I invite you to turn back this
morning with me to the book of 1 John. The book of 1 John. And I want to read this morning
for our text the first three verses of the third chapter of
1 John. The first three verses of the
third chapter. Behold, what manner of love the
Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the
sons of God. Therefore, the world knoweth
us not, because it knew him not. Beloved, now are we the sons
of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be. But we know
that when he shall appear, we shall be like him, for we shall
see him as he is. And every man that hath this
hope in him purifies himself even as he is pure." This is a marvelous and wonderful
text that we have this morning. The Bible is full of these kind
of texts But I, certainly this morning, am very happy that I'm
able to speak to you on this verse of Scripture. I've been
able to feel a great deal as I have read and meditated and
studied out this text, and it always does my heart good, not
only just simply to come to some understanding, spiritually speaking,
of the text, but to have some feeling and to feel something
as you read as you think upon a certain portion of the Word
of God. But as I looked at this verse of Scripture, we read here,
it says, Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed
upon us, that we should be called the sons of God. Now, I understand
through my reading that this is a very poor translation of
this text of scripture and the revised version seems to be better
and the revised version would say behold what manner of love
the father hath bestowed upon us that we should be called the
children of God and such we are and such we are it would say
now the word such is not in the original in the original manuscripts
I understand And it should be read, and we are. Just simply, and we are. Behold
what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we
should be called the sons of God, or the children of God,
and we are. And we are. Now that's a glorious
and wonderful truth. Now this, I believe, is correct. I have no doubt about it in my
mind, and the Vulgate and Alexandrian versions of the Bible along with
many other very worthy and reputable versions have it this way, and
we are the children of God. We are called the children of
God, called the sons of God, and we are. Now so far as the
doctrine of the text is concerned, I suppose that it does not matter
either way because we get the same words in verse 2 where it
says, Beloved, now are we the sons of God. Now are we the sons
of God. Now We're not only to be called
sons of God, but we are so. The Father said it. The Father
himself, who bestowed such a manner of love upon us to make us his
children, has told us, has called us, if you please, his sons,
his children. Now the glory of this is that
we now have this thing. that we now have this thing in
possession, and we are the children of God. Now, if you were to read
this text and just read it and say, well, okay, I'll just go
on now to the next verse or to the next part of the chapter,
thinking very little about it, then you've not heard what this
verse has said. You do not understand what the
verse has said. You didn't listen carefully.
Because if you read verse 1 and 2 and 3 here of this particular
chapter, you cannot quickly get away from it. It arrests your
heart. It seems to reach out and get
a hold of you. Because it's talking about something
that a lot of people would give, I believe, their right arm to
understand and to know. It's talking about us having
in present possession eternal life. He's talking about us having
a relationship with God Almighty wherein we're spoken of as being
the sons and daughters of God. Now this brings us forcibly to
our minds. It brings forcibly to our minds
the truth of our present of our present, let me emphasize that,
of our present sonship in the Lord Jesus Christ, that we are
presently the sons and daughters of God, that we're not waiting
to be, that we do not, it's not that we hope to be sometime,
down the road when we get good enough to call ourselves the
children of God, but there has been a love bestowed upon us
by the Father which has put Him and us in the position where
we can claim this relationship. He claims us as His sons, His
children, and we can claim the relationship and say we are so. We are so indeed. Now it begins,
and let's look at this text, it begins with the explanation
here that the word behold. Look at it. The Apostle John
here exclaims, Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed
upon us. Now this is a word of wonder.
It's a word of wonder. Now John the Apostle had lived
among wonders. John's life from the time of
his conversion was a life of wonders both in what he saw with
his natural eye during the days of his long pilgrimage here on
this earth and also the sights that the Lord gave him to see
with his spiritual eye for an example when he was on the Isle
of Patmos. But John here, I believe that
one of the things that probably is at least to me is a wonder
of wonders is that on one occasion he was thrown, John was, into
a cauldron of boiling oil. They were seeking to take his
life, the enemies of the gospel, and yet he came out of it unharmed. And this was a wonder of wonders,
and if there was ever a prophet of God among men to whom wonders
became commonplace things in his life, John was that prophet
indeed. But yet as he wrote this epistle, He wrote this epistle like one
might speak rather than write. And he said, behold, behold,
this word of explanation here, saying, behold, what manner of
love the Father hath bestowed upon us. He could not help bursting
out here with this language. Behold what manner of love. Now
brethren, if we realize our adoption in the family of God, we will
never get over it. We will always stand in wonder
and awe and amazement at the fact that God has been pleased
to adopt us in, that God has been pleased to put us into his
family, that God has been pleased to highly honor and give us this
great privilege of calling ourselves the sons of God. Now if any mortal
man should become a son of God or a child of God, that ought
to astound us. But that we ourselves, wonder
of wonders, that we ourselves have become children of God.
