God Loves You
Notes
Transcript
34 But when the Pharisees heard that He had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. 35 Then one of them, a lawyer, asked Him a question, testing Him, and saying, 36 “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?”
37 Jesus said to him, “ ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and great commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”
(Let us pray)
Love People
Love People
We are in a series Love People.
Next week, I aim for us to talk about Loving Yourself Well.
Today, as a precursor, we talk about God’s love for You.
Say aloud God’s Love For Me
“God’s love for me.”
“God’s love for me.”
How many of us understand that we cannot give what we do not have?
Agree, type, Amen. Disagree, type Not sure.
Ask me about something that I have done, lived, reflected upon and we can talk for days, in depth. More than talking, we can develop a road map for you to see clearly and progress forward in that particular area.
But ask me about cooking...you ask me about making and baking from scratch a sweet potato pie. I can give advice....but only vaguely. I say, “Above all, make sure that the pie filling taste good.” The advice is vague. And the more questions that you ask to clarify the recipe, the more clear it becomes that my knowledge and experience are limited. “OrLando, what is meant by ‘good’..you say ‘taste good’?” I say, “Well, you know, ‘taste good’...’is good to the taste’”.
My reply is not helpful.
And so to can be the instruction I read from the scripture to us:
39 And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’
Well...
“How do I love myself? ...What does that entail?
How does that look?...
What about loving OrLando transfers to loving my neighbor?”
To get a clearer picture, let’s look at God and let’s consider how God loves you so well.
(The story of the prodigal son teaches me that it is possible for me to be loved well and yet not recognize until later that I am so well loved…or perhaps to not at all know it. I can walk through life thinking that I have the short end of the stick. This presents a problem when how I think is how I live.)
How you live life from a place of acceptance is often different from how life is lived when from a place of rejection.
Say Amen if you know that’s true. Say Hold it Preacher if you dispute.
He Loves me. He Loves me not. He loves me.
Today, I believe God wants for you to know He loves you.
When we talk about love, one of the first things that we will want to recognize is that God is love.
8 He who does not love does not know God, for God is love.
God is not just the personification of love.
God gives love its definition.
We can define love for ourselves in coming to know who God is.
A scripture/the divine story that jumps out for me, perhaps for you too, when speaking about God’s love for humanity and mankind is John 3:16
16 For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.
Elaborating on this love, 1 John 4:7-11
7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. 8 He who does not love does not know God, for God is love. 9 In this the love of God was manifested toward us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him. 10 In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
A couple of realities to grasps in God’s love for you:
1. God loved you first.
1. God loved you first.
Say God loved me first.
19 We love Him because He first loved us.
We love in response to God’s love for us but
God's love is not reactionary.
You ever like someone after you find out that they like you? And after you find out someone has stopped liking you, you stop liking them (or at least try to)?
God’s love is not reactionary.
This is good news--it means that we cannot manipulate our way into God's love (we can’t earn or purchase God’s love), nor can we (nor anyone) manipulate our way out of God's love—stop God from loving us.
God loves (you) absent of performance.
(Sure, God can delight in you or not delight in you. But there is something about God’s love for you that is independent of you—love not based on who you are but based on who He is.)
(In Deuteronomy, Moses exhorts the Israelites…)
7 The Lord did not set His love on you nor choose you because you were more in number than any other people, for you were the least of all peoples; 8 but because the Lord loves you, and because He would keep the oath which He swore to your fathers, the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand, and redeemed you from the house of bondage, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.
2. God's love is a demonstrated love.
2. God's love is a demonstrated love.
Notice, the author of John 3:16, the author of 1 John does not say, “God loves you. Trust me!”
9 In this the love of God was manifested toward us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him. 10 In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
manifest = reveal; make clear
to be manifest v. — to be or become clearly revealed to the mind, the senses, or judgment.
“…that we might live...”
John 10:10 (NKJV)
10 The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.
The author becomes more explicit, v10 “…In this is love...”
propitiation =
The satisfaction of the righteous demands of God in relation to human sin and its punishment through the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ upon the cross, by which the penalty of sin is cancelled and the anger of God averted.
Manser, M. H. (2009). Dictionary of Bible Themes: The Accessible and Comprehensive Tool for Topical Studies. London: Martin Manser.
propitiation n. — the means of appeasing wrath and gaining the good will of an offended person; especially with respect to sacrifices for appeasing angered deities.
The author is so confident in his example:
1 John 4:11 (NKJV)
11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
What is so remarkable about God’s love for you?
What is so remarkable about God’s love for you?
God has capacity.
1. God's love is capable…of deep sacrifice.
1. God's love is capable…of deep sacrifice.
16 By this we know love, because He laid down His life for us. And we also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.
6 For when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. 7 For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die. 8 But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
5 and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the ruler over the kings of the earth.
To Him who loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood,
2. God’s love can see you through to the other side.
2. God’s love can see you through to the other side.
2 looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
John 14:1–3 (NKJV)
Christ Comforts His Disciples
14 “Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me. 2 In My Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. 3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also.
Joshua 1:5 (NKJV)
5 No man shall be able to stand before you all the days of your life; as I was with Moses, so I will be with you. I will not leave you nor forsake you.
3. In His Love, God thinks about you
3. In His Love, God thinks about you
15 My frame was not hidden from You,
When I was made in secret,
And skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.
16 Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed.
And in Your book they all were written,
The days fashioned for me,
When as yet there were none of them.
17 How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God!
How great is the sum of them!
18 If I should count them, they would be more in number than the sand;
When I awake, I am still with You.
4. God’s love can think ahead into your future.
4. God’s love can think ahead into your future.
The Prophet Jeremiah gives the Jewish people in exile a message from God:
11 For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.
And God can keep track of the details of your life.
Luke 12:7 (NKJV)
7 But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Do not fear therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows.
5. God’s love actively works with you to see this future manifest.
5. God’s love actively works with you to see this future manifest.
6 being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ;
God’s love
4 Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; 5 does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; 6 does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; 7 bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
8 Love never fails. But whether there are prophecies, they will fail; whether there are tongues, they will cease; whether there is knowledge, it will vanish away.
16 For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.
What does it mean that God loves the world?
What does it mean that God loves the world?
It means that God loves you, but not just you.
(my story of walking to heaven to see God…)
God wants a relationship with all of His creation and sent Jesus to be that pathway.
17 And He came and preached peace to you who were afar off and to those who were near. 18 For through Him we both have access by one Spirit to the Father.
6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.
This is good news. Unlike the human capacity for love that sees personal limits, God is not limited in the ways you and I may most experience limitations.
God’s love has capacity for all of humanity.
12 For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek, for the same Lord over all is rich to all who call upon Him. 13 For “whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”
(You are not too much for God.)
2 Peter 3:9 (NKJV)
9 The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.
God loves us enough to place us into community
1 Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God! Therefore the world does not know us, because it did not know Him.
What is God’s desire for you today?
17 that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, 18 may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height—19 to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.