MACARTHUR: When I was given the subject of
"The Love of God," it reminded me that a number of years ago, the publisher that I was working
with at the time said to me, "You know, you're pretty intense in your books, and they tend
to be a bit combative from time to time. We would like you to write a more amiable
book. We would like to sort of, you know, change
your image a little and maybe have you kind of reach a wider audience. So could you just write sort of a non-controversial
book for us? And we think it will make you more friendly,
and we'd like to suggest that you write on the subject of the Love of God." I did, and I sent in the book to them, and
they sent me back a letter that said, "This is not what we had in mind. This may be the most potentially divisive
book you have ever written." I was sitting on the Larry King program sometime
back, which is always an adventure for me. And I have a strategy on Larry King, my strategy
is very simple, I don't care what the conversation's about, there are two things I want to say
– the Bible is the only authoritative Word from God, and Jesus is the only Savior, and
I just look for places to say those two things. But I was sitting next to Father Manning,
and between Father Manning and Deepak Chopra, who in one of his books says he's god. And he was so distressed because he's a rather
small guy, and he had him cranking the chair up so he could get up with everybody else. It's hard, when you're god, to be shorter
than everybody else. That's a problem, isn't it? But anyway, we were talking and Father Manning
said, "My Jesus loves everybody." And Larry King looked at me and said, "You
don't feel that way about Jesus, do you, John? You think if people don't believe in Jesus
and Jesus alone, they're going to hell, right?" And I said, "Right." And there are people who question that if
you believe that, you could still affirm the love of God. On the surface, the idea that God is love
is the most tolerable and the most universally affirmed truth concerning God, and almost
everyone is happy that God is love as long as you leave it in a simplistic kind of definition. The reality is that people, in fact, and most
professing Christians, do not understand the love of God. It is far more profound, it is far more complex
and frankly, it is incomprehensible and, at times, disturbing to contemplate. Setting aside the popular ideas, I want us
to look together at several Scriptures. You can preach a topical message once a year
if you ask for forgiveness. So I want to do that and bounce around a little
bit. Have your Bible handy, we're going to talk
about the height and depth and breadth and length of the love of God. At least I want to give you a sort of a primary
scope to look at this incredibly important reality in the nature of God and the place
His love has in the panoply of attributes that make up His nature. Clearly God is love, 1 John 4 tells us that,
the Bible declares that. But at the very outset, we're going to have
to break that love down and, for our purposes, just to get a good sense of the overview,
we're going to break it into three categories. Category number one is "God's love for Himself." This is what we will call "intra-Trinitarian
love," and this is the starting point, of necessity, for all of God's love. Before there was any creature to love, God
was still perfect love, and perfectly loved the members of the Trinity mutually. Open your Bible for a moment to the fourteenth
chapter of John. We'll look at a couple of passages in John
just as a starting point because, obviously, we can't get too far into these things, or
we'll not be able to cover the breadth of what we want to say. But in John 14, just some statements that
establish in our minds this intra-Trinitarian love. In verse 31 of John 14 we read, "But that
the world may know that I love the Father, and as the Father gave Me commandment, even
so, I do. Arise, let us go from here." Jesus said, "Let's progress toward the inevitability
of the cross that the world may know that I love the Father, and I show that love in
perfect and sacrificial obedience." In the fifteenth chapter, still in this wonderful
Upper Room Discourse, the night of the Passover with His apostles, Jesus says, verse 9, chapter
15, "Just as the Father has loved Me, I have also loved you. Abide in My love. If you keep My commandments, you will abide
in My love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in His love." Again, perfect love demonstrated in perfect
obedience. In the seventeenth chapter of John, again
we read of this intra-Trinitarian love. Verse 23, Jesus says, "I in them," and this,
of course, as you know is the "High Priestly Prayer" as it's often called, "I in them and
Thou in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, that the world may know that Thou didst
send Me and didst love them, even as Thou didst still love Me." Again, this emphasis is in verse 26, "I have
made Thy name known to them and will make it known, and the love wherewith Thou didst
love Me may be in them, and I in them." Perfect love in the Trinity, perfect love
from all eternity. Two expressions of that love I want to sort
of pull out of the text of John's Gospel, just to demonstrate something of the character
of it. We've already seen that it's connected to
the obedience of our Lord, therein lies the demonstration of His love back to the Father. But I want to show you the Father's love to
Him. Turn to the fifth chapter of John, and I find
this to be one of those compelling chapters, not unlike the seventeenth chapter. In the seventeenth chapter of John, you are
in the holy of holies, you are in the midst of communion between the Son and the Father,
and here is much the same kind of reality. The words belong to Jesus, chapter 5 verse
