveth knoweth God. Knowing God is essential, of course, as you know, to salvation. God does not... He does not save us in the dark. He saves us from the dark. He saves us from the ignorance. Ignorant we were. Blinded we were. The devil had a veil over our minds. We couldn't see the light. People could tell us all day long, there's the light, don't you see it? There it is, it's so plain, it's as plain as a nose on your face. Can't make it any simpler than this. Here's the truth. But that's just like telling a blind man to look at the sun and see how, look, it's the sun, can't you see? No, I can't see it. Because he's blind. Therefore, salvation in Scripture is equated with knowing God. To know Him is life eternal. Knowledge. You can't be saved if you don't know God. And what's more, if you don't know God, you can't love. The Scriptures testify that all of God's children are, and I quote, taught of the Lord. This is life eternal, that they may know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent. Without love to God, that means a man is in ignorance. He may know much of the Bible's teachings, but he does not know God. So you find so often in Scripture the same word, both in Old and New Testaments, because it is a Hebrew idiom, the same word, know, equated with love, equated with intimacy, intimate knowledge. Adam knew his wife Eve and she begot. I have known thee of all the nations in the earth, the Lord said of Israel." Didn't mean he just knew them intellectually, who they were. He said, I have loved you of all the nations. Paul said, did he not, to the churches, know them that labor among you. Know them. Do you think he was actually saying, well I want you to find out who your ministers and elders are. In context, it's referring to those men, those who labor among you. That's not what he was saying. Love them who labor among you. You see why it's so necessary. Love to God is a mark of knowing God. Love to God is also the root of love to others. Verse 11, Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another. And John goes on to point out, does he not, in this text, no man is a Christian who does not love other Christians. By this, said Christ, shall all men know that ye are my disciples, that ye have love one for another. But since love to our fellow Christians, to the family of God, springs out of a love to the father of the family of God, it's clear that we must have love to God or we will fail to have one of the indispensable marks of the children of God. They're in the family. John said, we know that we have passed from death unto life because we love the brethren. We know it. It's a big statement. You talk about one of the evidences that the scripture gives us when we're wondering if we're a child of God or not. He says we know if we love the brethren, if we genuinely love the Lord's people. Now it doesn't say that you won't love some more than others. But you will love them, because they're family. Love to God is not only necessary, because it is the... it's the spring of true obedience. Look at chapter 5, drop down to verse 3. For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments. and His commandments are not grievous. This is the love of God. This is love for God. We keep His commandments. Now, a man who does not, a man who has no regard for God's commandments, who has no regard for God's law, is evidently not a child of God. not a true believer. It is not that obeying God's commandments actually saves him, but it is the fact that he is saved, he is dead on shore to be one who obeys the commandments of God. This is the love of God. This is love for God. And he keeps his commandments. I'm not telling you anything new. I know. You know the summary of the law. You know what sums up the Ten Commandments? Loving God with all your heart, soul, strength and might and loving your neighbor as yourself. It's what it is. It's what it's about. It's love. Obedience is love. The springboard for our obedience is love. My children aren't my children because they obey me. They're my children because of birth. But because they are my children, and because they love me, Well, there is one I can apply this to still, because there is a fear. They obey. Let me hasten to add that this is not merely an external obedience, an outward recognition of God's law, is not obedience in God's eyes. The Lord has made it absolutely clear in His Word that He despises the sacrifice where the heart is not found. This is what we have been studying in Malachi, in chapter 1. God said to him, I take no pleasure in your ministry. No pleasure. I hold it in contempt. Because you are not doing it with your heart. Remember what Samuel told King Saul when he came back, not having slaughtered all the enemy, but spared Agag, and he spared the best of the sheep? He said that he not to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams? But I brought all these sheep back for sacrifice. I don't want to hear it, Samuel says. You want to show your devotion to God, you want to show your love for