As you know I'm standing in last minute for Mr North who was not able to come this morning to preach so I thought I would preach on a text that I have preached on before it was on a Thursday evening several years ago now or a few years ago now our text is 1 John chapter 4 verse 19 1 John chapter 4 verse 19 we love him because he first loved us we love him because he first loved us now by way of introduction I would lay a foundation as it were and the foundation is this that man by nature does not love God. Man in his fallen condition does not know God, and so he cannot love God. How can we love someone that we don't know? Those who are in a state of nature, that is, in a fallen and unregenerate condition, who do not know God, and therefore cannot love God, are so far from loving God, that they are actually at enmity against God. They hate God. As Paul says in Romans, because the carnal mind is enmity against God, for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. Only those who are alive are capable of loving. And so it is in a spiritual sense. Only those who are made alive are capable, and indeed actually do, love God. A spiritually dead sinner can know and do nothing spiritually. This is declared to us by the four black nuns, as Ian Paisley used to call them. You know the four black nuns of Holy Scripture? There is none righteous, no not one. There is none that understandeth. There is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way. They are together become unprofitable. There is none that doeth good. The four black nuns of Holy Scripture. Or many profess to love God and to worship God. There are many kinds of religion in the world. And they would say they love God. What God do they love? It is a God of their own imagination. It is not the God of the Bible. Now this, I say, is a foundation. Of the five points of Calvinism, the doctrine of total depravity is the first of those five points and it is the foundation of all the other doctrines of grace. If the foundation is faulty, then the whole edifice, the whole building will be in danger of collapse. If there is a defective view of the Fall, and of the condition of man since the Fall, then there will be a defective understanding of the rest of the Scriptures, and indeed of salvation itself. And this we see in the Harlot Church of Rome. The Church of Rome takes the semi-Pelagian view of man. which regards man as sick but not dead. The Council of Trent states, and I quote, The Holy Synod declares that in order properly to understand the doctrine of justification, it is necessary that everyone should acknowledge and confess that since all men lost their innocency in the apostasy of Adam, so that they are servants of sin under the power of the devil and of death, nevertheless, In them free will is by no means extinct, although it is weakened as to its strength and biased. Now that is a false foundation. And it is on that false foundation that the whole anti-Christian system, which is what the Roman Catholic Church is, is built. It's also the foundation of Arminianism, of course. But the Scriptures are quite clear. Writing to the Ephesians, Paul says, "...and you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins." Not sick in trespasses and sins, not weakened in trespasses and sins, dead in trespasses and sins. He tells them that they were by nature the children of wrath, even as others. Now, if they had a free will, they could not be by nature the children of wrath, at least not until they had actually sinned, or not until they had rejected so-called offers of grace, or a so-called offer of salvation. No, David was brought to see his total depravity, was he not? As indeed are all the elect of God. Behold, I was shapen in iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive me." He confesses. He's a transgressor from the womb! Conceived in sin, shapen in iniquity, children of wrath, dead in trespasses and sins. Men and women in such a condition can do nothing good in the eyes of a holy God? Nothing! Or they may do those things which they consider to be good in their own eyes or which might appear to be good in the eyes of others but they can never do those things which are good and right and acceptable in the eyes of a holy God. Men and women in such conditions certainly cannot love God They do not love his righteousness. They do not love his holiness. And they do not love his justice either. They may be very religious. But the natural man's religion is nothing more than a covering of fig leaves. An attempt to cover their nakedness, their shame, their sin. but woe unto you Pharisees for ye tithe mint and rue and all manner of herbs and pass over judgment and the love of God the Lord Jesus Christ sees through the religion of the Pharisee and of the hypocrite but I know you that ye have not the love of God in you and you know that is the very essence of true religion, real religion, is the love of God, the love of God. Peter, after he had thrice denied the Lord, was restored with these words, Lovest thou me? Lovest thou me? Lovest thou me? This is the sum of the first table of the law. Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy might again there in Deuteronomy 10 and verse 12 and now Israel what doth the Lord thy God require of thee but to fear the Lord thy God to walk in his ways and to love him and to serve the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul this is the very essence of real religion, true religion the love of God but how can those who are born in sin ever be brought to the love of God? well what is required is a heart operation. Nothing short of an operation of God upon the heart will bring a man, a woman, a sinner, to the love of God. Again in Deuteronomy, "...and the Lord thy God will circumcise thine heart, and the heart of thy seed, to love the Lord thy God with all thine heart and with all thy soul, that thou mayest live. If we are to truly love God, then God must do the work within us. And this is what we have here in the words of our text. We love him because he first loved us. God's love to us is the cause of our love to Him, not vice versa. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Yes, we love Him because He first loved us. The scripture is quite plain, isn't it? When we have a right view of the fall and of our fallen condition, then we will begin to have a right understanding of God's love to us. God grant that we might be able indeed to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth and length and depth and height of that love of God. which is in Christ Jesus, our Lord. This then is our foundation. Except the Lord loved us first, we could never be brought to love God because of our fallen nature as sinners. And the fact that there are some who are brought to love God shows that there are some whom God has loved. Well, let us consider the love of God to us. We shall see, I trust with the Lord's help, that the love of God to us is previous to our love to him, as we consider it. Firstly, in eternity, and secondly, as it is manifested in time. And then thirdly, and by way of conclusion, we shall consider something of our love to God. We love Him, because He first loved us. Firstly, then, let us consider the love of God to us in eternity. The love of God to us is previous to our love to Him. It is before our love to Him. God's love is first. No man can be beforehand with God. He is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. God's love is always first. We love Him because He first loved us. Indeed, His love to us is previous to our very existence. And it's previous even to the foundation of the world before the world was made. according as he hath chosen us in him that is in Christ before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and without blame before him in love having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself according to the good pleasure of his will now there's no punctuation in the Greek so those words in love could be applied to the the next verse, in love having predestinated us. But it really makes no difference to the meaning because it was in love that God predestinated us, yes, but it was also in love that he chose us in Christ. It was in love that he purposed that we should be holy and without blame before him, that is, without sin in his presence. God's love, then, is first. For it is eternal. It's eternal. And by eternal, of course, we not only mean that it lasts to all eternity, of course it does do that, it is eternal in that sense, but the word eternal properly means not only to all eternity, but from all eternity. Eternity is a timeless state. And if God's love is eternal, and it must be, For God is love, and he is eternal and immutable. Well then, his love could have no beginning. It is eternal and unchangeable. It is from everlasting and to everlasting. It did not begin in time as our love begins in time. the elect were loved in the eternal covenant being put into the hands of Christ and made his care and charge and Christ in that eternal covenant being made their surety and mediator the elect of God were blessed blessed with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ this grace was given them in Christ Jesus before the world began as Paul writes to Timothy yes they were loved as Jeremiah says loved with an everlasting love and they are loved not because of any good foreseen in them or done by them but purely because God would love them he willed to love them and his will to love them is his love of them he first loved us Now in the second place, the love of God to us is manifested in time. And yet, this love, as it is manifested to us in time, is still previous to our loving Him. It is not that we loved him and then he manifested his love to us, he showed us that he had indeed loved us for all eternity, no. It is now made manifest by the appearing of our saviour Jesus Christ. This John tells us in verse 9 of this chapter. in this was manifested the love of God toward us because God sent his only begotten son into the world that we might live through him it was out of his love to sinners that the father sent his son into the world For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved. Not that this love was universal, the world there John 3.16 is speaking of the Jews and the Gentiles. It was out of his love for sinners, sinners of the Gentiles and of the Jews, that the Lord of glory, the Lord Jesus Christ condescended to dwell in a house of clay, that is, in a human body. with a human soul because that's what a true man is body and soul if Christ did not have a human soul then he was not a true man who being in the form of God thought it not robbery to be equal with God but made himself of no reputation and took upon him the form of a servant and was made in the likeness of men and this blessed doctrine of the incarnation is not something that we preach once a year in December on an invented holy day imposed on the professing church by Antichrist. No, it's something we preach all the year round because it's the gospel. This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation that is in all places and at all times worthy of all acceptation that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners of whom I am chief the purpose of Christ coming into the world of his taking upon himself the nature of man yet without sin was that he might die that's why he came into the world he was to be offered up as a sacrifice. Wherefore, when he cometh into the world, he saith, Sacrifice and offering thou wouldst not, but a body hast thou prepared me. Those Old Testament sacrifices were not, could never take away sins. but Christ came, a body had been prepared for him to take that he might offer it as a sinless sacrifice. It is at Bethlehem and at Golgotha, nearly all the road between, from the womb to the tomb, that we see the love of God manifested toward us. in the life and in the death and in the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. 