19. "Jesus therefore answered and was saying to
them, 'Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, unless it is something
He sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, these things
the Son also does in like manner. For the Father loves the Son and shows Him
all these things that He Himself is doing. And greater works than these will He show
Him, that you may marvel. For,'" verse 21, "'just as the Father raises
the dead and gives them life, even so, the Son also gives life to those whom He wishes.'" Verse 22, "'For not even the Father judges
anyone but He has given all judgment to the Son, in order that all may honor the Son,
even as they honor the Father. He who does not honor the Son does not honor
the Father who sent Him. Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears My
word and believes Him who sent Me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment but has passed
out of death into life. Truly, truly, I say to you, an hour is coming,
and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear shall
live. For just as the Father has life in Himself,
even so He gave to the Son also to have life in Himself. And He gave Him authority to execute judgment
because He is the Son of Man.'" Now, we can stop there. Do you know what that says? Everything that the Father has, He gave His
Son, everything. "The Son does what He sees the Father doing,"
in verse 19. The Father shows the Son everything that He
Himself is doing. Here is the magnanimity of the love of God,
He holds nothing back. All His power He gives to the Son. Verse 21 says, "Just as the Father raises
the dead and gives him life, so the Son also gives life to whom He wishes." God has the power to raise the dead, so does
the Son. God has the right to judge, verse 22, but
He's given all judgment to the Son. God is worthy of all honor, but He's given
equal honor to the Son. God is the one to be believed, but He gives
His Word to His Son who also is to be believed. The Father gives life, the Son gives life. The Father executes judgment, the Son executes
judgment. The magnanimity of the love of God to the
Son is that all the Father's knowledge, all the Father's power, all the Father's secrets,
all the Father's privileges, all the Father's honor, He gives to the Son and holds nothing
back. And the Son, in perfect reciprocal love, says
that all that He has is only, what? The Father has given Him. Thus He celebrates the expression of perfect
love in consummate generosity that holds back nothing. And in John 6 verse 36, we come to a familiar
portion of Scripture which takes us to a second illustration of how the Father loves the Son,
and the Son in return loves the Father. In John 6 verse 36 and following, and we'll
start at verse 37, Jesus says, "All that the Father gives Me shall come to Me." Now, here you come to the glory of redemption. The Father loves the Son so much that He gives
to the Son a redeemed humanity. You understand, don't you, that God loving
sinners is secondary, and God loving His Son is primary? He loves sinners insofar as by loving them,
He can express His love to His Son. We are nothing but an elect bride, the Father's
love gift to the Son. That's why He said, "All that the Father gives
Me…all that the Father gives Me." "No man comes unto Me unless the Father,"
what? "Draws him." And also in John 17, you have the very same
reality expressed a couple of times, verse 11, "I am no more in the world, yet they themselves
are in the world. I come to Thee, Holy Father. Keep them in Thy name, Thy name which Thou
hast given Me, that they may be one, even as We are one. While I was with them, I was keeping them
in Thy name which Thou hast given Me." Verse 24, "I desire that they also whom Thou
hast given Me, be with Me where I am." So, when you talk about intra-Trinitarian
love, you're talking about the love that exists, primarily expressed in the language between
the Father and the Son, but not to leave out the Holy Spirit, within the Trinity expressed
in texts such as we have just read. We must begin, then, with the primary intra-Trinitarian
love because it leads to the other loves. Because God the Father perfectly loves the
Son, salvation is planned. As the Father seeks a bride for His Son, as
the Son in perfect obedience and perfect love for the Father is willing to pay the price
for that bride, the immense price of redemption, obeying the Father's will out of love for
Him and becoming a substitute and receiving the wrath of God for all who would believe. God loving us, God loving people, rises out
of God's creating people to redeem a bride for the Son of His love. Now, that's a glorious subject in itself. I'm only introducing it tonight because it's
really not the focus of this particular address. Let's go to a second category of love. Letting that sort of settle in our minds for
a moment, I want to move to the second category of love, which is critical for us to understand,
that is "God's love for humanity," God's love for humanity. It is true, God does love men and women. God does love the world. There is a love of God which is unconditional,
you hear that? Used so many times that adjective, "unconditional,"
you would think that's the demanded adjective to describe God's love finally, ultimately
but it is not. But there is, however, an unconditional kind
of love, an unlimited kind of love, an indiscriminate kind of love, a love extended to all people. It's like Titus 3:4 which says, "God's love
for mankind," chrestotes. There is a kind of love extended to all men,
and it is a necessary love because God's nature is love, and if God has any interaction with
human beings, it will be based upon His nature. If you have an interaction with another human
being, another person, you are interacting with whatever the components of that person's
