God's Freedom in Love

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I want to invite you to have a seat and take out your Bibles, turn with me to 1st John.
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You're going to find your place there at chapter 4, and we're going to be looking at verse 10.
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1st John chapter 4 and verse 10.
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The title of the message this morning is God's Freedom in Love.
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We come this morning to the third Sunday in Advent.
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Each week we examine a different virtue which has accompanied the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ.
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So far we have looked at hope and peace, and next week Brother Andy Smith will be preaching on the subject of joy.
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Today, however, we're going to be looking at the subject of love, specifically the love of God, and more specifically still, the love of God for His people.
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Nathan, why don't you just turn the amp off for now? Sorry about this, we're having some technical difficulties.
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It's been that way all morning, so I apologize.
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Preaching on the love of God, and some people might say, boy, this week you're going to preach on the love of God, that's an easy message you didn't have to prepare.
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You didn't even have to study.
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I mean, come on, that's like Theology 101, that's basic stuff.
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I want you to know this, I have labored more over this message this week than I have in any in recent memory.
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In the sense that I wanted to be sure that I am absolutely accurate in my representation of the love of God, because I believe that this subject has been so misrepresented and maligned.
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If there is anything about God which I believe is misunderstood in the modern church, it is the love of God.
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And I want to tell you this, as a precursor to what I'm going to say today.
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Number one, I do not believe I could preach this message in most churches.
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What I'm about to say and some of the things that I'm about to say would have me removed, hung out to dry.
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And some of you who are visitors, who are guests, may want to leave when you hear what I have to say.
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I hope at least you'll give me till the end.
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I've had people walk out before, it didn't break my back then, it won't break my back today.
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But, I hope you'll give me till the end.
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Because I've taken to prepare a message which dives deeper into the nuances of God's love than most people are comfortable going.
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And it's going to look at the aspects of God's love that people don't like to think about.
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You say, this is Christmas man, why aren't you all happy? I'm jolly and chubby and I got a beard.
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You really thought that was funny, didn't you? But when I sat down to write about the love of God, I sat down to write my message about the love of God.
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I considered the fact that this is a complex idea.
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And often in modern church, all we get is an oversimplification of the love of God.
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People often extol the universal love of God for mankind in general.
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And they never talk about the particular love that God has for His covenant people.
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In fact, they talk about the universal love of God to the exclusion of His particular love.
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And in that sense, they end up confusing the two.
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And they bleed the language of the two.
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And they use the language of God's covenant love to express for all people in general.
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And that is not the way the Bible uses that language.
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The love of God is not a simple, one-dimensional idea.
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God's love is a multi-layered subject which the Bible describes in vivid detail.
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And God's love is a subject that takes an investment of thought that most people are unwilling to give.
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We want everything simple.
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We want everything wrapped in a little bow.
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We want everything delivered to us without critical thought.
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Thus we treat God's love like peanut butter that just gets spread all over everything without any distinctions.
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And this is especially true when it comes to God's freedom in love.
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So that's what I've titled the message today.
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The common assertion that God's love is absolutely the same for every single individual without distinction or discrimination is very unpopular.
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However, that assertion carries an unintended consequence that I intend to show you today.
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If God's love makes no distinction, then God's love is not free.
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If God's love makes no distinction, then God is not free to love whom He chooses, how He chooses, and the way He chooses, and why He chooses.
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He's not making a decision to love you if His love is not free.
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You ever thought about that? That's heavy enough.
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Amen? We can stop.
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Just think on that.
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It's interesting because people want to fight tooth and nail for the freedom of man and man's free will.
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But when you start talking about God's freedom, everybody wants to fight.
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They want to argue about man's free will.
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What about God's free will? What about God's freedom? Do we fight for God's freedom? Do we even believe in it? Or do we believe God loves us because He has to? You see, if you believe God loves you because He has to, then His love is of no value because He didn't choose to love you.
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It was just something that He does because He has to.
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That's a problem, folks, but that is what is taught in most churches.
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That God simply loves because, well, that's who He is and that's what He does.
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Well, God is love, and we're going to talk about what that means in a little while.
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But does God make a choice? People say, no, He has to love me.
