And we'll come back to the verse
that I'm looking at. Herein, 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. So I just have one phrase that
I want to explain by the grace of God today. Herein is love. Herein is love. This is love. This is love defined,
expressed, realised, established, manifested. Let's pray. Our dear and gracious Heavenly Father,
we thank You for Your Word and we thank You for the Spirit that
takes that word and makes it life to us. And Heavenly Father,
we come before you acknowledging again the depths of our dependency
upon you, Heavenly Father. We thank you that your dear and
precious Son reminded us, and we are reminded by our own circumstances
in this world, that without Him we can do nothing. Heavenly Father,
we long for Him, Your dear and precious Son, to be seen as glorious
for that extraordinary sacrifice that He made on the cross of
Calvary all that time ago. to be something that draws us
to Him in love and draws us to one another. We pray, Heavenly
Father, that we would be caused to look to Him, look upon what
He has done and what He has achieved and what He is doing right now
and why He did it, that we might be able to answer the question,
herein is love. What is love? Our Father, we do pray that You
would bless us with Your love and Your grace this morning,
that You would make Your words life to our souls. We pray these things, that Your
Son might be glorified in our midst, Heavenly Father, and that
the extraordinary promises that You have made in Him to be with
us and to guide us and to minister to each and every one of us individually
as our needs are, Oh Heavenly Father what a spirit of grace
you pour out upon your people. Pray you bless your word to our
hearts this morning. For we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. It goes without saying that the
world talks much about love. And it goes without saying that
for most For most people, it's me, isn't it? It's I. I want. And we live in a world where
when people's wants are not satisfied, then they either walk out or
leave, or just abandon those that they've made these commitments
to. Our God is love. And in verse 9, It was manifested. This is manifested love of God
towards us. This herein is love. Herein is
love that you can see. Herein is love revealed. Herein is love expressed. Herein is love established, manifested. The similar expressions to this
verse are in Romans 3.25 where it talks about this word propitiation
again. And it's whom, whom God set forth,
Romans 3.25. Salvation, the salvation of your
souls is in a person. Love is in a person, in his works,
in what he's done. He's been exhibited, he's manifested,
he's been exhibited, he is displayed. The purpose of Gospel preaching
is that he would be displayed, that you would take your eyes
off the things around you and you would be caused by God to
look to him, to look to Jesus Christ and Him crucified. He was manifested, He was set
forth in all eternity in those councils of God. And Father,
Son and Holy Spirit entered into that eternal covenant of love,
that covenant of grace. He was the Lamb slain from the
foundation of the world. He's set forth in all the promises
of the scripture. He's made manifest in promises
and all of those promises, all of those promises like beams
from the sun come to one point and one source and that is our
dear and glorious Saviour. He is set forth throughout the
scriptures. in all the types and patterns. The covering that covered the
shame of Adam and Eve in the garden represents the Lord Jesus. The sacrifice that Abel brought
outside of the garden, that sacrifice, that blood sacrifice, represented
the Lord Jesus. Throughout the scriptures, the
sacrifices and the bloodshed all represent the Lord Jesus
and Him crucified. He set forth as God prepared
a body for Him. The stars in the skies moved
to shine a light on that place where He was born and the angels,
that choir of angels came and sang. Heaven looked upon this
dear and precious Son of God. He came into this world and He
lived amongst these people who were witnesses. John in his Gospel
and in this letter begins by talking about how they have handled
the Word of Life. They have touched Him, they have
seen Him, they have gazed upon Him. talking about His incarnation
when He came and He walked this earth, talking about Him when
He came back after the resurrection and walked this earth amongst
them. They had the opportunity to handle
and to gaze and to talk to and to be taught by and to walk with
the resurrected Lord Jesus. He's manifested in all of the
Scriptures. All of the Scriptures speak of
Him. Jesus Christ and Him crucified
is just the topic of Scripture. Redemption in His blood is the
topic of this book. He's set forth, and I pray the
Lord would set Him forth before us again today. He's set forth
