Systematic Theology (part 23)

Bethlehem Bible Church

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So as you look at in your handout we you can see the text that we have covered so far We've looked at some of the scriptures pointing to the love of God as you remember

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We've been looking at God as Trinity. We've been looking at attributes of God. I Think Bill do you need one?

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Oh, you got one and we've been looking specifically at the benevolence of God or the goodness of God and One specific attribute, which

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I think is key, which is the love of God for a couple of weeks now We have seen some examples of God's love

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We've looked at the nature and the character of God's love and last week. We looked at one specific aspect of that love which is

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It's titled here as response and we talked about the fact that the love of God is not

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Cheap in the sense that it is not it does not Exclude the justice of God.

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God is a holy God and therefore he has to deal with sin and evil He doesn't he loves unconditionally, but he deals with the sin of the people that he redeems and therefore we have the work of Christ that is central to the love of God and in fact today when we are going to be looking at the section on Trinity and hopefully

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The next section which is the unshakable love I want us to take a few moments before we get into that to think about the kind of love that we

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Exhibit the kind of love that we show toward one another So maybe if you want to just take a couple of moments now to think about People or maybe the person that you love the most outside of God here on earth a human person

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Who do you love why do you love this person

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How do you know that? You love this person. So and Finally, what is the proof of your love for this person?

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Who do you love? Why do you love this person? And maybe finally

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How do you know what is the proof of your love for this person? Let's just take a maybe a couple of moments before we get into our text.

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So anyone bold enough to share A Love for another human person and some of these questions that I asked you to reflect upon Stephen Or if you can just summarize them either way, it would be good.

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So There is a yeah and the first John actually talks about the evidence of the love that we have for God and one of those evidence is being that we demonstrate that love toward our fellow brothers and sisters excellent, but let's maybe make it a little more focused on maybe a specific person or someone that's

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Big in your heart right now What are some practical ways in which we can answer that question of how who we love?

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Why do we love them and just keep in the background that love of God for us and then hopefully that'll steer your response

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Charlie Charlie and then Becky Excellent Thank you

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I've had that some of my friends who are non -believers tell me that you know, when you say you love God, you know

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Maybe you are looking for something back and in the case of God we do get something back and in terms of Relationships we live in a capitalistic world

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So people normally think you know, I give you something you give me something back and that's how the transaction proceeds and love is one of those

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Mysterious Gifts that we have and and again God is love and because this is a communicable attribute

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We can express that love that God gives us. In fact, the first text we're going to be looking at we're going to talk about that and This is one of those things that defies the human

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Reason when it comes to transactions there is something that is beyond these Especially in our materialistic world the way we want to think of gain and selfishness and greed here is something that gives of itself and there is something that is

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Supernatural in true agape love Actually, you just brought up two other aspects which are important.

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One of the fact is Love especially in this context is about a relationship. It's really not about It's about one person placing their affection upon the other person and then

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Building upon that relationship here in terms of parent -child and then there is also and last week we looked at this

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God seeks to raise us up and You remember we talked about the critique of the non -believers

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It's like you know You guys you Christians you go into this confessional booth you just confess your sins and then you go back and do your own thing again whatever you did, you know

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God just erases and then What's the point of a

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Christian living if that's all you guys do you just send you go Confess and then you go back to sinning again, and we talked about the love of God.

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It's efficacious It it God doesn't leave us that he redeems us positionally and then he sanctifies us with his love

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He takes us from where we are from the gutters and then he makes us daily Conforming more and more into the image of Christ.

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There is a goal in The love of God on his people that one day he

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Christ will present the church spotless before God and that's So we always want to remember that the love of God is never divorced from the holiness and the justice and the

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And the goodness of God in bringing us to his accomplished end And I think that's kind of what you were heading at You know when we when we demonstrate a love for our children part of what we want is for them to grow in godliness for example

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But let's now switch the turn switch the viewpoint a little bit. The love of God toward us is

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Is different in a couple of ways? When we say God's love toward us is unconditional

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You know many a time we love someone I remember when I met my when

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I Realized I'm I am I'm gonna marry my wife. I look at her.

