The Village Church
The Love Nature of God - Audio
How this morning? Good? Okay. All right. Well, I'm a little sad this morning because football game turned out as well. We would like to. It's okay. Two weeks ago, John encouraged us to live as the true of God and not like the true of the evil one. So he challenged us to live in love and not hate, and that we should love one another as Jesus has loved us. How did Jesus love us? It was a sacrificial love, love that is self-giving that seeks the positive good of another. Now in our passage this morning, John continues his discussion about a self-giving love, a love that seeks the benefit of another. So again, he calls us to love one another. But this time the reasons are different. This time the reasons are based upon God the Father himself. He moves away from us in our actions and turns them to God. So if you have your Bibles, open them to 1 John, chapter 4 beginning in verse 7. Beloved, let us love one another. For love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that has sent his only son into the world, that we might live through him. And this is love not that we have loved God, but he loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God if we love one another. God abys in us, and his love is perfected in us. By this we know that we abide in him and he and us because he has given us his spirit. And we have seen and testified that the Father has sent his son to be the savior of the world, whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abysing him and he and God. So we have come to know him to rely on the love the Father has for us. God is love, and whoever abys in love abys in God, and God abys in him. By this love is perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he also was in the world, so are we. There is no fear in love. Perfect love casts out all fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. We love because he first loved us. If anyone says I love God and hates his brother, he is a liar, but he who does not love his brother whom he sees cannot love God whom he cannot see. And this is the commandment we have from him, whoever loves God must also love his brother. Please pray with me. Father God, as we come to your truth, as we come to your word, it's all about you. It's not about me. It's not about who I am. I'm just a man. I'm just a vessel, and it ain't about me, but it's about my God. It's about my Redeemer. It's about my Savior. And so Spirit, I call upon you that you were table that preached this morning and apply it to the hearts of God's people. Apply it to my heart. Let us see God. Let us worship God. Let us be convicted. Let us be challenged. Let us be changed by the truth. Only you can work it in our heart spirit when we call you to do that, in Christ in my prayer. Amen. God loves you. God loves you. What comes to mind when you hear those words? God loves you. What suppressed feelings and emotions rise to the surface when you hear? God loves you. Some of us, you know, some of us have people in our lives who are not allowed to utter those words to us. They are not even to say those words, I love you, because of what they have done to us, because of how they have heard us. When you think about God, is God in that category with those people? Is he not allowed to say, I love you? Do you keep God at arms link, arms link, or you don't guard against the God? Does God love you? Does he really love you? Do you know it? How can you know it? You can, you can play the game. He loves me. He loves me not. You can use that to see where the God loves you. I mean, we played that game before, haven't you? You all had a crush in school, and you had your little flower, and you sat on the playground, and then you picked the pet off the flower. He loves me. He loves me not. She loves me. She loves me not. Well, can you use that method to determine if God loves you? Can you leave it up to chance to know that God loves you? The assurance that God's love for you is not grounding in a play school game. It's not grounding in the decision based upon a flower, but his grounds for loving you is rooted and grounded in himself. It's grounded in who he is. It's God. John tells us, let us love one another for lovers from God. Whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love, there's not no God. Why? Because God is love. We've been the first John for a while now, and John has made many references to God's love throughout this letter. You know, he said phrases like the love of the Father, the love of the Father that has, the love of the Father has latched upon us. God's love is abiding in us. God's love being perfected in us. But something is different here. For the first time in his letter, he is referring to love as being part of God's character, being part of God's nature. That's what that phrase means. God is love. God love is from God. It's part of who he is, part of his nature. It's part of his emeralds being. And because he is love, we are not the foundation of his love for us. He is. One pastor says that the foundation of all God's love towards simple men lies not in us, nor in anything about us, nor in anything external to God himself. He and he alone is the cause and the reason, the motive, the end