Knowing a Loving God

You were born with a deep longing to be loved, fully and unconditionally—a love that comes from only one source, and its not the world. Dr. David Jeremiah explains that complete, fulfilling love is impossible to find apart from God, who gives it freely and abundantly.

Dear Lord,
Today…….I am asking all my prayer warriors to say a prayer that may help others. So many people are hurting right now. Many are struggling with finances and need jobs. Some are facing foreclosure and don’t even know how they are going to make it from week to week.. Many are lonely. . Many are heartbroken. . Many are facing sickness and health is fading. . Some are dealing with difficult family members. Many have lost HOPE.. Tonight, let us put our prayers and faith together decree and declare breakthrough over our families. Financial miracles WILL take place. Jobs WILL be found. Our Bodies WILL be made whole & sickness WILL flee. Marriages and relationships WILL be restored. Family members WILL find Jesus. Heartbreaks WILL be healed. JOY WILL be restored and HOPE WILL be found. In Jesus Name. Amen!!!!!! Keep God First…….

Welcome to Turning Point Weekend edition.
Being in love is the height of human emotion. Yet it pales in comparison to the love of God.
Today, Dr David Jeremiah takes a deep dive into the pure agape, love of God to share this powerful message, knowing a loving God.
Here’s David, thank you for joining us. This is the weekend edition of Turning Point.
And today we’re going to talk about the love of God.
You know, the Bible doesn’t say that God is a loving God.
The Bible doesn’t say so much that God loves us though.
It does say that to some degree what the Bible really says is that God is love.
He is more about just loving. He is love. He himself is the embodiment of agape love.
And oh, what a what a message that is for us today here on turning point for the weekend edition, we’re going to learn what it means to know a loving God.
What a great verse is John 3 16.
In fact, most of you would say it’s my favorite verse.
I know that because when I sign your Bibles, I look to see what verses are in there, John 316 is in your Bibles more than any other verse.
And we put that verse in our Bibles and we let that word be in our heart because it’s hard for us to find someone willing to love us as we are.
And we know that God does and he does it perfectly. And the Bible says God is love.
It doesn’t merely say He’s loving. He is that. But the Bible says God is love.
That God is the very embodiment of love, the very personification of love.
The essence of all that love means John made that statement twice in his first letter, first John 48 and 16.
He said God is love. 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.
God isn’t just loving God is love. All love originates with God.
The Bible even tells us that we love God because He first loved us.
We don’t even have any of our own love that we can offer back to God.
We have to get our love from God so we can give it back to Him.
And as we look at this part of God’s nature, we discover we have a creator who loves us.
He never asks us to get rid of our baggage before he accepts us.
He takes us as we are to be sure when he moves in and begins to rule in our lives.
He cleans up a few things here and there. He erases the past through his forgiveness.
He begins working in us. What is pleasing to him were transformed over time by grace.
And from the beginning, at the very inception and continually and throughout eternity, we have a God who looks at us just as we are and says, I love you.
I love you just as you are. I love you too much to leave you the way you are.
The Bible says of God, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.
The love of Jesus is so incredible that the ancient writers had to create a new word for love.
When he came on the scene.
The New Testament was originally written in Greek, which was the universal language of the first century.
And the Greeks had a lot of words for love and their top words were eros which means erotic love or which was for brotherly love.
But there was no Greek word to describe self, sacrificial love until Jesus came on the scene.
Isn’t that an interesting thing? A new word appeared as the savior appeared a unique word.
It’s the word agape. This is true love, the love that seeks the best for the one it loves without any expectation of anything in return.
In my estimation, only those who know Christ are capable of agape love because it only comes from God.
That’s the kind of love the Bible is talking about when the Bible says God is love.
God is a, he reaches out to every one of us just as we are despite our Brokenness and baggage.
And he says I am focusing my infinite love on you, not because of who you are, but in spite of who you are and because of who I am, he expects nothing back from us except to love Him in return.
Why does God love you?
Not because you’re bigger or better than anyone else, but simply because He loves you.
God loves us because He loves us. It is his nature.
God is love in our study of the attributes of God.