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She's very pretty and I'm like, oh wow You know what a beautiful lady. She would that she would consider marrying me

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There is something that we look at we I'm sure many of you can reflect upon your

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Marriages that way and when you look at the little baby Like so cute. How can you but love this little baby?

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And there is there is something that just draws your heart your bowels as it were in the biblical

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Language that just wants to pour out your affection upon this object of your love

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And the distinction between our love and God's love is that God loves us we're gonna see some text where when we were unlovable when we were

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Filthy and God on on his own volition places his love upon us and then he loves us.

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And so In that aspect it's different and then let we will look at a few more ways in which

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God's love is something that we want to emulate and our text will draw us to that if someone can read

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Romans 5 Verses 1 to 8. I think that'll be the first text.

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We'll use this morning Romans 5 1 to 8.

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Thank you, Brian Thank you So when we look at this text Obviously many of us know the context of Romans 5 the book of Romans, you know first three chapters dealing with sin 3 to 5 talking about faith and justification 5 to 8 talking about sanctification and walking in the spirit and here in 5 as we are beginning this context of You know,

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God has justified us. He has declared us not guilty And now how much how can we live this life by the power of God?

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He begins with this section Talking about something that has been done to us. We have been justified by faith by faith

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We have peace with God. We are reconciled with God We have a relationship with God that has been restored through this one person

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Jesus Christ Our Lord verse 1 and then verse 2 through him Jesus Christ We've been

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We've obtained access by faith into this grace by which in which we stand it is by grace alone that we are

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Redeemed and then there is this end of verse 5 chapter 5 verse 2

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That's going to begin the section that I want us to focus on He says we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God positionally we are

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Perfect before God we are looking forward to the in hope to the glory of God in the culmination of all time and then you have these verses 3 to 8 and I want you to look at two aspects in this

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Section one of which is the Trinitarian work in the pouring out of the love of God in our lives

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When we think of the love of God, there are many things that should many verses that should Pop into your head.

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This is one of the texts that didn't pop into my head That's why I wanted us to spend a few moments looking at this. You see the father.

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You see the son you see the Holy Spirit all in mold here and I want us to just Pull that out as we look at the love of God in the in the

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Trinity that is exhibited toward us The second thing I want us to look at this while we look at the nature of the love of God in the

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Trinity I want us to also look at what that love does for us So we'll begin with the second part which is what does this love do for us and then we'll hone in on what?

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this Trinitarian love Truly is so and that will give us the rest of the verses that we can dive off into So as you look at verse 3 and 4

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You see something like James chapter 1, right? Counted all joy when you face trials of various kinds and first Peter 1 here he says

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End of verse 2 was we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. That's our forward -looking joy at the culmination of our salvation and then in verse 3 you have more than that More than what we are looking forward to we rejoice in our sufferings and that's one of those

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Contrasts that should just shock us, you know, here is what we would all be You know someone born on the end of all things and then there is something else and the more immediate sense that Paul says we rejoice even more in and that is in the sufferings and here he's talking about the pressure the weight of oppression that comes

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When you stand for the name of Jesus Christ, you're going to face these types of sufferings and then he he stacks them up I mean you see this in a couple of New Testament passages.

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He says our sufferings Why do we rejoice in our suffering? This is counterintuitive most of us hate suffering

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I hate suffering for itself, but we rejoice because we know something. What do we know suffering produces?