in the Gospel. The Gospel sets him forth as
a glorious saviour. The Gospel sets him forth on
earth as he's set forth in heaven right now, manifested, set forth. Herein is love. Herein is love that he was set
forth. here in his love, and John goes
to show us our role in this. Not that we loved God. not that
we love God. The natural heart of man is enmity
against God, hatred, hatred of God. We were enemies, we were
without strength, we were ungodly. Ephesians 2 describes us as we
were by nature children of wrath, which means we were wrathful
children. I don't know about you, but I
can speak for myself. I found a hatred in my heart
against God that is almost inexplicable. It's an irrational hatred. I hated God and I hated religion. And I spent so much of my youth
in my early twenties just railing against God and anyone who would
declare Him. And I became an expert in my
little world, an expert in proving to people that it was all a hoax,
it was all a figment of man's imagination, that the history
was distorted and concocted. This book didn't tell the truth,
it was just a man-made activity until God steps in. How does
Colossians 1.21 describe us? It says we are alienated from
God, aliens from Him, and enemies in your mind by wicked works. Our activities herein is love. It's not found in the heart of
man by nature. Herein is love. here in his love,
not that we love God, but that he loved us. That he loved us. The us is the particular group.
John makes it clear. We just read earlier he talks
about the false teachers. He's writing to people who are
being subtly deceived by people. He's writing about people who
have left that fellowship of believers and stood outside of
that fellowship of believers and drew other people after them.
He's talking to these people to stand firm in the Gospel. to stand firm with what they
heard from the Apostle John at the beginning, stand firm in
what they heard from the other Apostles. And the Apostles declared
the extraordinary love of God for a particular people. There
are three simple facts that we need to have before us again
and again, aren't they? God is holy. God is just. God is righteous. And God is unchangeable in His
character. God is just. God is holy and
we are unholy. We are unholy by birth and by
nature and by practice and by desire. And thirdly, if there
is a way for us to be holy and to be accepted of God, to dwell
in His presence, then something must happen from God. God must
do something. And God must do something to
remedy this situation in a way that allows God's character of
holiness and justice and righteousness to be exalted. The way to solve
that problem must be a way that honours God in all of His character. I love what he says in chapter
2 verse 12 of John. He says, Your sins are forgiven. Your sins are forgiven. Why? Your sins are forgiven for His
name's sake. If sins are forgiven, it is for
God's name, for God's reputation. for God's honour and glory. If God is going to do something,
if something is going to happen, God must initiate it. It must
honour God. And it can require absolutely
nothing from me. It must be all of pure, sovereign
grace. that God loved us. What an extraordinary
phrase. That he loved his people with
an everlasting love and therefore with loving kindness he draws
them to himself. Isn't it remarkable? That awesome
holy God. Will that holy God have us on
his mind? David says he is mindful of us. He thinks about his people. We're
on his heart and in his mind. And will a holy God not deal
with us in wrath and judgment, but in mercy and grace and love? That's what the scriptures are
saying, aren't they? That God has found a way Has God in His
infinite wisdom designed a just and a holy way by which the chief
of sinners may be made holy and unblameable, accepted? Can human beings like us, like
you and me, have the blessed hope the blessed assurance of
everlasting life before this holy God. Can we dwell with Him in eternal
sinless glory? That's what the scriptures set
forth before us. We saw last week that the love
of God is a manifested and revealed love. The love of God is always
active. The love of God is never portrayed
in the scriptures as something that sits there passively waiting
for man to do something. God's love acts. God's love activates
things. The love of God is sovereign. The love of God is eternal. The love of God is unchanging
and unchangeable. He loved his people in eternity
past. He loved them in eternity future. He loved them before they were
born. He loved them when they came forth from their mother's
womb speaking lies. He loved them when they were
rebels against Him. He loved them in bringing them
to Himself and regenerating them, causing them to be born again.
And He loves them when they sin and fall and stumble. And He
loves them exactly the same way throughout all of their existence.
