We thank God that we can know
that everything that happens in the life of a believer is
ordained and caused by God and worked together with all other
things by God for our good. And this doesn't mean we don't
cry when it's time to cry or we don't laugh when it's time
to laugh or just sit there like a bump on a log when it's time
for that. We just live our lives, but we live our lives knowing
this. Our God is in control. And nothing bad has ever happened
to any of the people of God. Ever. Painful? Yes. Bad? No. All right. Extra sermon
for this morning. If God will enable me This morning,
by the way, you can turn your Bibles to John chapter 16. John
16, that's where we'll begin. But if the Lord will enable me,
I would like to finish this year of preaching to you by glorifying
God for his great love for us. Were it not that the religious
world has diminished his love to such a degree, we would be
able to approach a subject like this with nothing but positive
to say to people. But just as the Jews, when they
returned from Babylon, just as the Jews had to clear away the
rubble before they could rebuild Jerusalem's wall, So it is that
when we try to preach something wonderful from the scriptures,
quite often the first thing we must do is remove all the rubble
that's in the way. You see, you can speak of the
love of God. You can get in a pulpit and say,
I'd like to talk about the love of God. And everybody thinks,
well, that's just wonderful. And you can say some things about
the love of God. And yet the religious world has
so corrupted what the love of God means that they aren't understanding
what you're saying because they define that love differently
than the scriptures define that love. One of the most important
things, at least from my perspective as a preacher, one of the most
important things that a preacher must do is define his terms,
especially if he's preaching in a religious age, a religious
nation, such as ours is, and preaching to a congregation in
which most of them assume that they are believers. Our enemy is very subtle. He
deceived our first mother. And he deceived her when she
had no sin. She had a brain that worked perfectly. We're easy prey for deception. How in the world did he ever
deceive Eve? But if he can deceive her, we are certainly no match
for him. And he deceives much of the world. Much of the world that professes
to be Christian, he deceives them by letting preachers use
the words of scriptures, but he has twisted the meaning of
those words such that when people hear them, they have the wrong
thoughts. They don't understand it. Now,
I once watched a movie about Martin Luther, and I think it
was just called Luther. It was 10 or 12 years ago. Good movie.
And in one scene, Luther's mentor finds him on the floor in his
room, weeping and in agony of soul. And when that man asked
Luther what it is he seeks, Luther's reply was, I just want to know
that God loves me. Now, I do not know if that scene
in that movie corresponds to any particular event in Luther's
life, or did they do, as they often do when they're trying
to present historical characters, take several events from their
life and cram them all into one scene? I don't know. It doesn't
matter. Because the point I want to make is that
scene taught more about the love of God than crosses most pulpits
in a lifetime. I'm not saying this to be judgmental,
it's an observation. When Luther said, I just want
to know that God loves me, what lies under that statement, or
makes that statement a worthy statement to be made, is a truth that most of the Christian
world, at least as near as I can perceive it, they don't understand.
And it's this, God's love means something. God's love means something. It means something. if God loves
you. Luther evidently understood this,
if God loves me, all is well. God's love is the source of all
eternal goodness, and wherever God's love is found, the result
is eternal goodness. None have ever received anything
of eternal value apart from being loved by God, and none, or excuse
me, and no one loved by God has ever failed to receive the fullness
of divine eternal blessings. Now if that's not true, what
Luther said is utterly meaningless. If God's love It does not ensure
that the objects of his love receive all eternal blessings. What use is it? What good does God's love bring? The religious world has cheapened
God's love. We know that they've cheapened
it because they often speak of it without awe. They are not stunned by the thought
that God loves people. In fact, they are more stunned
if you dare say that there are some people whom God does not
love. Jacob have I loved, Esau have
I hated. And they have such a hard time
with Esau have I hated. I have no trouble with that at
all. I understand perfectly why God hated Esau. Esau hated God. What I don't understand and what
shocks me is the first part. Jacob have I loved. That's the point we ought to
stumble over. That's the point that ought to make us stop right
there and, what? That scoundrel? That cheat, that thief, that
liar? God loved him. I can understand
that. And I know this, anyone who's
ever been saved by God, has been the object of his love and he
can't understand why. It's a wonderful thing and we
believe it to be so, he loves us, but we cannot find a reason
in us why he would love us. The wonder of the love of God You don't hear it spoken of in
such a way that people are stunned by it. It's the opening salvo in what
most churches call gospel preaching. God loves you. They take it as
a given. This is a point we don't have
to prove from the scriptures. They tell people that God loves
them as though there could be no doubt of it, nor any reason
that he would not love them. The universal love of God is
declared with such regularity that the thought that God might
not love a person never enters that person's mind. It entered Martin Luther's mind.
