The Father's Love
Notes
Transcript
Introduction - Love, (Reminds me of an old Johnny Lee song called looking for love in all the wrong places).. examples of poor human love to show the greatness of the Father’s Love.
Our passage today shows us a bit about just how great the Love of the Father is.
1 See how great a love the Father has bestowed on us, that we would be called children of God; and such we are. For this reason the world does not know us, because it did not know Him.
2 Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what we will be. We know that when He appears, we will be like Him, because we will see Him just as He is.
3 And everyone who has this hope fixed on Him purifies himself, just as He is pure.
How great a LOVE? John 3:16
What can that look like in a human stand point. (boating accident illustration)
Verse 1 says that the Father bestowed love on us. I checked some other versions to see what other words were used to express this idea...
Bestowed (NASB) (KJV) Given (RSV) Lavished (NIV) Allows (NLT)
Why so many different translations?
didomi - means to give or to grant.
Verse 1 also says that we are Children of God (Adoption) He choose me!! -adopted, predestined etc… Eph 1:3-6
3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ,
4 just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him. In love
5 He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will,
6 to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.
This shows the depth of His love - He predestined us to adoption before the foundation of the world. He chose us. Because He chose us He controlled what was going on in our lives to bring us to a point of surrender that we might accept Jesus as Lord. Since He chose us He bestowed on us this love, the Love of the Father. Agape love, unconditional and unswerving.
Because we have become children of God we are strangers in this world.
The world does not know Jesus because Jesus is not of this world. He came from the Father full of grace and truth. He spent His life here to show us how to live and to set the captives free. We were the captives, held hostage by the evil one and slaves to sin. The sin we were enslaved to makes this world dark. And those who are of this place love the darkness. And since the darkness hates the light it hates God and His Son Jesus. It also hates all those who walk in the Light. When we accept Jesus we become Children of God and begin to walk in the light. When we walk in the light the world will no longer know us. In fact the world will hate us because we are in the light.
Jesus said it this way:
18 “If the world hates you, you know that it has hated Me before it hated you.
19 “If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, because of this the world hates you.
He said it Himself we are not of the world. The great thing here isn’t that the world doesn’t know us but that Jesus chose us out of the world. We used to be a part of the world. But, we were chosen out of the world to be His brothers and Sisters.
Think of it this way… Tell a story about choosing marbles from a bag… Remember what Ephesians 1:5 said? We were predestined for adoption. We weren’t randomly pulled from the world - He chose us. He dug around in the bag looking specifically for each one of us.
This is one of the reasons we should avoid loving the world. It doesn’t know us, in fact it hates us. Should we love something that doesn’t know us and hates us? Absolutely not.
The big question is…
Now that we are children of God what will we be? Well according to verse 2 we don’t yet know. We don’t know what we will be like when we pass away from this world. However we can guess by what we are told about Jesus during His transfiguration...
2 And He was transfigured before them; and His face shone like the sun, and His garments became as white as light.
At this point and time the true spiritual appearance of Jesus was evident to the disciples who witnessed this event. God is light, and the light of God was shining in Jesus at this time. His physical body disappeared for a time. This pot of clay that we walk around in and live in while we are here on this earth became nothing for Jesus.
This isn’t the only story that points us to a spiritual body. Stories about Angels are scattered throughout the scriptures and they tell us of spiritual beings that looked similar to how Jesus looked at this point. One such story comes during Jesus’ resurrection. Matthew 28:2-3 says:
2 And behold, a severe earthquake had occurred, for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled away the stone and sat upon it.
3 And his appearance was like lightning, and his clothing as white as snow.
His appearance was like lightning - have you ever seen lightning? I don’t mean from far away, but up close? I saw lightning strike a tree once, the brightness of it was incredible. I didn’t see any color at all, the darkness of the tree was completely swallowed by the light.
The incredible thing is that verse 2 goes on to say that we will be like Him. But how can that be? How can we be like lightning?
Well 1 Corinthians chapter 15 tells us all about it what we will be like... 1 Cor 15:50-53
50 Now I say this, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.
51 Behold, I tell you a mystery; we will not all sleep, but we will all be changed,
52 in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet; for the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed.
53 For this perishable must put on the imperishable, and this mortal must put on immortality.
This is perishable… boy is it ever perishable. But when we are like Jesus we will be imperishable. The appearance of lightning - that is imperishable.
And then we will see Him just as He is. We will see Him in His glorified state. We will see Him like lightning and when we look down at ourselves we too will look like lightning because we will be with Him and we will be like Him. We will be raised imperishable.
So now we have an idea of what we will be like when this perishable container stops working. We will become imperishable like Jesus. This imperishability is one of the things that we must hope for as we run this race called the Christian walk. In fact verse 3 of our passage says that everyone who has this hope fixed on Him purifies himself. So what hope is John talking about?
Well this Hope - is the hope that we will become like Jesus. We can’t see that it will happen right now but we can have the assurance that it will happen. Our hope is in something that is not seen by us at the moment. But we must stay fixed on Him. The idea of being fixed on Him makes me think of super glue. Do you remember the old commercials where they showed how well super glue works. They super glued a man’s hard hat to a steel beam and lifted him off the ground as he hung on to his hat. That’s what we have to do with Jesus. We have to stay stuck to Him. Fixed on Him and the prize of imperishability.
But, to do this we must purify ourselves. The idea of being pure is a tough one. Things in a vacuum can stay pure. But we can’t live in a vacuum. So, how can we live in this dark and evil world and remain pure? The worst part of this is how do I purify myself? I can’t get all the grim of this world off of me. That is where the blood of Jesus comes in. Only His blood can purify me. So, in order for me to purify myself I must accept Him and allow His blood to purify me. And then I have to stay fixed on Him.
Paul said it this way to the Corinthians:
1 Therefore, having these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.
Perfecting Holiness. Purity like holiness is being set apart. So we must set ourselves apart from all defilement of flesh and spirit. That’s a big order so, once again how do we do that? The only thing I can think of is to fix our eyes on Jesus. If we are keeping our eyes on Jesus and walking towards Him then we won’t walk towards evil and the things of this world.
By keeping our eyes on Jesus we can keep ourselves pure because He is pure. There is no sin in Him and there is no sin in God’s presence.
48 “Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
That’s the goal - be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect. This journey begins with the blood of Jesus, but it requires us to keep our eyes fixed on Him. Do not turn to the left or the right. There is all sorts of ugly when we turn away from Jesus. The apostle John exhorts us to keep our hope fixed on Him and the final outcome of our walk in this world.
This world that doesn’t know us and actually hates us because it hates the light and we are in the light. But in the light is the Father and the love of the Father never fails - it isn’t like the love that some of us have seen from people in our lives. The love of parents that aren’t there when you need them; or the love of the father that comes home drunk and beats you; or the love of a parent that just takes and never gives.
The love of my Father is so scandalous that He even chose me for adoption. Me a filthy sinner. He chose me that I might be called a child of God. Did He choose you too? Are you a child of God? If you are identify yourself with Him. There are too many people who call themselves Christian yet they do not walk as a child of God. If someone asks you to describe yourself or tell them who you are - start out with the knowledge of your place in the Kingdom of God. Tell them I am a child of God, and say it like you mean it.
1 See how great a love the Father has bestowed on us, that we would be called children of God; and such we are. For this reason the world does not know us, because it did not know Him.
Pray!