character and personality are. And when the sinful world interacts at all
with God or God with them, the truth about God will be manifest, and the truth about
God is that He is love and so, love is part of that relationship. A few passages that are important in that
regard, Matthew chapter 5. Matthew chapter 5, and I want to show you
a little bit about this sort of unconditional, indiscriminate, general, unlimited love that
extends to all people. Matthew chapter 5 verse 44, "I say to you,
love your enemies. Pray for those who persecute you, in order
that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven." Never are you more like God than when you
love your enemies. God loves His enemies. God's love is not restricted to the redeemed. This is an unqualified, unconditional love. Another illustration of this is found in the
tenth chapter of Mark which, I think, is sort of tucked into that tenth chapter and perhaps
overlooked unless you're reading thoughtfully. Verse 17, "As he was setting out on a journey,
a man ran up to Him," Mark 10:17, "knelt before Him, and began asking Him, 'Good teacher,
what shall I do to inherit eternal life?'" This is the well-known rich young ruler. "And Jesus said to him, 'Why do you call Me
good? No one is good except God alone. You know the commandments – do not murder,
do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not bear false witness, do not defraud, honor
your father and mother.' And he said to Him, 'Teacher, I have kept
all these things from my youth up.'" There is a deluded man. There is a confused man. There is a man who cannot receive eternal
life because he does not understand the wretchedness of his own condition. He believes himself to be righteous in spite
of the fact that he would not accept the diagnosis that Jesus gave of his condition or endeavored
to expose. It says in verse 21, and I've always been
fascinated by this, "And looking at him, Jesus felt a love for him." Amazing! Looking at this obstinate, self-righteous
rejecter, "Jesus felt a love for him, and He said to him, 'One thing you lack. Go and sell all you possess, give to the poor,
and you shall have a treasure in heaven and come follow Me.'" There are two conditions upon which this man
would put himself in the place to receive eternal life and, one, was to understand that
he had broken the law of God and, two, was to understand that he was being asked to submit
to the Lordship of Christ, whatever Christ commanded. But in either case, would he respond? And verse 22 says, "At these words, his face
fell, he went away grieved for he was one who owned much property." And Jesus' comment was, "How hard it will
be for those who are wealthy to enter the kingdom of God." Here was a man who didn't enter the kingdom
of God, and yet Jesus had a love for him. God loves humanity. There are four ways in which we see this unconditional,
indiscriminate love. Number one is what theologians have always
called "common grace." If for a moment you could look at Matthew
chapter 5 again, you would notice the latter half of verse 45, where He says, "Love your
enemies in order that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven, for He causes His
sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. And if you only love those who love you, what
reward have you? Tax collectors do that." God loves those who don't love Him, and that
love is manifest, listen, in an earthly, physical, temporal fashion. By rain and good. And you understand that, of course, because
you know that the soul that sins, it shall die. The wages of sin is death. And yet, the world is constantly, from the
very start, populated by people who sin and sin continuously in an unbroken pattern and
go on living. And it's not as if this is outside the control
of God because it's in God we live and move and have our being. And God says to Adam, "In the day you eat
of the fruit of that tree, you will die," and Adam lived over nine hundred years. What is that? And so did all the other sinners that are
listed there early in Genesis, living for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years. Can you imagine, by the time you get to be
sixty or seventy, your life is so full of sin, what would it have been like if you lived
to be nine hundred? How would you deal with that memory bank of
garbage? The very fact that the Lord, you know, lets
the unregenerate get up in the morning and smell the coffee and have a good breakfast,
and kiss the person they love, and hug a baby, and go off to a stimulating career, and enjoy
a great meal, and a comfortable car, and a sunset, and a beautiful seascape, and hear
music, and enjoy all of the common grace of life is an expression of God's love for humanity. He loves all men unconditionally in that physical,
temporal sense. And we have to understand that that is God's
love. Listen to Acts 14:17, "He did good and gave
you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, satisfying your hearts with food and gladness." Who is Paul saying that to? A bunch of idolaters who tried to turn Paul
and Barnabas into gods. That's common grace. The second way in which God loves humanity
is "compassion." Compassion. And certainly, it's tied into the reason that
God expresses common grace. God's love for mankind is revealed in His
universal pity, His universal grief over lost souls. Ezekiel 18:32, "I have no pleasure in the
death of the wicked." God finds no pleasure, no satisfaction there. I always love reading Jeremiah, particularly
when I'm feeling sorry for myself and need somebody to cry with me. Jeremiah 13, "Listen and give heed. Do not be haughty or proud, for the Lord has
spoken. Give glory to the Lord your God before He
