There is a continual obligation because of God’s love for us to love one another. It’s not a creative alternative. Some of us have chosen to put people that are like us and we like into the love category, people we don’t like and are not like us into a category that we say, we’ll pray for you. I mean, we always naturally find in our hearts a tendency to love those that we like or who love us and respond to it. But those in the category who are not like us, we’re not able to say with good Christian conscience, well, they don’t like me, so how can you expect me to like them? No, it’s an obligation to love one another.
SPEAKER 01 :
And we welcome you to the midweek edition of Hope for Today. Most human love has limits. It holds up as long as people are pleasant, agreeable, and easy to deal with. But the love of God, the love of God is not like that at all. God did not love us because we’re lovely or lovable. He loved us in our need, in our sin, and at the cost of his only son. And if that love has changed us, then it must show up in how we love one another. Today, as David Hawking continues his series on the attributes of God, he begins a message called The Love of God. And in 1 John 4, we’re going to see that true love doesn’t begin with man, but with God, God who loved us first. And we’ll begin in just a moment. First, after today’s lesson, take a look at the Hope for Today Media Center on our website at davidhawking.org. That’s where you’ll find video on demand of David’s Bible teaching. If today’s broadcast stirs your heart and leaves you wanting more, you can keep going. The Media Center gives you access to solid verse-by-verse teaching by David, Bible-centered teaching you can watch on your own schedule, go back to later, and share with others who need the truths of God’s Word. That’s the Media Center at davidhawking.org. And here’s David with day one on the love of God.
SPEAKER 03 :
1 John chapter 4, beginning at verse 7, reading down to chapter 5, verse 5, on the love of God. A subject so vast where every man ascribed by trade, it would be impossible to write the love of God above. It’s so boundless, it’s so measureless. His love has no limit. His grace has no measure. His power has no boundaries known to man. So when we attempt to discuss the love of God, we’re on a subject that’s just vast and immense, and we can only hit the highlights. There are some wonderful words in 1 John 4 to direct us. Verse 7, Beloved, let us love one another. For love is of God, and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God. For God is love. In this the love of God was manifested toward us, that God has sent his only begotten Son into the world that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has seen God at any time. If we love one another, God abides in us, and His love has been perfected in us. By this we know that we abide in Him and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit. And we have seen and testified that the Father has sent the Son as Savior of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him and he in God. And we have known and believed the love that God has for us. God is love. And he who abides in love abides in God and God in him. Love has been perfected among us in this, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment, because as he is, so are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment. But he who fears has not been made perfect in love. We love him because he first loved us. If someone says, I love God, and hates his brother, he is a liar. For he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen? And this commandment we have from him, that he who loves God must love his brother also. Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah, is born of God. And everyone who loves him who begot also loves him who is begotten of him. By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and keep His commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments. And His commandments are not burdensome. For whatever is born of God overcomes the world, and this is the victory that has overcome the world, our faith. Who is He who overcomes the world, but He who believes that Jesus is the Son of God? Perhaps the greatest evangelist from the past is Dwight L. Moody, that is, in terms of American history. Dwight L. Moody was born in 1837, and he was born again in 1854, the age of 17, to the instrumentality of a man named Kimball, Edward Kimball. He was in business till age 23, and he entered the ministry… really as a lay preacher. He was not well educated, and yet he established schools that still stand to this day. He was successful to a point in his early years, which began about 1860. And as you well imagine by hearing the date, you know the turbulent times that were going on in America, the Civil War. He made a missions trip in 1867 to England. He was 37 years old. He met a man named Henry Morehouse. Morehouse wanted to preach for Moody, and he kept putting him off. One day he invited himself, literally said he was going to be in Chicago. And Morehouse came. The year was 1867. Morehouse preached while Moody was gone on John 3.16, “…for God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” Moody came back from a trip and asked what he was preaching about. They said John 3.16. He thought it was rather elementary. He said, well, what’s he going to preach on? They said John 3.16. Well, is it a two-part message? No. He said he’s going to preach on John 3.16 until we learn it. He continued for weeks on John 3.16. I am now reading the words of Dwight L. Moody, who sat there and listened to this man who preached on John 3.16. I never knew up to that time that God loved me so much. This heart of mine began to thaw out. I could not keep back the tears. I just drank it in. I tell you there’s one thing that draws above everything else in the world and that is love. I took up that word love and I do not know how many weeks I spent in studying the passages in which it occurs. Till at last I could not help loving people. I had been feeding on