This Jeremiah passage is wonderful. In some ways it's a great introduction
to this passage in 1 Peter. You often wonder what the apostles
would say if they came back, don't you? What would it be like
for John? What would John do if he came back today and saw
this world and this religious world that we use today? You
know what he'd do? He'd write 1 John, 2 John, 3
John. the Gospel of John and Revelations. Nothing will have changed." I
love the way he uses that word that is so frequent in Song of
Solomon. He says, Beloved, again and again. He talks about, as the other
apostles do, they wrote with a deep and abiding sense of love. Love for the brothers and sisters,
and love for the Lord Jesus. Let's turn to chapter 4 of John's
Gospel. This is the passage Esther has
asked me to preach from. She wanted me to start in verse
7, but we might just read from verse 1. Beloved, believe not
every spirit, but try the spirits. Test the spirits, whether they
are of God, because many false prophets have gone out into the
world. Test the spirits. Test the person
preaching to you. Test the person who is speaking
to you about the Lord. Because many false prophets have
gone out into the world, what a remarkable thing, isn't it,
that all of what we deal with here was actually experienced
by the apostles all those years ago. God, in his sovereign love
and mercy for his people, took the apostles through all the
trials that we and all of Christians will ever go through. Hereby know you the Spirit of
God. Every spirit that confesses that
Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God. And as I said earlier,
that's to confess that Jesus was the Christ before He came
into the world. And to be the Christ, He had
to fulfil all of those promises. He had to be all that those promises
were, and He had to fulfil all those promises. And the promises
are ongoing promises. He has to fulfil those promises
right now to be the Christ of God. And every spirit that confesses
not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God. This
is the spirit, is that spirit of Antichrist, whereof you have
heard that it should come. Even now already is it in the
world. You 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,
They speak of the world and the world hears them. We are of God. He that knows God heareth us. He that is not of God heareth
not us. Hereby we know 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
knows God. He that loveth not knoweth not
God, for God is love. In 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 have 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 has 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 has given us of His Spirit.
And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son
to be the Saviour 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 has 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 casts out fear, because fear has torment. He that feareth is not made perfect
in love. We love Him because He first
loved us. If any man say, I love God, and
hates his brother, he is a liar. For he that loves not his brother
whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen? And this commandment we have
from Him, that he who loves God, love his brother also. Quite a passage to preach at
a wedding, that's why I'm anxious to spend some time with you going
through it and looking at it. so that I can have something
clear in my own mind, because the last couple of weddings I've
been to, there is quite a moveable feast, as it were, and things
change. And what you have prepared, what
I prepared for Washington, the wedding in America last year,
it was all changed within 12 hours or 24 hours of the wedding. So I thank you for, thank God for
this opportunity to look at John tells us why he writes. It's wonderful, isn't it? He
makes it really abundantly clear in chapter 2 verse 26. He says,
these things have I written unto you concerning them that seduce
you. They lay something out before
you which is enticing and alluring. We are victims of it all the
time, aren't we? That's what advertising is all
about, isn't it? It's about seducing you. Seducing
you to buy something. That's why he writes. And he
says, in a couple of other places in chapter 5 verse 13, he says,
these things have I written unto you that believe in the name
of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life
and that you may believe on the name of the Son of God. Again
and again, like the rest of the New Testament letters, the call
of John, the call of John is to believe, is to believe the
testimony that you had from the beginning. In verse 24 of chapter
2 he says, Let therefore that abide in you which you have heard
from the beginning, if that which you have heard from the beginning
shall remain in you, you also shall continue in the Son and
in the Father. And this is the promise, this
is the promise. of staying with the apostolic
testimony, having that faith grow and grow and grow. This
is the promise that he has promised us. Eternal life is the promise. And so many weddings it's an
opportunity isn't it for people to think, think about the wonderful
things that have happened, think about the wonderful things that
are going to happen, and think about the possibility that this
will go on and on in bliss until eternity. So many people think
that love goes on forever. The only love that goes on forever
is the love of God in Christ Jesus. The only people who will
love forever are God's children. The only people who will love.