And when we get to heaven, His love might have changed one little
tiny bit. It will just be made real, more
real in our experience than we can imagine. The love of God
is a sacrificial love. The love of God is an electing,
choosing, particular love. The love of God is an unmerited
love. The love of God constrains us. The love of God, like all of
God's other activities, is embraced by all of His being. His love
is a holy love. His love is a righteous love.
His love is a just love. His love is a gracious love.
His love is a successful, achieving love. The love of God constrains
the hearts of His people. It motivates and moves His people,
compels His people. Herein is love, not that we love
God, but that He loved us. And He loved us and He sent,
He sent. The blood of God, as I said,
is always active, always purposeful, and always successful. He sent
His Son. The Lord Jesus always acknowledged
that He was sent by the Father. He came as a servant, but he
came as a willing servant. Whoever receives you receives
me, and whoever receives me receives him who sent me. The works which
the Father has given me to finish, he says in John 5.36. the works
that have been given to finish, the same works that I do, and
they bear witness of me, that the Father has sent me. Herein is love. The Father sends
His Son, His only Son, His only begotten Son. He sends Him into
this world, hearing His love, the Son comes willingly. He says, I delight to do Thy
will, O my God. Hearing His love, the Father
sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. I know that's a
big word, but it's a big and precious Bible word. And it means
a sacrifice offered to God to appease His wrath and to make
Him propitious. The word propitious means to
be well disposed and to be favourable to. A sacrifice offered to God
that allows God to be well disposed and favourable. The same word
There's many other places in scripture. It is a word that
means to cover. We read about it in Psalm 32.
He covers his people. He covers their sins. It's the word that is similar
to the word attainment. It's the word that is used as
the covering for Noah's Ark. Noah was no doubt a fantastic
carpenter and he spent a long time building that huge ark,
enormous ark. Maybe 120 years he spent building
that ark. No matter how good carpentry
was, for that ark to survive, it needed something more than
good carpentry, didn't it? What kept the ark of God, that
ark that typified the Lord Jesus and typified his protection of
all of his people, is that covering on the inside and the outside
of the ark, that word called pitch. We use, translate pitch. It is the same word. It is that
covering. That covering absorbed the wrath
of God. All of His wrath was poured out
on that ark which typified the Lord Jesus. And there were God's
people sealed and protected, both inside and outside. that we have for Mercy Seat,
if you turn in your scriptures to Exodus 25 and we'll just look
briefly. The Mercy Seat is a gold lid that covered the
Ark. The Ark wasn't very big. It was about a bit over a metre
long and about half a metre high and wide. And in the ark, in the ark is
the law of God. The two tablets of the law of
God. In verse 17 of chapter 5. And
thou shalt make a mercy seat of pure gold. Two cubits and a half shall be
the length thereof, and a cubit and a half the breadth thereof.
So it will be exactly the same length and exactly the same width
as the ark. It covers the ark completely. Now shall make two cherubims
of gold. Of beaten work shall you make
them in the ends of the mercy seat. And one cherub on one end
and the other cherub on the other end, even of the mercy seat,
shall you make the cherubims on the two ends thereof. And
the cherubims shall stretch forth their wings on high, covering
the mercy seat with their wings, and their faces shall look one
to the other toward the mercy seat, shall the faces of the
cherubims be. And thou shalt put the mercy
seat above the ark, and in the ark thou shalt put the testimony
that I shall give thee. And there I will meet with thee,
and I will commune with thee from above the mercy seat, from
between the two cherubims, which are upon the ark of the testimony
of all things which I give thee in commandments unto the children
of Israel. So the mercy seat, this propitiation,
isn't it wonderful how the Lord uses big words and causes us
to know them but he gives us glorious pictures which show
what they are so beautifully. lid that covered this ark with
these two angels with their outstretched wing looking down on the mercy
seat. And it was in the Holy of Holies.
