The Love of God, Part 6 A

God is love. And so we would expect his children to walk in what in love. God's people bear his reflection since love has God as its source. Those who show that love give evidence that they are the children of God in their life and their love is derived, demonstrating God's love to the watching world. How well would your coworkers say you're doing. What about your friends, your spouse, your children well today on grace to you. John MacArthur looks at what it takes to follow Christ example of self-sacrificing love. It's part of a study simply titled the love of God. John is going to cover quite a few passages today, so if you're able, grab your Bible and follow along. Now, as he begins the message we went deep and high and far and wide in our discussion of God's love and we tried to wrap our arms around the Hyatt. The depth, the length and breadth of the love that passes knowledge and when we got our arms as wide as we could get them and we were finally left in silence unable to unscrew the inscrutable we were done because there needed to be one other discussion and that is the one for this morning on how do we respond to that love. What is required of us. We can't just put that great understanding of the love of God out there and walk away from it. It has immense and it has specific and clear implications for us. What is the appropriate response to being so greatly loved by God, as he loves us what is the proper reaction for believers to having received this surpassing love this perfect love and the answer is very very clear in Scripture responses to manifest that same love to others.

That's it. In one statement, our responses to manifest that same love to others how God has loved us is precisely how we are to love and this then is really the capstone of everything in Ephesians chapter 5. Let me just read you very briefly what Paul says at the beginning of the chapter. Just listen. Therefore be imitators of God and walk in love. You are God's beloved children imitate him. How by walking in love. That's our response to God's love is to walk in that same kind of love, but I want to take you to Matthew chapter 5 for a moment, because I think this responsibility.

This duty, this implication of God's love is so crystal clear in Matthew five verse 43 and I'll read down to verse 48 you have heard that it was said, you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. Now Jesus is simply saying common knowledge or if you want to use the contemporary parlance conventional wisdom says that you are to love your neighbor and hate your enemy. In other words, they were not a lot. Unlike our society today.

They wanted to give room for hate. They thought it was not only reasonable and acceptable, but it was even religious to hate people who gave you trouble. Conventional wisdom said love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. Why verse 45 in order that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. Why he loves his enemies. The question is does God love the world, yes, does he love those who hate him yes. He loves his enemies and it is on that premise that we are commanded to love our enemies. There it is. We are to love the ungodly, just like God loves the ungodly and how does he love them through common grace. Verse 45. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good he sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.

There is a love which demonstrates itself commonly to everybody regardless of their spiritual condition or whether they are God's own beloved or not there's nothing commendable about just loving the people that are in your group if you love verse 46 says those who love you, what reward have you. I mean, that's not noble even tax collectors do that that's collectors are in the New Testament synonymous with the scum of the earth because not because of their profession itself but because they were Jews who sold out to exorbitant illegal taxation on the part of Rome so they were seen as traders of their own people.

Verse 47. If you greet your brothers.

Only what you do more than others. How different is that everybody does that even the pagans do the same. You need to love as God loves and he says it this way in verse 48 your to be perfect, as your heavenly father's birth, nothing more. Demonstrates the perfection of God than the fact that he loves those who hate him nothing more demonstrate the perfection of God more than the loves the enemies who set their life against him and you are to be perfect, as your father is perfect. You see that verse. Matthew 548 is in the context of loving people who hate you. So how are we to how are we to respond to God's love where to mimic it where to imitate it were to copy it. Ephesians 5 use the word MMA taste, from which we get mimic we are to reproduce the same kind of love and that starts with loving the ungodly, the way God loves them and we shared with you. God loves the world the and unlimited sense God loves all sinners and it manifests itself in common grace or goodness, kindness, and secondly, and compassion. Pity tender heartedness sympathy. Thirdly, warning warning about judgment warning about hell, forcefully calling them to repentance or giving them an invitation to believe the gospel. That's how we are to love just the way God loves his enemies where to treat them with kindness and tenderness and sympathy and pity. We are to warn them, and we are to give them the gospel.

That's to demonstrate is verse 45 says that we are the sons of our father who is in heaven. You see, we started out by saying the first proposition in the series was God's love to the world is unlimited in extent, that is, he loves the world. John 316 God so loved the world, Titus 34 speaks of his love for mankind and as I said, it is demonstrated in common grace, compassion, warnings in the gospel call. It was his love for the world and motivated him to send his son to be the Savior of the world as Scripture calls them, and so we are to love the world in the same way that God loves them. That is to say where to love them with kindness. That's why Galatians 610 says, do good to all men, especially those of the household of faith. But do good to all men or first Corinthians 1614 says let all that you do be done in love. Love them with kindness, love them with goodness help to make the sunshine on them a little bit in the rainfall bring a little joy into their life.