The only people, and John's writing, so that these people would have
assurance in the midst of all of this enticement to move away
from the simplicity of the Gospel, to move away from the simplicity
of who the Lord Jesus is and what He's done, is to move away
from His love and to move away from confidence, isn't it? Again
and again he says we know. If you go through I think at
least 17 times he says we know. Christianity is not stumbling
around in the dark. It's actually walking in the
light, verse 7. It's walking in the light, the
light of the gospel. It's walking in that confidence
that he who is the light has come into this world and he is
shone. in the hearts of His people.
And one of the things that we know, and hereby in verse 319,
hereby we know that we are of the truth and shall assure, shall
trust, shall believe, shall have confidence. Our hearts will be
assured. Our hearts will be at peace. Our hearts will rest in faith. What a great, great theme to
be thinking about, as two people come before God to be united
together. What an amazing Gospel we have
laid out before us. What an amazing Lord Jesus, John,
gives us such clear descriptions of. Amazing medicine. What perfect medicine the Gospel
is for sin-sick souls. That God loves, accepts, that
He delights in, that He watches over, that He protects, that
He jealously guards, He everlastingly preserves and He rejoices over
continually His own. And that's the great news of
the Gospel, isn't it? That God has loved people from
eternity. The love of God, it says in Romans
8, at the end of Romans 8, is in Christ Jesus. To talk about
the love of God outside of the Christ Jesus of this scripture
is to not talk about love of God at all, isn't it? Nothing
shall be able to separate us from the love of God. And there
is a place and there is an object that centres all that love of
God, the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord, Romans
8. All of these promises, all of
these blessings, all of them come and flow from a God whose
character is revealed in the Gospel. All of His protection,
all of His love is linked to all of His powers and His wisdom
and His knowledge, all that God possesses. all that God possesses
for His people is in His dear and precious Son. And it's on
the basis of this eternal covenant, that covenant that we read about,
that God had loved the people everlastingly, from everlasting. And then as we read on in that
the glorious chapter in Jeremiah 31, we see that it has impacts
and outworkings in the lives of his people. The eternal covenant
is a covenant that causes things to happen. It caused his son
to come from heaven. It caused his son to be sent.
It caused his son to come with a purpose. It caused his son
to achieve all that he ever set out to achieve. A successful
saviour. A successful redeemer. A successful sacrifice. A covenant sealed and a covenant
affirmed. What a glorious thing it is to
think about our Saviour as a shepherd, the Great Shepherd. And in that
eternal covenant, He took infinite, eternal responsibility for all
that the Father gave Him. took responsibility, took responsibility
for their righteousness, took responsibility for their sin,
took responsibility for their walk in this world. I love what
those words say in marriage ceremonies, isn't it? To have and to hold
from this day forth. To have and to hold. What a great description. Marriage,
as Ephesians 5 reminds us, marriage is a picture of the love of the
Lord Jesus for his bride. That's what the whole purpose
is. That was what the marriage in the Garden of Eden typified
and pictured. It pictured this love, that they
will leave and they will cleave and they will be united as one. A man shall leave his father
and mother, and the two shall be joined unto his wife, and
they too shall become one flesh. And then to make sure we understand
what he's saying, this is a great mystery. But I speak concerning
Christ and the church. Leave and cleave, and they too
shall be one, one flesh. The more we contemplate the love
of God, the more amazing it is. And the more we contemplate the
everlasting love of God, the more we become aware, astonished, at His love. Fancy Him loving
sinners like us. What extraordinary love. See,
it's a love that humbles us, doesn't it? It's a humbling thing
to know that God loves us, loves us and loves us as Deuteronomy
7 says. He just loves us because He loves
us. I love what Deuteronomy 7 says in verses 7 and 8. He just talks
about His love for His people. He says, The Lord did not set
His love upon you, nor choose you because you are more in number
than any people, for you are the fewest of all people, but
because the Lord loved you. He loves, because he loves. God is love. And, verse 8, and
because he would keep the oath which he had sworn unto your
fathers, has the Lord brought you out of the mighty hand, and
redeemed you out of the house of bondmen, and from the hand
of Pharaoh king of Egypt. Again, God's love is an active
love. The vilest sinner out of hell
who lives to feel his need is welcome to the throne of grace,
the Saviour's blood to plead. And so John begins, God's love
has been active in his life. God's love has drawn him to the
Lord Jesus. God's love has drawn him to be
an apostle. God's love has drawn him to love
these people. removed from Jerusalem, up at
Ephesus, there he was with his group of churches under his care.