It was in the one place, the one place where God manifested
His glory was between those cherubs. And between the manifest glory
of God and His law, this broken law, the law that stands against
you and condemns you and exposes your sin, between that broken
law and this manifest glory was this pure lid of gold completely
covering the ark. pure gold, perfectly covering
it all. As the Lord Jesus perfectly covered
all of the law, in every requirement of righteousness, it was fulfilled. He magnified the law and made
it honourable. He kept it perfectly. No human
being has ever kept one tiny part of God's law, ever. They never did, they never could,
and they never will. And the purpose of the law was
to expose sin and drive people to a mercy seat. A mercy seat. The Lord Jesus became a curse
for us. He bore the curse of God's holy
law until God's justice said satisfy. See, that's the mercy
seat, that's the propitiation. Christ stands between God's wrath
and vengeance and us as sinners perfectly covering it. The mercy
seat, as we saw in those words, is the blessed place where wrath
is appeased. In verse 22, if you look there
again, he says, I will meet with you. That's the one place where God
meets with sinners. He meets with them. A holy God
meets at the mercy seat. A holy God also He communes with them. If God is going to commune with
you and me, He's going to commune with us on the basis of a mercy
seat, at the place of a mercy seat, in the Lord Jesus Christ. It's the place where God's glory
is manifested. It's called a mercy seat because
it's where the Lord Jesus makes mercy possible. The Lord Jesus
is our sin offering. He's our trespass offering. The
Lord Jesus is our Passover lamb. The Lord Jesus took on himself
our guilt. and our sin, and he voluntarily
bore the infinite wrath of God. He is our propitiatory sacrifice. He is the propitiation. It's very interesting, in the
King James Bible they do us a great favour by italicising words that
weren't in the original text. And it's interesting that this
verse says, he sent his son And we have to be, and they put it
in italics, he sent his son, the propitiation, the wrath bearing,
the favour bringing, one for our sins. He endured
the torments of hell for us. 1 John 3, if you turn there,
is a wonderful description. of His manifestation, 1 John
3.5, and you know that He was manifested to take away our sins,
and in Him is no sin. To take away our sins is to lift
them up and to carry them away. If He lifted them up and carried
them away, then they're not on Me. He's lifted them up and they've
been carried away and He bore them and I don't bear them anymore. They are gone. God doesn't remember. God has no knowledge of the sins
of His people. They are gone. He doesn't remember
them anymore. That's why He can meet with His
people. That's why He can commune with His people. That's why the
angels are there looking down, the angels from Heaven. What
do they look upon in Heaven? What are they gazing upon in
Heaven? What is being sung in Heaven? Songs of redemption,
songs of victory, songs of praise to the glory of the Lord Jesus,
for His blood shed for he sacrificed. He was made sin. He was the one
sent. He was sent to be a propitiation. He was the one appointed by God. He was the one God accepted. Christ is the justice satisfying
sacrifice. Christ is the effectual sacrifice. Christ is the alone sacrifice. So there were three things required
for propitiation. For God to be propitious, there
needed to be a priest, there needed to be an altar, and there
needed to be a sacrifice. And the Lord Jesus Christ is
all of them. I love how in Leviticus 16 you
have the the first exhibition of the Day
of Atonement. And there were the people of
Israel gathered at God's command, gathered around that tabernacle,
gathered to bear witness to who God is and how He saves His people. And on that day they did absolutely
nothing. Their job was to sit still and
observe and one person alone, one person alone was to go in
to the whole tabernacle and one person alone was to go into the
presence of God. And that high priest went in
there and he went in there with blood for his own sins And he
went in there with blood for the people. He went in there
with that breastplate on. He had the names of the children
of God on his heart. And he had the names of the children
of God on his shoulder. And he went in there with blood,
blood that represented the Lord Jesus Christ. And he came out
And these people knew that God had accepted the sacrifice yet
again. What a way, believing Israelites,
then and now, come to God. They place their hands on the
sacrifice. They lay hold of the sacrifice. and they confess their sins and
they go in peace and they go in faith. looking to Him alone. The same word, this same word,
propitiation is the word that the publican used in Luke chapter
