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Take a vote and ask, what is the most important virtue? I am confident we would come up with the same answer. And that answer would be the virtue of love. The Bible agrees with this statement. First Corinthians 13, 13 says, Faith, hope, and love abide these three, but the greatest of these three is love.
You don't need to be a believer in Christ to know that there is something special about love. Brianna and I have enjoyed going to shops in this area since we moved here. And they always have those signs with different messages on them that you can put on the wall in your home.
And the ones you see in every store always say something about love. They say, I love you to the moon and back, or all we need is love, or they say, faith, hope, and love. So to talk about love, it's very deep in our culture, and this is not uniquely Christian, but there is a problem with the way our culture defines love.
What we will see from Scripture today is that our culture has a faulty understanding.
Of what love is.
What we will see is that love comes from God. Everything comes from God, and God is the source of love. And so we need to let the author of love define what love is. And we are going to see how amazing his love is this morning.
If you can believe it, this is our second-to-last sermon in this sermon series, the ultimate pursuit of knowing God. And so today, we're going to look at the attribute of God's love. In our big idea, or our proposition, you'll see this in your outline, is a proper understanding of love comes from the source of love.
A proper understanding of love comes from the source of love. Last week, we looked at how God shows mercy and grace in salvation through Jesus Christ. God mercifully erases our sins and the punishment that follows.
God graciously gives us eternal life so that when this life is over, you go to be with the one for whom you were created. Today, we are going to look at how God's love is demonstrated in salvation, and we're going to look at that in point number two.
I have four points this morning. But first, we're going to look at an accurate definition of what love is. We need to find out, well, when we say love, what do we mean by that? God defines what love is.
So here is a definition of love. One author defines it this way. God gives himself to others for their benefit. This is a definition of God's love. God gives himself to others for their benefit. Why does God give himself for the benefit of others?
Well, 1 John 4, 8 says that God is love. So he does this because he himself is love. He is the source of love so that it can only be correctly defined by him. In this sermon today, we're going to look at four ways that this love is correctly defined.
And the first way is God's love between the members of the Trinity. God's love is demonstrated between the members of the Trinity. Now, before there was a creation, have you ever wondered what was God doing when it was just him?
I mean, there was no creation, but he was there. What was he doing? Did God get lonely? The answer, of course, is no. God was not lonely. We learned in June that God is self-sufficient and has no needs.
We don't complete him in any way. He did not create because he was lonely. Before there was a creation, each person of the Trinity was loving the other. And this has been called by theologians an eternal dance, where each loved the other from all eternity.
The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit were in relationship with one another. This is where relationships originated. God was in relationship from all eternity. This is what Jesus said of the love that he had with the Father before creation.
John 17, 24. Once God created all things, the love between the Father and the Son did not miss a beat, because this is what it says in John 3, 35. Now, in the two verses I just read, Jesus mentions the Father's love for him.
But this is not a one-way love. Jesus loves the Father back. John 14, 31. The love between the Spirit and the other two persons of the Trinity is not explicitly mentioned in Scripture, but since the three persons of the Trinity are mentioned together throughout Scripture, we can assume confidently that it is clear that the Spirit was also involved in this love, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, loving each other from all eternity.
It's hard for us to wrap our minds around this, but it's true. Now, when we talk about the definition of love as God giving himself for the benefit of others, how does God give to God who has no needs?
Okay, let me say that again. How does one person in the Trinity give to another person in the Trinity when they don't have any needs? Because, obviously, as sinners, we have great needs, and God shows his love for us by sending Jesus to die for our sins, as sinners.
The Father, Son, and the Spirit love one another by having affection for the other and giving honor to the other. So each person in the Trinity is taking pleasure in the other person, and then each person in the Trinity is showing honor to the other.
That's how they loved each other from all eternity. Each person in the Trinity is giving himself for the joy of the other. Now, God defines what love is because he is love. And the greatest love that there has ever been is the love between the persons of the Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Now, this is the first way that a proper understanding of love is demonstrated. It's demonstrated between each member of the Trinity. The second way that a proper understanding of love is demonstrated is God's love for sinners.
