The fifteenth chapter of the
book of John. A verse that I want to talk to you about a little
bit. John chapter fifteen. That ninth verse says, Father hath loved me." The Lord Jesus doing the speaking
here, recorded by John. He said, As the Father has loved
me, hath loved me. As the Father hath loved me so, Have I loved you just like the
Father has loved me? We talk about the length and
the breadth and the height of the love of God. We cannot fathom it. It cannot
be measured. As high as we can go, it is still
higher. As deep as we can go, The depth
of His love is still deeper, it's still broader in whatever
direction. But the same measure of love,
that the Father hath loved the Son, the Lord Jesus said, so
have I loved you, so have I loved you. That's amazing isn't it? Love that cannot be fathomed,
cannot be measured. Wonderful! The love of the Lord
Jesus Christ to His people. He loves His people just like
the Father loves Him. I think that's a great thing.
When the Apostle Paul over there in the 5th chapter of the book
of Ephesians. When he spoke of marriage, he
said, Behold, I show you a great mystery. A great mystery in this
marriage business. And it is likened unto the love
of God in Christ Jesus for His people. He speaks here of marriage. And he says in verse 32 of that
fifth chapter, this is a great mystery, but I speak concerning
Christ and his Church, Christ and his people. The only thing
that is recognized in the Word of God by way of a visible assembly,
a group, is his Church, which is his people. people. This is a great mystery is what
I'm going to talk about, he said. I speak concerning Christ and
the Church. It's a mystery of love. A mystery
of love. It cannot be fathomed. It's a
great mystery. It's a great mystery. We can
get out on the edges of it. We can see a little bit of it
and feel some of it, but it's a great mystery. The love of
the Lord Jesus Christ to his people is the most profitable
subject, the most profitable theme that a preacher can bring
before the people that he is preaching to, the most profitable theme or subject
that can ever be brought before the Church of the Living God.
But I, myself, greatly need the help of the Spirit of the Living
God, the Holy Spirit that He promised to give, that abides
in us forever. I need the help of the Holy Spirit
in order to prepare my mind and to prepare your mind for the
enjoyment of this truth. It is one thing to hear the outward
sound of the love of God, but it is quite another thing to
feel the inward sense of it. Most people hear the outward
sound. but only his people feel the
inward sense of the love of Almighty God. So I ask you this morning,
is he your hope? Is he your joy? Is he your all
in all? Has he made himself known to
you? Have you renounced your righteousness
and laid claim to His righteousness as the only means of your acceptance
before Him. Have you received Him and His
fullness as the sacrifice for your sin? Do you know Him as
your obedience? Do you have His perfection? Is your perfection
His perfection? Is your righteousness His righteousness? Is your righteousness in His
righteousness, your perfection in His perfection? If that's so, if that's true
with you, then You've got to dispense all your doubts and
all your fears and know that he speaks to you with his own
lips as well as out of his own book, the scriptures, the holy
scriptures. It is as real. I said, if you know him, not
just the outward sound of his love, but have you felt and experienced
in an inward sense of his love, you know him. I know him, whom
to know is life eternal. He's my Lord, my Redeemer, my
Savior, my sacrifice, my righteousness, my obedience. He's everything. All I need. I have no righteousness
apart from him. I've renounced all that. He's
mine. And if that's so, if that's so,
it's as real this morning as if he stood or sat there by your
side and took you by the hand and spoke. looking into your
eyes with the tenderness of His love and His mercy and says to
you, as the Father hath loved me, so I have loved you. That's the way you've got to
take this. But it's qualified, you've got to be one of His.
If you're not one of His, you ain't going to hear it. it will
just hit you and leave you. But if it hits, you will feel
a sense of it and you will at least begin to enjoy the love
of Almighty God. Now, he is speaking here not
of his general love of benevolence to all flesh or to all humankind,
And God does have a benevolence towards all flesh, all humankind. He makes the sun to shine upon
the unjust as well as the just and the rain falls upon the unjust
as well as the just. He is not speaking here of his
general love of benevolence but that facial love and affection
which he has for his own people. This is a great mystery, but
I speak concerning Christ and the Church. I love the Church. Husbands, verse 25, husbands,
love your wives even as Christ also loved the Church. and gave himself for it." That's
what he's talking about, that kind of love, a spatial love,
a spatial affection that he has for his people. He says here in this 16th chapter
of the book of John, or the 15th chapter in the 19th verse, he
said, I have chosen you out of the
world. Ye have not chosen me, but I
have chosen you and ordained you. Verse 19, If ye were of
the world, the world would love his own, but because ye are not
of the world, But I have chosen you out of the world, therefore
the world hateth you. So you see that he's not speaking
here in this text that I gave you here where he says, As the
Father hath loved me, even so I've loved you. He's not speaking
to the whole world in general in a sort of a benevolent love
that he has for all flesh, but he's speaking here in a love
and affection to his own people. You have not chosen me. did not choose him, then it must
be he chose me. There is a sense in which those
who are believers in Christ, we did choose him, but we chose
him because he chose us. He formed the initiative, it
was not us. It was because he loved us that
he chose us. Ye have not chosen me, but I
have chosen you. I have chosen you out of the
world, therefore the world hates you. Spatial, spatial love. We need to remember, brethren,
sisters, this verse of Scripture here that says, greater love
hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friend."