brings darkness and before your feet stumble on the dusky mountains, and, while you are
hoping for light, He makes it into deep darkness and turns it into gloom. But if you will not listen to it," listen
to this, "my soul will sob in secret for such pride, and my eyes will bitterly weep and
flow down with tears." That's the compassion of God weeping through
the eyes of Jeremiah. And at the end of the book of Jonah, chapter
5, down there in verse 11 God says to Jonah, "Should not I have had compassion on Nineveh?" "Just because you hate the Gentiles, doesn't
mean I do." It's the forty-eighth chapter, I think, of
Jeremiah, if I remember right, around verse 30 and following, where God literally weeps
and wails over the destruction of Moab. Moab was cursed, but God found no pleasure
in their iniquity or their judgment. And then, Matthew 23:37, what is Jesus saying? "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often I would
have gathered you as a hen gathereth her brood and you would not. You just kill the prophets that are sent to
you." In Luke 19:41, He says, "He looked over the
city and He wept." And He wept over the tomb of Lazarus, why? Because He was sorry Lazarus died? No, because He wanted Lazarus dead. Don't you remember He stayed up by the Jordan
until he was good and dead, until he had been dead for three days. And the Jews didn't embalm. He would've been in some seriously bad shape
by then. He was not weeping because Lazarus was dead,
He was weeping because He was absorbing the horrible consequence of sin, namely, death
for all. This, you know, this is a love of compassion
that is not motivated by the present value of someone but by the lost value. When Moses wanted to see God, God said, "I'll
show you My compassion." There is a third element of this love for
humanity and, I guess, we could put it in the category of "warning." God's love for mankind is revealed in His
incessant warnings. All through the Scripture, we won't take the
time to recite them. I always think of a text that I first heard
from R.C. many years ago, when I listened to his series on "The Holiness of God," I
think it's in that series, taken out of Luke 13 where they came and asked Jesus about the
tower that fell on the people, and then people who were in worshiping, and the soldiers came
in and sliced them up. And Jesus' response was, "Hey, you better
take a look at your own life, the same thing is going to happen to you. You're not exempt." It's not that they were any worse than anybody
else. The fact of the matter is it's only grace
and love that gives you another breath. You know, when you think about that text in
1 Timothy 4:10, it's a very provocative text, where it says that God is the Savior of all
men, especially those who believe. I know that's disturbed a lot of people. Universalists like that text, right? "God is the Savior of all men." But God is the Savior of all men especially
those who believe, malista, a little adverb there. In what sense is God the Savior of all men? In a physical and temporal sense in that He
withholds from the sinner what the sinner deserves when he deserves it. And it is that that Paul says in Romans 2
is the patience and forbearance of God that you should have, leading you to repentance. The
New Testament and the Old Testament are filled with warnings, filled with warnings. There's a fourth category of this unconditional
love, and I guess we could call it "the gospel offer." God's love for mankind, in the broadest sense,
is revealed in His incessant and extensive offer of the gospel. "Go into all the world and preach the gospel"
to? "Everyone," everyone. The path to salvation has been made known
to all. "That which may be known of God," Romans 1,
"is in them." It is that logical process built into the
mind, that cause-and-effect pattern in human thinking that is the operation of logic. I mean, it's basically the simple building
block upon which all reasoning takes place. And when you get into that pattern, it takes
you back to the ultimate cause, and then God puts Himself on display in His creation. In chapter 2 of Romans it tells us that He
has written His law in our hearts and He's given us a conscience to react to that law
and convict, accuse, or excuse. Christ is the light that lights every man. There is a path built into the human heart
which, when followed, leads to truth and to God, and as we are faithful to proclaim to
the ends of the earth to the hearing of the gospel. Hyper-Calvinists tell us we shouldn't preach
the gospel to everybody because we don't know who is the elect. That's not what the Bible tells us. Every sinner, as far as I know, I have to
operate on this basis. Every sinner that I meet, if he or she believes
in Jesus will be pardoned and saved. John 6:40, "This is the will of My Father
that everyone who beholds the Son and believes in Him will have eternal life, and I Myself,"
Jesus said, "will raise him on the last day." The divine Savior is revealed to sinners indiscriminately,
in an unlimited fashion. To the ends of the earth we are to go with
this message. Whether it's Psalm 34:8 which says, "Oh, taste
and see that the Lord is good, blessed is the man that trusts in Him." Proverbs 1:24, "I have called and you refused,
I stretched out my hand and no man regarded." Or Isaiah 55, "Come, buy and eat. Buy wine and milk without money and without
price." Or Isaiah 65, "Behold Me, behold Me, unto
a nation that was not called by My name, I have spread out My hands all the day unto
a rebellious people." And in Matthew 22, Jesus said, "The kingdom
of heaven is like a king who made a marriage for his son, and he sent forth his servants
to call them that were bidden to the wedding and they wouldn't come." Or Luke 14, which says, "A man made a great
supper, and bade many, sent his servants at supper time to say to them who were bidden,