of his own love to our world. The love of God, the love that has no motive but himself. By his very nature, by his very nature, it must be pointing out the flood of his own joyous fulfillment forever and ever. God loves God first. God is a God-centered God. And his love is a God-centered love. He loves himself, most of all, his glory. And as John Piper says, that love spills out onto unworthy people. You understand? That love spills out onto people like me, the people I like you. In his commentary on First John, Vernon Mengea recites a conversation a pastor had with a highly intelligent woman. She prouted herself on how smart she was on her intellect. She told the pastor, "I have no use for the Bible for Christian superstition or religious dogma. It is enough for me to know that God is love." The pastor said, "Well, did you know it?" The woman said, "Well, of course I did." She said, "Everyone knows that." The pastor says, he goes on to ask this lady a series of questions. He says, "Does the people in Africa, the tribes in Africa, do they know it? The people in unreached countries, do they know God loves them?" She thought to herself, she was like, "Well, perhaps not, but in the civilized land, we all know it." In a civilized land, we all know that God loves us. But how is it that we know it, the pastor says? Who told us? Where did we find it out? How did we come to know it? And the lady was confused by these questions. She said, "I don't understand what you mean." She said, "I have always known it. I have always known that God is love." And the pastor boldly tells her, "No one in the world has ever known it until it was revealed." No one in the world has ever known that God is love until it was revealed in heaven and recorded in God's Word. It is here and nowhere else. It is not found in all the literature of the ancients. It's found here. God is love. He's revealed it to us through his Word. But keep in mind, he is not just love. Is he? His love, his only attribute? Is he just love? He has many other attributes. And when you read that phrase, "God is love," no, it should jog something in your memory about something else that John said God is in the beginning of the book. Do you remember what he said in chapter 1 verse 5 about who God is? For this is the message we heard from him from the beginning, and proclaim to you that God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all. God is light. That's how you begin the body part of his letter. And now in chapter 4 he says, "God is love." These two statements about God are bookends to the major sections of this book. God is light. God is love. And the point is this, that all the things that John talks about in his letter are never done in isolation apart from who God is. Nothing in his life is done in isolation apart from who God is. From beginning to end and everything in between, it's all about God. And this also teaches a very important lesson when it comes about your understanding of God, that you should never look at one particular attribute of God in isolation to all the others. If God is just a God of love only, is that an accurate view of God? Is he just a God of light only? No, he's not. He got to hold those two things together. God is both light and love. See, no one disagrees with that. Everyone here would disagree with that. Everyone here would agree. Yeah, God is light. Yeah, God is love. He's holy and he's love. He's just and he's merciful. But if I gave you two measuring cups and ask you if God poured all of his love into one cup and all of his holiness into one cup, which cup would have more? In the measuring cup, which cup would measure more? Which one God have the more of? Will he have more love? Or will he have more light? Is it two cups of light? What cup to love? Which is it? Which is it? We say, this is how we think now. We say God is both, but we think he has different measures of your both. You see, the measure of God's light, the measure of his love are always equally full, one never out measures the other. We have to keep in mind that God is on a whole different level than we are, a whole different level. And he is never in danger ever being unbalanced and in of his attributes like us. We're unbalanced. We ain't always loving as we should. God is always holy and always loving at the same time. He's 100% both, 100% both light and love at the same time from all eternity, which is not the case for us. We're unequal. We're unstable. We're unbalanced. And when you begin to focus on the love of God so much that you have a little value for his light, for his holiness, you are trying to bring an infinite God down to your five night level. I'll say that again. When you begin to focus on just one of his attributes and isolation to all the others, you are actually trying to bring an infinite God down to your five night level. That's what you do. That's what we do. We actually want God to be unbalanced like us, unstable like us. But our God is neither of those. He would never be like us in our frailties in our weaknesses, in our unbalanced. He stands alone. And what do he tell Moses at the burning bush, "I am who I am." And his attributes of light and love are always stable and always in balance. One never out measures the