him, to obey is far better than all your sacrifices. And surely that was beating at the heart of what David said, the sacrifices of God are a broken and a contrite heart. You see, I must obey God because I love Him, or else I don't have the Spirit of God in me. And I haven't obeyed God at all. So you see then that love to God is absolutely necessary. It is as natural to a sinner who has been born again by the Spirit of God as a love a child has for its mother. We didn't have to teach our children to love mom. It was just natural. So therefore, the point of application is, ask God to search your heart, and make sure you can say with Peter, Lord thou knowest all things, thou knowest that I love thee. Now secondly, I want you to see the source of the Christians' love to God. It's necessity, now it's source. We love Him because He first loved us. Now, that means that wherever you find love to God, in a man, wherever it really exists, it has been brought into existence by a belief that God loves us. No man loves God until he knows, until he believes, that God loves him. Isn't that the logical conclusion of what's being said here? We love him because he first loved us? How in the world can you actually love God until you first believe, until you know and you believe that God actually loves you? Once the sinner sees the sinfulness of his sin, Once he sees that not only is he undeserving, but he's actually hell-deserving, and then puts his trust in that blood atonement of Jesus Christ, then, then he will love the Lord! I'll love Him! Let me say first that love to God, it doesn't find its source in any kind of an admiration of His glorious nature. You didn't first begin to love God because you saw He was omniscient. You didn't begin first to love God because you saw He was omnipotent, omnipresent, that He was Spirit. It's true that after you loved God because He first loved you, You began to love God for what He is, for who He is. But that was not the starting place of your love to Him. Now, I can tell you from experience that this is a very important truth when you are continually troubled about doubts, about your own salvation, as to whether or not you really are saved. You've been there, haven't you? You've questioned. The thought may have gone through your mind even tonight. Do I really love him? Because what that man up there is telling me, if I don't love him, I've never been saved. The thought will come to your mind Do I love God because of selfish motives? Did I have a selfless, disinterested love for God when I sought Him? Or did I seek Him because I wanted something from Him? Were my motive selfish? One thing you want to be content with is the kind of love that John is breaking out here. I love him because he first loved me. I'm content with that. He first loved me. There's no questions about whether it was selfish motivation. I guess it would be, wouldn't it? It was very selfish of me that I wanted deliverance from hell. I didn't want to go to hell. And I knew that's where I was going. Sure as anything, I knew it. I knew I was lost. And I needed saving. And I knew that only Christ could save me. And he offered to save me. And I wanted to be saved. But I didn't want to go to hell. Was that selfish? Yeah. That was about me. But pray tell, what in the world do you think the Lord Jesus Christ was doing when he preached so often on hell and sought? His goal was to bring fear in the hearts of his hearers. Fear him who can cast both body and soul into hell. Fear him, he said. You better have an interest in your eternal destiny. The fountainhead, however, of my love to him, it's because he loved me. Our love to God, moreover, does not come from the power of our own wills. Modern-day evangelicalism wants to make a kind of a God out of man's will. You would think by hearing some of them preach that man's will trumps God's will, that man's will is more powerful than the will of God. It seems that all those who want to glory in and take pride in the freeness of man's will are saying that man's will does what it wants to in heaven and on earth. But the fact of the matter is that the will of man is not king, The will of man is not a master. The will of man is a slave. A slave. Luther got it. Luther saw it. The bondage of the will. When you talk about bondage, you're talking about servitude. Free? Man's will is free? Not on your life. Man is a slave. His will is a slave. A slave to sin. He can't do what he wants to do with regards to God. He doesn't have the power of his own volition to choose God any more than he does to love Him. No man can stand up and say that I, unaided, unbiased, will to love God and I will to hate Satan. A man can only love God when he has come when he has come to know and to believe and to understand some reasons for loving God. And the chief reason is in verse 16, and we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. You see that? We've known and we've believed. There's knowledge and there's faith. Because of that, we love God. Let's look at that same truth