Our gracious Father, we thank
you for your mercy to us in the Lord Jesus Christ, our Savior,
your Son, our Lord, our Mediator, the one who is all for us to
God, and through whom all from God comes to us. And we're so
thankful, Lord, that you have found Him, not us, but Him, to
be all that you require from us, so that we might look to
Him at all times and in everything. We might find our all in Him.
Help us, Lord. The troubles of our lives, the
long race of faith, just walking by faith day by day, leaves us
tired. And we pray, Lord, that you would
lift us up that you would encourage us from your word, that you would
tell us of your eternal, unchanging, and unfailing love. We thank
you for this text of scripture. We pray, Lord, that it would
not be darkened for our edification by the false teachings of men,
but that we would find in it a certain salvation, an eternal
salvation, an unchanging salvation. One that is beyond belief except
by your spirit. We believe on the Lord Jesus
Christ and we find him precious indeed. Thank you for this great
salvation. We pray you'd be with Tim and
Sarah who've joined us by the Zoom meeting and bless them and
guide them in all of their thoughts and plans. We don't know exactly
what your will is, but we pray you'd be with them. You'd also
be with Dan And Rhonda, as they make their plans to possibly
move to Idaho, and if that would be your will, we pray, Lord,
you'd go with them, as we know you do with all your people,
and that you'd bless them in your word. Bless all those who
meet with us week by week on Sundays and during the Bible
studies. You know them, Lord. You have
promised in your word that it is precious to you that your
people speak to one another of the precious things of Christ,
that you even write a book of remembrance and keep it, and
that you consider them the treasure of the Lord Jesus Christ, the
One who is your Son, who served you. And so, Lord, we delight
to speak of the things of Christ, our Savior. We delight that He
has spoken to us the gospel, the eternal will of God. We pray,
Lord, that you'd bless us now from your word, in Jesus' name
we pray, amen. John chapter three, we're gonna
read verse 16. I would not be surprised if you
could tell me what this verse is without reading it together,
but we have to read from God's word. Faith comes by hearing,
and hearing by the word of God. Let me make sure that this is
on before I go too far, yes. John 3.16 says here, for God
so loved the world. that he gave his only begotten
son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but
have everlasting life. What an amazing text of scripture.
I think I read in a Gideon Bible recently that this scripture
has been translated into 60 some languages by the Gideons, probably
a lot more than that. And we want to consider this
scripture here. First thing we see here is God
loved. God loved. When we think about God, when
we think about Him as people, we tend to think about our sin,
and we tend to do what Adam did, which is hide. Hide from Him
who we truly are. We don't open our hearts to Him.
We don't come boldly to the throne of grace as we ought to come
through the blood of Jesus. We come indifferently. We come bashfully. We come shyly, as if we have
no basis of coming ourselves. And in ourselves, we don't have
any basis of coming. But in the Lord Jesus Christ,
we have every reason to come. And that's what this text of
scripture is saying. God loved. He so loved. The word so here
means in this way. This is the way God loved. It
means that this is the way we know the love of God. When we
think of love, as we say, we use a lot of words nowadays where
we tack them on or we put them on things to emphasize or to
add, to embellish what we're trying to say. People today will
often say, thank you so much. I notice that's a new way of
just saying thank you to people. It tries to increase the intensity
of the thanksgiving. There's nothing wrong with that.
But we tend to apply these things to God. So when it says, God
so loved the world, we might imagine that he has clasped his
hands together to his chest and tilted his head to one side in
an adoring emotion and saying, he just so loves them. But that's
not what he's saying here. God isn't a God of emotion. He's
a God of love. He's a God of action. He's a
God of saving grace. A God of justice and truth. He's
not a man. He's a God. And so when he says
he's so loved, he's telling us this is the way we know his love.
This is how he loved. He loved, it says, he so loved
the world that he gave his only begotten son. The measure of
God's love is the measure of what he gave. There is no measure
to the Son of God. He is infinite God. He is infinite
God. He is the only begotten Son.
And when it says He's the only begotten Son of God, it means
there's only one. There's only one who is just
like the Father in His essence, in His being, in His nature.
