God's Love

When you're a street preacher, you learn to keep aware of what's behind you. So I'm always thinking about that. Well, today I want to talk about God's love. I've got Psalm 103 that I'm going to read most of for you in different order than the verses come. But if you're familiar with that psalm, hopefully you'll be able to think about what you've already memorized from there.

And if not, just listen. We want to talk about God's love today. And then Jake's going to lead us in a song that's going to help remind us of that. Psalm 103, verse 11, begins, well, verse 11 goes, For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is His loving devotion for those who fear Him. And then Psalm 139, 17-18, a similar thought. How precious to me are your thoughts, O God, or your thoughts about me, O God.

How vast is their sum! If I were to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand. And when I awake, I am still with you, David writes. So I want you to consider that God's love is infinite. It's free. This part might shock you.

It's conditional. It's conditional upon Christ's work for you. It's unconditional to us, but it's conditional on Christ's work. And I want you to just think about that it's unfathomable. So if you think about the word fathom, where it comes from, the idea is that when you're in a boat, you can drop something down and the sound that bounces back up, you know how far the thing had to travel.

That's how you know the depth of the water that you're in. And so a lot of times we'll come up with something that we don't understand and we'll say, I can't even fathom that. And the fact of the matter is that God's love is unfathomable. It doesn't mean it's not something we can understand at all. What it means is that we can't plumb the depths of it.

It's so deep that if God's love was the ocean, and you dropped something in and you were waiting to hear the sound that would bounce back, you'd never hear it. Because it would just keep going on infinitely. And the fact is, because we're finite, we don't actually understand what infinity is. We can only think about it in terms of what it's not. It's not finite.

So when you consider God love toward you and God love being infinite I want you to take three L for application So we have some alliteration to help you think about God love today One, God loves, I'm sorry, I want you to love what God loves. First of all, God loves himself, so we must love God. Just sticking with Psalm 103, here are the first five verses.

Bless Yahweh, O my soul, all that is within me. Bless His holy name. Bless Yahweh, O my soul, and do not forget all His kind deeds. He who forgives all your iniquities and heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with loving devotion and compassion, who satisfies you with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagles.

God loves himself and we ought to too and we have reason to in real time as David just recounted some of the wonderful deeds of God towards the children of God. Secondly, God loves people, so we must. So if you're to love as God loves, you're going to love God and you're going to love people. Listen to Psalm 103, 8-10. Yahweh is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in loving devotion or steadfast love.

He will not always accuse us nor harbor His anger forever. He has not dealt with us according to our sins or repaid us according to our iniquities. And if we would model that type of disposition and treatment of others, we would be more like Christ, and we would be loving people as God loves people. Reminder from Philippians, therefore, if you have any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from his love, if there's any fellowship with the Spirit, any affection and compassion, make Paul's joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love.

Being united in spirit and purpose, do nothing out of selfish ambition or empty pride, conceit, but in humility consider others more important than yourselves. And this is exactly what Jesus did for us. And Paul follows up that statement with the humility of Christ as the example to us. So first of all, I want you to love what God loves, himself and other people.

2. Secondly, it is required that we would loathe what God loathes. So, your second L is loathes. And this is the harder one for us. But Psalm 103 6 Yahweh executes righteousness and justice for all the oppressed Righteousness and justice for the oppressed requires a loathing of the oppressor He made known his ways to Moses his deeds to the people of Israel And then in Psalm 139, again, 19 to 22, David writes, O God, that you would slay the wicked away from me, you bloodthirsty men, who speak of you deceitfully.

He says, your enemies take your name in vain. He says, do I not hate those who hate you, O Yahweh, and detest those who rise against you? I hate them with perfect hatred. I count them as my enemies. David follows this up with that very well-spoken prayer that his heart would be searched by God, But it is appropriate that we would love what God loves and loathe what God loathes.

And then the third L, I want you to lean on him. Psalm 103, 12-14 As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us. As a father has compassion on his children, so Yahweh has compassion on those who fear him. He knows our frame. He's mindful that we are but dust. I want you to remember to lean on God's love.

God's love was demonstrated to us in that Christ died for us while we were yet sinners. And part of how you lean on him is by confessing your sins, but also agreeing with God in what he has declared about your sins. That he has cast them as far as the east is from the west. If you imagined, wow, there's actually a spider here. I'm going to flick it. There was one.

I just had to do it. If you imagined for a moment a conversation you're having with God and you go to Him to confess your sin, which you ought to do, and you say to God, I'm sorry for the sin that I just committed, and His response is, what sin? You have to understand that the depth of His love and His casting it as far as the east is from the west is that the omniscient God, the all-knowing God, does not remember your sins.

You remember them. They're very real to you and they do affect you in your life. But God does not see your sins. He sees His Son is what He sees when He looks at you. He sees His perfect Son. Psalm 103, 17.

From everlasting to everlasting the loving devotion or steadfast love of Yahweh extends to those who fear Him and His righteousness to their children children In the style of Proverbs 30 verse 18 I going to say there are three L Love, loathe, and lean on him. There are three L's that are too wonderful for me, but there's a fourth that I cannot understand. And so the fourth L, the extra L I want to add to those of you who need to hear this is let him in.

Jesus came so that sinners could let him into their heart, so that people could open themselves up to that loving devotion that he's demonstrated. He's already done the work necessary so that we could be reconciled to God, and the command is, let him in. In Revelation 3.20, Jesus says, Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and dine with him and he with me, and I have no problem applying that to individual salvation.

Let him in. From everlasting to everlasting, the loving devotion of Yahweh extends to those who fear him and his righteousness to their children's children, to those who keep his covenant and remember to obey his precepts, Equivalent phrases to trusting Christ for your salvation, becoming a Christian. Yahweh has established His throne in heaven and His kingdom rules over all.

So I want you to love as God loves because His love is perfect. I want you to loathe as He loathes because His love is perfect. Lean on Him because His love is perfect for you. And if you haven't yet, let Him in today. Do not harden your heart. Let them in.

Become a Christian. Call on the name of the Lord for salvation. Let me pray for you. Father in heaven, I pray for this people here today that you would encourage their hearts with your love, that everyone here would realize that even in their most despairing moment, even in the moment when we are the most despicable in our sin, that your love is unchanged.

Your love is infinite and perfect. And we can trust in it. And I pray that you would fill our hearts with that love. Help us to sing loudly and proudly about our Lord Jesus Christ. And you do the work in our hearts that only you can do to help us to have our spirits illuminated to what you have provided us in Christ. And for those here that have not yet bowed the knee, we pray that you would work in their hearts, that they would let Christ in.

And it's in Jesus' name I pray. Amen.