other. John gets that. He understands that. And he keeps everything in balance in this letter. And I love that. He preaches obedience without legalism. John does. He preaches grace without license. All in this one little book. And he represents God as both light and love, a both and God, a balanced God. John is not going to lead us down the path of false doctrine. He's actually preaching against that in the book. And so if he only preached a one-sided view of God, he would be doing the same thing the false teachers were doing in the church there. So you realize that? He had to round out his argument in the letter. He had to say God is love and God is light to round out his argument. Because if he didn't, he would be doing the same thing the false teachers were doing. A one-sided view of God. A misunderstanding of God. He is both. When the Bible says he is light, that means he's holy. He's righteous. He's perfect. That he cannot stand sin. There's no darkness in him at all. When it says he is love, he's merciful. He's gracious. He's forgiving. He's compassionate. And when you learn to hold these two attributes to God together and not in isolation of each other, you won't become a bandwagon fan of either. You'll be a fan of both. You'll be a cheerleader or both of those attributes. God is love. God is light. Three weeks ago, a vacuum cleaner salesman came by our house and tried to sell us a fancy, very expensive vacuum. They kind of tricked me into it. But nonetheless, he got into the house and before he gave himself pitch and told us how much it was going to cost, he put on a little demonstration. And if you ever had anyone come try to sell you didn't think of a vacuum cleaner, anything like that, they always do a demonstration. They always want to show you how good that product is. So he vacuums the spot of carpet. He vacuumed some of the furniture and he wanted us to see just how dirty our stuff was. And that this vacuum cleaner was going to clean it all up. A demonstration of how good his vacuum cleaner is. It was a good demonstration. I didn't buy it, but it was a good demonstration. And I think good demonstrations are useful. And even God knows that. But he himself, he put on a demonstration for us. And he came to where we are to do it. What did he demonstrate? He put on a demonstration of his love for you. You realize that? That a God who is infinite, God who is loving, God who is perfect, God who is true, demonstrated his love for you. And he came to where you are to do it. Verse 9 says, "In this, the love of God was made manifest among us." That's a passive statement. It's a passive because we didn't have a part in it. We didn't have to hold God's hands and say, "Come on, God, don't show me how much you love me." We didn't have no part to play in it. God freely displayed his love for us. He was revealed and it was demonstrated. And when we see it, we understand that God loves us not just in word and talk, but he loves us in these as well. You see, God's love is not lyrics, and a nice love song. It's not stanzas in a poem. His love is not some abstract theological principle that you read about in books that you just listen to on sermons like this one, but it's real. It's a fact. It's true. God is love and his love spills out into your life. To own you, he manifested to you. How did he do that? It says he manifests his love among us that he sent his only son into the world, that we might live through him. And this is love. Now that we have love of God, but he has loved us and sent his son to be the appreciation for our sins. He manifests his love through the Son. It displays his love to you through the Son. What is that? The incarnation of Jesus into this world is a demonstration of God's love to you. If you have a doubt that God's love you, if you have a doubt that God loves you, look at what he did. He sent his son into this world for you that you might live through him. He's only begotten son. And what kind of world did he send him in? Did he send him into a nice loving world where everything is good? We all get along and saying kumbaya. Was that the world he sent him in? He sent him into a broken, fallen, sinful, rebellious world. His only son into a world that was in opposition to God. And he said, well, but how is that love? Remember what John said about Jesus in the prologue to this letter? It's the first four verses of this book. He made the point to say that Jesus pre-existed with the Father in heaven before the incarnation. Before the dawn of time, Jesus existed. But Jesus humbled himself in the incarnation to be born of a woman in the lightness of man found in human form. Paul says in 2nd Corinthians 8-9, "For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor." So that by his poverty, you might become rich. Can you wrap your minds around that? That the eternal son of God who pre-existed in heaven with the Father became poor through the incarnation for you. For Jesus becoming a man was poverty. It was a humiliation compared to what he left. Do you realize that? His willingness to become poor demonstrates the Father's love for you. A self-given love that benefits you. Remember the story of the rich young ruler who wouldn't give up everything? Jesus did that for you. He