It's the Son of God. The Son of God is His Father
in every way that God is God. He is, as it says in Hebrews
1, the express image of His person. He is the brightness of His glory. Everything that can be said of
God can be said of the father and said of the son because he
is God. And in John chapter five, verse
17 and 18, the Jews wanted to kill Jesus because he said God
is his father, making himself equal with God. They understood
that to say that he was the son of God meant he was equal with
God. And in John 10, verse 30, he
said, I and my father are one. one in will, one in purpose,
one in power, one in wisdom, one in eternality, one in all
things. All power is given to the son
by the father, but it belongs to him as God, just as much as
it does to the father. So in every way, he's equal with
the father. And this is the measure of the love of God, that he gave
his son, one so great, one so dear to his father, that he gave
his son. And so we want to think about
these things. And then also it says that he gave him in order
that whosoever, this is the reason God gave his son, whosoever believeth
in him should not perish. This is the problem. We are perishing. we are perishing at the hand
of God for our sins. But God has done something to
keep us from perishing. He gave His Son, in order that
whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have eternal life
or everlasting life from the depths of eternal ruin to the
heights of communion eternally with God in full, calm confidence in the presence
of His glory without fault. It's an eternal salvation. It's
a perfect salvation. And God did this by giving His
Son. This is the love of God. Now,
I want you to consider this. I've written this in a handout
that I sent out. You may not have it, but just
listen to these words. The scales of God's uncompromising
justice must be balanced, and they will be balanced. God does
not pervert judgment. God does all things. He keeps a perfect balance to
his justice. Nothing will go out of balance
in God. His throne, it says in Psalm
89, I think verse 14, is established on justice. The throne of God. If God did not uphold justice,
God would cease to be God. So God is just. But the scales
of this uncompromising justice, which is nothing more than the
way God thinks, nothing more than the character of God, must
be balanced. And God balanced them. God keeps
them balanced. But not balanced against the
sinner, not balanced in this verse by taking out from the
sinner the due, what was due to God's justice, but he himself,
the Lord our God, absorbed what it took to keep his scales in
balance. That's amazing. We offended God. But for all who believe on him,
according to this verse, whosoever believeth in him, regardless
of your age, regardless of your wealth, regardless of your size,
or your appearance, or your intellect, or your family background, regardless
of your life, whether good or bad, regardless of even your
sin, whosoever believeth on the Lord Jesus Christ has, according
to God's word, this is Jesus Christ speaking, God's word,
recorded by the Spirit of God from His mouth concerning what
God the Father has done, whoever believes on the Lord Jesus Christ,
because this text is about the Father and the Son, that one
has eternal life. And God therefore gave his son
to balance. He absorbed what it took to maintain
balance in his justice. required it of himself and he
required it in the death of his own son. And now that is holy,
isn't it? That is holy justice. H-O-L-Y. That is God's justice. The word
holy means that God himself in all of his perfections, not my
perfections because I have none, but in all of God's perfections
is uncompromisingly in harmony at all times and for all eternity. Holy is just a way of saying
all of God, in all of His perfections, in perfect balance, His justice,
His truth, His righteousness, His love, all that God is, is
in perfect harmony. And how did this happen in regards
to sinners perishing under the wrath of God? How could he give
them eternal life and maintain that perfect harmony? He did
it at the death of his own son. That's what this is talking about
here. This verse is talking about how God himself, in uncompromising
holiness, has balanced the scales of his justice in the death of
his son for ungodly, unworthy, and hell-deserving sinners. That's
the gospel. That's the gospel. No one influenced
God to do this. No one was there when he determined
to do this. He was in eternity. He did it
before he created one thing. The Lord Jesus Christ is the
Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. Known unto God
are all his works. from before the foundation of
the world. He works all things according
to the counsel of his own will. Not my will, not your input,
his own will. And God does all his thoughts,
Isaiah 14, 24. Nothing that God thinks goes
undone. If God thinks it, it's just,
it's right, and it will be done. No possibility of failure, and
God doesn't lie, and he never changes. So whatever God thinks
today, He has always thought. Whatever God's will is today,
that's always been His will and always will be His will. And
whatever God's work is today, or in the time of Christ, or
before the world began, or after the world is finished, in eternity,
All of it will be according to God's eternal will. That's why
we know all those who receive the kingdom prepared by the Father
for them from the foundation of the world are those who are
in heaven. If there's someone in heaven standing before the
throne of God in the end, it will be because God in his foreknowledge
knew that he would work it out to bring that sinner to himself. And why did he do that? Why did
He give His Son? Because that's the only way this
could be done. The love of God. The love of God. When you think
about the love of God, you can interchange everything that God
does for us through Christ with His love, because that's what
motivated Him. And don't think of God's love
as seeing something. That's the way we love, isn't
it? I found my wife to be beautiful and attractive, and I loved her. But that's not the way God's
love works at all. God's love begins and ends with God. It has nothing to do with what
He finds in us. He does all things for the glory
of His own name. In other words, He Himself is
the beginning, the Alpha and the Omega of all of His actions
and all of His purposes. So no one influenced God to do
this. He did it before He created one
thing. It was before time. It was done in eternity. It was
from everlasting because all God thinks All of His purpose,
all of His holy character, whether justice or love or righteousness
or truth or mercy or grace or wisdom or power, all of God has
been and forever shall be is unchanged and unchangeable. No
one was with Him except His only begotten Son, who is eternal,
and His own Holy Spirit in the beginning, And that's when God
determined to lay the offenses of elect sinners on His Son,
to balance the scales of His justice, and to do what? To make
known the love of God. The love of God. Herein is love,
not that we love God, but that He loved us and sent His Son
to be the propitiation for our sins. That is love. And love
is not what we do for God. Love is not our love to God.