God's love for sinners. I mentioned earlier that love is God giving of himself for the benefit of others. One of the most amazing realities revealed in Scripture is that God loves sinners. Romans 5, 8 says that God demonstrates his love for us and that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
He does not love us because he looks at us and sees something that he likes. He doesn't love us because we are lovely. God the Father mercifully looked down upon us by giving Jesus in order that we could be in relationship with him.
John 3, 16. It's always great to quote this verse on a Sunday because it's the most famous verse in the world. For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
Another way to say this verse is God loved the world in this way, by sending his Son for sinners. Do you notice how love involves action? How do we know God loves us? Well, he gave his Son for us. In the sacrifice of Jesus, we see how great God's love is because it came at a great cost.
God came to this earth humbly as a man in the person of Jesus Christ. And the God-man Jesus, who is perfect, without blemish, never sinned, was put on trial by sinful men and was crucified by sinful men.
If you want to talk about a scandal, that's a scandal. The one who has never sinned is put on the cross by sinners. The perfect Lamb of God suffered a punishment that he did not deserve. It was a punishment that we deserve, but he was treated as our sins deserve.
But God sent Jesus because it was the only way that God could bring sinners to himself. Jesus bore the punishment that we deserve. And God desired to have a relationship with you. God desires to have a relationship with his image-bearers.
And we, as humans, are his image-bearers. Last week, Brianna and Abby sang the song A Mighty Fortress Is Our God. This was a song originally written by Martin Luther about 500 years ago. And there is a line in there that says that God is jealous for his own.
None could comprehend his love and his mercy. God sent his son because he desired a redeemed people. For God to be jealous for you, it means that he wants you. And he's going to go at great cost to get what he wants.
If you belong to Jesus today, you are among this redeemed people that God sent his son for. Sometimes people ask the question, does God really love me? I know he sent his son for me, but does he have affection for me?
The question usually comes from people who have not been loved rightly in their life by family members or by someone else. And it's a good question to ask. I just mentioned that God does not love us because we are lovely.
Could he really have affection for us if we are not lovely? The answer is, yes, he can. And it is an affection because of who you are becoming once you are saved. Okay, so God's affection for you is because of who you are becoming.
When God created humans at the beginning of time, in Genesis 1, he said that his creation was very good. And so God created mankind and he said, my creation is very good. God delighted in the first humans, Adam and Eve.
But once they sinned and through them all people sinned, humanity was no longer lovely and God does not delight in sinners. But once you become a Christian and the Holy Spirit is given to you, this original perfection that God delights in is being restored.
Okay, it's the process of holiness. Once you're saved, the Holy Spirit's given to you and little by little, day by day, you're made more like Jesus Christ. And God delights in that. He delights in the Spirit's work in your life.
Now, the fruit of the Spirit, Galatians 5 .22 describes it, the fruit of the Spirit is love,.
Joy,.
Peace, patience, kindness,.
Goodness,.
Gentleness,.
Self-control. Those fruits of the Spirit, as God defines them, become yours more and more as you follow Jesus Christ. And God delights in that. So there is no question that God does delight and takes pleasure in his people.
Isaiah 62 .5 says, What about those who are not his people? Okay, so we see that God has affection for his people. Okay, this deep love. And God demonstrates his love by sending his Son so that his people would be saved.
But what about people, what about those who will never be saved? Does God still love them? What's amazing about God's love is that God even loves unbelievers in the sense that he takes care of them. He causes the sun and the rain to go down on the just and the unjust.
Matthew 5 .45. But God has a special love for believers. So God demonstrates his love for you by giving his Son. And his affection goes from a general caring for you when you were an unbeliever since you are his creation to a special affection that he now has for you as his child.
A very deep affection. And so God saves you to become a family member. God is your Father. Galatians 4 .4 -7 says, Born of woman, born under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying,.
Abba, Father.
So you are no longer a slave, but a son. And if a son, then an heir through God. I mean, think about that for a second. You are a member of God's family. And the people we love the most in life are our family.
And so God has this tremendous affection for you as his child. Only believers are a part of God's family. And this is an important point to stress. We hear this a lot in our society where people say that everyone is a child of God.