18 when he goes to the temple and there are two men at the
temple. One comes before God with all of his works and all
of his righteousness that not only did he see, but he made
sure that the rest of the world saw and he wanted them to know
and he wanted It seems as if he wanted God to know. The Holy
Spirit describes him wonderfully. He prayed with himself. And the
publican, he prayed with himself and he described all the things
he'd done. And the publican, standing afar off, would not
lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast,
saying, God, be merciful to me, a sinner." In fact, it's, God,
be merciful to me, the sinner. There is no sinner in the world
like the sinner that I am. But he's saying, God, be propitious
to me. God, look upon your sin-bearing
sacrifice and show me favour on account of him. I tell you, says the Lord Jesus,
this man went down to his house justified. Perfectly just before
God. Perfectly righteous before the
law of God. Perfectly without any sin whatsoever. See, the reason for God's blessings all of God's blessings that come
into your lives. If you are blessed with God,
the blessings are blood-bought blessings. They must come from
God. They must be bought. They must be from God. an appeasement. There must be
from God a reconciliation, a removing of all the reason for anger,
to take away that barrier between me and God. This is love. Herein is love. Not that we love
God, but He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation
for our sins. There's absolutely nothing that
we can do to appease God. What He does, He does for Himself. What's our contribution at the
end of the verse? Our sins. He's the propitiation
for our sins. He does it for his own name's
sake. He does it for his own glory's
sake. He does it for that love with
which he's loved his people from the foundation of the world.
The blood of the Lord Jesus has removed all reasons for separation
between God and His people once and for all, forever. By the
blood, He's removed all the sins of God's people forever. They were all completely taken
away 2,000 years ago. That's what propitiation does,
doesn't it? It buys an extraordinary privilege for God's children to the end, 1 Thessalonians 3.13,
to the end, to the purpose. God does everything with a purpose,
to the end that He may establish your hearts unblameable in holiness. He actually makes His people
as holy as the Lord Jesus before Him, as acceptable as the Lord
Jesus, as blameless as the Lord Jesus. It's all of His work. That's what propitiation does.
It's not my faith. that causes God to be propitious. It's not my repentance. It's
not my view and not my understanding. God's propitiation has nothing
to do with me. I am just the recipient. We are,
believers, the recipients of God's grace. How does he describe
it? in that remarkable picture of
God's rescuing His people and saving them in Exodus, when they
had to sacrifice that Passover lamb, to take it in and to slay
it and to eat it, and to sprinkle that blood on the doorposts,
and that avenging angel, that wrath of God, came upon that
nation Israel. And what did the Lord say to
the Israelites? He says, when I see the blood,
when I see the blood, I will pass over. He doesn't say, when
I see your understanding of the blood, when I see your knowledge
of the blood, when I see your experiences, when I see your
activities. He says, when I see the blood,
I will pass over. What a glorious salvation. God
set him forth. God had a plan. God foreordained all things. God purposed all things. God
displayed our Lord Jesus. He set him forth. He made this
love manifest. Here in his love, One thing that
should be really obvious from the scriptures is you cannot
separate the love of God from the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus.
If you're going to talk about the love of God, you need to
talk about the love of God displayed in that one place where the love
of God is herein displayed, herein manifested. in the cross of the
Lord Jesus, who He is and what He did. We live in a world where
so many people want to talk about the love of God all of the time.
But the love of God is in Christ Jesus, and the love of God is
displayed in Christ Jesus being the propitiation for the sins
of His people. a successful saviour who really
put away the sins of his people, an all-sufficient saviour, an
all-sufficient propitiation, an unchangeable propitiation
established once and forever, an absolute and complete propitiation. God dwells in us. 1 John 4, and His love is perfected
in us. It's made complete. It's the same word that He used
in John 13, having loved His own who are in the world, He
loved them to the end. He loved them completely. This is a glorious, glorious
saviour that we have to declare, to make manifest before people. What an extraordinary sacrifice.