Love is God's love to us in Christ. Now, there's many things that
God compares us to in scripture as people. He compares us to
grasshoppers. In Isaiah 40, verse 22, he says,
all the inhabitants of the earth are like grasshoppers before
the Lord. Nothing. Another place, he says,
he speaks of the nation of Israel and he calls them thou worm,
O Jacob. So we're compared to worms. And
he also says in Luke 17 verse 10, I think, he says that when
you've done all that your duty is to do, say this, I am an unprofitable
servant. And the apostle Paul in Romans
chapter 7 verse 18 said, in me there dwelleth no good thing.
That's what we are. In James, the book of James,
it says our life is but a vapor. It appears for a little time
and then it vanishes away. And in 1 Peter 1.25, it says
that we are like grass. We spring up today like the flower
of the grass. We spring up today and the next
day we wither and are cast into the fire. We are nothing. And God is everything. There's nothing outside of God,
nothing that we can compare to Him, and we are insignificant
nothing. And yet this God, for those He
chose of His own free will, because His will alone is free to do
as according to His nature, but His will and His will and in
His own character out of His love determined to save sinners,
to balance the scales of his justice in the death of his son,
that they might not perish, that they wouldn't perish. It wasn't
a maybe-so thing. It was a certain thing, that
they wouldn't perish. Now, when you read John 3.16,
almost every time you read this, the word world by the world or
by religion is highlighted and underlined and made bold and
brought forward and emphasized as if the love of God is for
the whole world, all men without exception. We have to ask this
fundamental question. What is the nature of God's love? What does God's love do? And
based on that, does the word world here actually mean everyone
in all of time, in all the world, without exception? Does God love
every person in all of the world? Is that what scripture teaches?
If it does, then we have to ask this next question. Then why
is it, then, that some men, or many, most, have no knowledge
of God? How is it then that the Lord
Jesus Christ would say in the last day to many on that day
from Matthew 7, 21 through 23, depart from me, I never knew
you. How is it that God could love
people the Lord Jesus Christ never knew? And how is it that
God would actually bring eternal punishment on those that he loved? Well, the answer of the religious
world is that some, unlike others, believe, and others who don't
believe, though loved of God, perish because they don't believe.
So it all comes down to the fulcrum of man's faith, or man's free
will, as it's sometimes called. as if man's will to believe is
faith, or if man's faith somehow makes the balance, make it so
that God then could actually save him from perishing, even
though God loved him and gave his son for him. And it's that
man's faith then that makes what God's love wanted and what Christ's
death accomplished actually work, you see. So which of these things
are true? Well, I say that we should get
at this, first of all, through the nature of God's love. What
is the love of God? But before I do that, I want
to just read through some of this stuff, my thoughts on this,
on the bottom of page one of the handout. Men like to make
John 3.16 speak about universal redemption. They cannot get past
thinking that the world was worth saving. I know I stood in my
backyard a few years ago, after we first moved here, with a man
who said, God is love. And if God is love, then he loves
everybody, because that's his nature. Think about that for
a minute, because maybe that statement would trouble you.
If God is love, then He has to love everybody. Is that a sound
argument? Is that a sound conclusion to
the statement from Scripture that God is love? Well, keep
reading. These people who think this way
cannot think of justice, not the justice of God. They cannot
think of God because they are self-absorbed in a fantasy world
of their own goodness and worth. They have never considered that
God must humble himself to look upon the things of the earth,
and that God is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity. They
cannot accept that God's testimony says every imagination of the
thought of man, his heart, is only evil continually, as it
says in Genesis 6 verse 5, and that this evil did not arise
from man, but God, because God made man upright, but he has
sought out every invention, every evil invention, like in Romans
chapter 1, where men suppress the knowledge God gave to them,
and God gives them over to their own heart's lust to seek after
every evil invention. And this thought that God must
love men because they are the world is worth saving and that
man is certainly worth saving and God should love him. They cannot think that all of
man's sin arises from his own heart like Jesus said in Mark
chapter seven. Men never consider that God's
justice must be upheld for God to be God and to remain God over
all. And men do find their own worth
in their own filth, because that's all we are. Our best righteousnesses
are as filthy rags in God's sight. But the truth is that God found
worth only in himself, and therefore it is for his name's sake that
he upheld justice at the cost of his own son, and that it is
for his name's sake that he lavished his love at the cost of his own
son, and in his own wisdom determined to glorify, that is, to make
his great and infinite perfections known in all of their uncompromising
harmony at all times, from eternity to everlasting ages, and to do
so all in the death of his own son. So if we are to understand
the love of God, we have to look higher than the worm that man
is. We have to consider God, His
thoughts and His perfections, His word, His promises, His work,
and that all that God does is all to His glory alone, out of
His own heart, and therefore is pure, holy, without the faintest
taint of darkness, and therefore without anything in it of man,
because we're all unrighteous, but only for the salvation of
this most unlikely, lowest, and despicably loathsome dust and
grass and worm and grasshopper on whom God has had mercy, sovereign
mercy. mercy of his own choosing, of
his own will, to show his glory, arising out of his wisdom, to
do the one thing we need, which is to know God and to see his
glory. That's a stoop, isn't it? For
God to do this, this is humility. God making
himself known to these filthy creatures, worms, grasshoppers,
This filthy man that we are. And God would do this to make
known His love and exercise His love in our eternal salvation. This is the reason. This is what
God's love is. Now, if we go on. We know this
about God and about His love. We have to see God in Christ
to know God and to have eternal life. And all who believe are
intended within the scope of God's love. And John 3.16 is
clear that whoever believes on Christ has everlasting life.