'Come, all things are ready,' and they all with one consent began to make excuse." Jesus said, "Come unto Me all you who labor
and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." Jesus said, "Him that comes to Me, I'll never
turn away." And so, there is in this extensive gospel
offer, a manifest love to humanity. Thomas Boston, the Puritan preacher, used
the analogy of a king. It was like a king, he said, appointing a
physician for the nation. And that position was available to all the
people, the official doctor of that society, whether people chose him or not. He was the official physician for that nation. Well, Jesus is the Savior of the world, declared
so by God and available to all who come to Him for spiritual healing. In John 5:40, Jesus said, "You are unwilling
to come to Me that you might have life." We can't forget that. That is God's love for humanity. God loved the world so much that He provided
a sufficient Savior, but sinners refuse to come and are guilty for that refusal. Jesus said, "You will die in your sins and
where I go, you will never come because you didn't believe in Me." That takes us to the third aspect of God's
love, not only God's love for Himself, "intra-Trinitarian love," and "God's love for humanity," but
"God's love for His own." God's love for His own. Listen carefully, though God genuinely loves
the world, He loves them enough to give them common grace, He loves them enough to feel
compassion and extend it to them. He loves them enough to warn them. He loves them enough to give them gospel opportunity. That love has no limit in extent, listen,
but it has a limit in degree. This is always challenging for us but, nonetheless,
true. He loves and saves, in a temporal physical
sense, all men. But He especially loves and saves believers. His love for His own is eternal. It is limited in extent and unlimited in degree. It is conditional, and it is uninfluenced. It is a love based upon nothing but sovereign
determination. Turn to John 13. Of all the passages where, in a straightforward
and direct sense you can see this love, this is foundational. John 13, our Lord here is on the brink of
His own death, gathered with his obstinate, blockhead apostles, the "Oh, you of little
faith" association. And they are gathering together to celebrate
the Passover the night that, of course, Judas would betray Him and He would be then arrested
and murdered. And I just, verse 1 captures me, "Now before
the Feast of the Passover, Jesus knowing that His hour had come that He should depart out
of this world to the Father," listen to this, "having loved His own who were in the world,
He loved them to the end." "Having loved," past tense with ongoing force. Having always loved His own who were in the
world, He loves the world, but there's another kind of love. We know He loves the world, but He has another
love for His own who are in the world, and what is it? He loved them to the end. And I think the Lord picks a really marvelous
time to have John express that because the disciples, at this point in the upper room,
are having an argument about which of them is going to be the greatest in the kingdom. I mean, they're just so self-centered, so
immature, selfish, ambitious. Jesus had told them what was going to happen,
and as He is there in the shadow of the cross, and the dark night is falling over Him, all
they can think about is their own glory. And here in their ugliest moment, when they
are utterly indifferent to His coming suffering, when whatever the indications of His own sorrow
were, as He gathered with them in intimate fellowship for hours that night, they never
picked up anything. This was when they were the ugliest of all. And it says, "He loved them eis telos." Who is it that He loved? His own, who were in the world, eis telos. What does that mean? It means, in one sense, "to the max." "Unto the end," in the sense of complete and
perfect and full. He loved them to the max. Another way to say that would be, He loved
them to the end of His capacity to love them. And that cannot be said of His love for humanity. It could say, "He loved them to the last." They deserted Him, they denied Him, they were
ashamed of Him, they were cowards, they were disloyal, they were fearful, they were scattered
very soon from this time. And do you remember when they rendezvoused
up in Galilee after His resurrection? What was Jesus' thrice-repeated question to
Peter? "Peter, do you," what? "Do you love Me?" "Do you love Me?" You see, Jesus was used to love being demonstrated
by obedience, because that's how He loved His Father. And Jesus had told Peter to go to Galilee
and wait for Him, and Peter went back to his old career. He loved them in their disloyalty. His love for them is so astonishing. You can see it in the events that follow. When you get into His promises in this Passover
evening, this legacy of Jesus that He gives to them, promises them all these things, He
pledges His love to them. He shows His love to them by washing their
filthy feet while they were debating who was the greatest, and none would stoop to do that. He shows His love to them later on in the
garden. Do you remember the soldiers came in the garden
to take Jesus captive? And Jesus knew very clearly that these men
could never survive if they were taken captive. He knew that. He knew that it would be more than they could
bear, more than their faith could handle. And so, John 18 says, "When they came to take
Jesus, Jesus went forth," moved…didn't hide, moved right toward "the Roman cohort, and
officers from the chief priests and Pharisees with lanterns, torches, and weapons." Verse 4, John 18, "He went forth and said,
'Whom do you seek?'" In other words, He said, "I want to know what's
