Have you ever felt loved? Loved by a parent. Loved by a friend. Loved by a wife or husband? I want us all to realise this evening that God loves each one of us much, much more than that – more than any love we have ever experienced in our lives. God loves you more than you can possibly imagine!
We know how much God loves us because
God lavished his love on us!
1 John 3:1 See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!
Ephesians 1:7 In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace 8 that he lavished on us.
Redemption, forgiveness, the riches of God’s grace, the unsearchable riches of Christ –
LAVISHED upon US!!! Extravagantly poured out on us! Like the Father’s love for the wayward prodigal son:-
“How great is the love the Father has lavished on us!”J.B.Phillips: “See what incredible love God has for us!” Great. Incredible. Amazing. Fantastic. Wonderful love of God!
I love our children Lizzie and Susie and David. I believe that I love them as much as any Father is able to love his children. But I don’t love them one thousandth as much as God the Father loves us!
Believe it – and also think about it! Imagine it! Meditate on it. Receive for yourself God’s great incredible amazing fantastic wonderful love! God loves you! God loves me! Say it for yourself, “God loves me”. GOD loves me. God LOVES me. God loves ME!
What does that mean?
God’s love is “not a senile benevolence that drowsily wishes you to be happy in your own way, not the cold philanthropy of a conscientious magistrate, nor the care of a host who feels responsible for the comfort of his guests, but the consuming fire himself, the Love that made the worlds, persistent as the artist’s love for his work, provident and venerable as a father’s love for a child, jealous, inexorable, exacting as love between man and woman.” C. S. Lewis
God shows us how much he loves us by the way he treats us and the blessings he pours out on us! We are going to think about some of those blessings this evening. They are all there in this first letter from the apostle John.
We know how much God loves us because
We are God’s children
1 John 3:1 See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! …. 2 Dear friends, now we are children of God,
What an impossible miracle – Almighty and Eternal God, Creator and Ruler of heaven and earth, adopts us, mere creatures, to become His sons and daughters! Consider how great God is and how small we are!!
God has made us His children – that’s how much God loves us!
To realise just how amazing that is, remember the insurmountable problem of our sin! All the things we have said and thought and done which make the Holy and righteous God justifiably angry with us. Yet, in order to make us His children:
We know how much God loves us because
God forgives our sins
1 John 2:1 … My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have an advocate with the Father—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. 2 He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.
1:8 If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. 9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.
None of us deserve to be God’s children! We could never earn our forgiveness! It’s all God’s grace!
God has forgiven your sins – that’s how much God loves you!
We know how much God loves us because
We have eternal life
2:25 And this is what he promised us- even eternal life.
5:11 And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.
12 He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life.
13 I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life.
We “have the Son.” We are born again. God’s Spirit is within us. We have passed from death to life and we now have eternal life – life in all its fullness.
God has given you eternal life – that’s how much God loves you!
We know how much God loves us because
God is in us and we are in God
4:15 If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God. 16 And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.
3:24 The one who keeps God’s commands lives in him, and he in them. And this is how we know that he lives in us: we know it by the Spirit he gave us.
God has shared His life with you so that God is IN you and you are IN God – God LIVES inside us by His Holy Spirit – that’s how much God loves you!
We know how much God loves us because
God gives us victory over temptation
5:4 for everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith. 5 Who is it that overcomes the world? Only the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God.
4 4 You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.
What a glorious truth. He is in you is greater than he who is in the world. We will certainly have much more to say about that verse in a couple of weeks. God gives you victory over the world, the flesh and the devil – that’s how much God loves you!
We know how much God loves us because
God answers our prayers
5:14 This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. 15 And if we know that he hears us – whatever we ask- we know that we have what we asked of him.
3:21 Dear friends, …. we have confidence before God 22 and receive from him anything we ask, because we obey his commands and do what pleases him.
Just pause for a moment and think about all the prayers you have offered over the years. Every time God has helped you. Every time God has rescued you. Every time God has guided you. Every time God has healed you. Every time you have prayed for somebody else and God in His mercy has heard your prayer and granted your request.
God answers your prayers – that’s how much God loves you!
We know how much God loves us because of
The certainty of heaven
3:2 Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. 3 All who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.
The world around doesn’t understand what we are talking about but that’s because the world doesn’t know God! We know there is more to life than this life! This life is just the introduction, the foreword. We are God’s children already, but there is much much more waiting for us.
And the blessings of heaven will be much more amazing than we can imagine.
“What we will be has not yet been made known.” “Who knows how we will end up?!!” We cannot begin to imagine how wonderful heaven is going to be!!
But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.
This is our Christian hope – not just a wishy washy optimism but a happy certainty which rests on the promises of our God who always keeps His promises!
The promise of heaven is a great comfort to us when a loved one has died, or when we face illness or later years. But we should all think about heaven much much more than we do. We will be spending eternity there with God! Sometimes the reason we don’t look forward to heaven enough is because we are trapped in this world!
2:15 Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 16 For everything in the world- the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does- comes not from the Father but from the world. 17 The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives for ever.
God has guaranteed you a place in heaven, with Him in glory forever, waiting for you – that’s how much God loves you!
So we know and rely on God’s love – We have nothing to fear from God.
4 16 And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.
God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. …. 18 There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear
There is nothing you can do to make God love you more! There is nothing you can do to make God love you less! His love is unconditional, impartial, everlasting, infinite, perfect! Because God is love!
And if we want a measure of God’s love we look at the cross.
We know how much God loves us because
Jesus laid down his life for us!
4:9 This is how God showed his love among us: he sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. 10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.
3:16 This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us.
Romans 5:7 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
We use a mark of a CROSS on letters, cards, emails, text messages, Valentine’s cards to say “I love you”
Cross of Christ = God’s “I love you” to the world
O THE DEEP, DEEP LOVE OF JESUS! Vast, unmeasured, boundless, free;
Rolling as a mighty ocean In its fulness over me.
Underneath me, all around me, Is the current of Thy love;
Leading onward, leading homeward, To my glorious rest above.
Great! Incredible! Amazing! Fantastic! WONDERFUL LOVE!
How big is God’s love? It is infinitely broad, infinitely long, infinitely high, infinitely deep. And it goes on forever. God’s love is everlasting. It is eternal.
God wants us all to know just how much He loves us. To know the breadth and length and height and depth of Christ’s love, even though it is so big that even all eternity will not be long enough for us to know it completely. Our minds won’t be able to understand God’s amazing love. But our hearts can receive that love.
And God longs so much for each one of us to know and receive and experience the love which he has lavished on us. God’s love which is so great and Incredible and Amazing and Fantastic and Wonderful!
This is how we know how much God loves us.
• God has lavished his love upon us
• God has made us His children
• God has forgiven our sins
• God has given us eternal life
• God has shared His life with us so that God is IN us and we are IN God
• God gives us victory over the world, the flesh and the devil
• God answers our prayers
• God has guaranteed us a place in heaven, with Him in glory forever,
• Look at Jesus dying on the cross – that’s how much God loves us!