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Endurance endurance produces character and character Produces hope

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So while you suffer suffer well suffer for the name of Christ and you bear up under it you it produces endurance in you

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How can you develop this endurance? I mean many of us are watching these Olympic sports these days I mean, I'd like to be the guy winning the gold

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But I don't know the years and years of practice and this constant pushing their bodies to the very limits

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That has brought them to the place where they can actually do what they are doing today and without all those hard hours of labor put in they don't have the fruit of that endurance that that They can revel in bring the bodies to where they need to be and I think when we think of Paul talking about how athletes beat their bodies up, you know, they they train hard in order to secure a perishable wreath and he's probably thinking of these

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Olympic stuff on their head and we have something even more that we want to be

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Pressing forward to which is the spiritual blessing that we have by working out our our

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Well Philippines to working out a salvation with fear and trembling that we would live out under those sufferings by by trusting in God by Making those choices that would honor him and that would grow our endurance and then this endurance fills out an established character, how do

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I know that I am Reflecting more and more of the character of God in my life by making those choices under those difficult circumstances

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But I say, you know back to first John This is what pleases God and I'm going to obey him even though it doesn't feel easy to do that So in suffering you get endurance and then that builds up a character and then the character that is inside of you

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Gives you a hope and we've talked about hope In the past can someone tell me what's the difference between the hope of the

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Christian and the hope that Unbelievers normally have in it and not and people generally talk about hope in the world

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What's the difference between the Christian hope and the hope of the world? excellent, and that's exactly the

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Meaning of the biblical hope the biblical hope is really a confidence in the promise and the assurance of God We have told some things in the

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Word of God that are true and we hope for them Because they are not yet present in our lives we know that this is in the future and we can be assured that this will happen because God has promised it excellent and When it comes to other things in the world, you know,

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I hope I can get a job next week You know, I remember some weeks it felt like that.

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It's like This must be the job you have for me and we need to be very careful

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God never promised, you know It'll give you a job on March 31st and and of course

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That's why the charismatics are in big trouble because sometimes they presume that God says something to them

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And when it doesn't come then you're like your hope is shattered. We put our hope in what God has promised in the word he would always provide for us he is and When we trust in the promises of God, we know that there is it is unshakable because it

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God will accomplish what he has said With that understanding of hope if you now look into verse 5 and this is bringing us

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Into the context of the love of God itself. So here it says hope does not put us to shame

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Let's just think about this for a moment Paul is talking about rejoicing suffering and then he has this list of Attributes that work in our lives through that suffering and then he ends with hope and then he says this hope does not put us to shame

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What could have caused shame in the life of a believer when you look at verses Two to five if you were hoping if you were rejoicing in your suffering and then you are shamed

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What would be what would have to happen? Very good If you're not a

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Christian, then of course there is There is nothing in which you can solidly stand upon but as a

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Christian no matter what trials you go through what? Temptations you succumb to you never lose

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Hope because you know that the Spirit of God within you will bring conviction in your sin When you when you do sin, he will raise you up He'll give you the strength to resist that sin the next time and you will have a renewed vision of Jesus Christ our

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Champion we keep our eyes fixed firmly upon him knowing that he will take us to the finished end

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Excellent because the war in the end is Christ. He wins it all. Yes, Charlie Excellent, and I think we have many texts in the

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New Testament Even that talk about this cultural idea of suffering in the in the ancient times and even today, you know

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Pastor Steve was talking about John 9 The man born blind disciples ask who sin, you know, is this

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God's judgment that this man was born blind we have we have many cases lepers being one of them and and even today when people

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Suffer you somehow think you know that they must have done something wrong or there is some divine

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Wrath upon them and even for us as Christian when you suffer for righteousness sake

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People in the world cannot comprehend this and yet we don't live for the accolades the world gives us we are looking to for the accolade that God gives one day in heaven and So in in that sense, we have no shame when it comes to suffering but when we think about the hope itself and I think the rest of verse 5 will give you the

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Sense in which this hope is kind of unshakable So as you're going through suffering as you're building up this endurance as your character is developing more and more into the image of Christ Let's look at the rest of Romans chapter 5 as we look at why this hope is unshakable.