And he saw them being assailed by false prophets of all different
stripes. We are reading about them in
Galatians and you can read about them in Colossians and other
places. But he has He has these people that he says are beloved. Beloved again and again. He says,
Beloved, believe not every spirit. Beloved, let us love one another. For love is of God, and everyone
that loveth is born of God and knows God. God's love and the
love of God's people for him is particularly focused on him
and is particularly focused on his people. It has an object
and it has a purpose and it has an effect. Verse 8 says, He that
loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love. John describes God as spirit
in John 4.24. God is spirit. And in 1 John
1.5 he says, God is light. God is holiness. God is goodness. God is life. God, and in Him
there is no darkness, no darkness at all. No darkness of sin or
evil or death. You see, love is much more than
one of God's attributes. It's His nature. I love what
Pink says, the better we are acquainted with His love, its
character and fullness and blessedness, the more our hearts will be drawn
out in love to Him. God is love. The cause of His
love in action is entirely within himself. There's nothing in the
recipients that causes him to love them. He loves because he
loves. His love is free. His love is spontaneous. His love is uncaused. His love is sovereign love. What a remarkable witness the
scriptures bear to the eternality of the love of God for His people. Again and again we are reminded
that we are loved, as Jeremiah says, loved everlastingly, loved
eternally, drawn to Him. Ephesians 1 speaks so clearly,
doesn't it, of us. in those amazing opening verses
of Ephesians, according as He has chosen us
in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should
be holy and without blame before Him in love. having predestinated
us under the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to Himself, according
to the good pleasure of His will." Again and again he says, it's
to the praise of the glory of His grace, wherein He has made
us accepted, made us highly favoured in the blood. He has graced us
in the blood. How many spiritual blessings
do the children of God have? Verse 3 says, He has blessed
us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ. God's love, like himself, is
sovereign. God's love, like himself, is eternal. Isn't it remarkable? Remarkable to think, isn't it,
that before the worlds began, God set his love upon the people
in his dear and precious son. Loved by God before the foundation
of the world, loved by God knowing all that would befall us. Knowing
what would happen in the fall, knowing what would happen as
the fall was lived out in our lives, and we came forth from
our mother's womb speaking lies, and we had our fists shoved in
God's face. Romans 3 is such a great description
of us all, isn't it? In verse 9, Paul summarises,
What then are we better? Are we better than they? Are we any better? No, in no
wise have we had before proved that both Jews and Gentiles,
that they are all under sin. As is written, 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, no not one. Their throat is an open sepulcher. With their tongues they have
used deceit. The poison of Asp's is under
their lips. His mouth is full of cursing
and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed
blood. Destruction and misery are in
their ways. And the way of peace they have
not known. There is no fear of God before
their eyes. That's what we were, we weren't
an accurate description. God's description of us. And
yet, we are loved. God loves. Because of who He
is, God loves eternally. God loves. entirely unmoved by
anything in us. Isn't it amazing to think that
God's love is unchanging. His love that he had for his
people in eternity was exactly the same love he had for them
in the fall, was exactly the same love that he had for them
When they came and lived, as we've just read in Romans 3,
it's exactly the same love that he has for them in all of their
sin and rebellion. It's exactly the same love he
has for them when they're converted and brought to faith in the Lord
Jesus. And it's exactly the same love
that he has for them in heaven. What changes when we get to heaven? Our view of things changes. Does
God change? Does God change His love for
us? Isn't it remarkable that God loves His people now exactly
as He loves them in Heaven? So the Gospel is a revealing,
isn't it? in this was manifested the love
of God toward us. The Gospel is a revealing, isn't
it? It's shedding a light. It's God,
the Holy Spirit, shedding a light upon God the Son. And in God the Son we see that
He is all of God and the fullness of deity dwells in Him. And all
of those promises are yes and amen. We see in Him light. And only in the light of who
He is do we actually see anything at all. It's a manifested love. John begins by describing the