And they are the target of the ones loved in John 3.16. But again, the religious world
will say, no, God loved the whole world. but only those who believe
on Him actually have everlasting life. So we have to ask this
question, what is the nature of God's love? And so on page
three of the handout, God's love is of this nature. First of all,
it arises from Himself. It is uninfluenced by all that
is outside of Himself. It is purely of God. It is in
God. It is holy. It is without mixture
of anything but God in His will and character and in His works.
It has nothing to do with us. We are merely the objects of
someone else's eternal holy love, God himself. Amazing. That's
amazing. We are objects of love. We are
not contributors in this. We didn't make it happen. So
it is a false and fallacious statement from scripture to say
that God should love man because man is somehow worth something.
And how many times have you seen it on Hollywood? You just have
to, you know, I can't even remember all the baloney you hear on Hollywood. I won't even try to regurgitate
it because that's what it would be. Men love to find worth in
themselves. Men make the world and their
lives a center of the universe. But here's the other thing about
the love of God, and we have to understand these things, so
I'm gonna try to get through it. First of all, God's love is only
from himself. Secondly, God's love is sovereign.
Absolutely sovereign. No one influences him. And he
loves because he loves. Why did God love the Israelites? As he says in Deuteronomy chapter
seven, verse seven, he says, because the Lord loved you. Now
that's not enough reason for the proud intellect of man, but
that's the reason that seemed good to the Holy Ghost to give
to us, because the Lord loved you. That's reason enough. It
explains the whole motive, because God would do it. He willed to
do it, He wanted to. He wanted to glorify Himself
in doing that, and He did it at the highest cost, all of it.
All that cost, He bore it. So God's love is sovereign. God
is love. His love is therefore sovereign.
God is just. God is love. God is eternal.
God is love. His love is therefore eternal
and His love is holy. His love is therefore just. His
love is sovereign. It says, God's love is in perfect
harmony with all that God is, and has been, and forever shall
be. Is God sovereign? Is He just?
Is God truth? Is He merciful? Is He gracious?
Does He give? Then God's love is sovereign,
just, righteous, and exalts God's truth. You see, it has to be
consistent with who God is. God is truth. God is the God
of truth. What God thinks is justice. What
God does is right. God is love. Therefore, His love
is right. It's just. It's holy. It's good.
And let's go to the next thing about God's love. Since I'm saying
that, God's love is holy. What does it mean? I've already
said this, but what does that mean that God is holy? It means
that all of God's perfections and none other, not mine, not
someone else's, not some angel's, only God's perfections are in
perfect harmony at all times from all eternity. It's not like
There's a standard, and I've used this before. When we used
to, as an engineer, we used to measure things. We always had
to have some reference to compare one thing to another, because
that's really what measurement is. When you want to know how
long something is, you use your tape measure. When you want to
know how heavy something is, you use your scales. But all
those things are just comparisons of A to B. And if you're comparing
A to B, you're assuming that the reference is more accurate
than the thing you're measuring. Now, if God wants to be holy,
does he look somewhere to find what the definition of holy is
and then conform to it? When he wants to be just, does
he look at some definition of what justice is and then conform
himself to that? No. Whatever God thinks is holy. His thoughts are just. Whatever
He does is right. We can't say, like Abraham did
say this, the judge of all the earth will do right. Why? Because
God can't do wrong. He's holy in all His ways, righteous
in all His works. Psalm 145, verse 17. So the Lord is holy, therefore
His love is also holy. It's consistent with all that
He is. He is almighty, He's all-wise, He's all-just, He's all-righteous,
He's gracious and merciful, He's full of compassion, and He is
love, and it's all consistent. He's not going to love someone
at the expense of his justice. He's not going to compromise
His justice, neither will He compromise His love. In John
3.16, God loved the world in this way that He gave His only
begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish.
Well, if God loves the whole world, the unbelieving world,
and they perish, then you have to ask this question. Was it
too hard for God to save those perishing sinners who wouldn't
believe him? Was his love unable to break through their unbelief?
Is that the nature of God's saving salvation? Is that he only is
like the raging sea that can only go so far up to the shore
of man's will and faith, and then he has to wait for man to
come to the shoreline to save him? That's ludicrous. Not only is it ludicrous, but
it's anti-biblical. Remember chapter 9 of Romans?
Is the word of God taken in effect? That's the question that's asked
in Romans 9 by the Apostle Paul. Why wasn't Israel all saved?