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It is not a kind of hope that will put us to shame Let me just point to it and then we'll talk about it

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He says hope does not put us to shame Because here is the reason why it doesn't put us to shame

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Because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the

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Holy Spirit who has been given to us so you have two persons of the Trinity the father and the

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Third person the spirit of God and it says the love of God has been poured into our hearts through the

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Holy Spirit Let me just give you a little context and then we look at the next verse and then we'll talk about it up until this verse everything that Paul has been writing about is talking about the objective love of God that has been

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Working in the people's life. So right up until this point. So when you're saying we have been justified by faith, you know

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Here is this objective work that God has accomplished in the person of Jesus Christ. Here is the when we think of objective

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This is external to ourselves you know these are things that God has done and Revealed to us in the word and it's on the basis of that that we trust in the

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Word of God and in the work of God Now in verse 5 he says God's love has been poured out into our hearts.

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He's here He is talking about the subjective Aspect of knowing the love of God in ourselves for sure like one of my daughters was just asking me daddy

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How do you know that this Bible is true? And you know, I went through a lot of things talking about why the

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Bible can be trusted why it's it's God's Word and then I said You know, you're young and I'm glad that you're reading the

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Bible that you want to know it to be true How can you know it to be true for sure by faith?

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You know, it is God who gives us faith as a gift and many people think faith is just this You know thing

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I generate from myself. I I think hard enough than I say this is true. It must be true That's not what faith is faith is a gift from God through which we know that God exists that he is the

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God of the Bible that Jesus Christ is our Savior and and Roman Hebrews 11 talks about this hope this faith by which we know these things for sure we normally think faith and knowledge as two separate things and We think you know, we know things by our

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You know cognitive capacities when it comes to faith It's like this ephemeral thing and the

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Bible never talks about faith that way if without faith It is impossible to please God and we need faith which

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God gives us in order to trust in him to know him and to enjoy him and Okay, why did

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I get into that I got a little carried away didn't I? No, we subject him so we're coming back to the

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God's love that has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit and there is something that every single believer knows for Sure, because God has done something in his life.

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We've been regenerated We have a new heart that now has the capacity to see God It is by faith that we can access

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God and the truths that he has promised to us but in this Verse 5 we get to see the subjective element

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You know, this is not like a calculus equation. We just say okay here is what it is. And I just kind of Bow my knee to this high and mighty knowledge because the demons do that too

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They know that God exists and all and they tremble much more than we do and yet they do not have the love of God in their hearts because God has not redeemed them.

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He has redeemed us and he has poured out his love in our hearts And the interesting thing is here you have the

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Holy Spirit involved He says through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us and I think you know that ought to blow our mind away when we talk about the love of God that he would

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Indwell us through the third person of the Trinity and when I think of that Let me let me hold that thought because we'll come back to that in a moment but in verse 6 for for while we were still weak

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Basically dead in our sins while we were incapable of loving God at the right time

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Christ died for the ungodly and And so this sets the second person of the

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Trinity what it is Well, how did Jesus demonstrate his love for us? He died and in fact all the everything else that we talked about talked about the love of God but in this today's text, we're going to see the supreme manifestation of God's love for us that Jesus would die for Filthy people like us ungodly people people who had who did not have

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God on the foremost on their mind and God Volitionally would love us Through the work of Christ.

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So let's look at verse 7 and 8 and then let's talk about this verse 7

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Just to kind of emphasize, you know, we as Christians sometimes If you've been

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Christian for long enough the gospel is Important but it is not always central in my thinking.

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I was just talking to someone yesterday a good friend and He was trying to read the

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Beatitudes and I said, you know you need to look at it through the lens of the gospel and What God has done for you in terms of what the kingdom rules that belong to the king?

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So if you belong to the Jesus Christ your king Here is how you live because of what the king has done for you first in bringing you into the kingdom so here

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Verse 7 Explicates that more and for one will scarcely die for a righteous person.

