Sermon Tone Analysis

! The Love of God – An Everlasting Love

 

 

One truth about God we to keep in mind as look at His Character or Attributes is that you can not separate them.

God is ONE.

You can’t really separate His Love from His Wrath, or His Grace and Mercy from His Justice.

The concept that “God is Love” is clearly the most popular and the most universally affirmed truth concerning God.

                                                                            

1 John 4:8 *8 *Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.

Almost everyone is happy that God is Love as long as you leave it in a simplistic definition.

The fact is most people and even many Christians don’t really understand the Love of God.

God’s Love is far more profound, far more complex and frankly incomprehensible and at times disturbing to contemplate.

We’re going to try to talk about the height, and breadth and depth of the Love of God.

And the place His Love has in the total of His attributes.

 

3 Categories of Love of God

 

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God’s Love for Himself – Intra-Trinitarian Love

 

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Gods Love for All Humanity – God’s Common Grace

 

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God’s Love for His Own – God’s Love to the Max

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*1 – God’s Love for Himself.*

This is the starting point for for looking at God’s Love, because before there were any creatures to love, God was still Love and he loved the other members of the Trinity Mutually.

*John 14:31* (NASB95) 31     but so that the world may know that I love the Father, I do exactly as the Father commanded Me.

Get up, let us go from here.

The Son Loves the Father in perfect obedience.

*John 15:9-10* (NASB95) 9     “Just as the Father has loved Me, I have also loved you; abide in My love.

10     “If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love; just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love.

The Father loves the Son.

Again perfect Love in Perfect obedience

 

*John 17:23     *I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that You sent Me, and loved them, even as You have loved Me.

 

Perfect love in the Trinity

 

Let’s look at the Father’s love for the Son

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!

John 5: 21-27

*19 *So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing.

For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise.

*20 *For the Father loves the Son and shows him all that he himself is doing.

And greater works than these will he show him, so that you may marvel.

*21 *For as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whom he will.

*22 *The Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son, *23 *that all may honor the Son, just as they honor the Father.

Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him.

*24 *Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life.

He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.

*25 *“Truly, truly, I say to you, an hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live.

*26 *For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself.

*27 *And he has given him authority to execute judgment, because he is the Son of Man.

You know what this says?

Everything that the Father has He gave to the Son!!

The Son does what He see the Father doing, The Father shows the Son everything that He is doing!

This demonstrates the magnanimity of God’s love.

He gives the Son EVERYTHING.

He holds nothing back!!

All of the Fathers power, all of His privileges, all of His Honor, He give the Son.

Lets Look at John 6 –

 

John 6:37 *37 *All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out.

*38 *For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me.

*39 *And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day.

!! And

*verse 44 *No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.

And I will raise him up on the last day.

*I’ll admit that this is a little obtuse.

Does anyone see the demonstration of Gods Love for the Son in this passage?*

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The Father loves the Son so much that He gives to the Son a redeemed humanity.

We need to understand that God’s love for sinners is secondary.

God’s Love for His Son is primary.

The Fathers love for us is to give a love gift of a Bride to the Son.

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! Let’s look a little further into how this love is expressed

 

*Titus 1:1-3  *1 Paul, a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ, for the sake of the faith of God’s elect and their knowledge of the truth, which accords with godliness, 2 in hope of eternal life, which God, who never lies, promised before the ages began 3 and at the proper time manifested in his word through the preaching with which I have been entrusted by the command of God our Savior;

 

The key is at the end of verse two.

This whole unfolding miracle of salvation comes “from God who cannot lie”.

At the end of verse two, “He promised it before time began”.

Before time began, to whom did He make that promise?

Not to me, or any other human being, because we weren’t created.

So to whom did He make this promise?

*2 Tim 1:8-9  *8 Therefore do not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord, nor of me his prisoner, but share in suffering for the gospel by the power of God, 9 who saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works but because of his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began,

 

So, to whom did He make the promise?

It was an Inter-Trinitarian promise.

It involved a promise from the God the Father to the God the Son.

I know I’m treading on sacred ground here and I’ll try to support it from the Gospel of John in just a moment.

But just bear with me for now.

There was a moment in eternity when the Father determined to express His infinite and perfect love to the Son.

There is an intra-Trinitarian love, the likes of which is incomprehensible to us.

But this we know about love …It gives.

And at some eternal moment, the Father desired to express His perfect love for the Son.

And the way He determined to express that was to give to the Son a redeemed humanity as a love gift.

A redeemed humanity whose purpose would be…forever and ever throughout all of the eons of eternity to praise and glorify the Son and serve Him perfectly.

Evidently the angels wouldn’t suffice.

Because there are characteristics of the Son for which they could never praise Him because they had never fallen and had never been redeemed.

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He not only pre-determined it, but He pre-determined who would make up that redeemed humanity and He wrote their names down in the book of life before the world began.

Rev 13:8 (NASB)  "And all who dwell on the earth will worship him, everyone whose name has not been written from the foundation of the world in the *book of life *of the Lamb who has been slain."

Rev 20:15 (NASB)  "And if anyone's name was not found written in the *book of life, *he was thrown into the lake of fire."

The Father told the Son this is the love gift that I want to give to you.

And they will forever want to praise and glorify your Name.

When we get a glimpse of heaven in Revelation, what are they doing up there?

The Saints are saying, “Worthy is the Lamb.”

And that’s what’s going to go on up there forever.

So the Father determined to give a love gift to the son.

Which means, if I can be so bold as to say it, you and I are somewhat incidental to the real issue here.

Salvation is primarily for the honor of the Son, not the honor of the sinner.

The purpose is not to save me so I could have a happy life, that is a by-product.

The purpose is to save us to we can praise the Son forever and ever and ever.

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To see further illustration of this LOVE, let’s look at the gospel of John to what has to be a most remarkable insight with few parallels into this theme.

In John chapter six, starting in verse 37, Jesus says this…