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No, He does not.
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Let me tell you that right now.
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God does not have to love you.
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See, I told you I was going to get you a little uncomfortable.
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It's going to get worse.
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If that was uncomfortable, hold on.
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God does not have to love you.
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My desire for you to understand today is the beauty of God's love is that God makes a choice.
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Not out of duty, not out of necessity, but by His own sovereign will He chooses to love.
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And that's what makes it such a blessed love.
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Let's stand and read the text.
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We'll look at the context in a little bit, but for now we'll just read the text for the morning which I'll be exegeting in just a moment.
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But it's just verse 10.
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It says, In this is love.
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Not that we have loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
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Father God, I thank You for Your Word.
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I thank You for the truth.
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I thank You for Your choice to love us.
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God, as we look at the distinctions of Your love today, and we look at the love that You have for Your covenant people, I pray, O God, that You would keep me from error.
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Help me not to speak as some type of pastoral shock person, but to speak simply Your truth.
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If people are to be shocked, let them be shocked by the truth, and not because of anything in me or my behavior.
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Father, keep me from error.
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Open Your people's heart to the truth, Lord.
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And if there are those here who have come today and they don't believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, I pray, Lord, that today would be the day they would hear the Gospel.
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Today would be the day You would open their heart, and according to Your will that You would give them new life.
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We trust You with that, Lord.
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We make no pretense of being able to convert men's souls.
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We know that that is a work of the Spirit alone.
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And we trust You with it.
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In Jesus' name, Amen.
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For those of you who are not familiar with the language, we ascribe in this church to a view of salvation typically referred to as Reformed Theology.
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At least it's what I have been teaching for the last several years.
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It's what we covenant together in our statement of faith.
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I've been teaching on it in Sunday school the last few weeks just to help understand better what it is when we say we're Reformed.
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There is an accusation which has been made against Reformed Theology that I want to begin by addressing.
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The accusation is that Reformed churches, pastors, and theologians do not exalt the love of God.
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We are known for championing the sovereignty of God, the justice of God, the grace of God, and we're also known for focusing on the hatred of God for sin.
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But we have been accused of lacking a hearty emphasis on God's love.
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And unfortunately this is true in some instances.
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There are Reformed teachers who get so consumed with God's other attributes that you rarely hear them ever address the love of God.
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And as a result, in some circles of Reformed-minded believers, the love of God seems a far-off reality and the relationship with Him can seem very cold and very distant.
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Well, I want to speak right away and say that should not be.
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Thankfully, that isn't always the case.
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In fact, I would say it's the rarity of the men that I have heard, strong Reformed teachers like Dr.
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Sproul and others, often exalt the love of God much more beautifully than I've heard in other churches, much more accurately than I've heard in other churches.
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But here's why the accusation has come.
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The accusation comes because we do not exalt the love of God the same way that the Arminian does.
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And if you don't know the difference in distinction that the opposite of Reformed theology is Arminianism, and I don't want to get into all that, but the Arminian will exalt the love of God differently and explain the love of God differently.
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And somebody says to me, well, hey, Pastor Keith, you don't talk about God's love like the pastor down the street.
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I say, I know, because we understand God's love differently.
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It needs to be recognized that the reason why Reformed teachers and Reformed churches are not emphasizing God's love in the way that the other churches are is because we do understand it differently.
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Both traditionally Reformed and non-Reformed Arminian Christians believe in the universality of God's love, but that does not mean that we believe that it is universally the same.
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Non-Reformed people believe that God's love is absolutely equal, absolutely indiscriminate.
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They believe that God loves every person exactly the same, and that is to say that He shows absolutely no distinction for any person ever at any way, and while that sounds good and that's what people want to believe, that is not what the Bible teaches.
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Reformed theology teaches that while God has a general loving kindness, sometimes called common grace, which He extends to all mankind, there is a particular type of love that He gives to His people, those whom He has chosen.
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And if you don't believe that, then the whole Old Testament should make no sense to you, because He gave a particular specific type of love to Israel that He gave to no one else.
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If you need to see that, go with me to Deuteronomy.