He chose us in love. And the reason of his choice
is seen over here in the book of Deuteronomy, the seventh chapter. Let me read this to you. He says in verse 6 of the seventh
chapter, For thou art an holy people unto the Lord thy God. The Lord thy God hath chosen
thee to be a special people unto himself above all people that
are upon the face of the earth. a spatial people, a chosen people,
above all that are upon the face of the earth. The Lord did not
set His love upon you nor choose you because you were more in
number than any people, for ye were the fewest of all people,
but because the Lord loved you. You remember that. Because the
Lord loved you. He chose us in love and the reason
of His choice was love. Nothing more, nothing less. He loved you because He loved
you. It wasn't because of anything
in us. He says of these Jews, it wasn't
because you were great in number, you're the fewest of them all.
I loved you, I chose you because I loved you. That's God's prerogative. He can love whom he wants to
love. He loved you because he loved
you. We talk about the doctrine of
election. Election is based upon affection. Election is based upon love. The whole system of divine love
springs, flows from this one source and it's the love of Almighty
God. If you are one with Him, if He's
your hope, if He's your joy, then He loved you before the
world began, and all because He would love you. He loved you
in order that He might manifest His love. The reason for his
love was never found or seen in you, but the reason for his
love is found in himself alone. So great was the love of God
towards his people that he had chosen from the foundation of
the world, that he became a man. That's how great His love is
for His people, that He chose us in Him before the world was. And in order to manifest that
love to us, He, God Himself, became a man. He counted it, the Bible says,
not robbery, to be equal with God. Our Lord Jesus Christ left
His Father's house. He left His Father's house. He loved His Father, and His
Father loved Him. But in order to redeem us, He
must leave His Father's house. and become a man, that he might
become one flesh with you and I, with his church, with his
people. He might become one of them. Now listen, if he had never been
the babe of Bethlehem's manger and the man of Nazareth acquainted
with grief and a man of sorrow, He could have never in all points
been like unto his brethren what love it was that brought the
Lord of glory from his Father's house, from his Father's throne,
from the highest place in heaven to become the man of sorrows
acquainted with grief. Amazing love, isn't it? I think it is. Listen, having
become a man for us, and you've heard me say many times that
he is as much man as if he is never God, and as much God as
if he is never man. He is the man, Christ Jesus. He becomes a man. that you and I might be redeemed. Jesus Christ died because of
love for us. The laying down of his life is
divine proof of his love. He died voluntarily. No man took his life from him. He was not the victim of an unruly
mob who was in mass hysteria and could not control themselves
or couldn't be controlled by others and got out of hand and
took his life. No, he said, if I called my father,
he'd send 10,000 No man takes my life from me. I lay it down voluntarily. There was no necessity upon him
as unto us to die, none whatsoever. Other men, if they died for us, human men, just human men, not
to God's name, if other men would die for us, they would but pay
the debt to nature a little before its time and that's all. But
Jesus died who needed not to die so far as he himself is concerned. He needed not to die. His death
on the tree voluntarily, surrendering himself to the eternal purpose
of God, his death on the tree is to us the greatest infinite
proof of his infinite love to his people. He must die the death
of a felon. hanging between two thieves,
utterly friendless, the object of ridicule, despised and rejected,
looked upon as the off-scouring of this earth, bearing our sin
in his own body. And all this, as I hear it from
time to time, makes me say, Behold, what manner of love is this,
that the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we might be called
the sons of God. It was because of this love that the Lord made you to live. Over here, in the book of Ezekiel,
chapter 16. We have our condition by nature
represented as that of a deserted infant cast out in the field
to die, unwashed, unswallowed, bleeding itself to death in filth
and in mercy. Let me read that to you. And to say, verse 3, Thus saith
the Lord God unto Jerusalem, Thy birth and thy nativity is
of the land of Canaan. Thy father was an Amorite, and
thy mother an Hittite. As for thy nativity, in the day
thou wast born, thy navel was not cut, neither wast thou washed
in water, to supple thee. Thou wast not salted at all,
nor swaddled at all, and none I pity thee. This is the condition
that every one of us who lays claim to the love of God, that's
our condition, Bob. No, I pity thee. Here we lay in filth and misery,
but it's written here in the Scriptures where it says in verse
6, When I passed by thee, God in Christ, passed by thee, he
said to the infant, Live! And the infant lived. Live! Yea, I said unto thee,
when thou wast in thy blood, live. Ah, this When we were dead in trespasses
and in sins, he spoke to us and we lived. You know, when the
great apostle was converted, the apostle Paul, who was an
enemy of the Lord Jesus, and on his way to Tarsus to I gathered
those that were followers of the Lord Jesus Christ and to
put them in jail, to imprison them and to kill some of them.
