Take your Bibles and turn with
me back to 1 John chapter 4. 1 John chapter 4. We'll be looking at verses 7 through
11 this morning. The title of the message is, The
God of Love and the Love of God. The God of love. and the love
of God. The Scripture says, let's read
this together, Beloved, let us love one another, for love is
of God. And everyone that loveth is born
of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not
God, for God is love. The God of love. God is love. I love these songs that we sing
concerning God's love. One of my favorite is how deep
the Father's love for us, how vast beyond all measure that
he would give his only Son to make a wretch his treasure. The love of God is greater far
than tongue of man can ever tell. It goes beyond the highest hill
and reaches to the lowest hell. Could we with ink the ocean fill,
and were the skies of parchment made? Were every stalk on earth
a quill, and every man a scribe by trade? To write the love of
God above would drain the ocean dry, nor could the scroll contain
the whole, though stretched from sky to sky." How deep is the
love of God. Friends, the love of God is as
deep as God Himself. God is love. God is love. The attribute of
God's love is as infinite, immutable, and omnipotent as all of His
other attributes. This is because God is the only
eternal being. He is the only infinite being. He is the only one without creation,
without beginning and without end. And whatever God is, God has
always been and God will always be. He is love. He is love. Paul calls it in 2 Corinthians,
calls the Lord in 2 Corinthians 13, 14, the God of love. It's
the same thing. He is the God of love. The God
of all love. Because He is love. Because He
is love. I can't begin to understand love. I just, I see love only through
the cross. Because I know this, my love
is shallow. My love is not deep. It's not
very deep. And my love seems to change with
the circumstance. Change with the tide. And it's not to be trusted. We can love somebody today and
then all of a sudden our love can flip off and flip on. That's
not love. That's not love. God is love. He is the very essence
of all love. If I can love, it is because
God has given me that love. Just like the moon has no light
of its own, it just reflects the light of the sun. You see,
I just reflect the love of God. That's all His saints do. We
reflect His love. And this is how I am able to
love you. And how you are able to love
me. And how we are able to love God is because God is love. He is love. But let us be clear. This attribute of love does not and cannot interfere
with any of other of God's attributes. When we say God is love, our
little finite minds can't fathom that God is love and God is justice. God is mercy and yet God is holy. You see, we're like an either
or. Well, if He is love, isn't that
all He is? No. He is just as much holy as he
is love. He's just as much just as he
is love. Does it conflict with any of
the other attributes of God? God is righteousness. God is
holiness. God is justice. God is mercy. And none of these attributes
can or will conflict with the other. But yet, because man is
so depraved by nature, because we are born so wickedly vile
and lack understanding of God, we cannot fathom who God is. And man by nature will only see
a God of his own making. He cannot know God. No man can
know God by his own intellect or understanding. He will not yield to a God that
he cannot know. If you are wondering why your
friends and your family do not love God or do not worship God
as God, it's because they do not know Him. They do not know
Him. How do you know that? Do they
hear us? Do they hear the gospel we preach?
Or are they listening to Antichrist? Because there's no other gospel. There is one gospel. Only one. Salvation that is by grace through
faith in Christ alone. And so because man does not know
God, he makes God what he does know. What does man know? Man only knows himself. What knoweth a man save the spirit
that is within a man? We can only know what we can
understand, what we can perceive. And therefore, man makes a god
of his own image, of his own image. Go to Psalm chapter 50. Flip over there and see this.
Psalm chapter 50 and verse 21. God says, these things hast thou
done. Talking about, he said, you saw
the thief and you consented with him. You saw the adulterer and
you took part in that, but you even cursed your own family.
You cursed your own brothers and sisters, mother. He said,
these things you've done, these sins you've done, not kept silent.
Thou thoughtest that I was altogether such in one, as thyself, but
I will reprove thee and set them in order before thine eyes. Thou thoughtest that I was altogether
like you." God says, I am nothing like you. I am altogether by
myself in my own category. God's not like us and His love
is not like our love. His grace is not like our grace. His forgiveness is not like our
forgiveness. His justice is not like our justice. I'll tell you what, we see somebody
steal. And he steals because his family's
starving. His family's hungry. And so he
steals. And what do we do? We say, well,
hey, that could be excused. You see, God doesn't excuse anything
that's sin. He said, you saw the thief and
you consented with him. I'm not like that. I'm just. God is holy. God is righteous. Because of our depravity, we
cannot see how God can love and yet justify the ungodly. We do
not, in a carnal sense, no one can understand how it is that
God can be both holy, righteous, just, and still pardon iniquity
and love. How can He do these things? How
is it that God can show mercy and by no means clear the guilty?