on your orders. I want to know who the warrant is for?" And, "They answered Him, 'Jesus the Nazarene.' He said to them, 'I am He.' When, therefore, He said to them, 'I am He,'
they drew back and fell to the ground." Boom! Just the sheer force of His name, the name
of God, "I AM." "And again He said to them, 'Whom do you seek?' And they said, 'Jesus the Nazarene.'" And He was affirming by their own lips that
they had absolutely no right to take those disciples prisoner. Why? Verse 8, "He said, 'I told you that I'm He. If therefore you seek Me, let these go their
way.'" Why? They couldn't have handled it. It would have been more than their faith could
bear, and so, He protected them. And He said this, verse 9, "That the word
might be fulfilled which He spoke, 'Of those whom Thou hast given Me, I lost not one.'" Did you understand that passage? What Jesus is saying is, "If I allowed them
to get into that situation and be arrested, I would have lost them." You say, "Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait
a minute!" He can't lose His own, that's right, He can't
lose His own because He won't lose His own. Not just because He said He won't, but because
He enforces what He said. He never lets you be put in a position where
your faith could fail to that degree. He protected them from what would have been
shattering to them. Later on after the resurrection, He forgave
them even though they didn't believe in the resurrection, and they're walking along talking
to Him and moaning about the fact that He's dead. He restored them even though they were disobedient. He sent them His Holy Spirit, Acts chapter
2, and empowered them to preach the gospel. He loved them to the max. And, of course, He showed it on the cross,
"Greater love has no man than this that he lay down his life for his friends." This love, by the way, is eternal because,
in John 14, Jesus said, "Stop letting your heart be," what? "Troubled." "You believe in God," don't you? "Believe in Me. In my Father's house are many rooms. If it were not so, I would have told you. For I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I
will come again and receive you to Myself that where I am, there you may be also." And you want to know something? There are no empty rooms in heaven. The rooms He prepares, He fills, which means
He keeps the people to whom the rooms have been promised. They don't oversell heaven, nor do they undersell. He faces the cross, sin-bearing, agonizing
execution, painful, lonely, forsaken. Yet like a Father who loses Himself in the
love of His children as He Himself faces death, Jesus makes sure He holds onto His own. And then, as He knows in His own heart He's
going to the cross and He's going to be separated from the Father when He says, "Eloi, Eloi,
lama sabachthani?" He's expressing whatever the reality of that
separation was. I think He anticipates that in John 17 when
He says, "Father, I kept them while I was here, now You keep them." It's almost as if He says, "I've held on to
them up to now. In that moment, when I might not be able to
hold onto them because I am bearing the wrath for the sins of all who would ever believe,
Father, hold on to them." This is what the hymn writer said, "The love
of Jesus, what it is, none but His loved ones know." It is not just that general love that gives
common grace, compassion, warning, and gospel opportunity. It is this love that is way beyond that, it
is this saving love, this covenant love. And honestly, I can never ever preach a sermon
on this subject without going to Ezekiel 16 because it is the greatest illustration of
this. You have to turn Ezekiel 16, and I think at
an earlier Ligonier conference when I was speaking on a related subject, I drew attention
to this chapter. This is so monumental to me. Here is this covenant love, this unbreakable
love, this love which Romans 8 says you can never be separated from. And it's so graphic, it is just an unforgettable
chapter. The word of the Lord comes to Ezekiel in verse
1, "Son of Man, make known to Jerusalem her abominations,
and say, 'Thus says the Lord God to Jerusalem, 'Your origin and your birth are from the land
of the Canaanite. Your father was an Amorite and your mother
was a Hittite.'" I mean, the bottom line here is this is a
basic address given toward Jerusalem and Israel for her abominations, her idolatries. The "Amorite" and the "Hittite" are simply
general names for the dwellers in Canaan and here refer to the pagan origins of the people
of Israel and to the fact, as well, that the people of Israel had gotten involved in pagan
conduct and pagan idolatry. Jerusalem is very Canaanitish at this point. And He reminds this nation in verse 4 of her
birth, "As for your birth, on the day you were born your navel cord was not cut, nor
were you washed with water for cleansing, you were not rubbed with salt or even wrapped
in cloths." The imagery is just so vivid. This is a throwaway baby. You were a throwaway baby as far as the people
from whom you came were concerned. When a baby was born, of course the cord is
cut, the baby is washed, cleansed, rubbed with salt as a disinfectant, wrapped carefully
in cloth, and cared for in a tender way. He says in verse 5, "No eye looked with pity
on you to do any of these things for you, to have compassion on you. Rather you were thrown out into the open field,
for you were abhorred, or hated, on the day you were born." This was not uncommon when Israel, as it were,
was thrown out of Egypt, when they were cast out into that field, hated and despised. Verse 6 says, "When I passed by you and saw
you squirming in your blood, I said to you while you were in your blood, 'Live!' I said to you while you were in your blood,
'Live!' And I made you numerous like plants of the