did that. He left the riches of heaven to be born into the importance in this world for your sake that by his poverty you might become rich. And that's love. Do you see that? That's love. Who else, who do you know is going to leave riches to become poor because they love you? I just love you so I'm going to give away all I got to show it. And not only that, I'm going to suffer for you because I love you. Who would do that? Who in your life would demonstrate that kind of love, exercise that kind of love for you? Who will? All those love songs that people write, none of them were going to die even if they said in the song. They ain't going to do it. But Jesus did. The incarnation, the son of, the incarnation of God's son is not the only way the son demonstrates his love for us in another way, of course, is the cross. This is love. Not that we have loved God, but he has loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins. The incarnation, the atonement, the cross is also a display of God's love for you. Remember last week we talked about the cross. We said that on the cross, Jesus turned the cross from a symbol of shame and distracing to a symbol of victory in life. And John is not telling us the cross is a display of God's love for you. The cross is a display of God's love for you. Man, what a demonstration. Is that doing anything for you? Is he doing anything for you? Are you just ready to go to lunch? As one Christian says, the Christian information that God has loved is not sustained by ignoring the cross but by setting it in a forefront of the situation. That was love benefiting you as Jesus died of suffering a cross. John says God sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins. This is something that John talked about back in chapter 2. And again, it means that Jesus was the atonement sacrifice for all of our sins. Jesus satisfied God's divine wrath. That's what he did on the cross. He turned away God's wrath from us, from you, and placed it upon himself. He placed it upon himself. And this is love. Not that we have loved God, but that he has loved us as his son to die for our sins. We can't ever love God that way because he doesn't need a Savior. He doesn't need to be saved. He doesn't need to be redeemed. We do. We do. Not him. And to take it a step further, in Romans 5 Paul says that God showed his love for us and that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. He talked about that he died for me. Yes, not that he died for me while I was still a sinner. Man, another demonstration. Do you see the kind of love the Father has for you? You probably don't because I believe in the Bible belt. And when we live in Alabama, to say that God loves you is almost, to say that God loves sinners has become awarded down statement and no longer carries the same weight it used to. God loves you has simply become a cool status for your Facebook page. God loves sinners. I'll update my Facebook page with that. It no longer gives you a great appreciation to understand that we love for you. It no longer does that. But you know what does when Paul says that God showed his love for us while we were sinners, Christ died for us. You know what that means? Christ died for you while you were still God's enemy. You were his enemy when Jesus died for you. You wasn't just a sinner. You were God's enemy when he died for you. Now, how did that make you feel about his love? You were his enemy when he hung on that cross and died for you. Paul says in Romans 5, 10, while we were enemies, we were rucked and sawed to God by the death of his son. God loves his enemies and you better praise him that he do. He sacrificed his only son for his enemies that we might become reconciled to him. What parent, no parent was sacrificed his son for their friends, you're the lonely enemies. But God did. The cross is a demonstration of the father's love for us. But what of the son? Have you ever thought about that? Did the father stop loving the son as he bore God's wrath on the cross? Did he? No, he did not. The father forsaped the son, but he never stopped loving the son as the son died upon the cross. And John Piper makes this clear. He says, the father forsook the son and handed him over to the curse of the cross and lived at no finger to spare him, but he never ceased to love the son. In that very moment, when the son was taken upon himself, everything that God hates in us and was being forsaken by God, even to death. Even then, the father knew the measures of the son surfing was the depth of the son's love of the father's love. And in that love, the father took deep displeasure. You see, a man shinning up your the cross always says, Jesus died, did it for me. He did it for the father, for the father's glory. You just benefit from it. That's the gossip that you're the cross. Jesus did it for the glory of the father, and now we benefit from it. And Jesus knew that the father loved him for it. That's why Jesus said in John 10 17, for this reason the father loves me, for this is the reason the father loves me, because I laid down my life and I take it up again. No one takes it from me, while I lay it down on my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This is the charge I received from my