He could find no reason for God to love him, and it terrified
him. So they say, I just want to know
that God loves me, because if God loves me, all is well. While supposedly seeking to glorify
God by declaring that he loves every individual, what they actually
do is make his love a useless thing. They turn it into a trivial
matter, nothing more than bait in their so-called gospel preaching. It's a trivial matter that one
may attend at one's pleasure. After all, it's always true. His love is always present and
flows equally to all. Oh, I can just take advantage
of it when I want to. You say it wouldn't produce that
in someone. It does. It does. Went to my cousin's church, this
was back when I was in high school. They had these so-called spring
revival meetings. And so you're talking the spring
of 1973. And these two young boys came, and they had announced,
now this was on Monday, they announced they were gonna get
saved on Friday. And so they let them lead the
singing all week long. And come Friday night, they let
a few songs, said, okay, we're gonna get saved now. Really? How do you know that God will
save you? How do you know that he ever
intended to or even wants to? Well, people believe that way
and they might not be so obvious about it as those two young boys
were, They've been told that God is just standing there and
has their whole lives begging and begging and begging them to accept him, to love him, to
receive his salvation. Well, if that's the way it is,
I'll just, sooner or later I'll get around to it. That doesn't honor God's love.
Furthermore, they preach up the universal love of God. When they
do this, they make God appear desperate, casting his love about
carelessly in the hope that somebody will love him back. Now, if anyone
had watched me pursue Bonnie in my final year of college,
they would likely describe my pursuit of her as desperate.
And I suppose, in some sense, my pursuit of her was desperate. They'd be right. But whatever
desperation I may have shown was not as humiliating as the
sort of desperation they ascribed to God by declaring his universal
love. I never did set up a wedding
and pay all the costs and send out an invitation that says on
such and such a day there will be a wedding at such and such
a place. The groom is Joe Terrell. The bride is going to be whoever
shows up. You see, that's how the universal
or the doctrine of the universal love of God portrays God. I was
not desperate for love. I was not even desperate for
a wife. I was desperate for Bonnie to
love me and agree to be my wife. That's, if there's any desperation
in my pursuit, it was over that. I wasn't looking for just anybody. When I came to school that year,
I didn't love any of the women until I saw Bonnie. And once I saw her, there were
no other women at Cedarville College. I didn't love any of them. I liked them okay. I loved them
as human to human, but I didn't spend one second pursuing them. I can only imagine how things
would have turned out differently If when I asked Bonnie to marry
me, she had asked in return, do you love me? And I had respond,
oh yes, I love you, Bonnie. In fact, I love all women. If I had said that, I would not
be telling you this story today. My love for her meant something. It meant that I would do whatever
I could to win her love for me. But that love was not for anyone
else. And it never has been since. And the love of God is an eternal
thing. And God, of course, has no desperation.
Desperation comes from the word despair, and He's never despaired.
of the success of his purpose. But in the same way, that because
of the love that I had for Bonnie, I was moved to do everything
in my power to make her my wife. God, who has all power, loves
his people, and he has and will do everything within his power
to bring about the salvation of the objects of his love. The
love of God means something. When we say that God does not
love all men, We're all people. People misunderstand us, what
we mean by that. We simply mean that his love,
his saving covenant love, is personal and focused. We do not
mean that he takes pleasure in the death of the wicked. He said
he doesn't. It does not mean that he will
forever take satisfaction in the suffering of the unbelieving.