Treat them with courtesy and tenderness, then we remember that the Lord loved also in a way that made him speak about judgment are tenderness cannot mitigate against the warning. We are to love the world and warn them where to say to them that God has commanded all men everywhere to repent X to 1730 and he is appointed a day in which he will judge the world by that man whom he has ordained, whom he raised from the dead. Even the Lord Jesus Christ where to warn them and warn them and warn them about impending doom and judgment in hell is Mark 1615 says were to go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. So just like God loves in those same four ways we are to love were to reproduce his love in the world with kindness and compassion, and warnings and invitations to believe. Secondly, the second grade proposition. We said was that God's love to the world is limited in degree is unlimited in extent, but it is limited in degree, God does not love the world, the way he loves his own. He loves the world in a temporal temporary way, he loves them in a limited way he doesn't love them like he loves the elect he doesn't love them like he loves those years designed to save loves his own. It says in John 13 one.

He loves his own on to perfection. He loves his own eyes tell us to the max to the end to the limit forever and we saw that God loves his own. That is, believers those who belong to him with a lavish, forgiving, generous, merciful, gracious, inseparable, unbreakable, unconquerable, unwavering, unfading sanctifying cleansing, purifying, nourishing, cherishing love and he loves them as much as he has a capacity to love because he loves them under perfection to the max to the end totally. And that's how little that's not a word to love the brothers were to love them the same way he loves us in John 13 and that upper room the night of Jesus betrayal.

He demonstrated his love and an example of how the disciples were to love by washing their feet and you remember that come in from a day in the dusty roads and their feet would've been dirty significantly dirty and it was accustomed to have the most menial slave available to do the foot washing because it was the dirtiest and lowest task on the on the responsibility chart with Jesus to was King of Kings and Lord of lords stooped and didn't and in John 1312. It says he wash their feet and then putting back on his garment. He reclined the table again and he said to them, do you know what I don't do you call me teacher you call me Lord. And you're right, for so I am in your wondering in your minds. Why is the Lord doing this. Why is the teacher doing this. Why is the master doing this and he said if I then, the Lord, the master, the teacher, washed your feet, you also want to wash one another's feet. For I've given you an example that you should do as I did. Do you truly, truly, I say to you, a slave is not greater than his master. Neither is one who is sent greater than the one who sent him. I'm telling you, if I did it.

You need to do and then down in verse 34 a new commandment I give you that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another.

There is that lavish, unselfish, humble, sacrificial bowing of the need to do the dirty task that benefits a brother or a sister that's how were the love. It is a magnanimous love. It is a far-reaching love is a lavish love is a love is John first John in first John three 1617 says it is a love that opens up our feelings of compassion toward one another.

We are to love other believers to perfection. We have a love for the world, but it's not to the to the extent that we love the brotherhood.

We love the brotherhood like God does to perfection to the max to the limit with a limitless unbounded love, Peter says love one another with with an Denise lovey. It's the word fervent Acton aces used of the stretching of a muscle to its absolute limit.

We are to love believers to perfection. That's how we are perfect as our father in heaven is perfect to understand that, let's turn to first John chapter 4 this is the text.

The Lord really laid on my heart. First John chapter 4 and here we are given a tremendous call to perfect love. If we are to be perfect as our father in heaven is perfect and we have to manifest love for love is not perfection of God and if we are to be God like we have the love like God loves with a perfect love, perfect meeting again to the max to the end complete, thorough hole carried out to the full permanent supreme. All of that and John is writing here to believers calling them to this kind of love verse 12. At the end of the verse. He talks about his love being perfected in us. Verse 17. By this, love is perfected with us.

Verse 18 at the end of the verse perfected in love. John is not writing about some small component of love are some diminished amount of love or some lesser degree of love. He is writing about perfectly so that we can be like our father perfect.

We are to love supremely where to love, to the max. That's John's theme in verses 7 to 21.

I want to look at it with me were going to go through it just briefly. It starts in verse seven. Here's the opening statement that sets it all in motion. Beloved, let us love one another.

Yes, we learn from Matthew five that we are to love our enemies were love the world as we said with common grace, compassion, judgment, and will warnings and in gospel invitations, but we are also love the brotherhood and this love here is commanded of us beloved and again he emphasizes we are the love that's why he calls us beloved and so we are to love one another. We are to demonstrate the perfect love that will make us the perfect children of our perfect heavenly father. So verse seven gives the exhortation. Let us love one another. Then there are six reasons why we are to obey it.

Six reasons and they do overlap.

John overlaps himself all the time.

In fact, if you read the Gospel of John, you have the feeling you're going in circles. I should say if you read the epistle of John, you have the feeling you're going in circles. He cycles back through the same things interweaving overlapping and rehearsing what you will see here. Six reasons why the believer manifests self-sacrificing love that is like his father's love to him. Reason number one because love is the essence of God, because love is the essence of God. In other words, if we are going to say we are the children of God is Ephesians 5 puts it, then we better walk in love, because that's the character of God, look at it verse seven. Let us love one another. Why, for love is from God.

That's why love is from God, and we who are God's children will reproduce his nature, Clement of Alexandria long ago wrote something that some might think borders on blasphemy. But this is what he said.

The true Christian practices being God. You think like that when you come to the moments and days and issues of your life do you say to yourself I want to do what God would want to think like God would think in say what God would say and feel what God would feel and do what God would do I want to play God in the best sense of the word.