He was on his way to do that. Some people, I've heard people
say, well, Paul was under conviction for a long time. No, he wasn't
under conviction. He wasn't under conviction. It
happened to Paul suddenly, all at once, he was riding along,
him and his him and his deputy sheriffs and they was going down
to this other city to get these people. He had their names and
he was going to put them in jail. He was going to kill them. He
was going to shut them up once and for all because they was
telling people about Jesus Christ and Paul hated the name. He was trying to do away with
the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and suddenly He is converting. Sudden! Just
that quick! The force of God unhorsed him
and put him on the ground. He couldn't speak, he couldn't see. Finally he said, Lord, who art
thou? The Lord said, I'm the Christ, I'm
Jesus whom thou persecust." And the effect of that experience
with the Apostle Paul changed his whole life. That's our condition, dead in
trespasses and in sins. But he came along. He came where
we were and he found us. And he said, live! My God, we
lived. So you remember, you're cast
down, conditioned, filthy, in your misery, unswaddled, naked,
dirty, out in the field. You lay between the jaws of death
and no eye pitied you. No one cared about your soul.
You didn't even pity yourself. The Lord Jesus looked upon you
long before you ever looked upon Him. If you are saved this morning,
you are not saved because you had a first look at Him. He looked upon you before you
looked upon Him. His look upon you caused you
to look upon Him. He spoke to you long before you
ever spoke to Him. He said, live, and you did live. Before that, you were dead in
trespasses and in sins. But He washed you. He clothed
you. He beautified you. He adopted
you. He made that wretched cast out
unswaddled, lying in its own blood to be a joint heir with
himself. And so long as we live here on
this earth, you and I, who have been the object of his mercy
and his grace, who were dead but he said live, you and I,
We ought to praise him as long as we live, the lover of our
souls. He loved us and he gave himself
for us. And he said, as the Father hath
loved me, I love you in the same way. Ought not we to praise and
to honor and to worship him the rest of our lives if he did all
this for us. Ought to. That's our business,
isn't it? Worship and praise. Our business
is not to... We're to remember the poor, help
the poor. As the Lord enables us to help
them, we're to do that. But our prime responsibility
in business as believers in this world is not to make the world
a better place to live in. That's not our objective, to
do away with guns and to do away with this and do away with that
and all that that men and women, boys and girls might live longer. That's not our business. Our
business is to tell the story. is to be a witness of the testimony
of God's dear Son in this world. And that's the testimony of God
that He sent the Lord Jesus Christ that we might live. And if we live to be a hundred,
we ought to still be praising His name. inasmuch as we are by nature
a great distance from God. We're far off from God by nature,
by nature. And we needed to be brought nigh
unto God. Jeremiah, that prophet, he had
a wonderful passage there in the book of Jeremiah. He said
that the Lord hath appeared of old unto me, saying, I have loved
thee with an everlasting love, therefore have I drawn thee unto
myself. Oh, do you remember? when you
was lifeless. I remember when I didn't have
no life. I was lifeless. I was a dead corpse. I remember
that. I was as lifeless as a stick
of firewood. I had no life in me. But He made me to run in His
way. He drew me unto Himself with
the cords of love, everlasting love. And He made me to run. in His ways, huh? Oh, draw unto Him, overcome my
stubborn rebellion. So I delight in Him. I delight in Him. And I love Him because He first
loved me. The Lord did all this. And what
was the reason for it? It was His love. He loved us. Unimaginable. The reason can't
be in us. It can't be because there's nothing
in us that's lovely. Just the opposite. We, by nature, didn't run after
Him. It was He that run after us. And why did He run after us and
draw us unto Himself? It's because He loved us in the
eternal purpose and He's determined to have us. It was for that love that He
forgave us of all of our sins, all our dark, black, nasty, sins
that we must keep them to ourselves. It can only be mentioned in the
darkness of night to ourselves and not unto other people because
of the violence of who we are. But it was out of the love of
God in Christ that he hath forgiven us, blotted
them out, and remembered them against us no more. It was the hand of God Almighty