That God has so lavished His love upon us Upon us, I say,
that we would become the children of God. Now, so it's no wonder
that John says, behold, because we ought to cry, behold, behold,
God has lavished upon us. His love so greatly that we are
now the children of God. Our regeneration and adoption
are complex miracles indeed. And they're miracles of grace.
Miracles of grace. No one can deny that if they
truly understand who it is that the writer here is talking about
when he's talking about these that have had the love of God
bestowed upon them. He's talking about those who
are sinners. He's talking about men. And He's talking about those
that are sinners. And He said that God has bestowed
His love upon us and we are now called the sons of God. Now it
would seem too good to be true if the Lord Himself had not revealed
it. If God had not revealed it, if
He hadn't told us of this, and somebody else came along, even
if it was an angel, we'd have difficulty believing it, that
God had been pleased to make us His children, and that He'd
been pleased to adopt us into His family, and that we truly
are indeed the sons and daughters of God Almighty. Now, then we
will call upon men marvelous truth, the manner of
love, we will call upon men and angels to behold, lavished upon us. That word bestowed
is a good word, but it's a little cold I think, because God has lavished his
love upon us and made us to be sons and daughters of Adam. We praise his worthy name. Now the poet said, behold, what
wrong sinners of a mortal race to call them sons of God. Behold. To understand exactly, if I can,
or at least partially, Now, Beloved, a multitude of
evils come from men and women ... what the Word of God says and
not listening to the language of Holy Scripture because ...
that we suffer as the people of God. Much of the trouble that
we experience in this world the Word of God and made it a
part of our spiritual system. We just simply haven't studied
and dug into what Scripture really means. And I want to try if I
can to help you. Multitudes of contrasts and opposites
in this world and I just You bear with me, let me try
to illustrate what I'm talking about. The kind of people here
that God... Cold and hot, weak and strong,
high and low, tall and short, something and... in the world. But the greatest
contrast in all the world, beloved, is this. Holy God and sinful
man. That's the greatest contrast
in all the world. Everything that God is, we aren't. And everything that we are, God
isn't. Now if you were to start at one
point with a holiness of God and go in the opposite direction,
as far as you could possibly go, you would find man in his
sinfulness. Now if God is light, Listen to
me. God is light, and we are darkness. God is love, and we are hate. God is pure, and we are corrupt. God is truth, and all men are
liars. God is glorious, but we are despicable. God is life, but we are death. God is in all fullness and we,
by nature, are absolutely empty. And I think most of you are aware
that when I'm talking about man, we're talking about man as he
stands in his own nature. We're talking about unregenerate
man. We're talking about lost men
and women. We're talking about men in a
state of nature. Now all these statements being
true, beloved, and they are true, These statements that I've made
both about God and about man and the distance that's between
them. But how, this is the question
we're driven to ask when we think upon these things. How could
we become, how could we ever be the sons of God? How could
we ever become children of God? How could we ever be adopted
into His family? How could we, how could God ever
love us and make us one with Him? How could He ever do this?