I have saved this one until last because to me, it’s the best news in all the world to be painfully honest with you.
There’s a sense in which I cower at the holiness of God. I mean, I’m forever thankful.
He’s holy and the universe would be in disastrous shape if he wasn’t.
But the blinding purity of God’s holiness overwhelms my imagination when it comes to God’s mercy, sometimes I want to cry when I think about it, his faithfulness encourages me and makes me want to search out all of his promises and I’m boggled and blessed by his omnipresence and his omniscience, all of God’s attributes affect me emotionally, but I am most of all affected by his love.
When I think of how much he loves me, how much he loves you, how much He loves the world.
I am moved more deeply than I can express.
And yet the truth is expressed in the simplest verse in all of the Bible.
I want you to say it with me.
You know it, well, let’s say it out loud together for God.
So love the world that he gave his only begotten son that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life that ladies and gentlemen is the gospel in one verse.
In fact that you know the gospels in that verse, let me show you for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that Hoover believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.
The gospel. You got that. What was it?
That’s the greatest verse in the Bible according to many because it’s the gospel.
But what is the gospel? What does the word gospel mean?
It’s a term in our English Bible that is translated from the original Greek word you and gallon.
And the middle of letters of that Greek term are you?
And Glean Angel is in that word and angel is the word in the Greek language, which also means messenger.
So the word Gospel literally means the good message, the glad tidings, the good news as it relates to the traits of God.
The good news isn’t simply that he is just, I’m glad he’s righteous or he couldn’t be God.
But that isn’t necessarily good news to me.
I mean, the fact that God is going to treat me as I deserve, I don’t know if that’s really good news.
It isn’t simply that God is holy. The good news of the gospel is that God is love.
When we read about this in John 3 16, we’re astounded because here in this verse is everything the Bible is all about.
Sometimes you wonder why do I have to read the rest of the Bible?
The important truth is right here in these words, if you have to distill the message of the whole Bible into one verse, this is it, this is the grounds at the end of the cup of coffee down at the bottom.
It’s simple. It’s deep.
So I’m going to unpack it for you in just a few minutes.
I remember reading some place that there are several 1000 different outlines of John 316.
Can you imagine that one verse with over 1000 different outlines out there somewhere floating around?
Let me just give you my little outline and let’s find out for sure that we know what this verse means.
First of all, the surpassing quality of God’s love.
That’s the first thing and that’s all wrapped up in one word for God so loved the world.
Do you ever have a little child come up to you and say, Poppy, I love you so much.
This verse describes the surpassing quality of God’s love. Notice God so loved the world.
The Bible doesn’t just say that God loved the world as wonderful as that would be.
The Bible says God so loved the world. So is the biggest little word in the Bible included in.
So are all the agonies of the cross, all the riches of God’s grace, all the depths of your sin and my sin and all of the wonders of His mercy.
The cross is bound up in the word.
So this is the truth that makes the heathen wonder and makes the devil tremble. God so loved that.
He went to the extraordinary lengths to express it. His love is beyond comprehension.
We cannot fathom a God who would willingly self sacrificially create the set of conditions we call salvation in Calvary.
I should spend hours meditating on that tiny word.
So and never begin to get to the bottom of it.
That’s why sometimes we hesitate even to preach on John 3 16.
I’m embarrassed to tell you that I was a preacher for 25 years before I ever preached on John 3 16.
And then I read these words from a wonderful Bible teacher by the name of G Campbell Morgan.
He said there is a text that I have never attempted to preach on though I have gone around it and around it, it’s John 3 16.
It’s too big when I have read it, there’s nothing left to say.
That’s the way you feel when you read this verse. How do I comment on this?
How can I make this better because it’s already as good as it can be.
He understood that nothing is as simple or as deep as the significance of for God’s soul love.
This is the quality of God’s love. Jesus Christ so loved us.
God so loved us that he gave his only son.
This world is astounded by the surpassing love of God.
Notice the surprising object of God’s love. He loved the world.
That was an extraordinary thing for a Jewish writer to say, I mean, the ancient Hebrews looked with proud disdain on every gentile to a devout Jew.