They had the promises. They had the covenants. They
had the service of God. They had the fathers. According
to the flesh, by that nation, Christ came. But why weren't
they all saved then? Was there something in God's
word that was defective or unable to accomplish God's will? Did
it just not go far enough? No. He says that's not the problem
at all. There's no weakness in God's
word. God did all he intended to do. He will have mercy on
whom He will have mercy. So it wasn't a matter of weakness
in God's word. It was about purpose. It was
about intent, choice, predestinating love of God. He did not choose,
did not promise all in Israel eternal life in Christ. He did
not give all of the nation of Israel to Christ to save them.
That's why they're not all saved. God's word never fails, it never
returns to Him void, it always accomplishes His will. Isaiah
55 verse 11. God is holy, His justice will
not be compromised, neither will His love fail. God rests in his
love, Zephaniah 3.17. He rests in his love because
he's confident that nothing can separate from his love those
he loves. That's what Romans 8 argues from
that standpoint. Those he foreknew he also did
predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son. And
he ends up with, and he glorified them all. There's no break in
the chain. The weakest link is God, and
it can't be broken. It's not man at all. God foreknew,
He predestinated, and those He predestinated, He called. Those
He called, He justified. Those He justified, He glorified.
There, it's done. All of God's will is done, and
it all depends on God only. Therefore, God only gets the
glory. So His love is perfect. And his
hatred is perfect. I want you to consider this psalm
in Psalm 139. If God loved the whole world,
then where does hatred ever enter into the equation here? This
is a conundrum. We have to ask these who claim
that God's love is universal, what do you do with this? Psalm
139, verse 21 says, do not I, verse 20, it says, for they speak
against thee, this is the psalmist praying to God, they speak against
thee wickedly, thine enemies take thy name in vain. In verse
21 of Psalm 139, do not I hate them? O Lord, do not I hate them,
O Lord, that hate thee? And am not I grieved with those
that rise up against thee? I hate them with perfect hatred. This is the Spirit of God, writing
about hatred according to God's will against all of His enemies. Now that's something to consider.
Let me read another psalm to you in Psalm chapter 5. He says
this about the hatred of God. Remember, all these things are
consistent in God. It's a holy love and it's a holy
hatred. I can understand the holy hatred
of God, can't you? It's more difficult for me to
understand the love of God. But in Psalm chapter five, in
verse five, it says this. The foolish shall not stand in
thy sight. Thou hatest all workers of iniquity. That's kind of hard, isn't it?
That God would hate all workers of iniquity. What hope do we
have then? Well, that's the mystery of the
gospel. That for his enemies, for those
God loved, that he would save with an everlasting salvation,
he found in another a way to balance the scales of his just
hatred and pour it out on his son. Amazing, isn't it? Alright, the
other thing about God's love is that it is in Christ alone.
God's love is in the Lord Jesus Christ. There's no love of God
outside of Christ. How could God love the world
if not all men are in Christ? Have you ever wondered that?
Can God love the person who believes and teaches a false religion
by which men follow and go to hell? Can God love that person? And that person perish in their
sins and their rebellion against the truth, their willful rebellion
and teaching the truth for personal gain at the expense of men's
souls? Would he love them? No, not outside
of Christ. No, no, no. God's love is in
Christ alone. There is only one name under
heaven given among men whereby we must be saved. It's the Lord
Jesus Christ. If we're not in Christ, we're
outside of Christ. If we're outside of Christ, then like Esau, God
hates us. And we will receive the just
reward of our deeds. How do I get into Christ then?
You don't get yourself in, God puts you there. Of Him are we
in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us righteousness, wisdom,
righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. We're in Christ
of God. That's how we get there, and
that's the only way. So God's love, therefore, being in Christ
only means that all outside of Christ are outside of that love.
How do we know that God's love is only in Christ? Well, He says
so in Romans chapter 8. He says this. What shall we say
then to these things in verse 31 of Romans chapter 8 about
the absolute connection between God's foreknowledge of love and
the glorification of those he knew in love before? How do we
know that God's love is only in Christ? Because he says in
response to that, what shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, notice, if
God be for us, wouldn't that be necessary if God loved you?
If God loves the world, is God for the world? I think those
two things have to be consistent. If God is for us, but doesn't
love us, that seems inconsistent. But if God loves us and isn't
for us, that also seems inconsistent. So if God loved the whole world,
then He must be for the whole world. So we go on. What shall
we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be
against us? He that spared not his own son, but delivered him
up for us all. Well, there you go. The Armenian
free will works religion that says, you can't deny that. He
just said all right there, and all means all. Right? World means world, and all means
all. But read on, dear one, who are still on this side of the
grave. He says, he that spared not his
own son. That sounds like John 3.16. He
gave His own Son. 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? There's the word all again. Heaven
is there, eternal life. Therefore, if we don't have eternal
life, what is necessary to conclude? He didn't spare His Son for us.
He did not. I mean, He didn't include us
in those for whom He did not spare His Son. He didn't include
us in those He delivered Him up. If He didn't give us all
things, then He didn't give us His Son. and he didn't love us,
therefore it all has to be the same. Notice verse 33, Who shall
lay anything to the charge of who? God's elect. Now it's beginning to come clear.