It simply means that he does not love all people the same
way he loves his people. I suppose you could say there's
something in the general love of God in the fact that he sends
rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. He gives times of
pleasure. enjoyment, even to those that
don't believe him. But you know, the Bible, if it
talks about that love at all, it certainly doesn't talk about
it much. Why? It doesn't accomplish anything. But that love which is bound
up in the gospel of Jesus Christ is not some general will of God
in which he is trying to save back all of those that he lost
in the fall. As though he's, by his love,
trying to reclaim a world that got out of his control. God's love is as powerful as
God. It is as successful in the salvation
of his people as his word was successful in the creation of
this universe. There's nothing beyond his ability,
nothing beyond his authority. We love our children. And because
we love them, we do everything in our power to raise them to
be healthy, to be wise. We want them to not get sick. And yet we're limited in what
we can do. No matter how much we love our
children, all our efforts in their behalf may come to nothing. That's not the way it is with
God's love. Our love may accomplish nothing because we don't have
any power over the hearts of other people. We may love our children deeply,
but still not have the wisdom to know exactly what it is they
need. God suffers no such deficiency. The preaching of the universal
love of God has dishonored God by giving to many skeptics and
outright atheists some ammunition with which to assail the truth
of God. Here's things I've heard from
them. How can there be a loving God with so much suffering in
the world? Don't tell me that God is good and loving when there
are children dying of cancer. I mean, what do you answer? That's why, and believe me, I
don't hold conversations with them. I read what they post in
comments and things like that. But I'd like to address a group
of them one time and say, you know, I don't believe in the
same God you don't believe in. That probably surprised them.
I don't believe in a God that loves everybody. Because if I did, I would be
asking the same questions you're asking. If he loves everybody,
why is everything such a mess? You know what we do preach in
the gospel that's universal? The absolute universal justice
of God. Now that we can preach universally.
Every man, every woman, every person ever conceived since Adam
and Eve, every one of them will receive perfect justice from
God. But nowhere in the scriptures
does it say everyone in the world receives God's love. Well, the
Bible says, God so loved the world. Not going to get in a
big language lesson, but the word world does not always mean
everyone in it. You can love the world and not
love everybody in it. recorded those words of the Lord's,
and he said something similar in the book of 1 John, when he
talked about Christ being the propitiation, not for our sins
alone, but for the sins of the whole world. But what he's talking
about there is not everybody in it. He's just saying it's
not just Jews. That's the point he was making.
He has a people from every kindred, tribe, tongue, and nation. But his love is not upon every
individual. There would be nothing wrong
with saying that in the days of Noah, God saved the world
by saving Noah. Because if he hadn't saved Noah,
there would be no humanity. He saved humanity by saving Noah. So when we say that God's love,
His gracious purpose, all those things surrounding His love,
if all those things are universal and equal for everyone, the skeptic
and the atheist has got ammunition. What kind of God is it that would
love a man and send him to hell? What kind of God would it be
that had all power and authority and claimed he loved a person,
but then just stand by and let that person perish? What would
that say of the love of God? It would say it's worthless.
It means nothing. And that brings us to our next
point. The doctrine of the universal love of God dishonors God, for
it makes his love useless. Brother Rolf Barnard said, if
the love of God is equally upon all men, then what does the love
of God have to do with whether or not I am saved? Look at two
scenes. In one, we see a man hanging
himself. And after some time, his body
is decaying. And others take him down, and
they throw him in a grave. And when he falls headlong into
the grave, his body is already so rotten it pops open. In another scene, we see a man
standing boldly before a large crowd, preaching to them of Christ. As you consider the great difference
between these two men, know that every last bit of the difference
arose from the love of God. It was the love of God that put
Peter in the temple on the day of Pentecost, declaring for the
first time in all history the full-blown gospel of Christ. But it was the lack of love that
left Judas to swing from a tree. God didn't stop Judas. God didn't forgive Judas. God didn't love Judas. Because
if he loved Judas, he would have stopped him. It's not as though we wish that
God loved even less people so we could feel even more special,
nor is it that we glory in the limited scope of his love. That's
not what we're glorying. Here's what we glory in. Here's
what we boast about, that he loved any of us. And we rejoice
that his love is the assurance of their salvation. That's why Martin Luther said,
I just want to know that God loves me. Because he understood
love. And he knew that if God loved
him, God would save him. Now, in John chapter 16, verse
27, our Lord says, no, the Father himself loves you because you
have loved me and have believed that I came from God. Now, would you turn quickly over
to 1 John chapter 4, verse 16. First John chapter 4 verse 16,
and so we know and we rely on the love God has for us. Now you think about what John's
just said there. We know it and we rely on it. Now how can you rely on God's
love? If God's love is equally upon
all, but the greater part of humanity ends up forever lost. If his love didn't save them,
why can we rely on his love to save us? But we can rely on it. Listen to our Lord's words. We
will repeat them from John 16. The Father himself loves you.