love so long that I was anxious to do everybody good I came in contact with. I got full of it. It ran out my fingers. You take up the subject of love in the Bible, you will get so full of it that all you have to do is open your lips and a flood of the love of God flows out. The churches would soon be filled if outsiders could find that people in them loved them when they came. This love draws sinners. We must win them to us first, then we can win them to Christ. We must get people to love us and then turn them over to Christ. If you haven’t got love in your heart, Moody said, you should throw your hope to the four winds and go and get a better one. There’s nothing greater than the love of God. Well, history records what happened from that moment on. As Moody described what his baptism in love was all about, and his evangelistic endeavors were so incredible that over a million people came to know the Lord through the preaching of D.L. Moody long before television and radio. And God used him mightily, and people were overwhelmed with the simplicity of the man and the love of the man. How we need the love of God. But I’m asking, what is the love of God? And then I want to ask, what is required for us to experience it? People want love. It’s so obvious. There’s a great need for love among married people today. Most of those who are not married aren’t too anxious to get married in the light of what they’ve seen. Instead of love dominating, there’s been a hostility and anger. As one sociologist says of the American home, it is filled with hostility and anger. Families need love. Parents need to love their children as never before. There are so many children that are rejected. Older people need love. On one little trip to a convalescent hospital, that’ll tell you about love and the need of love. I remember well the prison psychologist at a federal prison who told me that there wasn’t a single man on death row who had known the love of both father and mother. We need to wake up to something. Our world is in desperate need of love, so they’re trying all kinds of things. They’ve been heavy into the physical and found it pretty empty, filled with many, many consequences which they never anticipated or dreamed. Some of you listening to me right now wonder if anybody really loves and cares about you at all. It’s easy to get in that mode. After all, we do live in a narcissistic culture that has said, we’re important. Please tell me how. Please tell me why. Show me that I am. We’ve been dominated by feelings of self-importance and self-esteem and self-worth. And all of it, I suppose, has its place. But folks, we’ve missed the one who loves us more than anyone has ever loved us. And that’s God Almighty. God loves you. God is love. Let me tell you about the love of God. I just want to give you five simple statements from 1 John to describe and answer the question, what is the love of God? According to the Bible, it’s a divine resource that human beings need but are not born with. Let me repeat it again. What is God’s love? It is a divine resource that human beings need but they’re not born with it. How many in our world think that by just a little set of obligations or duties or a little list of things to do that somehow we can all of a sudden love with God’s love. Yet the Bible tells us that love is of God. Verse 7. The Greek is more powerful. The preposition out of dealing with source. The source of the love that we desperately need is out of the heart of God. It doesn’t come anywhere else. It’s not found anywhere else. The love that we really need, the only kind of love that truly satisfies and brings meaning and purpose and hope and strength and courage to our hearts, it comes from God and God alone. It is a divine resource. It’s out of God. God is not merely love. When it says God is love, though, don’t weaken that by saying that it’s not merely love. God is not a force, though He is very forceful. God is not simply an influence in the world giving us vibes and fuzzies toward each other. No, God is more than that. God’s a real person, as real as you are. But the truth is that His whole character, His nature, His attributes, and all that He is, I like to say, is baptized, bathed with love. He never operates without love. He is love. Everything that love is or should be, that’s what God is. It’s a divine resource, and human beings need it desperately. We all want it, and we search for it. We try to get it in several ways, yet we’re not born with it. According to the Bible, it comes from the heart of God Himself. Number two, I learn in this passage about the love of God that it’s not only a divine resource, but it is a needed relationship which believers must have with each other. There’s not one thing that should characterize us so much as believers in Jesus Christ as love for one another. Look please again at verse 7. The passage begins, Beloved ones, you’re loved of God. Beloved, let us love one another. I read down in verse 11. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought. That Greek word. Particular verb there for obligation and duty is in what we call the present tense. There is a continual obligation that we have because of God’s love for us to love one another. It’s not a creative alternative. I mean, we always naturally find in our hearts a tendency to love those that we like or who love us and respond to it. But those in the category who are not like us… We’re not able to say with good Christian conscience, well, they don’t like me, so how can you expect me to like them? No, it’s an obligation. The Bible says we continue to have this obligation to love one another. That is a command from God Almighty. We are to love one another. In our generation, because it’s so feeling-oriented, you get this response. Well, I can’t just make it up. I don’t feel like it. Hey, I don’t feel like getting up in the morning, but I got to. You understand? A lot of us are operating on the basis of whether we feel it or not. God’s love comes from God. And though it creates wonderful feelings in our heart, it’s