All sufficient, unchangeable, absolute, complete. And the purpose of God demands
the absolute freedom of his people. The love of God demands it. The
law of God demands it. The justice of God demands it. How did Job describe it? He says,
deliver him from going down to the pit. for I have found a ransom."
God has found satisfaction. Do you find satisfaction where
God finds satisfaction? Do you find your pleasure before
God where God finds it, in His Son? The other place in 1 John where
this same word is used in 1 John 2. What a word of comfort. He says, My little children,
these things I write unto you that you sin not. There is never
an excuse. Grace is never an excuse for
sin of any sort. That you sin not. And And if any man sin, we haven't lost
an advocate with the Father, we have an advocate with the
Father. We have an advocate with the
Father before the sin, during the sin, after the sin. We have an intercessor. What
a glorious intercess we have. He makes all of his clients plead
guilty, completely, absolutely guilty of all crimes laid before
him. And on the basis of his advocacy
and his perpetuation, he says they are completely innocent,
not because of what they have done. They're completely innocent
because of me. the Gospel. The Gospel declares
a glorious Saviour. What good news it is to contemplate
the perfect sufficiency of our Saviour's work. God is satisfied. See, our responsibility and our
command from God is just to believe the Gospel. Dare I believe it? Dare I believe these remarkable
promises? Verse 17, herein is love, our
love made perfect, that we may have boldness, that we may come
to the day of judgment with confidence. What a promise from God. that
people here will meet a holy God who is a consuming fire to
anyone outside of the Lord Jesus. They'll meet that holy God with
confidence, not because of what they have done, but because of
what He has done. People spend lots of time agonising
over whether they are elect, agonising over whether Christ
died for them. We just believe the gospel, just believe the
gospel. Faith, faith is the evidence. As I close, let's turn to Romans
3.25, which is the third place in the scriptures where this
word propitiation is used in this form. Verse 23, he says, for all have
sinned and come short of the glory of God. It doesn't matter how far short
you are. All have sinned and come short.
And then the next word is a remarkable word, isn't it? Being justified.
being justified freely, without any cause in you, brothers and
sisters, freely by His grace, through the redemption that is
in Christ Jesus, verse 25, whom God set forth to be a propitiation
through faith in His blood, to declare His righteousness for
the remission of sins that are past through the forbearance
of God. To declare, I say, at this time
His righteousness, that He might be just and the justifier of
him which believes in Jesus through faith in His blood. Just let
me ask a couple of questions, a few questions and we can close. Do you believe, do you believe
that His Precious blood is sufficient for the complete washing away
of all of your sins. Are you relying on His blood
for God to be perfectly pleased with you? Have you committed the salvation
of your soul to Him alone. To Him alone, to His works alone,
not to your works and your feelings and your experiences. Him alone. You come like the man we read,
the publican we read about in Lugadene. Just come before God. God be merciful, God be propitious
to me, the sinner. Believers have all their eggs
in one basket and nowhere else. That's what
it is to be a believer, isn't it? It's just to believe. to trust Him, trust Him alone. Herein is love. Not that we have loved God, but
He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our
sins. You, like me, have consciences
that gnaw away at you. Life and its circumstances continue
to bring up times when we feel completely unworthy. Does your
heart condemn you? I have to say that mine does,
not incessantly. Listen to what he says, the Apostle
says. Listen to what the Holy Spirit
says in the previous chapter. And hereby we know that we are
of the truth and shall assure our hearts before Him. And if
our heart condemns us, condemns us, if our heart condemns us,
I know the world will, I know Satan will, but if our heart
condemns us, God is greater than our heart and knows all things. There's nothing he doesn't know. As we come to take these two
elements that remind us, that remind us of his shed blood and
that broken body, may God cause us to find our peace with Him
in the very place that He finds peace and satisfaction in His
Son. Let's pray.