So back to verse seven. Love one another, for love is from God, and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. And the one who doesn't love doesn't know God, for God is love. And so we would expect his children to walk in what in love. God's people bear his reflection. Everyone who habitually loves gives evidence of being born of God, since love has God as its source. Those who show that love give evidence that they are the children of God, their life and their love is derived from him know there were people in the church, the assembly, to which John wrote this epistle who were being influenced by mystical teaching and later became known as Gnosticism, and that Miss mystical's teaching said that we've elevated ourselves to the higher planes of human consciousness in which we have come to know God and they look down on humble Christians, demeaning, denigrating them, looking them up as if they were lowlife, as if they were wallowing around in the muck of earth and these people by virtue of their transcendence by will, by virtue of their mystical experiences had ascended from the Martin were floating in the clouds of the true knowledge of God. That's why they were called gnostics from the word gnosis.

They were the people thought they were in the know to them. John writes these words, the one who goes around saying he knows God but does not demonstrate love for the brothers is not one who knows God because God is love, and whoever is born of God and knows God loves like God… So he says.

First of all, we love because it is the very essence of God's nature to love and we who belong to God will share that nature is God really love yes you look at that little phrase at the end of verse eight God is love. And as we been going to the Surrey summary much I question that. Look at the world around us. You say history has this long tail of man's inhumanity to man.

History is one long massacre. Spain had its inquisition written its Atlantic slave trade. Germany had its gas chambers rush at Siberian labor camps United States its own abuses.

The world is still swept by fear and lust in greed, and it seems to me, escalating racial tension and hatred nature to seems as twisted, if not more twisted in our time than ever babies are born depraved they inherent diseases and tendencies toward all kinds of trouble. Ours is a world of praying animals, parasites, viruses, deadly bacteria and when you read the Bible, you certainly don't read about utopia you open your Bible and you find tyranny cruelty mutilation people having their eyes gouged out their hands lopped off, God opens the ground and swallows them up in the Bible is full of the stories of decedent licentiousness and wickedness and immorality and homosexuality in war, and not only war, but war heard that God start in the Syria. One of the most pagan wretched ungodly cruel nations in the history of the world is called the rod of God's anger, and then you read God is love easy answers can't possibly be right. You must realize we are children that we are fools that we are self conceited stiffnecked rebels who will get everything wrong unless we are willing to give up telling God what he has to do and what he has to be like, and we stand firmly in Romans nine and we hear Paul say who are you old man to answer God closer met God's will because it says, but is love is never unmixed or untouched by his other attributes, but God is love and in spite of how it might look.

He wants his world to know he's love and he puts it on display through social we who are his children will manifest his perfect love. That's why were to walk in love, so we are the offspring of God and his essence is love. So let's love one. This is grace to you with John MacArthur. Thanks for being with us. John is a pastor conference speaker and Chancellor of the Masters University and seminary in the Los Angeles area's current study is an in-depth look at the love of God will friend wherever and however your hearing this program know that people from all sorts of life situations are being strengthened by this same teaching in John, you have some letter excerpts in front of you and they help paint the picture of the breadth of ministry that Gracie was having so share these with us yeah you know Phil, this is always a great joy for me because this is the fruit of the labor.

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Your ministry is like an appetizer that prepares my pallet for a great feast in the word I use your content in preparation for leading our men's group at church and teaching our young boys and girls that a Christian private school. While wonderful. Thank you, Alberto, this note comes from Micheal in Sweden. I have been listening to your sermons from grace to you for about five months. I'm just astounded. I have been listening 3 to 6 hours is to pay your sermons of God's word change my life in a way I never could imagine. I thank you from all of my heart. Well thank you Micheal God bless you and then from Robert, who had this to say about our series on the Beatitudes, which aired a few months ago Robert says in all my 81 years. Never have I heard anything that is open. My understanding of the sermon on the Mount more than this series has. I'm going to order your four volume commentary on Matthew making disciples of Jesus Christ is my hearts desire for the remaining time I have on earth. God bless you Robert 81 years and desiring to know more and serve the Lord with your whole heart. Then a final note from Nick, tow boat captain on the Mississippi River not long ago a new deckhand sent me a link to the greatest you app. Since then I've been listening to your sermons every day while at the helm of the boat. I ordered copies of the MacArthur study Bible for my wife are for little ones and myself. We use them to dig deep into the word of God. I have also been giving the gospel to my mother who is a Jehovah's Witness into my father, who feels that he's committed so many sins.

God will not forgive him. Thank you for your commitment to sound theology in helping me see Scripture so much clearer. I'm praying for you all well thank you Capt. Nick down the Mississippi River.

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Our toll-free number again 805 five grace and the website GT Y.org now for John MacArthur and the entire grace to you staff, I'm Phil Johnson encouraging you to be here tomorrow when John looks at God's amazing love for his son and for you. Don't miss the next half hour unleashing God's truth one verse at a time on Wednesdays. Grace to you