WWUTT 416 How Great Is the Love of the Father?

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Romans 5 .8 says that God demonstrates His love for us in that while we were yet sinners,

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Christ died for us. We love God because He first loved us when we understand the text.

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This is when we understand the text studying God's word to reach all the riches of full assurance in Christ.

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Find all our videos online at www .wutt .com, as well as links to follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

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Here's your teacher, Pastor Gabe Hughes. Thank you, Becky. Hey, greetings, everybody. I am on vacation right now, and so I've recorded all of this in advance.

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These devotionals this week and next week are going to be a little bit shorter than they usually are. I had to record a bunch at one time.

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So to be able to get this done in a short amount of time, I cut the time in half. So I'm literally taking time off right now, and here in a few weeks, we'll return back to the 20 -minute devotionals.

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But in the meantime, all this week and the next, they'll be about 10 minutes long. The exception would be the Friday edition of this broadcast when

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I'm going to be addressing the controversy concerning Hank Hanegraaff and his program, The Bible Answer Man, playing clips from that program and showing how

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Hanegraaff is no longer reliable as a teacher of the word. So we'll be talking about that on Friday.

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I would encourage you to listen to that broadcast. Today we are in 1 John 3, and I'm going to be reading verses 1 -3.

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The apostle writes, See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called the children of God, and so we are.

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The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are

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God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared, but we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is, and everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure.

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We come back again to verse 1, where John says, See what kind of love the Father has given to us.

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Some translations read, See what kind of love the Father has lavished upon us.

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This is a great amount of love, greater than any amount of love that you have ever experienced from another human being, or any amount of love that you have experienced for someone else.

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God has poured out this love upon us through Jesus Christ. You think also of John 3 .16,

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For God so loved the world. It doesn't just say God loved the world, God so loved the world.

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This is a great amount of love that God has for us in his son, Jesus Christ.

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We will never understand this kind of love on this side of heaven, and then when we see him as he is, because we'll be made to be like him, then we will see all these things perfectly as we do not see them now.

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I think perhaps the greatest human love that I have ever witnessed, and this is a personal opinion, but I think the greatest human love

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I've ever seen is the kind of love a mother has for her newborn.

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Just out of labor, all of the pain that she has gone through, and this baby is delivered into the world, and laid on the mother's breast for the first time, and there's a look in the mom's face that is unlike anything

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I have ever seen in human love anywhere else on the planet. It's not that I don't think my wife loves my kids more than she loves me, but you just think about what a woman goes through in pregnancy.

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There is a love that a woman has for her children that's different than the way a father loves his kids.

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You've got to give a woman that. So a mother goes through pregnancy and experiences all the aches and pains and craziness that comes with pregnancy, not just the pain that she feels in her body, but what it does to her mentally as well.

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And then she gets to the day of the child's birth and she goes through hours of labor, immense amount of pain.

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And then this child comes into the world and all the love that the mother has for that newborn baby, all of the pain and the struggle that she went through to bring this child into the world, what kind of appreciation she has for that new life when it is laid on her breast for the first time.

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I think the look that I have seen in my wife's face when my children have come into this world is a love that I have not seen between human people anywhere else.

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And again, I know that's a, that's a personal opinion, but we have that same picture.

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The love that a mother has for a newborn baby given throughout the scriptures. Paul talks about the

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Galatians and how they have fled from the true gospel. And Paul says to them,

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I feel like that I have to go through labor pains for you again. I have to give birth to you again because you have abandoned the true gospel for a, for a false gospel.

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And so just as Paul talks about going into labor to, uh, to bring about those from that come from darkness and into light, to bring about new life from the lost to the found, that kind of thing that Paul experienced as an apostle, he equates to being like a mother who is in labor pains.

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And so he has such affection for those that he's led to Christ, that he compares himself to being a mother, not just there, but in other places as well.

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So you think about that kind of love a mother has for a child, the labor that she has put into bringing a child into this world.

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And yet the father has a love for us. That's even greater than that, that we should be called the children of God.

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We're called the children of God because of the love that God has for us again.

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Remember that, that John has been giving assurance to his readers of salvation all throughout this letter.

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And one of the other ways that we know that we are saved is because of the love that God has for us in this is love.

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Not that we have loved God, but that he first loved us and gave his life up for us as a ransom and as a sacrifice.

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See what kind of love he's given to us, that we should be called the children of God. And so we are.

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How do we know that we are loved by God? Because we are his children.

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Now understand me clearly on this. God does not have that same kind of love for every single human being.

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He loves only his children. Would God send one of his children to hell and submit them to his wrath for all eternity?

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Of course he would not. Would God do that to a person that he loves? No, he has this love, this affectionate love as a father for his children only.

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You contrast this with a belief of a man like William Paul Young, who is the author of the shack and in that book and in a recent book that he came out with, it just released last month as a matter of fact, entitled lies we believe about God.

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He says in both of those books that God loves everyone and loves everybody equally. And furthermore, he dispenses universalism in both of those books.

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The idea that everybody eventually is going to go to be with heaven because God loves everyone and he would never send somebody that he loves to hell.

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But that is misunderstanding what is being stated in the scriptures. The love that God has for human beings is for those who are his children adopted into the family of God through Jesus Christ.

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Only the followers of Christ receive this kind of love from God. Those who are not in God's love are under his wrath and will be subjected to eternal torment at the final judgment if they do not repent and come into the love of Christ.

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This is a love and an affection that God has for his children before the foundation of the world.

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It's the only way this theology works is if God has foreordained those who are going to be called out of darkness and into his marvelous light adopted into the family through the blood, the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

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This blood is even thicker than the DNA that we share with our blood brothers and sisters because it is a spiritual anointing by the

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Holy Spirit of God by whose DNA we have now been infused into his family.

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See what kind of love the Father has given to us that we should be called the children of God and so we are.

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And the reason why the world, those whom God does not love the same way, the reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him.

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They're not part of this family. They don't know us. They don't know the Father. They don't know his children either.

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And so we need not lose heart or fall into despair when the world hates us. Jesus said to his disciples in the upper room before going to the cross and dying for their sins, dying for our sins.

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He said to them, the reason why the world hates you is because it hated me first. Another reason, another assurance that we can have of the salvation that we have in Christ is because the world hates us just as the world hates

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God. You know, there was a song that was written about this lovely verse. See what kind of love the

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Father has given to us that we should be called the children of God. This song was written by Mac Powell and Shane and Shane and also features

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Brian Littrell, who was a Backstreet Boy at one point. I don't know if you've ever heard this song or not.

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It was on a CD entitled Glory Revealed 2 and the lyrics are taken straight from 1

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John chapter 3 verse 1. And I'm going to close the devotional today by playing this song off of Glory Revealed.

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How great is God's amazing grace that we should be called the children of God.

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How great, how great that we believe by faith and we can be called the children of God.

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How great is the love of the Father that He sent His only Son that we could be called the children of God.

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We will never perish if we believe in Him and we can be called the children of God.

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How great, how great is God's amazing grace that we should be called the children of God.

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How good by faith and we can be called the children of God.

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Sons and daughters of God, we know love that He laid down His life for us.

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How great is the love the Father has poured out on us that we should be called the children of God.

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How great, how great is God's amazing grace that we should be called the children of God.

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How great, how great that we believe by faith and we can be called the children of God.

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Yes, we can be called the children of God. Children of God.

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This is the protection of First Southern Baptist Church in Junction City, Kansas. Find us on the web at www .utt