Now think of this, when did our Lord say this? This was the night
that Judas betrayed him. He's gathered with the disciples,
the next morning he will be crucified. And it's on that night that he
says, the Father himself loves you. But there's something that's
happened before our Lord ever said that to his disciples. Judas
has already been sent away. This word wasn't for Judas. He'd already said to Judas, go
and do what you've planned. Be quick about it. He sent him
away to do and fulfill his destiny. And he sent him away. because
he had a message for the remaining 11 that did not apply to Judas. Why did our Lord say this after Judas was sent away? Well,
imagine what would happen if he had said it while Judas was
there. Imagine this conversation between Peter and John sometime
after our Lord had gone to glory. Peter's in prison, and John has
gone to visit him. Peter looks very dejected. His
spirit is somewhat broken and he faces death for the testimony
of Christ. And as he thinks on this, he
begins to wonder if he is really among the saved. John encourages
him by saying, Brother Peter, don't you remember how our Lord
told us that the Father himself loves us? Isn't that a wonderful
encouragement for you right now? Peter responds, Brother John,
I do recall our Lord telling us that on the night he was betrayed
by Judas. And I recall how my heart leapt
within me when I heard it. But now I recall that Judas was
with us in the room when the Lord said that. So the Father loved Judas as
well as he loved me. And you see how things turned
out for Judas. As I sit here in this cell, all
I can think of is that on the same night that Judas betrayed
the Lord, I denied him three times. And John, you and all
the rest, you forsook him and fled. If the father loved Judas
the same way he loves me, how can I have any confidence that
things will turn out differently for me than they turned out for
him? And brethren, therein lies the
importance, the very nut of the matter. is why we hold the line on this
point and don't consider it to be a theological trivia. The love of God means something.
The love of God accomplishes something. And to say that it's
universal makes it useless and powerless. And if he loves everybody
else the way that he loves us, who rely upon his love, then we're leaning and relying
upon something that most of the time doesn't work. How do we know that the love
of God is particular and focused? Several ways, and I've got them
written here, but we're gonna be out of time. I'm just gonna
tell you one. The love of God and the kind
of love associated with God, Paul describes it in 1 Corinthians
13. It's the kind of love we should
have for one another, and we do, but we never have it in the
level that God has it. But Paul describes it, and one
of the characteristics of love is this. never fails. Love never fails. There is no love in hell. Do
you think that God loves the people who are there? Does he
love the devil and all his followers? Is God for eternity going to
be one experiencing unrequited love because he loves all those
people, but at the same time, he's visiting his eternal wrath
on them? That doesn't make any sense. There's no love of God
in hell. God's there, but the love of
God is not. Now, if love never fails, and God
does not love the people who are in hell, What does that say
about God's love for them? It never existed. He didn't change
and quit loving them. And no God of love would ever
visit his wrath on the object of his love. Now let me back
up and qualify that. He did that one time. One time. And because he did it that one
time, he can justly and righteously express his love toward us who
deserve to be in hell with the rest of humanity, unloved, uncared
for. How can I know if God loves me?