1 John 4, again in this chapter, verse 10, herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. This love, although it is manifested in time, yet it is still previous to our loving Him. Not that we loved God, but that He loved us. and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins. And as Paul says in Romans chapter 5, for when we were yet without strength in due time, Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die, yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die. But God commendeth his love toward us, that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Dr. Gill commenting on that verse, Romans 5 verse 8, says that the character of the elect, and again I quote, before conversion is particularly mentioned here to illustrate the love of God to them, notwithstanding this their character and condition. and to show that the love of God to them was very early. It anteceded their conversion. It was before the death of Christ for them, yea, it was from everlasting, and also to express the freeness of it, and to make it appear that it did not arise from any loveliness in them, or from any love in them to Him, nor from any works of righteousness done by them. but from his own sovereign will and pleasure. Yes, it was while we were yet sinners, while we were yet in a state of sin and in a state of enmity against God that Christ died for us. His love to us predates our love to him. He first loved us. But there is a further manifestation of the love of God in time and that is in the elect sinner's soul. Because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us. The Holy Ghost is given. It's given to us in the new birth. this is that gracious operation which we spoke earlier the circumcision of the heart the Lord Jesus Christ having finished the work which the father gave him to do rose from the dead he ascended up into heaven and the Holy Ghost is now sent and he is sent into the hearts of all elect sinners, elect and ransomed sinners I should say and you have he quickened who are dead in trespasses and sins. Now, to quicken, of course, means to make alive. And so we read of the quick and the dead. That is, the living and the dead. To be quickened means to be made alive. Being made alive, being quickened by God, the Holy Ghost, the elect sinner is made to feel his awful state and condition. Now the question is, have you been brought to this? Do you know anything of what you really are by nature? Have you been brought to that conviction of sin? And to wonder how it will be with your soul in the end? Where you will spend eternity? Will you be in heaven or will you be in hell? Perhaps you have known something of sleepless nights because of sin. The sinner is made to feel himself a sinner before a holy God. And he's brought to see that he is a debtor under the law. Why? The law requires a perfect obedience. And I cannot possibly pay that debt and fulfil that law. Why? Because I'm a sinner. If he were to render from henceforth and for the rest of his days that which the law demands, a thing which is absolutely impossible, of course, because of that nature which is inherited from Adam, then what of the debts which he has already incurred? The just sentence of the law hangs over his head. The soul that sinneth, it shall die. There is that second death. What is that second death? It's hell. Oh, the poor sinner is brought to an end of himself. What must I do to be saved? Have you been brought to that? What must I do to be saved? And the Lord Jesus Christ is revealed in the Gospel as that one who has stood in the sinner's place. He has stood in the sinner's place in order to keep the law on his behalf and he has stood in the sinner's place to die that death that was due to the sinner because of his transgression and because of his sin. Thou shalt believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. He has come, the Lord Jesus Christ has come, the Son of God has come as a man to do that which was required of men, that is to keep the law. This he has done not for himself but for his people, for his church and he has done it most perfectly. and moreover he has come as a man to ought to suffer the just punishment due to men for their transgressions of the law but now once in the end of the world hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself this is the gospel and there is no other way of salvation but this And only those souls who are quickened by divine grace through the love of God the Holy Ghost will ever be brought to look savingly to the Son of God who loved us and gave himself for us. And this manifestation of the love of God to the soul is previous to any love to God on our part. It is rather the cause of all true and real spiritual love to God the filial fear of God. We love him because he first loved us. And so in the third place, and by way of conclusion, I'd point out that this love of God to us, which is from eternity and manifested in time, is productive. It produces a fruit. What is that fruit? Why, it is love. It's love. We love Him because He first loved us. William Gadsby asked the question in his excellent catechism. If you've never read Gadsby's catechism, I do suggest you read it. What is love? What is love? The answer he gives is this. Love is a grace of the Spirit. communicated to the believer whereby he loves and delights in God and in his ways, word, worship and people. So let us examine ourselves. Are we those who love and delight in God and in his ways? or are we those who love and delight in the ways of the world? The Lord's people are taught they are instructed by the word and by the spirit for the spirit always instructs by means of the word he comes by no other way 1 John 2 verse 15 love not the world neither the things that are in the world If any man loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof. But he that doeth the will of God abideth forever. Are we those who love and delight in the Word of God? Charity we are told, Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth. Are we those who rejoice in the truth? Concerning the reprobate it is written of them that they received not the love of the truth that they might be saved. Are we going to listen to the lies of the political establishment and of the mainstream media? Or are we going to listen to the truth of God's word? Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, if ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed. and ye shall know the truth and the truth will make you free no freedom without truth without truth there is only tyranny and bondage the devil is the father of lies and his lies will enslave us the truth of Christ and only the truth of Christ will make us free. If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed. Are we those who love and delight in the worship of God? In Psalm 116, the psalmist says, I love the Lord, because he hath heard my voice and my supplications, because he hath inclined his ear unto me, therefore will I call upon him as long as I live. That is, I will worship the Lord as long as I live. For to call upon him is to worship him. He goes on to say in that psalm, What shall I render unto the Lord for all his benefits toward me? I will take the cup of salvation. and call upon the name of the Lord. Again in Psalm 97, verse 10, Ye that love the Lord hate evil. He preserved the souls of his saints, he delivered them out of the hand of the wicked. Light is sown for the righteous and gladness for the upright in heart. Rejoice in the Lord, ye righteous. and give thanks at the remembrance of his holiness. Where there is the real love of God, there will be the true worship of God. Are we those who love the people of God and delight in their company? Remember our dear friend and brother, faithful minister of the gospel there in Guernsey, Mr Graham Miller preaching here many years ago now from Acts 4 verse 23. I still remember the sermon. And being let go, they went to their own company, was his text. Acts 4, 23. And being let go, they went to their own company. Peter and John had been arrested following the miracle wrought on the lame man. And they were brought before the council. And being let go, they went to their own company. That's how they regarded the Gospel Church. It was their own company. Is that how we regard the Gospel Church? Is it your own company? David could say, Lord, I have loved the habitation of thy house and the place where thine honour dwelleth. He's speaking of the Gospel Church. What is the Church? It's not this building. which we meet in or any building which the Lord's people might meet in. The church is that people which Christ has loved and given his life a ransom for. Christ also loved the church and gave himself for it. Are you of that company? Can you say with the psalmist in Psalm 119 I am a companion of all them that fear thee and of them that keep thy precepts? Or are you a lover of good men? We read in this chapter do we not verse 11 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. At the end of that chapter, from the words of our text, verse 19, 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. The love that we show to one another or to any of the Lord's people is an expression of our love to God and to Christ which is why the king says in the judgments on the last day to his blessed people the sheep on his right hand in as much as you have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren you have done it unto me and that which is done against his people or he takes it personally it's done to himself Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? Not to love and not to show love is a grieving of the Holy Spirit. That's what Paul says there in Ephesians. Ephesians chapter 4, verse 30. And grieve not the Holy Spirit of God whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption. that all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and evil speaking be put away from you with all malice. And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you. Be ye therefore followers of God as dear children, and walk in love. as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savour." This, love then, is a grace of the Holy Spirit. Love is a grace of the Spirit communicated to the believer whereby he loves and delights in God and in His ways, word, worship and people. It is the fruit of the Spirit As we said before. But do we not find that our love to God and indeed our love sadly to one another is so imperfect? Why is that? Well, we have the answer in Galatians 5.17. for the flesh lusteth against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh and these are contrary the one to the other so that you cannot do the things that you would the corruption that is yet within us the flesh or the old man constantly opposes this grace of the spirit so that we cannot love as we would Isn't this expressed in so many of our hymns? Lord, it is my chief complaint that my love is weak and faint, yet I love thee and adore, oh, for grace to love thee more. In all our praying, let us ever pray for that best of all donations, the gift of the Holy Ghost Christ has promised us. If ye then, being evil, Know how to give good gifts unto your children. How much more shall your Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him? It is through the Spirit that we do mortify the deeds of the body. It is through the Spirit that this blessed fruit of love is produced. From me is thy fruit found, says God by the prophet Hosea. Well may the Lord bless his word to each of our souls this morning. We love him. Oh that each one of us here in this place might have that grace to be able to say we love him. We love him because he first loved us. Amen.