Those God loved, I mean God's elect are those that God delivered
up his son for. Those are the ones He didn't
spare His Son. Those are the ones with whom,
with Christ, He's going to give all things freely. Those are
the ones who were foreknown, predestined, called, justified,
and glorified. You see, all of it has to do
with God's elect. And that's why he says here,
who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect? No one
at any time in all of history or for eternity can lay anything
to the charge of God's elect. Why? Because they are in Christ. And Christ himself answered God
with his own self in death for them. And his answer was accepted.
He was God. It pleased the Lord to bruise
him. He shall see the travail of his soul, and he shall be
satisfied, and he was satisfied. Therefore, it is God that justifieth. He chose us, that's elect, in
Christ. Therefore, he justified us for
Christ's righteousness. Verse 34, who is he that condemneth? Let's take it another step further. If God's elect are justified,
let's go ahead and put the hammer on the same head of this pipsqueak
that rises up against God's elect. Because you're condemning those
God chose. And he goes on, he says, who
is he that condemned it? It is Christ that died. If John 3.16 is not talking about
the death, the substitutionary death of the Lord Jesus Christ,
I don't know what it's talking about. But it is. So here he
says, Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died. In other
words, if Christ died for us, no one can condemn us. Who is
He that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea,
rather, that is risen again, proving that we were justified
in His death, because His death made full satisfaction, full
compensation, fulfilled all righteousness. He says he's not only risen again,
he's even at the right hand of God. He has all power in heaven
and earth and can save whom he will, and he will save whom he
will because all they were given to him by the Father to save.
And it also says, who also maketh intercession for us. This is
Christ. Notice the consistency. For known,
predestined, called, justified, glorified, God's elect, not condemned,
because Christ died for us, rose again, ascended, reigns, and
intercedes for us. What does that mean? It means
God is for us. God is for us in total, in all
of our salvation, for all eternity, because He gave His Son. That
was the evidence of His love. Notice, we're going to read on.
Who, then, shall separate us from the love of Christ? Can
anything come between as a barrier or an insertion between Christ's
love for us and us? No. Here's the argument. Who? Who? We're still waiting
for an answer. Remember when Jesus stooped down
to write on the ground and rose up again? He that is without
sin among you, let him cast it for a stone. And they all went
out. He stooped down again, they all left. They were accused in
their own conscience. It's the same thing here. Who?
And there's no response. He says, who shall separate us
from the love of Christ? Christ's love for his people.
Shall tribulation? Of course, the answer is, it's
a rhetorical question. Or distress, or persecution,
or famine, or nakedness, or peril, danger, or sword, as it is written. Notice, it's not like we're kept
from trouble here. We're actually experiencing tribulation,
distress. Tribulation is from the outside,
distress is what we feel on the inside. Persecution, famine,
nakedness, peril, sword, that's a death thing. He says, as it
is written, for thy sake, for Christ's sake, we are killed
all the day long. We are counted as sheep for the
slaughter. But wait a minute, if you're
God's people, then why are you killed? because God will be glorified
in our life and in our death. His name will always be exalted.
His name, His glory is the object of all that He does. So if we
suffer, it is that God's strength might be glorified in our weakness
because He upheld our faith, pointing us to Christ, keeping
our eyes fixed on Christ through the preaching of His word. We're
counted 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 powers, nor things present, nor things to come, not even
the present things, because those are the ones that bother us most.
What happened yesterday doesn't bother me. What happens today
bothers me. And I'm not so much worried about
the future right now. It's just dealing with the present.
But I like that he put present in there for that reason. Neither
life, neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities,
nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come. It doesn't
matter who's in the White House. It doesn't matter who's on the
throne in some kingdom on this earth. It's who's on the throne
in glory. It's Christ that died. He's the
one who rose. He sits at the Father's right
hand. He intercedes for us. That's what matters, and that's
the end of it. I don't have to read any further. Neither, and
verse 39, 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. Only in Christ is the love of
God towards us unfailing and inseparable from us. So God's
love is in Christ. How we love to read about the
God who saved us and his eternal love for us. And here's another
thing, and we've just been reading about this in every text we've
read so far, that God's love is saving. This is important
to underscore because if Christ died for everyone and God loves
everyone in the world, then something is lacking. God's love isn't
saving. And if God's love isn't saving, then I can't be saved
because I need to be saved. I need God's love to be a saving
love. And it doesn't matter what I
need. Is God's love saving or not? Well, it is, it turns out. We just read it in Romans 8.32. He didn't spare his own son.
He delivered him up for us all. This same delivering up is spoken
of in Romans 4.25 where it says, at the end of chapter 4 of Romans,
Christ was delivered by the Father for our offenses, and He was
raised again for our justification. So the Father delivered up the
Lord Jesus Christ, His Son. And he did that to justify us.