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I will show you what I'm talking about, because this isn't something Pastor Fossey is making up, and I'm not riding a hobby horse this morning.
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I want to show you something.
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Go with me to Deuteronomy 7.
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In Deuteronomy chapter 7, and go to verse 6.
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If you're looking at a pew Bible, it's on page 193.
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God is speaking through Moses to the people.
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And He says, For you are a people holy to the Lord your God.
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The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for His treasured possession.
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Out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth, it was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set His, what on you? Love.
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That He set His love on you and chose you.
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For you were the fewest of all peoples, but it was because the Lord, what? Loves you and is keeping the oath that He swore to your fathers that the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.
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What does the Bible say? God spoke to Israel.
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He says, what? I chose you.
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Why? Because I loved you.
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And why did I? I loved you differently than I loved the other people, right? I loved you in a unique way.
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I loved you in a real particular way.
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And people say, I know that pastor, I've heard that my whole life.
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God loves Israel.
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That's His special people.
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That's His chosen people.
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You think God changed yesterday? And now He don't have a special love for people anymore? You think when Jesus came that all this just sort of stopped? And He no longer had a particular people? Now I will say, this is not bound in the nation of Israel anymore.
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But it's still a particular people.
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In fact, I'll show you who it is.
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Do you want to know who it is that the particular people are? Go with me to Ephesians chapter 1.
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A little Bible study going on this morning.
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I like to hear Bible pages turning.
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In Ephesians chapter 1, we see God's love on display in the form of His choosing.
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And we go to Ephesians 1 and verse 3.
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It says, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him.
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In love He predestined us.
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Oh, there's that ugly P word.
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We won't even deal with that.
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Just take it.
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Because it's there.
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But how did He do it? In what? In love.
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People often get all confused.
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They start learning about predestination.
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And they get upset.
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Well, why does God do it this way? Because He made a choice to do it this way.
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And because He's smarter than you.
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Because He made a choice to do it this way.
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And because His wisdom is higher than your wisdom.
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And His ways are higher than your ways.
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I don't like it.
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Guess what? It ain't your train, you ain't the conductor.
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You ain't got to like it.
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But you should.
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Because He did it in love.
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See, that's the thing that we don't like to really get a hold of.
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But it's there.
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In love He chose you.
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He didn't have to choose you.
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In fact, there was nothing in you.
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Nothing at all that would make you worthy of His choice.
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And yet He did.
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Reformed theology teaches that God is free in exercising His love.
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And He's free in exercising His grace.
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That's why we call the church sovereign grace.
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What is sovereign? It means that God is absolutely the authority over all of the universe.
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Even His grace.
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See, people want to say God is sovereign, but He has to give His grace to everybody.
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When you put the word has to in there, He's no longer sovereign.
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If He has to do anything, He's not God.
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Reformed theology teaches that God is free in His exercising of love.
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I want to show you one other passage if you don't mind.
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This one sometimes will get people very uncomfortable, but it's there.
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And if we don't address it, I'll feel like I shortchanged you.
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Turn to Romans 9.
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Like we didn't know I was going to end up in Romans 9 in this message at some point.
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Romans 9.
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I know many men, myself included, that were very influenced by this passage because it so challenged me against so many things that I presumed about God.
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I just want you to look at one verse in Romans 9.
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Verse 13.
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What does Romans 9.13 say? As it is written, Jacob I have loved, but Esau I have hated.
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Who's speaking? God.
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The Apostle Paul is writing the words of God, which he is quoting from Malachi.
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And people like to say, well, he's not talking about Jacob the person and Esau the person.
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He's talking about Jacob the nation, which is the nation of Israel, and Esau the nation, which is the nation of Eden.
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And in Malachi, that is correct.
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But let me just throw this out there in case you never thought about it.
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That means God didn't choose to love and to hate one person and one person.
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That means He chose to love and to hate a whole nation.
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It doesn't make it any better when you want to make the nation argument.
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It really doesn't make it better.
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If you're trying to somehow justify this in your mind, people have a hard time when it says God hated Esau.
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And some prefer to translate it as loved less to sort of soften the phrase.
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Jacob I have loved, Esau I have loved less.
