The Love Of God Ii

THE LOVE OF GOD II

TITUS 3:4

There was once this man who goes into a restaurant/lounge wearing a shirt open at the collar. Before he can get through the door he is met by the bouncer who tells him he must wear a necktie to be admitted. The man knows that there is not another restaurant around for miles. So he goes out to his car and he looks around for a necktie and discovers that he just doesn’t have one. He sees a set of jumper cables in his trunk. In desperation he ties these around his neck, manages to fashion a fairly acceptable looking knot and lets the ends dangle free. He goes back to the restaurant and the bouncer carefully looks him over for a few minutes and then says, "Well, OK, I guess you can come in; just don’t start anything."

Now I thought for hours on how I was going to tie that joke into my sermon this morning before I realized that I just couldn’t do it. But is was too good of a joke not to tell. At least I have everyone’s attention now.

Please turn with me to our passage today, that would be Titus 3:4.

Titus 3:4; “But when the kindness and the love of God our Savior toward man appeared,” Here Paul begins to speak on the doctrine of salvation. He begin in verse 4 by telling us that the kindness and love of God appeared to us through the coming of Jesus Christ. In that Christ came for our salvation, He was born, He lived, He died, He rose again, for us, so that we could have salvation.

Last week we began to talk about the love of God, and was learned some basic things regarding God’s love. While I stated that we will be looking at God’s love for two weeks actually we will be looking at it for three.

This week I want to us to get a glimpse of how complex God’s love is. Next week I want us to look at how God’s love works into our salvation.

How many of you have seen the movie “A Princess Bride”? It is great movie. One of the characters of the movie is a little Sicilian guy, who speaks with a little bit of a lisp. Now every time something happens that is the least bit out of the ordinary this little guy says, “inconceivable”. When they kidnap the princess and he is quite sure that no one knows that that did it, they make their get away in a ship. When another ship appears on the horizon he states, “inconceivable”. When they are climbing up the cliff on a rope and the masked hero is following them, he states, “inconceivable”. Over and over again, “inconceivable”.

Well if our little Sicilian friend where here and I began to tell him of the love of God, I know he would utter those words, “inconceivable”.

Because God’s love is just that “inconceivable”. We cannot even begin to understand that depth of Gods love, we cannot even begin to understand the complexity of God’s love. But while we cannot understand it fully we must strive to understand it the best we can. We must look to God’s word and glean what we can concerning the love of God.

I want to begin this morning by pointing out three observations that we can see concerning the Love of God. These are things that are plainly seem. Thing that you do not even have to open your Bibles to see.

First there is no other attribute of God that is so plainly seen. We see it in creation. Everyone take a look outside. See the trees and the hills, ok ok look back up here, and the snow, the beauty of it all. It all proclaims the love of God. The love of God is obvious in creation. God could have made this world very bland, but He did not, and He did not because of His love.

God love is also plainly seen in that He sustains this creation. He give us breath, food, drink. He keep our hearts pumping. And when our time is done He stops our hearts. Matthew 5:45 “...for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.” It matters not whether people our wicked or not, they are sustained by the love of God. The fact that the sun rises every day, that the rains come and water the crops, is a display of the love of God.

God’s love is also plainly seen in the fact that He has sent His only begotten Son Jesus Christ. As our passage state God’s love appeared in that He has provided us with a means of salvation, and that means is of course the blood of Christ shed on the cross. By placing our faith in that blood for the forgiveness of sin, God provides us with eternal life.