To be justified means to stand before God righteous and rewarded
with everlasting life because the righteousness we have in
Christ is an everlasting righteousness. In Revelation 1, verse 5, it
says, unto him who loved us, Here's the word, speaking of
Christ, unto him who loved us and washed us from our sins in
his own blood. Now I want you to turn that verse
over and over in your mind because someday the believers together
will stand before the throne of God and they will give all
praise and honor to the Lamb and to the Father, and they will
say this, unto him who loved us and washed us from our sins
in his own blood." What is the love of Christ? His blood. He
gave himself for me. He loved me and he gave himself
in total He gave all that He is, all that He has, He gave
Himself for me. That's a saving. His love to
justify, His love to cleanse me from my sins. And in Revelation
5-9, He says, Thou hast redeemed us by Thy blood. He bought us, He purchased us
to be His, to deliver us from all iniquity and the world and
Satan and death and everything. He did it by his blood. He redeemed
us out of every kindred, tongue, people, and nation. Those are
the songs of praise we sing in glory. And then in Zephaniah,
the book of Zephaniah in chapter three, verse 17, notice how he
says it there. If I can quickly find that text
of scripture for you. I always have trouble with these
minor prophets. Okay, Zephaniah chapter 3. He says this, sing, O daughter
of Zion. That's just a synonym for the
church of God. Daughter of Zion. Chapter three, verse 14 of Zephaniah.
Sing, O daughter of Zion. Shout, O Israel. Remember, the
true Israel, the Israel of God. Be glad and rejoice with all
the heart, O daughter of Jerusalem, the heavenly Jerusalem. Remember
Hebrews chapter 12. You are not come unto the mouth
that might be touched and that burned with fire and that and
all the things that were so intimidating about that, but you are come
to what? You come to Mount Zion, to the City of the Living God,
to the heavenly Jerusalem, not to the earthly. So all these
things are talking about the heavenly Jerusalem. Revelation
21, what comes down from heaven, from God out of heaven? the holy
city, Jerusalem, the church of God, adorned like a bride for
her husband. So here, sing, O daughter of
Zion. Shout, O Israel. Be glad and rejoice with all
the heart, O daughter of Jerusalem. The Lord hath taken away thy
judgments. He hath cast out thine enemy,
the King of Israel, Christ, even the Lord. is in the midst of
thee, thou shalt not see evil any more. In that day it shall
be said to Jerusalem, fear thou not, and to Zion, let not thine
hands be slack." Don't be cast down. There's no reason for you
to think of the way things are as what you experience. Yes,
all the day long we're delivered up for the slaughter, but Christ
is on the throne. Our forerunner sits in glory.
We will be with Him. Nothing can separate us from
His love. So in that day, don't let your hands be slack. He says
in verse 17, listen, The Lord thy God, speaking of the Lord
Jesus Christ, in the midst of thee is mighty. He will save. He will rejoice over thee with
joy. He will rest in his love. He will joy over thee with singing. The love of God is saving. Look
at Song of Solomon. The Song of Solomon. Got to find it also. I think
it's after Ecclesiastes chapter eight. Song of Solomon, chapter
8, and verse 6 of Song of Solomon, chapter 8. Now, this prayer here is inspired
by the Spirit of God and given to the Church of God as a request
from the Church, every believer, to the Lord Jesus Christ, that
in that prayer The heart, the desire of Christ's heart would
be requested to be fulfilled. So he says this, set me as a
seal upon thine heart. This is what the bride of Christ
prays. Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine
arm, for love is strong as death, Jealousy is cruel as the grave.
The coals thereof are coals of fire, which hath a most vehement
flame. Many waters cannot quench love. Neither can the floods drown
it. If a man would give all the substance of his house for love,
it would utterly be contemned. There you go. Love is not earned.
If you gave everything you had for love, it would be despised
of God. Because love in Christ comes
at Christ's expense, at God's giving, all of God's heart and
work. And this love of God is stronger
than death. It overcomes our sin. It overcomes our death. This
is why it was because of the love of God that he gave his
son so that we might not perish. And then going on, this love
of God gives all that he has to those he loves. He will not
stop short of giving all for those he gave his son. We just
read that in Romans 8, verse 32. But just pause on that. If
God gave his son, what didn't he give? Well, you could say,
I don't know, he didn't give me a lot of money. Money is not the thing. Politicians can just create money
out of thin air. Money means nothing. Money buys
perishing things. Money itself is going to be corrupted. long-standing with money. The
older you get, the less money means anything to you. If you're like me, it becomes
really not important. What did Jesus say? Why do you
take thought of the morrow? Consider the lilies of the field.
They don't toil, they don't spin, and yet Solomon in all his glory
was not arrayed like one of these. Consider the sparrows of the
air. They don't plant, they don't sow, and yet the Lord takes care
of them. And aren't you worth much more
than many sparrows? So the Lord is always encouraging
us not to think about things, but when he gives us all that
he has, when he gives us his Son, he gives us all that he
has. He gives us everything. He is worth... Everything came
from Him. Everything is for Him. So it's
all His. He's the heir of all things.
So if He gave His son, He gave all that He had. If a man, if
let's say Bill Gates has a hundred billion dollars, I don't know
how much money he has. Doesn't matter. But if he had a hundred billion
dollars, and he gave it all to his son, and then he gave you
his son, he'd be giving you all that he had. And so the Lord
has given everything to his son, and he gave his son, so he gave
all that he had. There's no respective persons
with God. God's love has nothing to do with what he finds in us.