in a positive light. Faith, faith always precedes love. And I'm not only talking about the new birth, I'm talking about our entire lives as Christians. Faith always precedes love. We were looking at this morning the Shulamite as she describes her beloved. He's altogether lovely. And the point of the meditation was, as she thought upon him, as she pondered her beloved in all of his beauty, it moved her heart to love him. But it took that knowledge and it took believing that about him. You know, you first believed the love of God before you loved God. You first believed in God's love before you loved Him? That to me is very encouraging. I don't believe, here's what I don't believe, I don't believe that God loves me because I feel I love Him. I have fallen into that trap. And so have you. But I don't feel anything. I don't feel any love. Does that mean that God doesn't love me? But I first believe that He loves me, and then, having believed that fact, I come to love Him. But what comes first is my knowledge that He loves me, and then I believe He loves me. I believe. Well, I'm glad somebody picked that song. I do believe, I will believe, that Jesus died for me. I do and I will. The doubting Christian has looked within his own soul, his heart, and doubted his love for God, and then concluded that he's probably not saved. But you see, the problem is everything is upside down. Everything is being done backwards. Your first step, when you have doubts about your salvation, is not to examine yourself, is to say, do I love him? The first step is, I believe that God loves me. We love him because he first loved us. Don't let the devil tempt you to believe that God does not love you because your love to him is feeble. Can I ask you, dear brothers and sisters, a question? Do you actually think you will ever come to a point in this life where you'll be able to say honestly, my love for God, for Christ, is what it ought to be? Are you ever, ever in this life going to be satisfied with your love for Him? I warrant you this, you will go to your grave saying, Lord, this is my chief complaint that my love for Thee is weak and faint. You will go to your grave feeling like that. The last thing you want to do when you feel your love is cold, and that coldness is making you wonder, am I His at all? Is not to put your eyes upon your love, but to put your eyes upon His love. To keep going over and over and over every truth, every portion, every scripture where God has made known His love to you. You want to hear the Lord keep telling you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you. I'm stepping out here. What do you think the spouse does when she feels that the love of her husband or his wife has grown cold? Does he really love me anymore? Do I love him or do I love her? The last thing that's done is, I've got to focus on my love. No! What's happened? I want to hear! Again and again and again. And of course, when I say here, I don't just mean the words being said, I mean the actions proving. I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you. And when that spouse comes to know that and to believe that, then, wonderful! The doubts go away. That's how it works. You see, if Satan That's what he's about. If he can in any way weaken your faith, your belief in the truth that God loves you, he's got you where he wants you. He knows what's going to happen. He wants your knowledge of God's love to be defective, unbiblical, twisted. Why? Because he knows that that is what feeds the pipeline of the soul. If I regret and I mourn, I lament over the fact that I don't love God as I ought, that's good. That's old-fashioned, holy regret. And there's nothing wrong with it. But if I therefore conclude that God's love to me is less, because of it, I just dig myself deeper into a hole of doubt and despondency. I got the wrong starting point. My attention's on me. My love not on the Lord and His love. What we must think more on, and this comes back to Malachi 1, what we must think more on is the greatness of God. And when you ponder the greatness of God, you're going to ponder the greatness of His love. If you want a deeper love to God, therefore, it's only going to come as you walk down the road of faith. There's no other way to find it. Faith. And seeing God's love, God's mercies for you, believing it, believing, He loves me. I fail, but He loves me. I deny Him, but He keeps loving me. I fall in love with a trinket. I make it my idol. and he still loves me. I ignore him. I don't call upon him. I lay aside his precious word and he still loves me. I sometimes have hard thoughts about him. I question his justice, his wisdom. I complain. I gripe about the hot desert sand that He's led me to. I murmur about the lack of blessing. And through it all, His love is as strong as it's always been. If you would love God, do not look within to see whether this grace or that is what it ought to be. but look to God and behold by faith His love everlasting, then your own love will start to revive again. It will take