field, and you grew up and became tall and reached the age for fine ornaments. Your breasts were formed, and your hair had
grown, yet you were naked and bare. And then I passed by you and I saw you and,
behold, you were at the time for love, so I spread My skirt over you and covered your
nakedness." That was a custom that symbolized espousal. "I took you to pledge to you to marry you." "And I passed by you and I saw you," He says,
"and I took you for my own." "'I swore to you, I made a covenant, a promise,
I entered into a covenant with you so that you became Mine,' declares the Lord God. 'And so, I bathed you with water and I washed
off your blood from you, and I anointed you with oil, and I clothed you with embroidered
cloth, and I put sandals of porpoise skin on your feet.'" I 'd love the environmentalists to read that. "I wrapped you with fine linen and covered
you with silk. I adorned you with ornaments, I put bracelets
on your hands, a necklace around your neck. I put a ring in your nostril, earrings in
your ears, a beautiful crown on your head. You were adorned with gold and silver, your
dress was of fine linen, silk, and embroidered cloth. You ate fine flour, honey, and oil. You were exceedingly beautiful, and advanced
to royalty," as God is talking about, I think, the glory of the Solomonic era, isn't He? "Your fame went forth among the nations,"
do you remember the Queen of Sheba came and said it was beyond anything that could ever
be described. Verse 15, "You trusted in your beauty, you
played the harlot." That's a sad story, isn't it? I mean, just imagine if this were an actual
account of a man who did this and took this person and did all this, and then the woman
played the harlot? Well, that's what Israel did. "You poured out your harlotries on every passerby
who might be willing." "You became a prostitute, a streetwalker." "You took some of your clothes, made for yourself
high places of various colors, played the harlot on them, which should never come or
happen." This is talking about the idolatrous high
places in Israel. "You took your beautiful jewels made of My
gold, My silver which I have given you, and made for yourselves male images that you might
play the harlot with them." This is idolatry. "And then you took your embroidered cloth
and covered them, and offered My oil and My incense before them. And My bread which I gave you, fine flour,
oil, and honey which I fed you. You would offer before these false gods a
soothing aroma. Then you took your sons and daughters, whom
you had borne to Me, and you sacrificed them to idols to be devoured. You burned your babies on the altar to Molech. You slaughtered My children and offered them
up to idols by causing them to pass through the fire. And besides," verse 22, "all your abominations
and harlotries, you didn't remember the days of your youth when you were naked and barren,
squirming in your blood." "You forgot what I took you from." Down at verse 28, "You were not satisfied
with harlotry with the Assyrians and the Philistines. You played the harlot with them and still
were not satisfied. You multiplied your harlotry," in verse 29,
it just goes on and on like that, describing this horrible behavior. And, "You were worse," he says in verse 46
and 47, "You were worse than Samaria, your sister who was taken captive," the Northern
Kingdom. "You were worse than Sodom." At the end of verse 47, "You acted more corruptly
in all your conduct then they did." And of course, the shameless, abandoned Israel
flaunted herself before all the idols that surrounded the nation, spurned the loving,
loyal grace of God, and became devoted to the insanity of worshiping idols. And of course, in this chapter as well, you
have the pledge, as it were, in verse 35 down through verse 43 that God's going to bring
the Babylonian captivity. He talks about wrath there. And then in verses 44 to 59, more of the iniquity
and the sin. We won't take time to go into all that. But drop down to verse 60, and we'll kind
of wrap it up at that point. The first word in verse 60 is amazing. The Lord has just said in verse 58 about your
lewdness, your abominations, and how you have despised the oath, you have broken the covenant. And then He says, "Nevertheless, I will remember
My covenant with you in the days of your youth, and I will establish an everlasting covenant
with you." "There will be a day," He said, "when you
will remember your ways, and you will be ashamed." Verse 62, "I will establish My covenant with
you. You shall know that I am the Lord in order
that you may remember and be ashamed and never open your mouth anymore because of your humiliation." "I know how I'm going to humble you, I'm going
to humble you by forgiving you." Isn't that amazing? Amazing how gracious God is to a people of
His covenant. Sodom was destroyed. Samaria unredeemed, disappeared. And Israel was worse than Sodom, and Israel
was worse than Samaria, yet God forgave Israel. To those whom He chooses to love in a covenant
way, His love is perfect, complete, saving, and eternal. Listen to what Jeremiah 31:3 says, "I have
loved you with an everlasting love. Therefore, I have drawn you with loving-kindness." Before the foundation of the world, God set
His love upon His own, is that not true? And He loves them with an everlasting love. In Ephesians 2 it says this love forgives
this, this love gives life, this love promises eternal glory, this love grants to us kindness
and produces righteous behavior, and it's all of grace. In Ephesians 5 it says this love cleanses,
purifies, makes holy, nourishes, cherishes. In Luke 15, it says this love lavishes, rejoices,
overlooks past sin, restores in riches – prodigal son. In Romans 8, it says this love is inseparable,
unconquerable love. Now that leads to a final question, why did