father. And it's Jesus, a bad man, a bad man. I'm using bad in a good way. Through Jesus, God's enemies have now become God's children. You see that? Enemies have become friends. And now we live through Jesus. We have life through Jesus. And in the Sermon on the Mount, you know, when Jesus says we are to love our enemies, you know why he can say that because he did. He did because he loved you, because he loved you when you were his enemy. And so we are called to love our enemies. God doesn't hold us as standing that he himself does not live. He lived it in the cross of the display of that. You see, when you think about that, his love is so amazing. It's so awesome. And you heard it say that if something sounds too good to be true, then it must not be true. You see, God's love for you is too good to be true, but the good news isn't it still true? It's still true. It is too good to be true, but it's still true. God loves his enemies for which I was born before Jesus' safety, praise the Lord that God loves his enemies. The Son is the manifestation of God's love for us, the incarnation, the cross, the resurrection. Even when Jesus ascended to heaven, that was a display of God's love for us. Why is that? Because something happened when Jesus went up, someone else came down. You see, when the Son went to heaven, the Spirit came down, the Spirit came down, and the Spirit and the Son are both with demonstration of God's love for us. Look at verse 13, it says, "By this we know that we abide in him and he and us, because he has given us his Spirit. He has given us his Spirit." When Jesus went up to heaven, Pentecost came later, and Pentecost in Acts 2 was also a demonstration of God's love for you. In Luke 24, Jesus told his disciples that before he ascended, he was going to send the promise of his Father upon them, that they were going to be clothed with power on high, clothed with power on high. Who is that? Ask the Spirit, the helper, the counselor, the one who leads us in this life. He is the one that keeps the affections of our heart looking toward God. It ain't you, it's the Spirit. In verses 14 and 15, he says, "We have seen and testified that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abys him and buys in him and he and God." These are activities of the Spirit, all the apostles, all of them, they all saw Jesus, lived with Jesus, mentioned with Jesus, but when did they begin to testify about Jesus? It was when the Spirit came, the Spirit enabled them to do that, and he enables us to do that. No one confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, if the Spirit ain't moving, if the Spirit ain't moving, ain't nothing happening. If the Spirit ain't moving now, this sermon means nothing. Because if the Spirit that takes God's word and applied to our hearts, not me, I ain't the Holy Spirit, I'm just a man, as I'm ever going to be. It's the Spirit that does it. For all that Jesus did on the cross, for all the love that followed has for us, it's the Spirit that applies it to us every time. He is the one that convinces us that we're sinners. He is the one that enlightens our minds and the knowledge of Christ. He is the one that renews our will. He is the one that persuades and enables us to embrace and accept Jesus Christ as our personal Lord and Savior. He is the one that does it. And I shared with you before that when I grew up, I thought I was a good person, I went to church here and there, I thought I was going to hell of a cause of that. I went to church some, I heard the gospel. People shared the gospel with me on the football team, but it wasn't until I went to college. For some reason, that night was different. For some reason, when that God shared the gospel, it all made sense. For the first time in my life, at that very moment, my freshman year of college, I saw my sin for what it was. I've heard the gospel before. I heard it in church. I never saw my need of it. I thought I was okay, but that night something was different. I felt it here. You know what it was? The Spirit was knocking at the door. He was knocking at the door, and everything made sense for the first time. Yeah, I'm a sinner. Yeah, Jesus is the way. He brings a gap between me and God. And yes, I want Jesus in my heart. And it happened that night, not because of me, because the Spirit was with me, knocking at me. All those seeds that were planted in my life finally grew that night. The Spirit did it. He did it. And He did it for each of you, if you would know Jesus. By sinning and sacrificing His Son and placing His Spirit in their hearts, God and Father has demonstrated His love for us. But do we understand that? You look to those two things as evidence of God's love for you. Does God love for you give you a strong sense of belonging, a strong sense of acceptance, assurance, and security? You see, in His study on this passage, Pastor Tim Keller says, "And many people look at their outward circumstances to determine if God loves me." You say, "God doesn't love me because feeling the blame. I don't have my job. I don't like my job. I don't have all the money that I need. I can't find this. My kids aren't turning out like I want them to. My life is difficult. And because my circumstances are hard, we think that