That's false. Not everyone is a child of God. Everyone is God's image bearer, yes.
But only believers.
Are God's children. And so this special affection only applies to the children of God. And so you are adopted into God's family when you believe in Jesus and the Holy Spirit is given to you. That's when this adoption happens.
So God does have affection for you by sending his Son for his sinful creation and then receiving you into his family and delighting in you as his child. So this is the second way that a proper understanding of love is demonstrated.
God loves sinners.
The third way.
That a proper understanding of love is demonstrated is our love for God. Okay, so we're talking about, we talked about God's love for us. Now we're talking about our love for God. It is so very important that we reflect God in this attribute of love.
One of the points I've been trying to get across in this sermon series is that there are certain attributes that we can imitate that God has. And love certainly is one of those attributes that we can imitate.
The most important thing we can do in our life is to love God. And I don't think that's an overstatement. The most important thing we can do in our life is to love God. And you will see why here in a second.
This is the greatest commandment in Scripture. Deuteronomy 6, 5 says, Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might.
Believers.
Are those who love God. Romans 8, 28 says, and we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good. Who are those who love God? When the Apostle Paul writes that, he's saying that believers are the ones who love God.
And so every believer in this room right now loves God to a certain extent. Some more, some less. And it should be our aim to love God more. But one thing is true about all believers. Every believer has a genuine love for God.
And it should always be our aim to love Him more. And unbelievers do not love God. Paul has strong words for those who reject God. 1 Corinthians 16, 22, it says, If anyone has no love for the Lord, let him be accursed.
Okay, so anyone who has no love for the Lord. Unbelievers have no love for the Lord. And we see that their destiny is hell.
But believers.
Have a sincere love for the Lord. So the question we need to ask right now.
Is,.
How?
How do we love God? How do we love God? If the definition of love is giving of yourself for the benefit of others, how do we do that? We can't give to God where He would benefit from us because He has no needs.
So how do we love God back? God gave to us because we had a great need as sinners. But God has no needs. So how do we give to God? We give to God by giving our lives to Him. Demonstrating our love for Him.
John 14, 23 says, Jesus answered him, If anyone loves me, he will keep my word. If anyone loves me, he will keep my word. Do you notice how there are two different pieces.
To love?
Look at this very close with me. This is, Scripture's a gold mine. And every Sunday, I want you to dig with me, okay? We're digging into Scripture and we're trying to find these nuggets of gold. And here's a nugget of gold.
In this verse, John 14, 23, where Jesus says, If anyone loves me,.
He will keep.
My commandments. There are two different pieces to love. Jesus says, If you love me, you'll keep my commandments. So the first, one of the pieces is keeping His commandments. Okay, that's one of the pieces of love.
Keeping His commandments. You will obey Him if you love Him. But He also says, If you love me. Okay, so you see, He says, If you love me here, then you will do this. Okay, but they're not the same thing.
They're two different pieces.
Of love.
If you love me, you'll keep my commandments. So what does He mean by this first piece of love? If you love me? To love God.
Is.
To find your joy in God. To take pleasure in Him. To delight in Him. To treasure Him above all else. And so that because you do that,.
You obey Him.
1 John 5, 3 says, For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments. And His commandments are not burdensome. So you have to ask the question, why are His commandments not burdensome? Because you love God.
Because you treasure Him.
Above all else.
Because you take pleasure in Him. You have this deep affection for Him. If you did not love God, obeying God would be a burden.
Would it not?
If you're just, if you're just obeying Him and just wanting to get into heaven, so you just obey, obey, obey, obey, hoping that one day God will let you in, that sounds miserable. And that's not how the Bible teaches us to love God.
The Bible teaches us to love God because we take pleasure in Him.
So you see those two different pieces? You treasure Him and because you treasure Him, you obey Him. This flows out of you. This obedience flows out of you. Following God is joyful because you are in fellowship with the greatest treasure in the universe.
And at this time, we need to examine ourselves to see if this is true of us.
Okay?
It's helpful to do this. Do we treasure God.
Above all else?
How do we know that we treasure God? Is God number one in your life? It's easy to say that. But is it true of your life? Jesus demands that he be number one in your life. You know what he says in Matthew 10 to 37?