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Actually images Pause there for a moment, you know, it's easy to say I would die for something good But you know just think about anyone in our lives today that we would die for basically, you know

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I can give a lot of things for someone to help them in their need. But when I die I have come to the terminus of my

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Existence which really means I cannot do all the good that I wanted to do for everybody else in my family and in my closed circles because it is done my

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I'm extinguished and I'm no more and that's the most that I can actually give and for a righteous person

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Even that very few would choose to die and for a good person. Maybe someone would dare to die

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Maybe you know, it's the president and you're his bodyguard and you you know, take a bullet for him

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But In verse 8 Jesus says the word says God shows his love for us.

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This is the love of the Father for us We're gonna see John 3 16 Momentarily in that while we were still sinners

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Christ died for us and we see the Trinitarian love the father loving placing his affection upon a people who are ungodly people who were still sinners and that's when he

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Exhibits his love and you have Jesus Christ who's willingly giving of himself he is going to die for these kinds of people like you and me who were on Who are not looking for God in the first place and then we have the

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Spirit of God who is going to be poured out in our hearts You know, we'd like to think that the moment we got saved we were glorified

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So we are all like clean vessels and have nothing spotless in us So the Spirit of God can indwell us but no none of us are

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I am NOT I Know my sins and I confess them daily and we all know that we are not these

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We are the temple of the Holy Ghost and yet we if we are conscious of the person who indwells us

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We recognize what Privilege it is that the Spirit of God would choose to indwell us

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While we are being sanctified before we are fully glorified now with that in mind, let's

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Just if you just go back on verses 5 through 8 you get to see the Trinity the love of God poured out in our hearts

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Subjectively we experience it because of the Holy Spirit who is in us God has placed his affection upon us as an ungodly people and Christ has died for us.

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So Let me back up one more point and then we'll we'll talk about this when

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I said in verse 5 Hope does not put us to shame on what basis can we be unashamed while going through these sufferings in?

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the confidence of What is happening and I think this is where you want to think of the love of the

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Father the love of the Son and the? love of the Spirit In our lives both objectively done in the finished work of Christ and subjectively poured out in our hearts when we say why am

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I? Unashamed when I go through these sufferings and like I said even my failures and my sin because on the other side

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When I one day will be glorified when I one day can look back at all the suffering and say, you know

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It was completely worth it because God loved me to put me in that times of trials To bring me through this transformation that I would reflect the light of Christ in my glorified body.

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So So You want to connect that hope and the confidence we have in the love of God that initiated my salvation

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Knowing that he will one day complete it as well. Does it make sense? Okay.

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So with that said let's now just go back into the love of God Because verse 5 kept me awake for a few nights the love of God has been poured into our hearts through the

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Holy Spirit Let's just talk about that for a moment How has the love of God been poured out into your heart through the

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Holy Spirit? Oh, well, let me We all know this is true. This is the Bible. We believe it to be true

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Even if you don't understand it, you know, that's true for every word of the scripture God's Word is always true.

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And now let's just unpack this in our lives You know, what does it mean that you have the love of God poured out in your heart through the

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Holy Spirit Andrew? Excellent. So once again when we talk about The love that we experience toward the brethren like you said remotely we have visitors in our church today you when you when you see brothers and sisters no matter where they are because of the love of God that is in their heart and The love of God that is in your heart and we both love a common

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Savior There is a joy because we are all brothers and sisters in that in that strong sense, you know, we shared this

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Savior who has redeemed us and we have this love for one another When you're pressed, where is your hope?

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Actually, we have two people Charlie and then Stephen excellent and And brothers and sisters, that's a good hermeneutic principle.

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You'll read something. You don't get what it says keep reading and normally either within the book or Within the within the context within the book or within the rest of the pages of scripture.

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You will have Clarification of what it means. Thank you Romans 8 16 Stephen amen, and I think you know, that's

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We love God because he first loved us and because the love of God is poured out in our hearts We are able to love one another and so when it comes back to James and the need for us to love one another

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That's because of the love of God in us. We are reflecting his love toward one another Charlie He might

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I haven't studied it. So I won't be able to Comment on the second Timothy passage, but you're right.