means God doesn't love me." Do you struggle with that? Or is it just me? Or the reverse, we think because our circumstances are good. That's evidence that God loves us. Because I'm getting everything I want. I'm getting my blessing. I'm throwing my seed. I'm getting all this return. Jesus loves me. Because life is good. I got all I want. Family's doing well. My circumstances shows and proves that God loves me. That's a bad way to live your Christian life. It's a bad way. Because circumstances, man, they're like this, up and down, down and up. And if you base your understanding God's love on that, your understanding God's love is always going to be down and up. You're always going to struggle with whether or not He loves you. Because you're looking at the wrong stuff. You're looking at the wrong stuff. You're supposed to look at Christ. You're supposed to look at the fact that He's giving you His Spirit. Our parents here this morning, our parents, you love your kids. But your love does not promise them a pain-free life. I don't care how much you love them. You cannot guarantee that they ain't going to suffer. You cannot guarantee that they're never going to get sick. Can you? But does that notify your love for them? No. What do you do when they get sick? You comfort them. When they get sick, you take them to the doctor. You are there when they're struggling. And so is God when you're struggling. His love is not guaranteed that you're never going to suffer. But His love guarantees you're going to have a constant friend in the midst of your troubles. You're going to have a comfort in the midst of your pain. That's His guarantee to you. His Spirit and His Son are tokens of His love for you. Romans 8, 31 and 32 says, "If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up for us all, how will He not also graciously give us all things?" What does that mean? That God is for you. He's for you. Your life might not be easy. You might not have everything that you want. But God will provide and comfort and sustain you throughout this life no matter what you go through. He is committed to you and you need to trust that. His love is at work within you. You understand what I'm saying there? Don't look at your circumstances. You can't use them to say, "God loves me and doesn't love me." Look at the gospel. Look at that. Let that be enough. John says in verse 16 that, "We are come to know Him to rely on the love that God has for us." What does that mean? It means through God's Spirit, His love continues to work in our life. His love has been perfected in us. And this work of God's love, it spills over into our life. That we begin to reflect God's love. We begin to reflect the love of our unseen God. That's what that means. He says no one have seen God, but if we love God God, if we love one another God's love about us in us, and His love has been perfected in us. That means you are actually displaying God's love in your life for other people. That's what that means. You are beginning to love God back. You are beginning to love other people. His love has been perfected in you. Kelsey says, "To know God's love and to rely on God's love, God's love means you understand it both in your mind and in your heart and you depend upon it." It means you understand that His love for you is solid. You know that. His love for you is solid. It never wavers. Do you understand that? You can't have any more of it because you already have it all in Jesus. He can't love you no more than he already does. You have all of his affection at this moment in Jesus, all of his attention, his ear constantly, you have it all through Christ. You have it all at this moment. Knowing this gives us a confidence, John says, confidence in the dead judgment, confidence in this world, confidence in knowing that perfect love casts out all fear. You see, as a child of God, you don't have to ever live in fear of him abandoning you, him letting you go, him kicking you to the curb, him breaking up with you, him sending you off, him forsaking you because he loves you completely. You are completely accepted in Jesus. You don't have to walk around and give. You don't have to walk around in fear. Don't ever. God loves you completely. That's solid and firm. It ain't ever going to waver a falter, his love for you. And so, for every believer, if we ever play this game, rose pedal game, you know, it's never he loves me. He loves me not. But you know what it means? He loves me and spider me. He loves me and spider me. This is what you say when you play the game. He loves me and spider me. He loves me and spider me. He loves me and spider me. He loves me and spider me from beginning to end. It's mercy, baby. It's mercy all day long. Let us pray. Father God, we thank you for mercy. We thank you for the fact that you are a light and you are of love also. We thank you for the tokens of your love, for Jesus, our Demar our Savior, and for your spirit that now lives in all of us who wages war against our sinful nature, who produces his fruit in us. We thank you for him that he is a deposit guaranteed in our inheritance, that he is changing our hearts, keeping our hearts focused on me. Thank you, Lord, for that. And I praise you for all this, Massiah's name and man.