An Everlasting Love

Ps.48:9 – AMP – We have thought of Your steadfast love, O God, in the midst of Your temple.

Jeremiah 31:3 The Lord appeared to him from far away. I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you.

1 John 4:19 We love because he first loved us.!

Introduction:

• Here we are again, in the House of God, reminded to meditate on the love of God.
• Having a love affair with the Gospel
• We began last week to scratch the surface on the topic of Heaven – A world of Love.
• I feel I should offer to you and our Lord an apology before I even continue to embark today on ministering on God’s love as my words cannot do it justice.
• Only the rapturing presence and transcendent power of the Holy Spirit can have us to taste of this other realm.
• Heaven is a world of love because Heaven is God’s dwelling place and the earth is His footstool.

1. Love is a necessity.

1.1. Yet love is impossible apart for Christ.

1.2. Ela… A child comes into this world with much cost, discomfort, patience, and even pain and then sleeplessness. Yet we love this child though this child has only made life more challenging, more expensive, more burdensome, then some time passes and many of us say let’s have another. Until one reaches their limit.

Hebrews 7:3 (ESV) 3 ….. having neither beginning of days nor end of life,

1.3. There are no limits to God’s oceans of love
1.4. We love because we realize the gift that has been given.
1.5. We cannot love on my own.
1.6. Ela… I don’t love you… Christ working through me loves you.

2. The source of love.

2 Timothy 1:7 (ESV) for God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control.

2.1. When God’s Spirit came into our life is when love enter in.

1 Timothy 1:14 The grace of our Lord was poured out on me abundantly, along with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.!

2.2. God so loved so that the world could begin to love back.

Rom. 5:5 And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.!

2.3. Love can only come from Jesus making His home in our heart via the Holy Spirit in us.

3. Called To Love.

3.1. “They were called Christians”
3.2. We become followers of the way of love…

John 13:34 “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.

3.3. This is all new… the way we are to love is new, different, from a different motive then before.
3.4. Called to “as I have loved you” spoken by the Lord.

James 2:8 If you really keep the royal law found in Scripture, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” you are doing right.

3.5. Called to love the unlovely.
3.6. Called to love those who have not loved.

4. If we have not love.

1 Corinthians 13:1-3 (ESV) 1 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.

4.1. Our… does not take the place:
4.1.1. gifting does not take the place of love…

4.1.2. Our moving in the power of the Holy Spirit 4.1.3. Or our great faith…
4.1.4. Or our sacrificial giving…
4.1.5. Or our sacrificing our life…

4.2. The Apostle is going to great lengths here ot emphasize the importance of love.

4.3.Without love:
4.3.1. I am just a noise.

4.3.2. I am nothing.
4.3.3. It profits me nothing.

5. Motivated by love.

5.1. The love of God is what motivates us through the most challenging of circumstances…

Jeremiah 38:5-6 (ESV) 5 King Zedekiah said, “Behold, he is in your hands, for the king can do nothing against you.” 6 So they took Jeremiah and cast him into the cistern of Malchiah, the king’s son, which was in the court of the guard, letting Jeremiah down by ropes. And there was no water in the cistern, but only mud, and Jeremiah sank in the mud.

Jeremiah 39:18 (ESV) For I will surely save you, and you shall not fall by the sword, but you shall have your life as a prize of war, because you have put your trust in me, declares the LORD.’”

2 Corinthians 4:17 For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, 18 as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.

5.2. Watchmen Nee Story: Let us learn from a man who had every opportunity and justification to be bitter as he spent the last 20 years of his life in a Chinese prison for his faith, though accused of theft, bribery, and leading a rebellion agains the communist Government. Yet he choose love.

5.3. Watchman Née “ we should always have in mind that, as the servants of God, we must not withhold our love in a place until some Christian brothers arrive on the scene. All who hold this misconception, namely, that their love is to be as reserved for the brethren (only), are unable to do the work of God. Let it be known, and unequivocally declared that the love of the brethren comes afterwards, and that it is a totally different proposition. You need to have a love for the general mankind and the compassion towards them for John 3:16 makes playing that “God so loved the world”. The world here refers to all the people in the world, including the unsaved and ignorant.”

5.4. Getting life into perspective. 5.5. Holiness is a fruit of love.

5.6. These men and women, normal people, smitten with the love of God, realizing the purpose of the short time on this earth.

6. An eternity without any hinderance to love.

Rev.21:4 He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away.

1 John 2:16 (ASV) For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the vainglory of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.

6.1. It would seem as if everything in this life strives everyday battling against love.

6.2. “From what we have heard and seen and what we hope for, let us think very much about God’s unfailing love whenever we meet in the midst of his temple”. All the streams of mercy that flow to us must be traced back to the fountain of God’s unfailing love. We are spared not because of any goodness in ourselves, but purely because of his mercy and the special favor he shows his people. We must therefore consider this with delight and think about it frequently and with perseverance. *MH*

6.3. No pain, fear, worry or anxiety.
6.4. We hardly know what a world like this will be like except for small taste here and there.

Conclusion: An expectation to remain:
REMAIN(IN(HIM! meno, men ́-o;
• To stay (in a given place, state, relation or expectancy): ! • To abide, ! • To continue,!
• To dwell, !
• To endure, !
• To be present!

REMAIN(IN(HIS(PRESENCE!
John 15:4 ! Remain in me, as I also remain in you.

John 15:5 “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.!

REMAIN(IN(HIS(WORD!
John 15:7 If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.!

REMAIN(IN(HIS(LOVE!
John 15:9 “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. in my love. 10 If you keep my commands, just as I have kept my Father’s commands