that blotted them out, a hand of love that blotted them out. It is His love that continues
to give us the best of spiritual drink and spiritual meat that
all of our wants as believers are satisfied in the Lord Jesus
Christ. He hath given us shoes. for our
journey home. He has given us armor for our
warfare while we're here. He has given us strength for
our labor. He hath given us rest for our
weariness. He hath given comfort for our
sorrow. He hath said that there is no
good thing will I withhold from Him my chosen. He's led you and
I through the wilderness in safety, even under this hour. Why? Because of that love, as the
Father hath loved me, even so I have loved you. The same nature,
you see. The reason for it all, Bob, is
His love. It's not because You're such
a good fellow. I'm such a good fellow. It's
not because you've got a good marriage. It's not because I've
got a good marriage. It's not because of anything
in us. It was by His sovereign choice. He set His affections upon us. He loved us before time ever
was. And the Lord Jesus Christ came
to redeem us. Love, love, love. Surely He loves us, as I've already
mentioned, more than our parents loved us, more than a child loves
his mother and his father, and certainly that is great love. He loves His blood-bought ones
that are joined to Him by a living and everlasting union, he loves
us. He loves us as a bride is joined
to the bridegroom, he says, in that restraint. You, the sworn,
who are the objects of his love, you are, because of that love,
identical with the covenant head the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. God, because of love, has dealt
with the Lord Jesus Christ as though He had sinned your sin. That's love, isn't it? And now
He deals with you as though You had wrought His righteousness
all out of love. Herein is love, not that we loved
Him but that He first loved us. I say unto you this morning,
to live one hour in this world apart from experiencing The love
of Almighty God is an hour of infinite danger. Who knows? Only God knows the second, the
minute, the hour, and the day when He calls us from this world. Oh, in the hour that you die,
You pass beyond hope. No hope for him that passes into
the next world. All his love, by the way, is
free, unsought and unborn. And he says in the book of Hosea,
I will love them freely, freely. If there was any beauty in you
and any beauty in me, it must have been first in his own eyes,
because he couldn't find it in his eyes. Free, free, absolutely
free. Don't have to pay a penny. Let
him come, he that hath no money. Let him come and buy milk and
wine. It's so free, so full, so complete. It's amazing. It's wonderful. It's beyond explanation. You'll
never hear in this world or in the world to come better news
than this. Never hear. I don't care how
long you live. If you live to be 150 years old,
you won't, but there's always that possibility. But if you do live to be 100
years old or 150 years old, you'll never hear better news than this.
There's no better news than this. You think it's good news or the
best of news if the doctor tells you, We can save that child's
life. That's good news. Oh boy. We've worried so. We've worried.
We've threatened. Oh. We just couldn't understand
how in the world we were going to continue on if the baby dies,
if the boy dies, if the daughter dies. Oh, if he says to your
wife, to you about your wife, where she's going to live. I
think I can say, I almost assure you, not to worry, we'll burn
her through. I said, well, ask her. What a relief, wasn't it?
But the best news that a man can hear in this life is not
that, although that's good. But the best news is this. He loved me and gave himself
for me. That's the best news. If that
ever falls on your ears, if God ever brings that home to your
heart, you'll understand what I'm talking about. You'll understand
why I've been telling people this for these forty-some years. You'll understand. The more that
we see of this love of God in Christ for us, the more we despise
and hate ourselves because of our want of love in return to
him. He has given to us His crown. He has given to us His garments.
He has given to us His body. He has given unto us His soul,
His life. He has given Himself. He has made Himself known to
our souls. What more can He do? as the Father hath loved me,
even so I have loved you. May your doubts be dispensed. May your unbelief be overcome
by belief, knowing that it is the love of God which
is the fountain and the center of the salvation of the sinner.
The reason is never in you. The reason is always in Him.
And unto Him be honor and glory, world without end, throughout
all ages.