The rest of the nations were defiled.
I mean, the Jews knew that God loved Israel, but they were not too sure that He’d loved the rest of the world.
And in fact, they pretty much felt like he was like them that the rest of the world was despised and condemned.
Yet, here’s a Jewish evangelist, the Apostle John, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit saying God loves the world, the world is made up of the unlovely and the unloving, the lonely and the loathsome, the arrogant in the lawbreakers and God loves each and everyone.
I grew up in a Christian home, but I went through a period as a teenager that I wrestled with some aspects of the Bible.
All of us do that. I’m sure one of the things that used to really plague me was the thought that one person could die for everybody.
I hear my dad preach and he would preach about how Jesus died for the whole world.
And I went, I went, how could that be in all of human history?
There have been over 100 billion souls who have passed through the corners of time.
And the population of the earth today is over seven billion.
How can one person offer himself as a sacrifice for billions of people?
And then I realized that this person wasn’t just a person, it was the person, the person, the son of God, God in the flesh and just as God is infinite in his life, he’s also infinite in his death.
So he could die a death that would be equal to everyone who would ever live and therefore sufficient for everyone who would ever believe.
And when I began to understand the deity of Christ, that Christ was and is and always will be God that helped me.
And the more I tried to take it in, the more I felt dizzy trying to understand it, it was always an abstraction.
How does God love the world? I had it up here, but I couldn’t get it here.
And then I noticed something one day when I was studying the crucifixion story.
While Jesus Christ was hanging on the cross for the sin of the whole world.
He turned to one somebody, one suffering individual suspended on the cross next to him.
And he loved that man and he forgave that man.
And he said to that man assuredly, I say to you today, you will be with me in paradise.
It was as if God were saying to us, I love the whole world.
But remember that includes you, I don’t love the whole world in general.
I love the whole world of everybody. And I personally love everybody in the whole world.
ST Augustine said it this way, God loves each one of us as if there were only one of us to love.
That’s the object of God’s love. God so loved the world.
Here’s the surprising sacrificial cost of God’s love. He gave his only begotten son.
But when I read in the Bible that God gave up his only begotten son and send him here to this earth to die for my sin.
I am just overwhelmed. I mean, I love all you guys.
I love you with a lot of love, but not enough to give you my son.
You can’t have him and you get what I’m meaning, don’t you?
Let’s don’t spiritualized this so that it ends up in the clouds someplace and oh yeah, well, that was some sort of a no, no.
God put it in the terms that he put it in.
So we would get the message, God loved his son as much as we love our sons.
And he sent his son into this world.
And he not only sent him into the world, he sent him knowing he would suffer and die so that you and I could be set free because the wages of sin is death and somebody has to die.
And if it’s not Jesus, it’s us.
He took our place willingly because His father loved us so much.
He gave up heaven’s best and sent Jesus Christ down here to be our substitute so that through Him, the infinite God, we could be set free, the sacrificial cost of God’s love.
And then there’s the serious offer of God’s love as the words continue to unfold.
In John 3 16, we learn that God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten son, that whoever, whoever means you and me.
And according to scripture, Jesus died for the sin of the entire world.
There’s enough grace at Calvary to cover every single person who’s ever lived in all the past eras of history or who will ever live as long as the planet endures or who is ever living.
Now, he offers eternal life to everybody in North America, South America, Asia, Europe, Antarctica, Oceanic, Africa, Australia, other most parts of the world you might be saying, but Pastor Jeremiah, you don’t know how bad I am.
You don’t know how much baggage I have or how messed up I am.
It doesn’t make any difference. Whoever means you with no conditions on that word.
In fact, here’s a good thing for you to do.
Go back and read it and put your name in there for God.
So loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that if David Jeremiah would believe he could have eternal life.
That’s how personal it is, how pointed it is.
But we also learn the selective choice of God’s love as you have to believe is the grace of God sufficient for everybody.
Absolutely. But God doesn’t just make a fiat decision. Ok? I love everybody. Everybody gets to go to heaven.
That’s not how it works.