He says, Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me. And whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Doesn't the Bible tell us to love our family?
It does.
But he says here, If you love your family more than me, you're not worthy of me. You can't be my disciple unless you love me more than your family.
And why does he say family here? Of all the things he could have mentioned, why does Jesus say family? Because we treasure family more than anybody. And of all the people on the earth, we treasure our family more than anybody.
But even that,.
He needs to be above that.
That's why he says this. So do you love him more than family. Or even close friends, too?
Do you love God.
More than your hobbies?
More than your work?
More than the Green Bay Packers? Or the Minnesota Vikings? I mean, I'm serious. I mean, there was, my brother's here today. My parents can tell you this, too. There was a time when the Minnesota Twins were more precious to me than God.
Not anymore.
I haven't watched the game all year. You know, they mean nothing to me. But God means everything to me. And that's what it needs to be. Doesn't mean you can't watch sports. I mean, that's, it's, but it just needs to be in the right proportion.
Do you love shopping more than you love God?
I mean, you could,.
We could go down a long list in your life. You know, I know that Brianna and I, I mean, this last year, our Aletheia came into the world and we treasure our daughter. We treasure her more than just about anything in this world.
But we can't treasure her more than God. And if we do, we're making her an idol. We're bringing her to a point that she should not be. Only God should be here. And that's one thing we need to understand.
And so, do you love God more than anything? This will show in your life with the time that you spend with God. We spend time with the ones we love the most.
We do.
We spend time with the ones we love the most. Do you spend time with God?
Do you pray to him.
Or hear from him in his word? He's given us this one book. Do you spend time with him in the word of God? Do you spend time with God's people? I mean, coming here on Sunday, it's very important to be here on Sunday because you meet God in a special way in corporate worship together.
We can't do this on our own. We need each other. And so when we meet together on Sundays, it's so important. We meet God in a special way. And as you spend time with God, obedience will follow. It flows out of you and it'll be natural, this obedience.
You won't even think about the obedience because you're so infatuated by God that it's just going to come out of you. And that's the Christian life,.
Right there.
So Jesus says, if you love me, then these evidences will show in your life. And so when people ask you to do something hard in the name of Christ, it's going to be easy because I'd do anything for Jesus because he's my treasure.
That's what we need to understand. So this is the third way that a proper understanding of love is demonstrated. Our love for God. The fourth way and final way that a proper understanding of love is demonstrated is our love for others.
I mentioned earlier that the greatest commandment in Scripture is to love God. After Jesus said loving God is the greatest commandment, do you know what the second is? Loving your neighbor as yourself.
That's what he says in Matthew 22, 39. He says, and the second is like it. Love your neighbor as yourself. Your love for others.
Starts.
With your love for God. That's where it starts. As you love God, the outflow of that will be that you love other people. 1 John 5, 1 explains this. Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God.
And everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of him. This is where our culture has gotten the definition of love wrong. Our culture defines love as a feeling that you have for someone.
As we have seen, love does not involve this feeling,.
Or,.
Or, sorry, love does, sorry, love does involve this feeling of deep affection for another. But this is only half of the coin. Our culture misses the other half. The other side is giving yourself for their benefit.
Treasuring others as you would want to be treated. Treating them as you would want to be treated. This means serving someone even when it is difficult. It is important to think about this in all areas of life, but what comes to mind here is marriage.
Sometimes in marriage, the initial spark that was there goes away. And one spouse may say to the other, I don't love you like I loved you before.
Or I don't,.
They might even go as far as saying, I don't love you anymore at all. And what's the problem with this? This statement comes from an incorrect understanding of what love is.
Love.
Is not only affection, it is giving of yourself. If you truly loved at the beginning,.
Then you,.
Then you give of yourself even when the initial spark is gone. True love perseveres over the long haul. First Corinthians 13, 7 says,.
Endures all things. And in marriage, it's a long haul.
And.
As you persevere over the long haul, you need to love even when it gets hard.
Even if the initial spark is gone, you need to love because that's what true love is. The true biblical definition of love involves sacrifice. Ephesians 5, 25 says, Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself.
Up.
For her.