How can we be clean? How can man that is born of a
woman be clean enough to enter into this relationship with God
wherein he is called a child of God or a son of God? How can a man be justified with
God? Well, here it is, behold what
manner of love. Beloved, study this and wonder
at it. Study it with every faculty concentrated
upon it. Study it. Meditate upon it. You
will find a new excellency in it every time you look at it,
I believe. Behold what manner of love. Don't merely glance
and then go your way, but stop and rest your heart here just
a little bit. I'm talking about that manner
of love that can bring together a holy God and a sinful man. and move the heart of this great
and holy God to make us one with Him and to make us a member of
His family now. Beloved, listen, I say to you
this morning, pry in to the secrets of this and think and meditate
upon it. Compare this love of God This
love here that John's talking about with all other loves. Compare
it with human love. Compare it with all other loves
that you know anything about. Come and dig here where nuggets
of pure gold are to be found indeed. Behold, listen to me,
read and mark and learn and inwardly digest. Sink your shaft here,
beloved. because this is where the goal
will be mined. I want you to think with me about
this, this love, this manner of love that the Father has had
toward us to make us poor, sinful, unworthy, undeserving creatures
as we are to be his children. God loved us into this relationship. And I'm going to have some things
to say about it that I hope will be instructive and helpful to
you, but we were loved into this relationship. We didn't get into
it any other way. And this is the thing that must
be impressed upon our minds. We have been loved into the relationship
that we have with the Lord. We didn't get into it by our
own effort and by our own merit, but we got into it out of divine
love and through divine love. So look, Beloved and look and
then look again for there are no ends to the discoveries that
you will make if you look into the love of God Because the love
of God is like the love of no creature For an example, let's
just look here at a few verses. I want you to look in first John
here chapter 3 And I want you to look at verse 16. Listen to
what it says. Hereby perceive we the love of
God because he laid down his life for us. Here is the way
that we perceive God's love. It's because we see it in the
laying down of the life of the Son of God for us. And then if
you look in the fourth chapter and look in verse 9, it says
in this was manifested the love of God toward us because that
God sent his only begotten Son into the world that we might
live through him. And then listen to the 10th verse.
Herein is love, not that we love God, but that He loved us and
sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. And then I want
you to turn back with me to Ephesians and look in chapter 2 and look
at verse 4. Now if you're familiar at all
with the 2nd chapter of the book of Ephesians, it describes what
we were before we were quickened to life. before we were brought
out of the death of sin into this glorious relationship with
the Lord Jesus Christ. And in verse 3 it says, among
whom also we all had our conversation, that word is behavior, in times
past in the lust of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the
flesh and of the mind, and were by nature the children of wrath,
even as others. But then notice verse 4. Notice
verse 4. And beloved, here's where it
comes together. Here's where the contrast between
a holy God and sinful man. Here's where it's brought together.
And just look at it. But God... But God, who is rich
in mercy for His great love wherewith He loved us even when we were
dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ by grace,
ye are saved. So you see it here in verse 4,
God who is rich in mercy for His great love, for His great
love wherewith He loved us. And so it's talking about God
loving children of wrath. It's talking about God loving
those who were dead in sin and God quickening them because of
His mercy and His great love wherewith He loved them. Now,
beloved, what these verses mean to me is this, that God has in
infinite wisdom and love that he's devised a plan whereby he
could remain, whereby he himself could remain just, true, and
holy, and yet at the same time would enable him to embrace certain
of the sons of Adam, the poor fallen sons of Adam, those that
were chosen in Jesus Christ before the foundation of the world,
that would enable Him to embrace them in love and to receive them
into His bosom as His children. Jesus Christ, the eternal Son
of God, He joined Himself with human nature and as a man. As
a man here on this earth, he rendered perfect obedience under
the law of God that we had broken in pieces ourselves. Then the Lord Jesus Christ voluntarily
went to Calvary's cross where he took upon himself the sins
of all of his elect and the guns of the wrath of God or fired
at him until all of the ammunition, there was none left, all wrath
had been exhausted itself upon the Lord Jesus Christ. And Jesus Christ suffered, he
bled and died, and this was the just suffering, bleeding and
dying, for the unjust, that he might bring us into relationship
with God. That we might be able to come
across the bridge, as it were, from sinful man we were in a
state of nature, into the holiness of God and into relationship
right relationship with Him, and He who died then rose from
the dead and ascended where He lives now to ever make intercession
for us. Now, beloved, sinners are justified,
sinners are accepted, and believing sinners are pardoned because
of the Lord Jesus Christ. Our position, our relationship
before the Holy God is based solely on the person and the
doing and the dying of the Lord Jesus Christ, our substitute.
And that needs to be understood. The only way we got into this
relationship was God loving us and sending his son to die in
our room instead and place. And so all of this relationship
before a holy God is based upon the doing and the dying of him
whom God sent into this world to live out a perfect life in
order that that life would become my life before Him on His most,
and that I would be justified through the Lord Jesus Christ.
And let me say to you, we are accepted in the Beloved. We are
accepted in the Beloved. in the Lord Jesus. Now you say,
well, now preacher, does that mean that I am going to be accepted?