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But let me just, I want you to imagine the conversation.
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Because I've thought about this.
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I've actually went through this.
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You know how fighters shadow box? You know why they shadow box? Well, it builds up stamina, but it also gets their body moving in a certain direction so that they know how to move around.
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And if they actually ever do, when they finally do get in the ring, they can move.
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Well, as a theologian, I often shadow box debates.
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I think about what the guy is going to say.
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You ever do that? I do it all the time.
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I'm sitting there thinking, well, if I say this, he's probably going to say this.
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Well, I've had this little shadow box debate in my mind.
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I've never gotten to have it with anybody.
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I'm looking forward to the day.
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When somebody steps in that puddle, I'm all over it.
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Because this is what the God will say.
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God loves everybody absolutely the same.
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Okay.
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Romans 9.13 says, Jacob I've loved, Esau I've hated.
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Well, that don't mean hate.
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That means he loved less.
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All you did was prove my point.
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That your first statement cannot stand if the second statement is true.
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If you want to prove that this means he loved him less, then your first statement that he loves everybody absolutely the same can't be.
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They can't exist in the same universe.
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It is the law of non-contradiction.
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It cannot be and not be at the same time and in the same relationship.
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And if God loves everybody equally and the same, but God loved Esau less, then it's not equal and the same.
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Leave if you need to leave, because now is the time.
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It's only getting worse.
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It is.
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It's so simple.
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God makes distinctions in His love.
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He is free to do that.
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And here's the question that I have.
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I wrote this.
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I wrote question on my notes.
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Let me ask you a question.
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I want you to answer this question very honestly.
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Are you free to make distinctions in your love? Do you love your wife like you love me? I hope not.
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I sure hope not.
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Do you love your children the same way you love my children? No, you don't.
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Do you love your mailman like you love your mama? I know my mailman.
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If you have freedom to make distinctions in your love, does God not have the same freedom? Are you more free than God is? Are you more free than God? Now, you might come to me after.
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I always like to think about the objections again, that whole debate, shadowboxing thing.
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You might come to me afterwards and say, now, pastor, the Bible says that God is not a respecter of persons.
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Yes, it does.
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And that is true.
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God does not show one man favor over another man because of anything in that man.
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God does not show the rich, the intelligent, the gifted, or the powerful any favor because they're rich, gifted, talented, or anything else.
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God chooses whom He will show favor to.
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In fact, what does He choose? He chooses the humble to show His favor to.
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He chooses the lowly, the poor, the naked, the wretched.
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Jesus showed love and compassion to prostitutes, and He condemned the rich.
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And He chose to do that.
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Everybody was surprised because He's not doing what we thought He's supposed to do.
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That was a choice.
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You're still in Romans 9.
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Look at verse 14 because some people might say, well, I don't think that's fair if God makes distinctions in His love.
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Paul addresses your argument.
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Just so you know, Paul answers your argument if that's what you're saying.
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If you're saying, I don't think God is fair, look at Romans 9.14.
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What shall we say then? Is there injustice on God's part? The question in the vernacular is, is God unfair? By no means.
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Meganoita.
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May it never be.
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For He says to Moses...
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By the way, Moses and Pharaoh, great example.
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And Paul's about to knock it out of the park.
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Because if you think God showed the same love and compassion to Moses that He showed to Pharaoh, you're off your rocker.
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God met with Moses in the wilderness, and He presented Himself to him as a loving King and a gracious Savior.
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He met with Pharaoh through nine plagues and then killed his son.
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You say, well, Pharaoh was obstinate.
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You think Moses was perfect? It's just...
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But seriously though, what does He say? He says to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I have mercy.
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I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.
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So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God who has mercy.
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For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, get this, for this very purpose I have raised you up, that I might show my power in you.
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Why was Pharaoh raised up? So that God could demonstrate His power in him.
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And that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.
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So then He has mercy on whomever He wills, and He hardens whomever He wills.
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There are a lot of people who are worshiping a God that is different than this one.
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They're worshiping the God of love in that they're worshiping love as God.
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But they're not worshiping the God of this book.
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For some, the idea that God makes distinctions in His love is an intolerable truth.