Okay, so how are husbands supposed to love their wives? By sacrificing.
For them.
By giving of themselves to their wife. And the same, the same type of love needs to be from the wife to the husband. And this sacrifice may not be sacrificing your life, but it is sacrificing in the little things.
The day-to-day grind.
Of life.
Thinking of your spouse's needs before your own. Being selfless and not selfish. Doing difficult things. That is love. And so that's the other side of the coin. So there, yes, it is deep affection for someone.
But it's so much more than that. It's also giving of yourself to.
Another.
Person. And this love for others goes beyond marriage. The Bible commands us to love everyone. As Jesus said, love your neighbor as yourself. The Bible tells us to especially love fellow believers. And here at Eureka, this must be seen.
In us.
This love for us.
Could you imagine.
If we love each other the right way? If we have this affection for another, for one another, and if we sacrifice for one another? If we do all these things in love to one another? Our community is going to look at this church and say,.
Wow,.
This people is different. This people is different from anybody I've ever seen in my life. That's how we want to build our church. We want people to be drawn to us because of that. And I've mentioned this, not because we have a great worship band or because we have whatever it might be or great programs.
We want people to be drawn to Jesus through our love for one another.
And in that way,.
We will be a light on a hill for the surrounding community. And the people in this community will know that we belong to Jesus by our love. As Christians, what is so incredible about the love that the Bible describes that we should have for others is that we should have this love for God.
We should have this love for fellow believers. We should have this people for strangers that we don't even know. And it goes even a step further than that. We need to love our enemies. Matthew, chapter 5, verses 43 through 48, this is what Jesus said, and this is so radical and so, so foreign to our society today.
Jesus said,.
What more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same. You must, therefore, be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect. Okay, so what he says there is these unbelievers, they love the people that they love.
The people, the people that they like.
But they don't love their enemies.
And you're different in the sense that you love those who hate you. So the question we need to ask is, do you love your enemies? Enemies that you may have in your life. Do you love them? Do you do good to them?
Do you pray for them?
That's how we show love to our enemies. Okay, so this is a radical love. I was watching one time, there's a guy named the son of Hamas. Now Hamas comes from, comes from Afghanistan. And this is a terrorist group from Afghanistan.
And the son of Hamas, his dad was the leader of this group in Afghanistan. And he became a Christian. Okay, so these were radical Muslims. And you know what convinced him to become a Christian? It was this verse.
Love your enemies. Because, because he grew up seeing all the people that surrounded him hated their enemies. They hate the West. And he saw that verse, he says, okay, this is a radical love that I've never seen before.
And how great is this? And so that was persuasive to him in becoming a follower of Jesus Christ. And so we need to love our enemies. And the world will say, wow, how different is their love than our love?
So this morning what we saw is a proper understanding of love comes from the source of love, God. And what we saw is four ways this love is demonstrated. God's love between the members of the Trinity.
God's love for sinners. Our love for God. And our love for others. It is so important that we get this definition right and understand how we are to love God and love other people. Love is joyful and challenging at times.
But once the Holy Spirit is given to you, this is something that you can do rightly. And it's just going to flow right out of you as you love God. And as you grow in your relationship with God, your love for God will increase.
And then your love for others will follow. That's something we need to understand. So, Eureka Baptist, may we be known for this greatest of all virtues,.
And may we praise God for his love and reflect this amazing attribute of God. And I mentioned earlier that this is our second to last sermon in this sermon series. Next week, we will finish off our sermon series.
And we're going to look at the attribute of joy. God's joy. And how we find our eternal happiness in God. Let's pray. Father in heaven, we praise you for your love. As Scripture says, Lord, you are love.
And we praise you for that. You are a wonderful God. And Father, I pray that we would demonstrate our love for you. That first and foremost, we would love you with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength.
And that.
The result of that, Lord, is that we will love people rightly. That we won't elevate them to idle status where we worship other people. But that we would love you and worship you alone. And that what will follow from that is a genuine love for others that is in right proportion.
And so, Father, I pray that here at Eureka Baptist, that we would demonstrate that love. And so, Father, we praise you for this this morning. Thank you for this time. In Jesus' name, Amen.