Well, let me ask you some questions. If the love of God is tied to
all the blessings of God, How can I know if God loves me? That's
a pretty important issue. Martin Luther was asking a good
question. I just want to know God loves
me. Well, how can I know? Well, do you know and rely upon
the love of God? Everyone God loves knows that love and relies on
it. Guilt. Well, that's our experience,
isn't it? I don't care how good we are. We are good enough, not
for our own conscience. And when the accuser of the brethren
accuses us in our conscience, on what can we rely? We can rely on this. God loves
us with an everlasting love. I like to use the word everlasting.
When you think about something lasting, that means it endures
abuse. If you get a new pair of boots,
all those will last a long time. Well, why do they say it'll last
a long time? Well, boots get a lot of abuse, don't they? And
some of them aren't very good, and they fall apart pretty quick.
Good boots, they put up with a lot of abuse. You walk across
gravel, you walk to here and there, and they don't fall apart. God's love is everlasting. It endures despite all our abuse
against it. Oh, think on that and rejoice.
You cannot wear out the love of God. You can't use it up. People can use up our love, can't
they? At least for a time. We just, I've had it. God never
says that. Never. We can rely on his love. We can
rest ourselves upon it with the full weight of all our sin. And it won't break. How can I know if God loves me?
Well, do you love God? It is written, 1 John 4, 19,
we love him because he first loved us. Everybody God loves eventually
loves him back. His love's that powerful. It
wins the heart of everyone it's aimed at. How can I know if God loves me?
Well, do you love the Lord Jesus and believe he came from God?
The Lord told there in John 16, 27, the father himself loves
you because you love me and believe I came from God. Now that sounds
like the Lord is saying that God's love to them was a response
to their love for the Lord Jesus. No, that's not what he's saying
at all. Translation is difficult because
there aren't always words that exactly match between two languages. And words have so many different
uses. Even if they have only one definition,
people use them in different ways. But let me paraphrase what
the Lord is saying. The Father himself loves you. And I can say that with authority. because you love me and you believe
I came from God. And no one would love me or believe
I came from God if God didn't love them. Their love for the
Lord Jesus and their faith in Christ, weak as it was, it's
not the cause of God's love to them, it's the proof of it. So
much so, Paul said, there's a curse on everyone who does not love
the Lord Jesus Christ. Do you love Christ? You might say, I don't feel comfortable
answering that. You know, Peter didn't either.
Remember after our Lord raised from the dead on one of the occasions
when they meet with all the disciples, he takes Peter aside and he says,
Peter, do you love me? Yeah, well, feed my sheep. They walk along a little farther.
Peter, do you love me? And I know what's going through
Peter's mind. He feels like an utter abject failure. He thinks he must be a huge disappointment
to the Lord Jesus. But Peter can't deny that he
loved her. And he said, yes, I do. Feed my lambs. And then
a third time, Peter, do you love me? And it is written that it grieved
Peter that the Lord asked him three times, why? That was how many times Peter
denied him. Our Lord's handling of the Apostle
Peter and his denial of Christ was difficult for Peter. But it worked something wondrous
in him. And that third time, he said,
Peter, do you love me? You can see Peter. He says, Lord,
you know all things. And you know that I love you. Yes, I denied you. I abandoned you. I pretended I didn't even know
who you were. But I love you. You see, the Lord Jesus knew
that Peter loved him. It was Peter that didn't know. And the Lord says, feed my lambs. And that was the end of it. Do you love the Lord Jesus? Have you been dragged to Christ?