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I think Paul does talk about filling in his body the suffering of Christ He talks about and actually that that language uses is pouring out.

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Is that sacrificial language of at the altar and And I think you know and the common thread that all of you were talking about was

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You can see that love of God in your heart being poured out toward one another and I think that's a

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Huge aspect of the love of God that we have. Yes Carol. Thank you Carol Actually, that's the you know, when we think of the greatest commandment, right?

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Love God with all your heart soul mind and strength and then love your neighbor as yourself We we love because God loved us and we love others because we love

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God first It is in demonstrating our love for him that we love others and I think we should never lose sight of that You know, it is always our love for God that motivates us to do these things because you know, even in church you could start serving

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Because you're just passionately in love with the Lord Jesus Christ 20 years later you may be still serving as hard as you did when you first started, but You know when you start meeting a lot of sinful people in the church

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You could your mind could be thinking of a lot of other things than that passionate love for Jesus Christ That spurred you on in the first place and I think we as a mature body of Saints here

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We should never lose sight of that it is the love of God that has been poured out by his Holy Spirit in our hearts that we experience and enjoy and that should always be the

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Prime mover that should be our joy in the service and in the love that we have toward our fellow brothers and sisters

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I Last one Cody go ahead and I think like you said for ourselves

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Going through these times. We have this hope that does not put us to shame Because we have the love of God poured out in our hearts

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And this is not just a warm fuzzy feeling because we have the objective death burial and resurrection of Christ that Underpins our hope and therefore we know that he will accomplish what he has done for us on the other side

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Let me just go through a few other verses because they just Compliment this so if you can just turn to John 3 16 our famous verse

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You have Jesus speaking with Nicodemus. He talks to him about being born again, and then If someone can read verse 14 through 21

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This will just summarize what we've talked about who would like to read John 3 14 to 21 to Corey The reason

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I wanted us to look at this verse In fact, if you go down to the bottom of your handout There is one example that I want you to just think about while we are looking at this text and that's

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Genesis 22 to Where God says take your son to Abraham your only son

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Isaac whom you love and go to the land of Moriah and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which

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I shall tell you and Here it goes on to talk. We get to see a glimpse of the faith of Abraham and his love for God But here looking back at John 3 16 we have

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God Loves the world so much. He places his unconditional love upon a

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Filthy people that he would give his only son in order to accomplish redemption once again, you know, we we should never lose sight of the two sides of this love and justice holiness and And affection that God begins this work in us and even in the previous verse

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Why do we have that suffering because God intends to accomplish that work of endurance character and hope in our lives

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He doesn't just leave us last time. I said, you know, it's not like just pouring water It's like putting gasoline and lighting it up.

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You are changed by the love of God that works in you He places affection upon you and he tricks you up.

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But the interesting thing in that passage was In verse 19 the people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil and that's kind of the state in which we were until God God regenerated us and then

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Enabled us to love his beloved son whom he was willing to give once again going back to the question that started us this morning

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You know, what what is the proof of your love for those whom you? Claim to love it is what you have done for them and the proof of God's love is

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Immense his only beloved son his eternally beloved son that he would give for people like you and I Let me stop here we are out of time

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Any thoughts or comments before we close? I want us to never forget that the love of God must be central in all that we say

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I think how do you put that very well when we go through these times, you know what when we drop down to our knees What is it that?

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Spurs us on when we are unable To fulfill the law the

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Commandments of God when we are Overwhelmed by the events that surround us

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And if it is not anchored in the love of God that he gave his only son on our behalf

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Our hope will not be firm as the Bible Calls us to be so we want to always fix our eyes upon Jesus Christ.

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He died. He gave everything For you and for me, let us pray a loving and gracious father we

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We are indeed overwhelmed by your love for us help us O Lord to revel in the good news of your son dying on our behalf and yours and The Spirit of God indwelling us help us this morning to worship you in spirit and in truth