fact that this Jesus, this Gospel that they are declaring, this
person, that which was from the beginning, which we have heard,
which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and
our hands have handled, the Word of Life. For the life was manifested,
light was shone upon it, and we saw Him. Only they saw Him. Thousands upon thousands saw
Him, and saw nothing in Him that was attractive at all. But they
saw Him. And when he'd done his great
work, bearing their sins and rising from the dead, he manifested
himself again and he only ever manifested himself to his people. What a remarkable gift of God,
that He not just sent His Son into the world, but He manifested
Him to us. In this, verse 9 of chapter 4,
is manifested the love of God. The love of God toward us. The pronouns matter. manifested
the love of God towards us, it's the beloved who are loved. The beloved are the ones who
have the love of God manifested towards us. Because God sent
his only son, 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. God's love is eternal, it has
no beginning and it has no end. God's love is an anchor for our
souls. Because it has no beginning and
no end, it's unchangeable love. It's manifested love. God's love
is sovereign. His love is infinite. His love
is unchanging. And that last night before he
died, our Lord Jesus took that towel in John 13, And John describes
his act which prefigured his death on the cross. Now before
the feast of Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour was come,
that he should depart out of this world unto the Father, having
loved his own which were in the world, he loved them unto the
end. He loved them finally. He loved them to completion. He loved them to perfection. He loved them because He had
taken away their sins. God's love is a holy love. It's a pure love. God loves not
on the basis of pretending that there is something there that's
not there. He loves on the basis that sin
has really been taken away and holiness has really been imparted. God's love is a gracious love. God's love comes to sinners like
us. because God foreknew us. He loved us from eternity. What shall we say then? If God
is for us, who can be against us? He that spared not his own
son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with
him also freely give us all things? Who shall lay anything to the
charge of God's elect? It is God that justifies. Who
is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather
it is risen again. Who is even at the right hand
of God, who also maketh intercession for us? Who shall separate us
from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress,
or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril assault.
As it is written, for thy sake we are killed all day long. We
are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Nay, in all these
things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. For I am persuaded that neither
death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor power,
nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth,
nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the
love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." It flows from
the throne of grace because God is love. That's its source, isn't
it? The source of the love of God
is His very character, His very being. Spiritual life, spiritual life
that loves God and loves His people is life that begins from
above and life that is sustained from above. Our love for God
must have its source in heaven itself. It must, those streams,
those living waters that flow, must flow from the throne of
grace to us. Is that not the case with you,
brothers and sisters, that life in this world is a struggle in
so many ways, but it's a struggle that's sustained, and faith is
sustained by God. The streams have their source
in Him, this manifested love of God. God's children are drawn
by the love of God, drawn by the Spirit of God, to go to Calvary
again and again and again. For God so loved the world, He
so loved the world that He sent His one and only Son. Christ
didn't die to make God love us. But he came, he came because
of the triune God's love for all his elect. And the essential
gifts of divine love are spiritual gifts, not temporal gifts. A father has loved his children
as he loves his dear and precious son. And what was his son's life
in this world like? He had no place to lay his head. The blessings that John is talking
about here are the blessings that flow from a God of love
in the midst of trials. John's life, like the rest of
the apostles' life, was not a life that was full of temporal blessings. to prove the love of God. In
fact, His love was proved to them by sustaining them in the
midst of trial and trouble. God's love, God's love for His
people is a spiritual love for them and it's always in Christ
Jesus. I love what the Shulamites said.