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In fact, the very mention of such a thing could not be spoken in certain pulpits.
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As I said earlier, I would get me ejected from certain churches.
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They're so desperate to maintain what they consider to be the integrity of God's love that they would rob Him of His freedom.
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You know why God loves you? Because He wants to.
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That's right.
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It's not because you're better than other people.
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It's not because you're more righteous, more benevolent, more spiritually sensitive.
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He loves you because He chose to love you.
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And it wasn't because you loved Him.
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I want to now turn back to 1 John 4 because I do want to exegete this text at some point.
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That was all introduction.
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This is for your benefit.
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Because I want to finally see what John has to tell us here.
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Because he tells us that God loves us not because we love Him.
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It's not because He had to love you.
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He wasn't duty-bound to love you.
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God loves you because He chooses to.
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Now you might argue, you might say, well, you just said God's free to love whoever He chooses.
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How do I know that He loves me? Well, let me answer that question because that is a big question.
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Somebody say, you say God is free to choose whom He loves.
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How do I know that He loves me? I'm going to ask you just a series of simple diagnostic questions.
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Do you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ? Do you have an affection for God, for His Word, for His church, for His people? If you have those things, that's evidence that God loves you.
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Because God gave you those affections.
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Those are not natural affections.
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And if you came today and you don't have those things, let me tell you how God has loved you to bring you here.
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God brought you here today to hear the Word.
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You could be in a church that could be telling you how good you are, and how perfect you are, and how you don't need to change.
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God brought you to a church today that's going to call you to repent.
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That's love.
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And whether my preaching is death unto death or life unto life, you are now experiencing a form of God's common grace because you're under the preaching of His Word.
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This is God's mercy extended to you right now.
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God is absolutely free to love and He chooses to love even though He doesn't have to love.
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And if you're hearing my voice today, you are in one way or another a recipient of God's absolutely undeserved loving kindness.
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Right now.
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Your heart is beating because God's grace is giving it the power to beat.
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If you don't believe that, just know that if His grace was rescinded, you would cease to be.
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So having said all that, about the distinction between the general nature of God's love toward mankind and the particular nature of God's love towards His people, I want to now turn in the text to the particular love of God that He has for His people, because that's what John's talking about here in 1 John 4.
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And he tells us three things about God's love.
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And if you have your notes, it's on the back of the worship folder.
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God's love is definitional.
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God's love is personal.
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God's love is reasonable.
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That's the three things we're going to see in 1 John 4.10.
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God's love is definitional.
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It says, in this is love.
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The NIV, I rarely quote the NIV, so it's a special morning when I do.
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The NIV says, this is love.
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And there is a sense in which the Greek can be translated.
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That's what this is saying.
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This is the definition of love.
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That's what this whole section is about.
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Go back up to verse 7.
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Beloved, let us love one another.
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See, John is calling us to love one another.
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He says, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God.
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Anyone who does not love does not know God, because what? God is love.
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In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent His only Son into the world so that we might live through Him.
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And this is love.
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Not that we have loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be a propitiation for our sins.
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Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought to love one another.
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No one has ever seen God.
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If we love one another, God abides in us and His love is perfected in us.
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That's the whole context here.
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He's calling you to love one another.
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Why? Because God loved you.
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God saved you.
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You should love one another.
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That's the gist.
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God loved you enough to save you.
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He loved you in spite of you.
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Love those around you in spite of them.
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That's part of the lesson here.
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But He's telling us something about God's definition of love.
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God is the definition of love.
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If somebody says, what's the definition of love? Well, you can go to 1 Corinthians 13, love is patient and kind, it doesn't envy, it doesn't boast, it does not seek its own.
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We know the textbook biblical definition of love, but you want to know what the actual definition of love is? God.
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God is love.
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But as I said earlier, love is not God.
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What does that mean? There are people who say love is king.
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They'll say love is my religion.
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Or they'll say something to the effect, love is the God I worship.
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I want to just tell you, in the Greek it don't work that way.
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When it says God is love, that's not a transferable thing.
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In fact, I'll quote from a scholar, in the Greek God has the article, love does not.
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The love is God.