No, no, no. It means we are already accepted
in the blood. We are in the Lord Jesus Christ,
accepted before God, just as Jesus has been accepted back
at the right hand of eternal majesty. We are accepted in the
blood. And we are loved. It's a fact. We are loved by the Father. Now,
beloved, there's a problem that I've had. I confess that I've
had this problem, and it's a problem that I believe that probably
several of you, and maybe even all of you, have had at one time
or another. And it's a problem we must face,
and it's one that we need not have, really, if we're children
of God, if we're true children of God, but yet we do have this
problem. And I want to talk to you a little
bit about this, and that problem is this. That is believing that
God loves me. I have a problem believing that
God loves me. Have you ever had that problem?
Have you ever said to yourself, I just can't believe that God
loves me. I have a problem with that. I
know what the scripture says, and I can believe that He can
love sisters so and so, and I can believe that He loves brothers
so and so, but I have trouble believing that He loves me. I've
got a problem with that. I can't always believe that in
my heart. Now there's been a few times
when God's been pleased to melt my heart with His love and I've
been able to know His love as John said here in the fourth
chapter. I've known and believed the love of God. I've experienced
it wonderfully in my own soul. But I have a problem just believing
that God loves me as He loves His own Son. But this is the
gospel truth. Now beloved, what I'm saying
is that we have problems living in the conscious awareness of
the love of God hourly Daily, weekly, we have trouble living
with the conscious awareness that God loves us. We operate
a lot of the times feeling maybe that we're unloved by God or
that maybe he's put out with... to you about these three reasons
why we have this problem believing that God loves us as individuals. Now the first thing I'd like
to say it is because that we have not looked at We have not
examined, we have not laid for ourselves through looking at
what the Word of God teaches generally, we've not laid a proper
foundation for ourselves in this truth of the love of God. We
failed to do that. We just simply missed it. We
don't understand what this love of God is all about. Now, I wanted
just to describe this love briefly, very briefly to you this morning.
First thing I'd like to say about this love, and this will help
us a little bit to lay a foundation here in regards to this truth
about God loving us. I'd like to say that the love
of God is a very intense love. Now, as if to say that the adopting
of his children into his family to be a son of God is an act
which involves so much love that we are especially to fix our
attention upon it. Now, beloved, you've got to look
at it, and you've got to think about it, and I've told you all
through, and it's a very simple message, but I've told you all
through, you've got to look at this. Behold, that's what the
word means. It's like putting up a sign.
Look at this. Look at this. This love of God. This is a very intense love.
What love would you have to have in your heart if you were to
take a wanton and malicious enemy of yours and say, well, you shall
be my son. You shall be my son. I'm going
to adopt you into my family. If one had wronged you and despised
you and defied your authority and you would say from this time
forth you'll be a member of my family. You're going to sit at
my table. You're going to eat off my table.
You're going to be at all of our family gatherings. You're
going to be mine. You're going to be mine. You're
going to be my adopted son from now on. Well, I asked you this
morning, how much love would it take for you to do that? But
beloved, herein is love. Love worth the beholding that
God took you and I who were enemies of his by nature you and I who
were Slaves to sin you and I who love sin you and I who were born
into this world with a nature Opposite his opposed to him and
in every way contradicted him by the way that we live and God
has taken us and and put us into his family. This is an intense
love on God's part. Don't look upon it as being a
common thing. It's not that God should take
you and put you into his family. And then certainly I think it
follows that this is an undeserved love. No man can possibly deserve
to be a child of God. Who is it that would deserve
it this morning in this group? Well, beloved, there's none here
that could say I deserve to be a child of God. I'm laying this
foundation and you've got to do this over and over in your
mind. First of all, God loved me intensely. God meant for me
to be his child because he took me a rebel and he put me into
his family and he took me home with him as it were and I sit
at his table. My feet are under God's table
now and I eat from his table. I mean I belong to him. He's mine and I'm his. There's
a relationship between me and God. And I told you we got loved
into this relationship. It was an intense love. And then
I'm telling you this is an undeserved love. Grace, in this instant,
is the sole source of the stream of God's goodness and God's salvation. Grace, I say, is the sole source. Now, if you had never sinned,
If you had never committed one sin in your life, then my friend,
I still say that you don't have any right to sonship. You don't have any right to be
a child of God. What would give you a right?
to be adopted into the family of Almighty God. Now the most
faithful service does not make a servant into a son. And that's
to be understood had you been perfect. What would you have
given to God to purchase this high dignity and this high privilege
and high honor as being His son? What would you have given if
you was the wealthiest person in the world? What would you
give to God to give him to put you into his family? Well my friend you couldn't Received and mocked, but to as
many as received him, to them gave he the power, the authority,
the honor, the privilege to become the sons of God. Now this power, this privilege,
this honor of sonship before God is gained in no other way
but that of faith and grace. You cannot become the children
of God except believing on the Lord Jesus Christ. Now let me,
I'm laying this foundation. You gotta think on these things.