Everybody is a candidate for heaven, but you only get to go to heaven if you believe the offer is made to everybody, but it’s only received by those who place their faith in Christ.
Many people reject this verse and they choose not to believe and they don’t seem to want to benefit from the death of the cross.
But the Bible says, if you believe you get in on the deal, can I just put it that crassly?
God has paid all the price. He’s done all the work. There’s nothing less you can do.
Salvation is a free gift, but a gift has to be received in order for it to matter.
And if you don’t receive this free gift.
If you just know about it, if you just learned about it, you hear it in church, you read about it in books, but you’ve never personally made a decision to say yes, I will receive that gift.
If you haven’t done that, then the gift is meaningless to you.
And someday you’ll stand before God and he’s going to say to you, why should I let you into my heaven?
And you’re going to have to admit I knew about the gift.
I saw the gift, it was laying right there in front of me, but I just never picked it up and unwrapped it and made it my own friends.
I need to tell you that to get to heaven, you have to receive the gift of eternal life through Jesus Christ, our Lord for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whoever believes in him.
And that leads us to the special promise of God’s love should not perish.
God loved us so much.
He gave us his son and the result of receiving his son is that you don’t perish.
You say, well, what does it mean to perish? It doesn’t mean to be annihilated. Please hear me.
A lot of people say, well, I’m not worried about all this religious stuff one day I’m going to die and I’ll just go on the ground and I’ll die like a dog and it’s over.
No, it’s not over. Hear me carefully. Everybody in this room is going to be alive somewhere forever.
Ever and ever, you’ll either be alive forever in the presence of God, or you’ll be alive forever in the absence of God.
But you don’t die like a dog.
When you die, your body goes in the ground, but your soul and spirit continues to live on.
And one day according to the word of God, if you know Jesus Christ is your savior, your soul and spirit will be reunited with your body and you will go to heaven and spend eternity with the Lord.
But there is also the truth that you will not disappear.
If you don’t know the Lord, you will be accountable to God for your rejection and your rebellion.
Notice the verse itself helps us.
We’re told that those who believe have everlasting life and those who don’t perish.
So what does it mean to perish? It means not to have everlasting life.
The word death in the Bible isn’t not a word that means the end. It means separation.
When you die, your soul and spirit are separated from your body.
The Bible says absent from the body present with the Lord.
The word death means separation and spiritual death is the separation of your soul forever and ever from almighty God, you can survive the first death, but you cannot survive the second death.
If you don’t receive Jesus Christ, if you don’t accept his word, if you don’t acknowledge his grace in your life and receive the gift that he sent his son to prepare for you.
You perish. Don’t take any comfort in that word. That word doesn’t mean it’s all over.
I won’t ever have to think about this again. My life is finished.
I didn’t get into all that religious stuff while I was living.
I had a good time and then they just perished.
No, you’re gonna be alive somewhere forever if you don’t like that. I’m sorry.
I wish I could fix it.
And if you don’t think it’s true, you should read the Bible, read the gospels and read how carefully the Lord Jesus defined what happens to you after you die.
If you have rejected his grace while you’re alive, you know, the Bible uses the word saved a lot.
We’ve kind of almost stopped using that. Nobody wants to use the word saved.
I think there’s something about that word.
I was riding in a car one day on my way to a graduate school in Denton, Texas.
And I saw a sign out in the field that probably captured it. The first sign said, are you saved?
And the second sign said, I’m not interested in being saved except from nuts like you.
That’s what the sign said. And there’s a lot of people that make fun of the word being saved, but it’s a good word.
The Bible uses the word whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved from what?
From perishing people who claim this promise as their own are freed from the fear of death, freed from perishing.
The Bible says that there are some people who go through their whole life in bondage because of their fear of death.
They can’t ever live life because all they think about is dying. I’ve read so many stories about that.
It’s becoming almost epidemic. People today are so they’re trying every which way to see if they can extend life because of their tremendous fear of death.
You know what? I don’t want to die, but I’m not afraid of it.
What happens when you die if you’re a Christian is you shift into overdrive. Amen.