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The definite emphasis on God is love.
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It does not mean love is God.
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You can't go back and forth.
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Love does not define God.
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God defines love.
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That's kind of a quick reading.
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But essentially, that last sentence is what is most important.
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Love doesn't define God.
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God defines love.
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You see, we take our human concepts of what love is, and by the way, most of us get really confused about love, because we end up importing all kinds of emotional and relational and sometimes even erotic ideas into love, and we mess up the idea of love.
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Listen to some of the songs that are written about Jesus today.
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And you couldn't tell the difference between whether it was Jesus or your boyfriend.
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Jesus is not your boyfriend.
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But you pull Jesus out, and you put Steve, I don't know who Steve is, you put somebody's name for Jesus, and it would work the same.
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Our concept of love is not God.
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God should be our concept of love.
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Does that make sense? If we want to truly know what love is, we have to know who God is, because God is love.
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God defines the purest and most sincere form of love when He sent His Son to die for sinners.
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That's the purest and most sincere form of love.
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God defines that.
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He demonstrates that.
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That is love.
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God's love is sacrificing.
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It's personal.
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It's choosing.
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It's making a choice to love.
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By the way, and this is something, not even in my notes, but this is something I've tried to point out over the years.
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Do you know the difference between love and like? You don't choose what you like.
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If I handed you a mouthful of chocolate ice cream, you're going to like it or you're not based upon your palate, based upon your personal, economic, social upbringing.
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Some people never had ice cream.
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They eat it.
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It tastes like syrup.
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It doesn't taste good to them at all.
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Some people like me have had ice cream since birth.
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It's awesome and we love it.
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And we know.
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Mama put it in my bottle.
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I'm just kidding.
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You don't choose what you like.
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Like is something you simply do or don't.
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That's why the Bible doesn't say like your neighbor or like your enemy.
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It says love your neighbor and love your enemy.
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Because even if I don't like you, I'm supposed to love you.
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Because love is a choice.
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And love is an action.
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Now love can be spoken of as a noun, as in the love of God.
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But action is how it's tended.
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It's something done.
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God's love is demonstrative and definitional for how we are to love.
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Sacrificially and by choice do we love others even if they don't love us.
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Number two.
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God's love is personal.
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It says, and this is love.
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Not that we have loved God, but He loved us.
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I love the word us.
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If you underline your Bible, underline us.
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He loved us.
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That's similar to the expression in Ephesians 1 where it says He chose us and gave Himself for us.
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By using the term, the text is demonstrating the personal nature of the love of God.
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God does not simply love nameless, faceless crowds.
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God loves individuals.
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He loves specific, particular individuals.
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And God knows everything about those individuals.
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That's the great thing about God.
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He knows everything about you and yet He still loves you.
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You don't know everything about me, and if you did, you probably wouldn't love me.
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If every thought I've ever had in my life was projected on a screen, and you could look at it and judge me, you wouldn't love me.
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You wouldn't even want to be my friend.
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God knows that.
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And yet He chooses to love me.
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It's personal, individual, and powerful love.
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Thirdly, God's love is reasonable.
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Now, I want to say this.
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I went this whole time without talking about propitiation.
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And my time is getting less.
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But why did I say God's love is reasonable? It's reasonable in this sense.
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God is just and holy.
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And if He loved us without doing something about our sin, but leaving us as sinful rebels, without an atonement, He would be violating His own nature.
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God's love is reasonable because He established the reason.
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He loves us because His Son has borne on His back the stripes of our sin and carried in His body the penalty of our sin.
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And now God can reasonably love us without violating His own nature, which is why Romans 3 says He is both just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus Christ.
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That's why it's reasonable.
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Before you came to Christ, there was a dividing wall of hostility between you and God.
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And that's what the cross did.
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The Bible says in Ephesians 2 verse 14 that Christ broke down the dividing wall between you and God.
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Why did He do that? Because of love.
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You know what's interesting about that word propitiation? That word propitiation is often attacked, especially by liberals, because what it means, it means to appease an angry God.
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And oftentimes it's used in old pagan religions where they would go and they would sacrifice a person to appease the angry God.