You gotta meditate on that. I got into this thing because
God loved me into it. And this is the love of God.
It's undeserved. I don't deserve it. Nobody deserves
it. It's an intense love. God meant
to get me into this place. And he did whatever had to be
done to put me in. And I didn't have anything to
do with it. God put me into this relationship. And then it's an
everlasting love. everlasting love and you got
to think on that a while because there's a lot of people that's
got lots of problem when it comes to this business of the preservation
and the perseverance of God's saints. I wouldn't walk across
the street to hear anybody talk about a salvation that don't
last for all eternity, that don't last forever and ever. It's like
vinegar to my teeth. It's like smoke in my eyes to
hear somebody talk about a salvation that you can get today and lose
tomorrow. I don't know anything about that.
The Bible don't know anything about it. When God saves a man,
he's saved for all eternity. If God calls you sons, then it's
done, and it's done forever, and it can never be undone. It's
done forever. Now beloved, we gotta understand
this. I'm talking about the love of
God being an everlasting love. Here's the joy of it. The servant,
the scripture says, abideth not in the house forever, but a son
abideth ever. Now listen to me, the relationship
between you and a hard man, it can have a beginning and it can
have an end. You can say to him, you take
your wages and go. But you can't say that to your
son, whether whatever you give him or whatever you don't give
him, that doesn't change the fact that he's your son, and
he will be your son forever. And you can say, well, I disown
him. Disown him if you want, but he's still your son. It's
a fact, and you can't get past that. It's a fact. And especially,
this is true of the children of God. And we are, it said,
and we are. I mean, behold what manner of
love the Father hath bestowed upon us that we should be called
the sons of God, and we are! We are the sons of God. Now listen
to me. We are called the children of
God, and we are the children of God, and this cannot be undone. Grace brings me into the family
of God, and grace keeps me in the family of God. And when the
Lord calls me his son, I know what he means. I know what he
means. He intends all that we mean by
the relationship and more. That's right. You say, well,
I think I know what it means for me to have a son. Well, then
that's what God means. And he means more. He means more. than even that. Now, like I said,
I wouldn't waste my time. I don't have any time for any
other salvation than the salvation of the Bible. In John 10 and
28, our Lord said, I give unto my sheep eternal life. They shall
never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand.
And my Father which gave them me, he's greater than all, and
no man can get them out of his hand. It's my sheep I'm talking
about. My sheep, they've got eternal
life and I'll put my fear in them, God said, so that they'll
not depart from me. God said they're mine, they belong
to me. And I bought them and they're
mine, they belong to me. Now then, we go on here. We must get our eyes open. and
to see these foundational truths about the love of God. Now I'd
say that in connection to my first point is that we've not
laid the foundation and we don't go over it and over it again
like we ought to in regards to the love of God. This is the
first reason why we have trouble believing that God loves us as
an individual. Now the second reason I offer
is this, that we do not live in the conscious awareness of
His love is that maybe back in our lives somewhere when we were
children. Maybe we got the idea that in
our home and where we grew up, maybe we got the idea that maybe
our mothers or our fathers did not love us. Or maybe sometime
in our life, maybe we were rejected by somebody that we loved and
they rejected us. and said that's it, we just don't
love you. Maybe that's the reason why that
we might think of God as one who might say the same thing.
I just have fallen out of love with you. I just don't love you
anymore. Maybe that's the reason. Maybe
there's something back in our mind where we got this feeling,
you know, that God will reject us like maybe mother or daddy
did, or like somebody else, some lover did, or somebody else did. that God will do this, that He'll
reject us. Now listen to me this morning.
I'd like for you to listen to the reading of the Word of God.
