Sermon Central
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The Love Of God Series
Contributed by Christian Cheong on Feb 9, 2012 (message contributor)
Summary: God loves you not because of who you are but who He is. His love is uncaused and unceasing. Rest in the certainty of His love. Enjoy the blessings of His love. Give His love away.
Everyone is looking for love. This quest is around us every day, in the music we hear and the movies we watch.
• The desire is woven into the fibre of our being. We all need love. We need to be loved.
• If everyone has this same need, then there must be a universal solution. That solution is in God.
• John says love comes from God and God is love. Blaise Pascal puts it plainly: “There is a God shaped vacuum in the heart of every man which cannot be filled by any created thing, but only by God, the Creator, made known through Jesus.”
Ultimately we need to know and experience the love of God. There is no fulfilment in life without the love of God.
• The source of love is in God. It did not start with the object of love. His love for you has nothing to do with you. He has chosen to love you.
• You cannot demand it, earn it, win it, or try to woo Him for it. He does not love you because of who you are. He loves you because of who He is.
• The love of God is born from within Him, not from what He finds in us. His love is uncaused and spontaneous. It is His very nature to love unconditionally.
• And you can never change that!
(1) REST IN THE CERTAINTY OF HIS LOVE
Rom 8:38-39 “38For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
• Actually it just means nothing. But the writer wants to make sure we understand.
• Not even angels or demons can do anything about it. Not even the future, or any powers – your sins and failures – they are powerless to change God’s love for you.
• In fact, He loves us while we were still sinners. (Rom 5:8)
We are confident in life today, not because we love Him, but because He loves us!
• And God demonstrated that – when He sent His Son Jesus to us. John says, “… that we might live through Him.”
• Love seeks the highest good for the object of love. God has your welfare at heart. He was thinking about you and He IS STILL THINKING about you today!
Imagine this for a moment – such a stance will stay that way FOREVER.
• Max Lucado (A Gentle Thunder, p.46): “God’s love never ceases. Never. Though we spurn him. Ignore him. Reject him. Despise hm. Disobey him. He will not change. Our evil cannot diminish his love. Our goodness cannot increase it. Our faith does not earn it anymore than our stupidity jeopardizes it. God doesn’t love us less if we fail or more if we succeed. God’s love never ceases.”
• Knowing we didn’t do anything to earn God’s love - means we do not need to live in fear of losing it either.
• If you did nothing to gain it, how could your performance (or lack of) lose it?
Jesus knows everything about us - the good, the bad and the ugly, the past, the present and the future - and He loves us still. Enjoy that freedom.
• 4:18 “There is no fear in love. Perfect love drives our fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.”
• You do not have to prove anything. He loves you for who you are. He sees through all of the stuff in your life and loves you just the same!
• Edmund Chan: You’ve nothing to prove, nothing to lose, and nothing to hide.
(2) ENJOY THE BLESSINGS OF HIS LOVE
Many are not enjoying being loved! They are still trying to prove that they are WORTHY of love. We need to BELIEVE God’s Word and ENJOY it.
Listen to how Paul prays for the Ephesians – Eph 3:17b-19
“And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, 18 may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, 19 and to know this love that surpasses knowledge - that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.”
Many are not enjoying the full measure of His love.
There is no way we can measure how much God loves us.
• It requires divine revelation to KNOW His love – we need the power to grasp because it surpasses knowledge.
• We pray for that revelation. We pray that we can all be convicted of this.
