Our God Is Love Series

Introduction:

A. The late television personality Art Linkletter became famous for his refreshing and humorous conversations with children.

1. One of his most memorable exchanges took place when he asked a little boy about the picture he was drawing.

2. The little boy said: “It’s a picture of God.”

3. When Linkletter told the boy that no one knows what God looks like, the boy confidently replied, “Well, They will when I get done with my picture.”

B. Let’s give the little guy and “E” for effort – his desire to show people what God looks like is admirable.

1. There’s certainly a lot we don’t know about God and His appearance, but there are many things we do know about God.

2. In our sermon series “It’s All About God,” we have been trying to get a better glimpse of who God is and what God is like, so that we can be more like God and reflect God appropriately.

3. During our series, we have been learning about God’s glory, and God’s holiness, and God’s eternal nature and unchanging nature.

4. Today, we want to focus on the fact that God is love.

C. Max Lucado opens his chapter on this attribute of God with an interesting story about the Edwards Aquifer that lays several hundred feet under his house in San Antonio, TX.

1. It caused me to wonder about any aquifers here in the Syracuse area, and it looks like there is a good-sized aquifer under Baldwinsville.

2. Here in CNY, we get most of our fresh water from lakes, like Ontario and Skaneateles.

3. The Edwards Aquifer in South Texas is 175 miles long and it is full of fresh water to quench people’s thirst, fill their swimming pools, and irrigate farms and lawns.

4. The interesting thing about that aquifer is that no one knows how deep it is and therefore they have no idea about how many gallons of water it contains.

5. That unmeasured pool caused Max to think about another unmeasured pool – the pool of God’s love.

6. In one of the most beautiful prayers that Paul wrote in one of his letters to the churches, he wrote: I pray that you, being rooted and firmly established in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the length and width, height and depth of God’s love, and to know Christ’s love that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. (Ephesians 3:17b-19)

7. God’s love is so long and wide, and high and deep, that it surpasses knowledge, yet through that love we can be filled with the fulness of God and can never run dry!

8. Consider these words from a hymn written by Mary Bowley Peters, titled “Whom Have We, Lord, but Thee”: “Whom have we, Lord, but Thee, soul thirst to satisfy. Exhaustless spring, the water is free, all other streams are dry.”

9. God’s love is an exhaustless spring, welling up deep inside of us, so that we never run dry.

10. The aquifer of God’s love is truly beyond measure and cannot be exhausted.

D. During this sermon series, we have been emphasizing that it is all about God, and it’s not about us.

1. But to say, “It’s not about us” is not to say that we are not loved.

2. It’s because God loves us that it’s not supposed to be about us, because God’s knows what is best for us.

3. Even though God’s love for us to too big to measure, I want to urge us to trust in it.

4. All of us need God’s love and are hungry for love.

5. Unfortunately, some people who should have loved us didn’t and some who could have loved us wouldn’t.

6. Some of us have been left at the hospital, or left at the altar, or left with an empty bed or a broken heart.

7. And we are left with the question: “Does anybody love me?”

8. God’s answer to us is: “I am love and I love you.”

E. But what does it mean that “God is love”?

1. Notice that I have entitled this sermon “Our God is love” rather than “Our God is a Loving God.”

2. The reason is because when we talk of the love of God, it is more than just describing him as “loving.”

3. We can call God loving (because He is), but we can also call our wives or husbands as loving.

4, But I cannot say about my wife, “Diana is love” - that is something that is true only of God.

5. This statement – “God is love” is simple enough to be understood even by those who are still children in the faith, yet it is profound enough to exhaust the mind of scholars and theologians.