Now, beloved, we've got to get this out of our thinking. God's
love is not like human love. It's not. It is not like human
love. And I want you to turn in your
Bible, if you've got one, to Isaiah chapter 49. And I want
to read beginning with verse 13 and read down through verse
16. And I want you to listen to the
language of the Word of God. And this will help you with that
idea that you've got. And maybe your mother did forsake
you, your daddy did forsake you, maybe your wife or husband did,
or maybe something else happened in your life, but listen to the
Word of God. Sing, O heavens, and be joyful,
verse 13 of Isaiah 49, O earth, and break forth into singing,
O mountains, for the Lord hath comforted his people and will
have mercy upon his afflicted. But Zion said, the Lord hath
forsaken me, and my Lord hath forgotten me. Listen to the language
of Zion. Is that not your language many
times? Is that not the language of a poor, afflicted, storm-tossed
child of God in this world, desperately trying to cling to something
and to hold on to something that means something in this world?
God has forgotten me and I've been forsaken by the Lord. Can a woman, listen to verse
15 to what God says, can a woman forget her suckling child? that
she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? Yes. She can. She can do it. And they do it every day. Absolutely. They may forget. God says, yet
will I not forget thee. He said, they may do it. I mean,
that's human to do that. But, he says, I will not forget
thee. Behold, he says in verse 16,
I have braven thee upon the palms of my hands. Thy walls are continually
before me. While your names are written
on the palms of my hand, I have you graven on the palms of my
hand. Your walls, the walls of your
dwelling, where you're at day in and day out, they're always
before me. I'm conscious of you, and I know
about you, and I love you, and I will not forsake you. I will
not, I will not abandon you. I will not. I will not reject
you. The reason I chose you in the
first place was for reasons known to me. It had nothing to do with
you. You didn't put yourself into
this and you can't get yourself out of it. God put you in it. He chose you before the foundation
of the world and gave you as a love gift to His Son. It's
His work. He said, I'm not going to forget
you. I won't. And then in Hebrews chapter 13
and verse 5, it says plainly, I will never leave thee nor forsake
thee. I won't abandon you. I won't
do it. I'll never reject you. And so, beloved, this will answer,
I believe. God is not a man that he should
lie. Neither is he the son of man that he should ever repent.
And God will not lie. He said, I won't forsake you.
I'll not abandon you. I'll not give you up. And don't
ever, beloved, equate the love of God with the love of your
kinfolk. With the love of humankind, don't
ever equate the two and say, well, it's like this. It's just
the opposite of it. It's not like that at all. Human
love, creature love is not worthy to be mentioned alongside that
manner of love that the Father hath lavished upon his dear children
in the Lord Jesus Christ. It's not worthy to be mentioned
alongside of it. We look at people and we love
them because of what we see in them, we love them because of
some personal attraction, something there, but God, He looked upon
us And we all just fit for the dunghill. We all of us were ready
for the rubbish bin. I mean, there was not a good
thing. There wasn't one of us that was profitable. We'd all
gone out of the way. But he lavished his love. His love was uncaused. And I'll
mention a little about that in a moment. But the Lord lavished
that love upon us and brought us unto himself. And never, my
friend, he quaked. human love with the love of God. And then thirdly, the third reason
why we have problems with this, believing that God loves me,
is because we claim We claim to believe in a gospel of pure
grace, that salvation is entirely the Lord from the beginning to
the end, but we are constantly, we do it, we do it constantly,
we pervert the gospel of the pure grace of God with the idea
that if we would stop doing something that we are doing, and if we
would start doing something that we haven't been doing, then God
would love us, or He would love us a little bit more, surely,
than what He does love us at this time. Now, beloved, that
is a perversion, and I want you to hear me this morning. This
is a perversion of the gospel of God's grace. That's what it
is. Now, I've told you before, And
I'll tell you again because it's worthy of repeating that the
love of God cannot be caused. Now that's a tremendous statement.
It is a tremendous statement. Now you may say, well that don't
sound like it's so deep. But beloved, it is a tremendous
statement. The love of God cannot be caused. You can't cause God to love you. Now your heart ought to rest
right here a little bit. It ought to rest. You can't induce
God to love you. Say, well, I'm going to stop
this, preacher. Well, you stop it if you want to. And that'd
be a good thing, maybe, that you ought to stop it. And say,
I'm going to start this, preacher. Well, maybe that's a wonderful
thing. And maybe you should. Maybe it'll have large ramification
if you just start doing some things you ought to be doing.