The world indicates not the extent, the universal extent of the love
of God, but the depths from which the heights of God's love extends
to save all men without distinction. And then the other thing we want
to know about the love of God is that it's from everlasting
to everlasting. It's eternal. I want to address this one question
this week, and then we're going to close here. Someone said,
God is love, therefore he must love everybody. Now think about
that for just a minute. I think even a child could answer
this question. It's funny how men will make
statements like that. It's almost as if they haven't
really thought critically at all about what they just said.
Someone said, God is love, therefore he loves everybody. But this
contradicts fact, doesn't it? God is love, but God is also
just. Therefore, His love is just.
Will God punish sin? Will He not punish sin because
He's love? Think about that. Will God not punish sin because
He's love? And yet you want to say, well,
because God loves, then He has to love everybody. So then you've
got a problem to answer now. How is God going to punish sin
if he's love? If because of his love he's not going to punish
everybody? Well, the answer, of course, to that question would
be, well, because of Christ. But let's go on. Does he punish
sin and also save sinners? He punishes sin and he saves
sinners, but does God save all sinners? Consider this extreme
case. Does God save Satan? Does God
love Satan? Well, if we argue that God, because
God is love, He must love everybody, and because in some way He cannot
help but love all of His creation, then why and how can God hate
all workers of iniquity? Like in Psalm 5-5, or Esau, like
in Romans 9, and most assuredly hate the devil, or like in Psalm
139 that we read, He hates all those who hate the Lord. It does
not follow that because God is love, He must love all the same,
or that because He is love, He will not send men and the devil
to hell to suffer eternal and unmitigated just wrath, because
He loves His justice too. No, no. The Lord is not only
righteous in His love, but He's righteous in His hatred. God
is love, but God hates, and when He hates, it is perfect. His
hatred and His love are in eternal and holy accord with His truth
and His justice and all of His perfections. This is who God
is. He cannot not be God. He cannot not be himself. He
is love, yes, but he is just. He will punish Satan and he will
punish all who are not found in the Lamb's book of life. Read
the Bible. That's what it says. Read Revelation
13, verse 8, 17, verse 8, and 21, verse 27. It all speaks of
the same thing. All not found in the Lamb's book
of life will perish. And that is the righteous God
who loves his people in Christ. So I will continue this next time, but I want you to
think about this in closing. Does God's love stop short of
faith? Because that's what men have
to argue when they say God loves the whole world and only those
who believe ultimately have everlasting life and don't perish. But that
would require that God's love does everything except give faith
to a dead sinner. But since we know that all are
dead in their sins and faith is the gift of God, God's love
doesn't stop short of giving faith to those whom He loves.
In fact, He will give faith to those whom He loves, and it is
only because He does that we believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.
Faith is not the cause of our salvation. Faith is not the cause
of God's love towards us. It's not the cause of our everlasting
life. Faith is the result of God's
love to us in Christ. The Spirit of God gives us faith
in Christ, and the Spirit of God is given because Christ rose
from the dead and justified us and sent the gift of His Spirit
to us to birth us as God's sons because He made us His sons in
His redeeming blood. And this is the fact of scripture,
the truth of the word of God. And if I'm mistaken on this,
then I don't know anything about this gospel that I preach. Let's
pray. Lord, I pray that we would not
pervert your word, that we would not misrepresent the truth, especially
the truth of who you are and what you've done in the Lord
Jesus Christ to save your people from their sins. We read in scripture
of the love of God and truly, as the psalmist said, thy loving
kindness is better than life. How we need your loving kindness.
It is according to your tender mercies and your loving kindness
that you save your people and forgive them for Christ's sake.
What love this is that you would call us that you would choose
us in Christ and call us your sons and send him to die, and
that his blood represents all the love of God towards us, so
that when we speak of the blood of Christ, we're speaking about
your love. And yet it's not a love that only goes so far. It goes
all the way to save us to the uttermost. That love that saw
us in eternity in Christ also glorified us and gave us a kingdom
and prepared it for us throughout time and history. and is being
prepared for us now by our Savior in heaven. And we long to see
him and long to be with you. We know that no barrier will
separate us from the love of God towards us because it is
in Christ. And Christ gave himself for us
when we were sinners, enemies without strength. ungodly and
helplessly and hopelessly lost and without strength in ourselves,
ruined in our sins and under the wrath of God and yet he stooped
and scooped us up and bore our sins in himself on the tree and
took them away and justified us before God and now sends his
gospel to tell us about his amazing grace His wonderful saving work
and the love of God that moved Him to make this salvation ours
and bring us to Himself as His sons and perfect us and bring
us into His presence with full peace and joy in the presence
of His glory and to know God as He is without anything withheld, a full disclosure
without any interruption in all of eternity, to sit as God's
sons and listen to Him in our Savior, speak of His wonderful
grace and mercy and love. We pray this blessing on all
those who hear your words tonight. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.