obedience to what God says. We are not having a suggestion here. We are commanded by God. Therefore, to not obey is clear disobedience. Turn, please, to verse 20. If someone says, I love God. After all, it’s dangerous not to say that. Amen. Amen. But if you hate your brother, the Bible says you’re a liar. Nobody likes to be called a liar. He who does not love is a habit of life his brother whom he’s seen, then how can he love God whom he’s not seen? You know, the writings of John are what I call simple and profound at the same time. I remember the first time I was in Greek class. The very first semester, they were teaching us about Greek. And I remember the first passage we ever could experiment in, in that first semester, was in 1 John. The reason being, it’s probably the simplest Greek you can read in the New Testament. As I was preparing this message, going over the passage again, I can almost quote it verbatim, not because of any other reason except we translate this over and over again in Greek class. I taught Greek for many years, made students translate 1 John. Why? It’s easy Greek. But the problem is that this easy Greek, which also becomes very easy to read English, is also profound. The theologian of the early church was not the Apostle Paul. If you read church history, you find out it was John, the only one who outlived the others, the one to whom Jesus entrusted the care of his mother after his death. John, the only one who died a natural death. John who lived through the first century. John who was exiled on the island of Patmos by Domitian, who ruled from 81 to 96 AD. John went into the 90s because he was released after that exile. He actually died at the church of Ephesus. His birthplace and Mary’s are in the city of Ephesus today. John, they called him the theologian. Heavy duty stuff, but never difficult to understand at first. It’s like you’ve got to go into it. And what John says is so simple to hear. If you don’t love your brother whom you see, then how can you love God whom you do not see? Rather simple statement, but the more you think about it, the deeper it sounds. I say in my heart, God, I love you. Maybe I’m saying it because I want to make sure I’m on my way to heaven. Maybe I want to make sure that nothing serious happens to me. But do I really love God? And God’s Word says in such powerful and blunt and simple language, well, I’ll tell you, David, do you love your brothers and sisters in the Lord? And if there’s somebody that you do not love… then how in the world, if that’s a person you see in your life, how can you love God whom you do not see? Something’s wrong. Look, please, at chapter 5, verse 1. John makes it deeper when he said, whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and everyone who loves Him, you say you love Jesus Christ? You love Him who begot, because we’re born of God, then you will also love Him who is begotten of Him. How in the world can you say that there’s somebody that you do not love who is a Christian? I was talking with a believer down south several years ago when I was first exposed to the problem of racism. I’ll tell you, I was a city kid from California, a beach bum who knew nothing about it. Yeah, I grew up with blacks, playing with blacks, the whole thing, talking to blacks, staying at their home, they’re at my home. I didn’t understand it. I went down south and all of a sudden I saw a problem. And I’m not here to simplify a major problem, but I’m here to tell you that God isn’t into skin color, folks. And I went down there and I found people who said they loved God, but couldn’t love somebody who had a different skin color. I didn’t understand that. Then as I got older and began to travel, I discovered all over the world, people who supposedly love God because of cultural differences or language differences or whatever, all of a sudden instead of loving or hating, something is wrong, God says. Something’s wrong. And in our own little world, we’ve developed comfortable zones of people that we like to hang around with. We like to talk to her, kind of in our little system. And we don’t like those who are outside of the system. My dear friends, how can you say you love God and do not love somebody who was born of Him? This is the needed relationship which believers must have with each other. Turn back to the Gospel of John, please, chapter 13. What is the love of God? It’s a divine resource that human beings need but are not born with. And it’s also a needed relationship which believers must have with each other. And I guess that’s where the rub is. It’s frustrating. It’s like our relationships with each other show how much we need the Lord. Amen? Is there somebody that could come to your mind by the sheer mentioning of this whom you do not like? Make that plural. Are there people who come to your mind? You know, we all have those people, those little thorns in the flesh, people that we don’t like. And it’s like at that moment we discover whether or not we know anything about the love of God. It’s easy to love people who like you. But if there’s somebody who rubs you the wrong way, and you know they’re Christians. You have no other excuse. They’re born of God. And you’re supposed to love them. And you’re finding out whether or not you really love when you’re faced with that. I read in John chapter 13, the same writer who wrote 1 John. He said in verse 34, a new commandment, not new from the standpoint of time, but fresh. A fresh commandment I give to you, because it was in the Old Testament, that you love one another as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. Look at chapter 15, verse 12. This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends. You are my friends if you do whatever I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master is doing. But I’ve called you friends for all things that I heard from my Father I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should remain. That whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it you. These things I command you, that you love one another.”