Isn't that what He said? Isn't that how He revealed Himself
to Moses? He said, keeping mercy for thousands. Forgiving iniquity and transgression
and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty." Even as a child, when that was
read to me, it was confusing. How in the world is He going
to forgive these things and not clear the guilty? If they're
guilty, how is He going to forgive them and remain just? How is
that possible? There's no way for us to imagine
it. There's no way for us to come up with it. We can't understand
it. So then, God's image, God's person, we
by nature see it in conflict. But in truth, there is no conflict. There is no conflict in God like
there is in ourselves. I'll tell you, I conflict with
myself daily. Have you ever argued with yourself?
I do. I argue with myself all the time.
I hope I don't make it vocal, but I know this, we have conflicting
interests concerning love and justice, love and being holy
and righteous, and yet we have conflicting things about that
in our nature. We can't understand that. The
God of this world, he's like that. The God of this world is
like that. You see, the God of this world
loves all men without exception, and yet he's conflicted. The
God of this world is so conflicted. He loves everybody, realizes
that they need a Savior, sends His only Son to die for all their
sins, and yet He cannot save them unless they allow it, unless
they exercise their will to make the blood of His Son effectual The gods of this world, their
love is worthless love. They're like the man who marries
a wife and has children and then leaves. And all the while, he
says, oh, I love my wife and children. Oh, how I love them. Why are you over here and your
wife and children in some other part of the country? And you
don't take care of them. How is that love? How can God
love all men without exception and not save all men without
exception? You see, that God, His love is
worthless. And the blood of Christ is no
value because it absolutely saves no one from their sins. Their Christ is of no value. If He died for all of the sins
of all men, then truly, He is a failure. Or God is unjust,
one of the two. If God is just, how can He demand
twice payment? He can't. He can't demand it
of His Son and then demand it of the sinner that His Son died
for. If this were true, then some
of those that God loved and Christ died for would be in hell. That's
blasphemy. That's utter blasphemy. You see, their God's love is
not real because their God is not real. Their Christ's blood
is not effectual because their Christ is not real. They thought Him to be like themselves. And so they made up this God. They made up a God that has conflict
within Himself. But our God, our God who is love,
has no conflict. No conflict. Flip over to Psalm 115, verse
1. The psalmist says, Not unto us,
O Lord, not unto us, but into thy name give glory, for thy
mercy and for thy truth's sake. Wherefore should the heathen
say, Where is now their God? But our God is in the heavens.
He hath done whatsoever he hath pleased." You want to know my
God? That's my God. He hath done whatsoever
he hath pleased. And friends, God has been pleased
to love a people. He has been pleased to love a
people. And the saints of God say not
unto us, not unto us, but unto thy name give glory. For what? Thy mercy and thy truth. What's the truth? The truth is we are guilty sinners. The truth is we have no righteousness
of our own. The truth is we deserve hell. That's the truth. Glory be to
God's name for the truth. But praise God for His mercy.
Praise God for His mercy. How then are these two reconciled
together? only in the person, the person
of Jesus Christ. That's how truth and justice
and mercy and love could meet together. It is only in the beloved
Son of Jesus Christ. People say, How can your God
be a God of love? How can your God love sinners
when all this bad stuff's happening? You say God loves you. Well,
what about all the evil stuff that happens to you? How come the world is so unjust? Where's your God? I don't know
where your God is, but my God's doing it all. My God sits on
the throne of heaven and He does whatsoever He pleases. Our God is in the heavens and
He's done from eternity what He's pleased to do. And that
is to save everyone who He set His love on. Everyone that God
set His love on in eternity, He was pleased to save them. He was pleased to love them. And His love, the God who is
love, His love is eternal and immutable. It's unchangeable.
It doesn't change with the times. How many people try to get you
to change with the times? You need to be up on things.
Preaching, that's outdated. I've actually heard people say
that. Preaching is outdated. You've got to get something else.