But we're talking about the love of God is what we're talking
about. And we're telling you this morning that nothing caused
the love of God. God loved his people before there
was any men. Before there was a people, God
loved his people in the Lord Jesus Christ. Where were you?
Where were your merits then, my friend? Where were they then?
Where was your bill paying and your loyalty to the community
and your this and your that? Where was all of your good works
then? I'm talking about God loving
his people before the song of the first angel broke the solemnity
of silence. I'm talking about God loving
his people back before the morning stars ever sang together. I'm
talking about God loving his people in Christ. And God's love
is an eternal love, stretches from eternity past to eternity
future. And you can't cause the love
of God. You can't. And none of us here
caused it. Hosea 14 and four says, I will
love them freely. I'll love them freely. Well,
what's that word freely means? It means simply, I will love
them without cause. I'll love them without cause.
And then in Romans three and 24, being justified freely. Well, what does that mean? It
means I'll justify them without cause on their part. I'll love
them without cause and I'll justify them without cause on their part. You can't get, my friend, listen,
if you ever get this strength, then you'll be able to entertain
and you'll be able to rejoice and to be glad, you'll be able
to meditate, you'll be able to cogitate, you'll be able to just
sit down and simply just make yourself happy thinking about
the love of God which you did not cause and that you didn't
have anything to do with it, that God loved you on His own.
Now, brother and sister, we brag on God here in this place. We're
not in this place to brag on anybody but Almighty God. But
when we get to Him, I mean, if we can, I mean, if we could,
we wouldn't even take a breath from the time we got up here
to preach until the time we sit down. We just fill the air with
all the words we could in glorifying and exalting the Lord our God. because we brag on this God because
He is the God of the Bible and you can't cause Him to love you.
You can't do it. Now then, we must quit taking
a legalistic approach to the love of God. We've got to quit
doing it. And you say, preacher, I just
wasn't raised that way. I've been taught all my life
to believe that I could make mom and daddy love me a little
more if I do what they told me to do. That may be so. That may
be so. But my friend, you ain't gonna
make God love you more. by what you do or don't do. God
loves His people in Christ before the foundation of the world and
His love is toward them. Now it's a big story. That's
not all of it. But that's where it started.
It started with God. I want you to look here in 1
John chapter 4 and look at verse 19. Look at what it says. We
love Him. In verse 19. Because He first
loved us. We love Him, but it's because
He first loved us. He loved us before we ever loved
Him. I mean, we ought to love Him,
and we ought to mind Him, and we ought to obey Him. We ought
to serve Him. We ought to walk with Him, and
we ought to please Him. But, beloved, He loved us before
we loved Him. Now then, I say that we must
quit taking the legalistic view of the love of God. We've got
to do it. If you're ever going to get to a place where you can
consciously live in the conscious awareness of the love of God
towards you, just quit taking the legalistic view of it. Now,
the love of God is unpurchased and it's unpurchasable and it
is indestructible. He loves us as He loves Jesus
Christ. We're loved in the beloved and
we're accepted in the beloved. Now notice lastly I want to say
a few things to you and I hope I can keep your attention for
a few minutes here. Now this adoption gives us the
name of God's children and the new birth gives us the nature
of God's children. Now in both senses we are the children
of God, both by name by nature we are the children of God adoption
is the legal act by which our father receives us and Regeneration
is that spiritual birth by which we receive the nature of our
father the new nature or the divine nature of God this principle
of Righteousness into our soul now every soul that is really
adopted into the family of God also really becomes a son of
God by being begotten of God being born again and Being born
into a lively or a living hope Now I want to put it to you in
this way. Can you on this double ground? the ground of God lavishing
his love upon you and you being regenerated and have not you
being adopted and then you being Regenerated in the new birth
and being given the divine nature of God in your soul Can you this
morning on these dumbest double ground say and we are? And we are. We are the sons of
God. Now then, are we really the children
of God? Do we truly believe in the Lord
Jesus Christ? Are we believing in the Lord
Jesus Christ with all of our hearts? Is He our confidence? Do we trust His blood and His
righteousness. If we indeed can say, and we
are, then we receive some measure of the divine nature, of the
nature, the very nature of God. God has planted in us some measure
of His nature and it follows this away. Now notice with me.