some meditation. We want the quick fix. I think sometimes that's the danger of being consumed with revival. A quick fix, or just come and revive us. It'll take care of all this mess. It'll take care of our coldness, our indifference, our lack of obedience, our lack of love for you. Just send out your spirit and pour out the Holy Ghost upon us and everything will be fine. I wonder how much of it is just this desire for the quick fix. We know, John says, and we believe. The Lord says, just put your mind on me. Just seek me and search for me. Now, final point. the deepening of the Christians' love to God. One preacher said that love to God is like a great mountain. Maybe we could liken it to Mount Everest. There are a lot of people, and in that context he is referring to Christians, the majority of travelers are content to view Mount Everest from afar. We like to look at pictures of it. I wouldn't mind going to India and stand there on the soil and, ah, it's Mount Everest. But that's the majority of travelers. If you climb to a lower level, and they see a little more of how great Mount Everest is. Then there are those who are a little more adventurous and they climb a bit higher. They get a better sight and they can see some of the other mountains that are below Everest. But relatively speaking, a very, very few actually go to the top. You see, to ascend To the high mountain, you want your love for God to be deep, like a Mount Everest kind of love. You don't just stroll up that mountain. It's going to take effort. Always love is free, but it will have to be sought after. The love of God to us is the only way to get to the mountain where our love to Him is deep, or as John says, perfect, complete. It's the only way. What is it that we've been considering tonight? Well, I know the title has been, The Christian's Love to God. But have you noticed what we've really been considering is God's love to the Christian. We can't understand the Christian's love to God without knowing and believing God's love to us. So I want you to get that thought in your head. God loves me. It's not that just God puts up with me. It's not just that He feeds me every day. He does. It's not that He just delivers me from temptation every day. He does. But He loves me. Think about that. God loves me. God. This, this creator of heaven and earth. The Alpha and Omega. The great I am. He loves you. Me. He loves me. Who is me? They don't know about you, but I am one insignificant, little, tiny speck of dust in the grand scheme of things. In spite of what my pride tells me, wants to convince me of, let me be the first to tell you people, I am a nobody. a nobody. No false humility. Let me tell you, if the Apostle Paul could actually write under divine inspiration, I am less than the least of all the saints. He had a right view. I am an insignificant nobody who is full of sin, who deserves to be in hell. who loves God so very little. But he loves me. And he never gets sick and tired of me. I'm never a pest to him. It never comes to a point where he says, go away. But I can come to him Just as it's pictured in the prodigal son, I can come to him in my rags and my rebellion and find that all the while he was waiting for me. He was looking for me to return. The father, you see, pictures Christ in that parable. And he runs to me and he throws his arms around me, not bothered by the smell of my sins. and says, this is my son that was lost and is found. He's come back home. He loved me before I was born. And He's loved me all these years. He loves me when I don't think He loves me. When I have sinned, He's loved me. When I have forgotten Him, He's loved me. And if God should spare me, and I am old and feeble, as I've seen many in the hospital bed, and I can't put two thoughts together, and someone's got to feed me, he will still be loving me. And when this world goes up in smoke one day, the Lord will make me the object of His love for eternity. We love Him because He first loved us. When you dwell on that, when you meditate on that, when you ponder that, Tomorrow, when you have your time of prayer, your time in the Word, just take the time to ponder, He loves me. He loves me. God write the Word upon our hearts for His namesake. Let's bow in prayer. Let's all pray. Father in heaven, how can we describe how can we portray that great love for Thy people. We ask in Jesus' name that this night the Holy Ghost will come alongside and take us a little farther, a little deeper in our understanding of Thy love for us. And our God, we pray that we will, with Thy help, meditate upon Thy great love. Because we do know we need to love Thee more. We need greater obedience to Thy commandments. We need Father in Heaven to glorify Thee more, to adore Thee more, to bless Thee more, to thank Thee more. knowing that the ingratitude and the apathy, the carelessness, all stems from a cold heart. So, Lord, we pray for the grace to climb this mount of knowing and believing Thy love for us. We pray it in Jesus' name and for His sake. Amen and amen.