Oh, no. Preaching is not outdated because
my father is never outdated. And praise God, my Father's love
is never outdated. It's the same as it was in eternity. The Father says, I have loved
thee with an everlasting love. An everlasting love. And His love wherewith He loved
us is always unto salvation. There is not one that God has
loved that He will not save. Not one. Not one. You see, there's no conflict
with God. Whoever God loves, He saves. Beloved, we are bound to give
thanks to God always for you. Beloved of the Lord, because
God hath chosen you from the beginning to What? Salvation. Through sanctification of the
Spirit and belief of the truth. You see, right there's the whole
package. Election. Redemption. Calling. The new birth. It's all there. The world says, cursed is the
Father that chooses. I don't. Praise God that He has chosen
a people. Otherwise, there would have been
none of us. None of us would have been chosen. None of us
would have been saved. The truth is plainly revealed
to us in this Scripture. For Jacob have I loved, but Esau
have I hated. God loved Jacob and hated Esau
even before they did anything. Will you declare God to be unjust
for doing that? Absolutely not. Because I deserve
to be hated. I didn't deserve to be loved. Praise God He did love. And praise
God He is love. In other words, God loves me
with His whole self. If God is love and He loves me,
He loves me with His whole self. I can't begin to understand that. There's not one part of God that's
angry with me. God loves me even as He loves
His only Son. If God spared not His Son, but
delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him freely
give us all things? All things. Friends, the truth is God is
absolutely sovereign in His mercy. And yet lost men think too highly
of themselves as deserving God's love. There is none good, no, not one. Not one of Adam's race escaped
death. And friends, only because of
God's love is there life given to any one of us. So then remains the question,
how then can this love and mercy This love, eternal love, show mercy to a sinner. Look at verse 9 of your text
in 1 John chapter 4. Verse 8 says, He that loveth
not knoweth not God, for God is love. In this was manifest
the love of God toward us. Because that God sent his only
begotten son into the world that we might live through him. The word that best describes
salvation is substitution. Substitution. The righteous taking the place
of the guilty. Therefore, that excludes every
one of us. That excludes everyone born of
Adam's race because none of us are righteous. None of us are
righteous. All have sinned and come short
of the glory of God. Why must it be a righteous man
that substitutes himself? Why must it be a righteous man
that offers himself to God for the sins of the guilty? Well, because he has no sin of
his own to pay for. You see, if I even possibly could
pay for my sins, I couldn't pay for your sins, too. I'm not a
righteous man. I can't pay for my own. How can
I help you? And you can't help me. Therefore, God in love sent
the only righteous man to be our substitute. To be our substitute. There is
only one born of the woman seed. There is only one in history
that was born righteous without sin. And that is Jesus Christ,
the Son of God and the Son of Man. The sinless, eternal Son of God
condescended to be a man who gets tired and weary. Do you like that? Do you like
to be weary and struggle? I don't. The other day I was
studying. It was so hard. My eyes began
to cross and the words began to come in front of me and I
couldn't read. I couldn't study. I couldn't
pray. I couldn't do anything. I was
so frustrated. For Christ Jesus to come and
to suffer such things as this flesh, Scripture says he learned obedience
by the things he suffered. But this was not for himself.
He didn't suffer for himself. He suffered for you. He suffered the ridicule and
persecution of men for you. Because he loved you. Because
he loved you. He gave himself for you. that through Him you might live. Live. By His perfect obedience, friends,
Jesus has accomplished our righteousness. And by His death, He has accomplished
satisfaction for God's justice. Can you not see it now? Can you
not behold the cross and see how it is that God can be just
and justify the ungodly? It is because God imputed our
sins to Christ and by no means cleared the guilty. He was made to bear our guilt. And God's justice reigned down
on Him. This is the only way that God could be just and still
justify wicked people like us. It's the only way. And on the cross is the greatest
display of love because He did not have to. He wanted to. Have you ever wanted to die for
somebody? No. We say we would. It's easy to
say, isn't it? But friends, truly, our life
is not that precious. Because if I died for somebody,
I'd do nothing for them. But Jesus said, I will die so
that you might live because I love you. And so successful was He that
God set a man on the throne where He is now ruling and reigning
in love for us, doing all things for our good. Nothing for our hurt. Nothing
for our hurt. Everything for our good. He sits
on the throne reigning. And He is now doing all things according to the counsel of His
own will. And friends, He is bringing many
sons to glory. He will call out His elect the
same way He called us by His gospel of love. It's not the law that constrains
us, but the love of Christ constraineth us. This is why we don't have a bylaw
as thick as this Bible, That doesn't make people come and
worship. That doesn't do anything. If you are made to come by law,
you come by love. You come because He loved you.
Why do you still believe? The love of Christ constrains
me to believe. Trust and rest in Him alone. His love is eternal. He manifested
at the cross and he gave it to me in time. Praise God for his
love. The cross is the true manifestation
of God's love, of his immutable justice and effectual grace for his saints. His love is real because He is love. His love is known to me because
He showed it to me by His Son. Is there any other proof we need
but the cross? Do you require any other evidence
for the love of God than to kill His own Son for
us. I need no other argument. I need
no other plea. Only that Christ died for me.
That's it. He's all my hope. I'm so thankful
He loves me. And friends, because of that
love, I love you. And because of that love, you
love me. Praise God for his love. Though mine changes, his never
changes. It's the same yesterday, today,
and forever. Amen.