God is a spirit. Have we become spiritual minded? Do we mind the things of the
spirit? Have we become spiritual minded
people? I mean, are we interested in spiritual things? I mean,
when we read, do we want to find something that has to do with
the Word of God? Something to do with our relationship
with the Lord? Something to do with the doctrines
of the Bible? Are we spiritual-minded? Do we
mind the things of the Spirit? God is holy. Do we hate sin? I mean, do we loathe that which
is not right? Do we want to do what is right? Do we desire it in our hearts? Let your conscience speak this
morning. Are we generous? Does love rule us? Are we a pitiful? Are we a tender? Are we a courteous? Are we a kind people? Have you love to God and love
to the household of faith? Do you love the brethren? What
I'm talking about is that if you've been a partaker of the
nature of God, and if God has adopted you and your family and
your children of God, then you have something of the nature
of God. Is there within you a longing
and a striving? to have the whole nature of God
as far as it can dwell in a mortal man. Is that desire in you? To have the nature of God? To
be more like God? To be more like Christ? Is that
longing and striving and desire, is it there? Now remember that
no person can be a child of God if he has not something of likeness
to God in him. God just don't call us His children. He puts in us His nature. And
there's a likeness to God in us. Now this is due to the nature
of God in us. It's not due to you getting busy
polishing up the old vessel and saying, I'm going to set out
some new stuff here and I'm going to look a little better and all
this. No, no, no, no. It's due to the nature God put
in you and it's there. And it just makes you different.
The new nature of God. Now if you're not in the least
like your father, then my friend, there's been a terrible mistake
made if you profess to be a child of God. There's something wrong
somewhere if you're not like your father. Am I a child of
God? Then I have love to my father. I have love to my Father. The
world cares nothing about God. It cares nothing about the eternal
God, the God of the Bible, the God that sits and inhabits eternity. The world cares nothing about
that. But I love my Father. I'm concerned about this business
of loving my Father. Now, and our hearts go out to
Him in longings after Him to whom we owe. our heavenly birth
and this heavenly relationship to us. God is all in all. And the poet said, do not I love
thee from my soul? Then let me nothing love. Dead be my heart to every joy
when Jesus cannot move. Hast thou a lamb in all thy flock? I would disdain to feed. Hast
thou a foe before whose face I would fear thy cause to plead."
Now, beloved, listen. I believe we can say that with
the poet. We love the Lord. We love our
Heavenly Father. Now, circumstances are going
to test this. And there will come a time when
you'll have to fall back on what old Peter said. Old Peter said,
thou knowest all things, and thou knowest that I love thee. It may not appear that I do,
and I slip and I fall, and I make a lot of mistakes, and lots of
things don't come out like I'd like for them to come out, but
Thou knowest all things, and Thou knowest that I love Thee. Now if I'm a child of God, I
also learn to trust the Lord, because the Lord does lead and
He provides. This is part of that newness,
that new nature that God gives and puts in us. We learn to trust
the Lord. I can stand here before you this
morning, I can tell you about my own experiences of how God
has provided for this poor preacher. But it would sound more like
a romance than it would maybe the truth. But I could do it
this morning. I could tell you about the many
times that God has marvelously delivered me. But I want to illustrate
it by telling you this story that I found in a little book
that I get once in a while. And this book is about a poor
godly man years ago that was in Old England. And he was sitting
early in the morning at the door of his house. His eyes were red
with weeping and his heart cried to heaven for he was expecting
to come any time an officer of the law to take him and to put
him to death. and to jail him for a small debt that he owed.
And then while sitting there with his heart heavy, there was
a little bird that flew through the street, fluttering up and
down as if in distress until at length, quick as an arrow,
it flew over the good man's head and perched itself on an empty
cupboard in his house. The good man, who little imagined
who had sent the bird, closed the door, caught the bird and
placed it in a cage, where it began to sing very sweetly, and
it seemed to the man as if it were the tune of a favorite hymn,
Fear Thou Not When Darkness Reigns. And as he listened to it, it
soothed his soul and comforted his mind, and then suddenly someone
knocked at the door. Aye, it's the officer, he thought.
thought the man, and he was so afraid, but no, it was the servant
of a respectable lady who said that the neighbors had seen a
bird fly into his house and wished to know if he had caught the
bird. Oh yes, answered the man, and
there it is. And the bird was carried away, and a few minutes
after the servant came again and said, you've done my mistress
a good service. For she sets a high value upon
that birth. She is so obliged to you and
requests you to accept this trifle with her thanks. The poor man
received it.