Your life just continues, but it gets better. Death is a hard thing. Nobody wants to die.
I don’t want anybody in their right mind who wants to die when I accepted Jesus Christ really understood.
It didn’t keep me awake at night anymore.
Wondering what would happen if something happened to me before the morning hours?
Hundreds and thousands of times as pastor, I have witnessed people come to Christ and what happens to them is an amazing story.
There are so many stories I could devote a whole month to just telling you the stories of what God has done in the lives of people who have been saved, saved by the grace of God.
My father had a radio ministry when I was growing up.
And his theme song was an old gospel song that went like this saved, saved, saved.
Every word was saved just about. It was a high energy song.
And we used to sing that every Sunday night because the Sunday night service was broadcast live.
We need to reinstitute the word. Saved. Somebody asked you how are you doing and say, I’m saved.
See what that does. I’m sure you’ll have a good conversation about that.
Here’s the last point number seven, the satisfying fulfillment of God’s love but have everlasting life.
Let me tell you something important about everlasting life. It doesn’t begin when you die.
I’ve heard people say and even see it on tombstones born such and such a time entered into everlasting life and the day of their death.
That’s not biblical. The Bible says the moment you believe in Jesus Christ. Everlasting life starts everlasting life begins.
It doesn’t begin when we die. It begins the moment we receive Jesus Christ.
And the biblical concept of eternal life isn’t merely about the duration of life. It’s about the quality of life.
Jesus said I have come that you might have life and have it more abundantly.
Everlasting life is everyday life elevated to a whole new level.
The day you trust Jesus Christ as your savior is the day you begin living in the dimension of everlasting life.
You are born again. If anyone is in Christ, he’s a new creature.
When we die, we shift into overdrive, we go on living without interruption with the Lord.
So if you’re looking to find some satisfying quality of life apart from God, you’re on a mission that can never ever happen.
If you’re trying to cram a lot of experiences into the empty space in your heart, it won’t work.
If you’re seeking more pleasures to deaden your pain, forget it.
What you really are looking for is the kind of life the Bible describes as abundant, eternal everlasting life and only Jesus can give you that.
Ladies and gentlemen, if you do not know Jesus Christ, there’s nothing more important for you to deal with.
You might have great business, things going on family issues to deal with.
But if you don’t know Christ, you’re starting way down the list of priorities.
The most important thing you can ever do is make sure you are related to the father in heaven.
Through his son, Jesus Christ. Jesus said it this way.
He said I am the way the truth and the life and no one comes to the father except through me.
I want to ask you today. Have you trusted Christ as your savior?
I know you think Pastor Jeremiah, you keep talking about this all the time.
I’m never ever going to stop talking about it because if you don’t ever hear anything else I say and you hear this message, we win, we win and you win.
I live almost in fear that somehow I would miscommunicate the essence of the gospel and someone would misunderstand it and it wouldn’t come through clearly and for some reason they wouldn’t believe.
So, let me ask you again, what are you going to say when you stand before Almighty God in heaven?
And he says to you, why should I let you into my heaven?
Don’t give me all this mitigating nonsense about a good life that doesn’t make any difference because you can never live a perfect life.
And that’s the standard you need to be able to say because oh God, one day I heard the message of the gospel and I received your son Jesus Christ that you gave to this earth so that I could be forgiven.
I have no claim to heaven except in Jesus and you will hear him say, welcome to heaven, welcome to heaven, welcome to eternal life with Jesus Christ.
I want to ask you today, what is between you and your decision for Christ?
We hope you enjoy today’s turning point weekend edition with Dr David Jeremiah.
You can also hear turning point Monday through Friday on a radio station near you to find one or to contact us.
Visit our website at David Jeremiah dot org slash radio. That’s David Jeremiah dot org slash radio.
Ask for your copy of David’s book, The God.
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You can also purchase the Jeremiah Study Bible in the English standard, new international and new King James versions with notes and articles from Dr Jeremiah’s decades of study.
Get the details when you contact us at David Jeremiah dot org slash radio and be here next weekend as Dr David Jeremiah brings another message from God’s word here on Turning Point weekend edition.