Our Lord Jesus says, no man can come to the Father except my
Father draw him. It is written in the prophets,
I've loved you with an everlasting love, therefore have I drawn
you with the cords of loving kindness. This word translated
draw does not simply mean attract. It's the word used when oxen
draw a plow. Do you think that when oxen draw
a plow, they let the plow sit there and they say, oh, God,
we'd like you to come this way. We want to get the ground plowed
up now. I mean, we're not going to violate your free will. Come on. And look at some other
animals. Would you all sing a few hymns
and so and so see if this plow will come? When oxen draw a plow,
they are hooked to that plow and they pull and the plow can't
resist. They drag the plow. The plow
had no ability to come to the oxen and the earth did everything
it could to stop the plow from moving. But neither the plow
nor the earth in which the plow was poked in there can stop the
ox when he begins to draw. Now, you'll sit there and you'll
do nothing. You'll listen to gospel preaching. You might even
think you agree with it. You might even get teary like
I do. My tears don't mean that I believe the gospel. They could
be crocodile tears, who knows? But if you are the object of
the love of God, someday his oxen, the Holy Spirit, they're
going to hitch up to you, and you're coming. You're coming. And nothing that
your natural flesh does in resistance, nothing, no obstacle that the
world puts up in your way will stop you from going to Christ. No man can come to me unless
my Father drags him, pulls him. And since we can't see God doing
the pulling, when they come to Christ, it looks like they're
the ones that are doing it. It's God dragging them to Christ. And you know, this dragging goes
on with the believer. Our flesh is still opposed to
Christ. And it tempts us away with the values and pleasures
of the flesh. And when we fall to those temptations,
the flesh tempts us with the allure of self-righteousness. And we have this tendency, we
want to go fix what we've done wrong by doing something good. We have knee-jerk reaction to
try to deal with our sin the way we used to in the days of
our flesh. But God is there. And with divine, omnipotent power,
He drags us to Christ and binds us to Him. On the one hand, I would say,
in a moment, I would forsake Christ. And on the other hand,
I just can't. I'm not saying that I wouldn't,
I'm saying that I can't. No matter how badly I fall, no
matter how much I may get wrapped up in legalistic self-righteousness,
I can't stay there. Why? God won't let me. You might ask, if we love God
because he loves us, how can I see God's love? Three quick
things. It can only be seen from one
perspective. You know how there are things, you know, someone
said, Oh, I can see that. Do you see that? And you go,
no, I can't see it. There's something blocking my view. Oh, then you're
going to have to come over here where I am before you can see
it. Well, there's only one perspective. from which you can see God's
love. And that's the perspective of
a sinner who's unworthy of his love. You know why people can't
see God's love as it really is? They got something blocking the
view. And what's blocking the view is their own righteousness. It's their own will. I made my
decision for Jesus. We haven't seen the love of God
yet. The only way you'll ever see
the love of God is to look at it from the position of one who
can make no claim on that love whatsoever. Secondly, if you want to see
the love of God, you're going to have to look where it's found.
That makes sense, doesn't it? Where is God's love found? Paul
says, nothing can separate us from the love of God, which is
in Christ Jesus is not anywhere else. And if you look for it
somewhere else, you're not going to find it. And then where is the love of
God displayed? Romans 5, 8 says this, God demonstrates
his love or demonstrated his love toward us in this, while
we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. I remember Paul speaking
to those who claim to believe. He didn't write that to the entire
world. The entire world can read it, but that's not who he sent
it to. He sent it to believers. But how do I know that God loves
me? When I look to the cross, I see
his unexplainable love toward me on full display. It has that effect on me. It
cancels out every objection that I might raise against the
idea that God loves me. It overwhelms it. Everything you need to know about
God and His love, you learn it at the cross. You view it from the perspective
of someone who's not worthy of that love. You look at that person
and know who he is and where he came from, and you see him
suffering, suffering for sin, and it breaks
your heart. For you, by the Spirit of God,
will see that that's your sin nailing there. And it'll break you. And it'll break your heart to
where you love the God that did that. And it'll prove that before
the world began, He loved you. In all the ages of this world,
He has loved you. And time has caught up with His
love. And it's the time of love for
you. And He's made you see what you are. He's made you see what
Christ is. He's made you to understand what
Christ has done. And you believe Him. And despite
all temptation in the other direction, you just can't leave him. What
does that mean? It means God loves you and he
will not let you go. Herein is love, not that we love
God, but that he loved us and gave his son as the atoning sacrifice
for us. You say, I don't know if I love
God, but I want to learn to. And you just go to the cross
and you just sit there. And you'll learn. And once you
learn, you won't want to leave.