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And they say, see, the Christian religion is an old ancient pagan mythology that's been converted into modern times, but it's based on the same pagan idea that God is a wrathful God and we have to appease Him.
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Well, half of that is true.
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God is wrathful.
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The Bible says God is angry with the wicked every day.
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And that He's holy, which means He cannot look upon sin with approval.
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But what's the difference between Christianity and the pagan religions of the world? It's very simple.
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In the pagan religions, we have to appease God.
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In Christianity, God appeases Himself on our behalf.
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That's the big difference.
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We don't have to offer up some young girl.
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We don't have to offer up a village or drop something into a mountain that's about to burst into a volcano.
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We simply have to trust in what God has done for us because He has appeased Himself in Christ.
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That's what propitiation is.
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God satisfies His own wrath.
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I want to draw to a conclusion.
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One of the phrases that has been popularized in the last century and has really permeated the Christian vernacular, especially the evangelical vernacular, is the phrase, unconditional love.
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You've heard that.
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You may have even used that.
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We hear preachers, poets, and pop stars talking about unconditional love.
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Well, years ago, Jennifer and I went to a debate to listen to Dr.
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James White debate John Shelby Spong.
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John Shelby Spong is a liberal preacher.
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I'm not even going to call him.
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He's a liberal man who preaches in the Episcopalian church.
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They're debating the subject of homosexuality.
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And that is not the subject of the morning.
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I've just given you the context of the debate.
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They were debating that subject.
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At the end of the debate, as is always the case with Dr.
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White's debates, or at least almost always the case, there was a time for questions and answers from the audience.
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And one of the ladies who was on the side of Dr.
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Spong came up to inquire of Dr.
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White and she asked the question.
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She says, I want to know your definition of unconditional love.
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And I've got to tell you something.
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Dr.
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White's answer was one of the best I've ever heard.
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And it stuck with me for a long time.
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But it's so long I couldn't remember it.
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So this week I actually went back to the video and I typed his answer out word for word and I'd like to read it to you.
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And I quote, There is no particular biblical passage that uses that language.
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So I'm not sure exactly what you mean by that.
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God's love is unconditional for His people in the sense that it provides everything that they need to have peace with Him.
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It is not a love that denies His own nature.
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It is not a love that gets rid of His own holiness, His own law.
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It is not a love that winks at sin.
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But it is a love that provides everything in and of Himself in Jesus Christ for any person who will repent and believe in Him.
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It is really one of the reasons why I am a biblical monergist, meaning I believe that God saves and God saves alone.
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It is because in His love, He has provided a perfect means of salvation in Jesus Christ that I cannot add anything to.
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And because I cannot add anything to it, I have to do nothing more than fall at the feet of God and my boasting can only be in Him.
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I don't believe there is anything in the Bible about an unconditional love that allows for a violation of God's holy nature.
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God's love is conditional.
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The condition is Himself and His choice.
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Now, you won't hear that, most likely, anywhere else this morning.
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Well, a few.
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But that's the point.
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There is a condition.
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But it's not a condition that you met.
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It's not a condition that you brought to the table.
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God's condition is Himself.
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He, had He not made the choice to love, He would not have been bound to love.
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But He did make the choice.
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And for that, we are to be eternally grateful.
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Let's pray.
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Father, I thank You for Your Word.
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I thank You for the love that You show Your people in giving us new life and granting us the gift of regeneration and eternal life in Christ.
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I pray, Lord, I pray that those under the sound of my voice today have not been confused about Your love.
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For it is not my desire to confuse anyone, Lord, and Your Word tells us You are not the author of confusion.
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I pray, Lord, that they have been challenged to think more deeply.
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Challenged to think more thoroughly about the things they confess and profess.
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For, Lord God, only when we accept that challenge to think, do we really begin to understand more rightly who You are and what You have done in Your Son.
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I thank You for Your love, Father.
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I do.
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I thank You for the personal nature of Your love.
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I thank You for the fact that You tell us that for those who are Yours, You know every hair on our head.
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For You, O God, know us intimately, and You love us incredibly.
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And for that, we give You praise, glory, and honor in Jesus' name.
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Amen.