as she was caused to describe the Beloved. She described Him
from head to foot in all the beauty that she could muster
and then she summarized it by saying, He's all together lovely. See His love has a source. His love as a means, God sent
His Son, not that we loved Him, but He loved us. God's love is
a manifest love. God's love is a holy love. He sent His Son to be the propitiation,
the wrath-absorbing, justice-satisfying sacrifice before God. And so the Shulamite can say,
as God's people can say, with exactly the same assurance. She
can say, I am black, I black, nothing in me, nothing in me
to attract His love, nothing I have done, nothing I ever will
do to attract His love. She can say that. That's what
I am. Nothing but seeing. I'm black. And she can say with
exactly the same assurance, exactly the same confidence, I am comely. I am beautiful. Nothing changes,
she said, brothers and sisters. The love of God is unchangeable
because the love of God is in Christ Jesus. The love of God
is established forever for His people. It's manifest in its
effects in us. It has remarkable effects, isn't
it? John says, we know, we know,
we know. Again and again he says, we know.
We have known that we have passed from death to life. We have known. We know that we have believed. We know that God has given us
this record, this testimony in the Gospel. Whatever is born of God, This is the victory that overcomes
the world, the world of our sin, the world of our flesh, the world
of its enmity against God, the world of its false teachers.
How do we overcome? We overcome even our faith, 1
John 5 verse 4. that whosoever is born of God
sinneth not, but he that is forgotten of God keepeth himself, and the
wicked one touches him not." And we know that we are of God
and the whole world lies in wickedness. And we know that the Son of God
has come and has given us an understanding that we may know
Him that is true. We may know Him that is true
and coming to know Him that is true we find these remarkable
things at the end of this letter. We know Him that is true and
we are in Him that is true, even His Son Jesus Christ. This is
the true God and eternal life. Faith. He that believes. See John is encouraging these
people, you have heard the gospel, the false teachers have come.
You've heard the message of who the Lord Jesus is and what He
did on the cross, and why He came and what He did in eternity,
and how He fulfilled all of those covenant promises, and He came
because of the love of God, and you have believed. He encourages faith in the midst
of the trials of life, in the midst of the enmity, in the midst
of the struggles with our flesh, the sin that rises up, the enticements
of the world, in the midst of all the false teachers and all
of their seductive, seducing spirits. In verse 10 of chapter
5 he says, He that believeth on the Son of God has the witness
in himself. Faith. Faith. Faith that rests in who he is. Faith that rests in what he's
done. Faith that rests in his ability
to take his people through these storms, to hold them close to
his heart and to carry them. He believes and he has a witness
in himself. We know and we are sure that
God's love brings his people, and I'll close here, brings his
people to a place where they see that they are one with him. They dwell in him and he dwells
in them. And God upholds them with his
hand. Hold me up. says the Samas, and
I shall be safe. God holds them, God perseveres
with them, God brings them assurance. And God brings them to that place
where in verse 17, herein is our love made perfect. The love that God has been the
source of the life that God protects and preserves. Herein is our
love made perfect. Here it comes to completion that
we may have boldness in the day of judgement." Confidence that
means. Confidence to come before an
almighty and holy God. Sitting on His judgment seat,
we have confidence, we have boldness in that day, because we come
not in anything that we have ever done ourselves, but we come
because of who His dear and precious Son is and what His Son has done. The vilest sinner out of hell
who lives to feel His need is welcomed to the throne of grace,
the Saviour's blood to please. We have boldness. What a remarkable
thing to go through this life. Go through this life knowing
that you will die and knowing you will face God and knowing
that that day is a day of joy, a day of confidence, a day of
assurance, a day of peace, a day of glory, because Because as He is, as He is right
now, our Saviour is right now, as He is, so are we in this world. perfectly united to Him, perfectly
at peace with Him, perfectly resting by faith in Him. May God grant that to us and
to our friends.