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, that’s Bible teacher and author David Hawking, and this is Hope for Today. David will be back to put the final touches on today’s message, so don’t go anywhere. First, though, Matt’s here, and together we want to tell you about some very special home Bible study resources. And Matt, let’s talk about them. Why did God choose to destroy the first civilization except Noah and his family in this global catastrophe of the Genesis flood? The Bible is clear that this was his purpose, but why? Find the answer inside David Hawking’s study of Genesis 1-11 titled, The Beginning, From Creation to the Flood. Was there a history of earth that preceded the creation week? And why can we have confidence in the biblical teaching of divine authorship in creation versus the popular notions of evolution? Again, answers inside The Beginning, From Creation to the Flood by David Hawking. How about lessons from creation that will build our faith and encourage our walk with the Lord today? You’ll find them with supporting scriptures inside this book. Matt, our culture is incredibly, incredibly confused regarding values, ethics, and the meaning and purpose of life. And one reason is our failure to understand the origin of human life. And David tackles this concern inside The Beginning, From Creation to the Flood. There’s so much inside this 156-page work by my dad. Matt, we cannot overstate the importance of Genesis 1 through 11. And our feature book for May, The Beginning, From Creation to the Flood, takes you on a dramatic journey through it. And the cost is $15. And friend, your purchase or donation will help the Ministry of Hope for today. And please pray for hope for today. Amen. We also want to mention that the Attributes of God radio series, which you’re currently hearing on Hope for Today, the complete series is available on MP3 for just $20. And we also have David’s original sermon notes and outlines for the series. The package of those notes for the whole series is just $10. These are great resources to help you hold on to what you’re hearing, to go back through these great truths again and dig deeper into the Word of God at your own pace. And as you order, would you also prayerfully consider standing with Hope for Today financially through a donation? It might be a one-time gift or regular monthly support, as long as God lays Hope for Today on your heart and enables you to give. And either way, your partnership helps keep this broadcast going out and helps us continue declaring the truths of God’s Word without compromise. Your giving makes a difference. It makes you a part of Hope for Today. To order these resources or make a donation, call 800-75-BIBLE. That’s in the U.S. Or 888-75-BIBLE in Canada. And Bible is 24253. You can also visit us at davidhawking.org. That’s David, H-O-C-K-I-N-G.org. And to get in touch with us by mail to make a donation or maybe share a prayer request, write to Hope for Today, Box 3927. Tustin, California, 92781. In Canada, write to Hope for Today, Box 15011, RPO, Seven Oaks, Abbotsford, B.C., V2S, 8P1. And let’s get back to David.
SPEAKER 02 :
Many years ago, when my mother was very, very ill and dying, She wanted me to sing to her the words of an old hymn called The Love of God. And that beautiful song tells the story of God’s love towards us. Actually, there are many old songs reflecting the love of God. I don’t know if you really understand God’s love or not, but we have a whole chapter in the Bible plus hundreds and hundreds of verses that that talk about God’s love. We even call 1 Corinthians 13 the love chapter. In that chapter, we learn what God’s love is not, because sometimes when you find out what a thing is not, it helps you understand what it is. God’s love, the Father’s love, sent His Son into this world. It was the Son’s love who was willing to do it, to die in our place. As God in human flesh, His wonderful life, dying on that cross, was able to substitute for the lives of all who will turn to Him. I don’t know if you feel His love or not, but our feelings are up and down and are often related to circumstances and events that happen in our life. God’s love is steady. It’s always there. The Bible says his love never fails. It’s wonderful to be loved by someone. But I also know it’s reality that many people are hurting over the lack of love. Some children grow up where they’ve never known the love of their parents as they have needed. But friends, I’m here to tell you, God loves you no matter what you’re like and no matter what happens to you. God bless you.
SPEAKER 01 :
Thank you, David. And friend, if you’re uncertain about God’s love, God’s love for you, we want to point you to a free resource called Does God Truly Love Me? This is written by our ministry friend Richard A. Bennett, and it’s available as a free download right now on our homepage at davidhawking.org. Download it. There’s nothing to sign up for. It’ll help you find real biblical assurance of God’s love through Jesus Christ. Does God Truly Love Me? Well, tomorrow David returns with day two of his message on the love of God. He’ll take us further into the staggering truth that God’s love is not shallow, selective, or self-serving. What it is, is holy, sacrificial, and rooted in his nature. Join us then, right here on Hope for Today.