God not choose to love everyone like that? Isn't that the question? And any time you pose a question "why" about
God's ultimate, sovereign determination, you are outside my limits. But I'll give you a…I'll give you a good
guess, and maybe not a guess. The reason God did not choose to love everyone
savingly is because the love of God is qualified and controlled by His glory, by His glory. God is not obligated to be the unqualified
equal opportunity Savior of everybody. God is not the prisoner of His love, and He
is not the prisoner of man's expectation. God's love is never separated as if it is
superior or dominant over all His other attributes, such as justice and holiness and righteousness
and wrath. In the end, it pleased Him to do it as He
did it because it gave Him glory. And if the gospel is for some a savor of life
unto life, and death unto death, it is because God determined that it should be. For the purpose of His eternal glory, He does
what He does. While He feels compassion for all, He warns
all, He calls for the gospel to be preached to all, He is still glorified in the salvation
of some and the condemnation of some. And, I guess, the hard question is, if we
didn't make that choice, why should we be condemned? And the answer is, you did make that choice. That's clear in Scripture. It's not apart from human rejection that we
are condemned but because of it. No matter how far you go back trying to discern
this in the mind of God, it's really bound up in nothing more than His glory, and we
rest there. Let me close with Romans 9. R.C. addressed this in our conference so ably. I just want to make a couple of quick comments
on Romans 9 because this is where you end up when you're talking about the love of God. The question that comes in the first five
verses of Romans 9 is simply, why, if God has brought His gospel into the world and
His glory and His covenants and His giving of the law and temple service and promises,
and gave to Israel the right to the heritage, the patriarchs, and brought Christ from the
line of Abraham. If God has done that, and God has blessed
them all with such an immense blessing. But Paul says, "Look, I have great sorrow
and unceasing grief in my heart because they have all this, and yet they don't believe." The question is why, if they had all these
privileges, is Israel not saved? The answer is shocking. Verse 6, "Has the word of God failed?" No. "They are not all Israel who are descended
from Israel, neither are they all children because they are Abraham's descendants." From the very beginning, God never intended
to save all of them, but rather it was through Isaac. That leaves Ishmael and his bunch out. And then he comes down into verse 11, and
starts to talk about the twins, Jacob and Esau, "And before they had done anything,
good or bad, in order that God's purpose according to His choice might stand, not because of
works, because of Him who calls, it was said to her, 'The older will serve the younger.'" That was absolutely sovereign. Before they were ever born, God determined
what would happen, "Just as it is written, 'Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated,'" Malachi
1. And what you're hearing there is the answer
to the question is, God never intended to establish a covenant love with all of those
Jewish people, never did. Well, verse 14, "What do we say? That sounds like injustice." Do you know what his answer is? "Shut up!" Right? Me genoito, "May it never be!" "Don't even voice that!" Do you remember what verse 15 says? Do you remember that He said to Moses in Exodus
33, "I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, I will have compassion on whom I have compassion. And it does not depend on the man who wills
or the man who runs but on God who has mercy." That is just clear as it can be, there's nothing
ambiguous there at all. Then he goes on to give an illustration of
Pharaoh. Hurrying down to verse 19, "You will say to
me then, 'Why does He find fault? I mean, this is the way it is. Who can resist His will?'" And this answer again is so interesting, "O
man, who are you who answers back to God?" It's the same answer. "Keep your mouth shut." "The thing molded will not say to the molder,
'Why did you make me like?' will it? Doesn't the potter have a right over the clay
to make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for common use?" I mean, that's so obvious, you can't miss
it. If you're the potter, and you're making the
pot, a pot doesn't talk to a potter. It's a huge gap, huge! Pots don't talk. It's huge, and the gap between a pot and a
potter is infinitesimal compared to the gap between you and God. You don't talk. "What if," verse 22, this is the answer, "So
what if God wanted to demonstrate His wrath and make His power known, and thus endured,
with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction? He did it so in order that He might make known
the riches of His," what? "Glory." You see, the riches of His glory wouldn't
shine as brightly if it weren't against the backdrop of His judgment. In the end, it's His glory. I rest there. I'm okay with that, are you? I'm okay with that. Let God be God. You know, prisoners who are handed pardons,
like us, escape death based on that pardon. We don't go around questioning whether such
pardons were granted to everybody. We grab our pardon and run. Father, we thank You for our time tonight
to consider Your great love, Your everlasting love. It is mystery, we understand that. We cannot unscrew the inscrutable. We cannot fathom the depths. We are pots, You are the potter. Your glory is everything. Glorify Yourself, Father, as You choose to
do. Put Your great Majesty in all its fullness
on display for all the holy angels and the redeemed saints to see, both now and forever. Amen.
