God is Love

It is so great to be here with you this morning. We're gonna talk about love today, and I have a little book in my office called God Bless Love where little kids talk about what love is. I want to show you just a few things that they say. These little kids learned a lot about love apparently from, well, their pets. One little girl writes, "My cat falls in love and stays out all night, and then he brings a lot of kittens back." And there are the three kittens he's brought back looking very psychotic if you ask me. I mean, look at that picture! My tortoise fell in love, but it made him tired, and he went to bed for about four years. I think love does make you tired, especially old women; they always sleep a lot.

All kinds of observations here. My big sister fell in love, and she went to this place where they sell you holy matrimony. But I don't think she paid him all the money because she said it wasn't worth it. Don't you know there's a story? There's a long story behind this observation, and there's some wisdom here too, like this one: Love is hard to do to people you don't particularly like. That is very true. How many of you had experience with that? No, you don't have to raise your hand, okay? You must take care of love; if you don't, it goes bad—also very, very true. And finally, when you go to church, you put money in the box, and God loves you. Is that why you guys are here today?

Let's talk about God's love. Grab your message notes that look like this as we continue our series God Is. In this series, we're looking at all kinds of different attributes of God each week, and we wrote a book that goes along with this. It's this book, God Is. If you're just joining us this week, you picked a great week to start because we are starting at my favorite week—the week we talk about the love of God. But there are daily devotions and Bible readings and prayers that go along with each week's theme, and you can grab a book at the information desk or in the visitors center. If you don't have a book with you this morning, don't leave here today without one because these will help you kind of glean more from each week's topic.

So far in this series, we've talked about how God is holy—that means infinite in purity, the one who is other, other, other and pure, pure, pure. We've talked about how he is omnipotent, infinite in power. Last week, how God is omnipresent—everywhere present. But today, as I said, my favorite, the most mind-blowing attribute of God of all: God is love. I deliberately started out the first three weeks with these mind-blowing majestic attributes of God. God is infinite in power; God created the universe. God is everywhere; he's over on Alpha Centauri, and he's everywhere on earth. He is just an amazing omnipotent being. I wanted that to blow your socks off so that when we got to love, you would just be completely blown away.

Because as you understand the truth about the infinite God's infinite love for you today, I mean, if you focus on this and allow the Holy Spirit to touch your heart as we explore this topic in the next few minutes, you are going to leave more relaxed than when you walked in those doors. You're gonna leave less stressed, less guilty, more confident. You're gonna leave more full of joy. How do I know? Understanding the love of God has this effect because it has happened to me, and it happened to a guy in the Bible. This morning, we're gonna be talking about the Apostle John, and this morning I want to take a look at a book that he wrote. It's in the Bible, and it's famous for being the love book of the Bible—the book of 1 John.

First, a little background about where the book of 1 John comes from. I think it's important background because it'll fascinate you when we get to studying the book later. The Apostle John wrote more books of the New Testament than anyone but the Apostle Paul. He was one of the original disciples. He knew Jesus personally. In fact, John outlived all of the other 12 apostles by many years. As a very old man, his nickname was the Apostle of Love. And you guys thought that was Barry White, the Apostle of Love. No, originally it was John. I mean, he talked about love so many times; he used the word love more than any other writer in the Bible—80 times. I mean, he was talking about love, this love, them God love—it was all love, love, love for the Apostle John. The word love is used 35 times in the book of 1 John alone.

Now watch it. In case this makes you think of John as a harmless-as-a-dove guy, kind of Mr. Rogers in a robe, you know, "Welcome to my neighborhood, God is love," you gotta know that is not this guy at all. In fact, the Apostle John was one of, if not the roughest of the first disciples. His first nickname was Son of Thunder. What's that tell you about the kind of—who gets a nickname Son of Thunder? Not Mr. Rogers in a robe, right? Son of Thunder—that connotes a guy who's a braggart, who's boastful, who's always talking in a loud voice, who has a personality of a bull in a china shop. And that's this guy.

As Bible scholar John MacArthur says, as a young man, along with his brother James, John was the most sectarian, narrow-minded, unbending, and personally zealous of all the disciples. In fact, he behaved like an extremist, a bigot, a harsh man. In his early years, he was the most unlikely candidate to be remembered as the Apostle of Love. Now, let me just give you a couple of examples from John's early life. In Luke 9, Jesus Christ is getting ready to go with his disciples into a village that's occupied by Samaritans, and there's religious tension there. There's racial tension there. The Samaritans do not want Jesus and his disciples in the village, and here is John's solution to the problem. He says to Jesus, "Jesus, do you want me to call down fire from heaven and consume the village—men, women, and children? I'll solve the problem for you that way. What do you think?" And Jesus basically looks at him and goes, "Seriously, John? Seriously? Have you not been listening to anything I've been saying?" And the Bible says he has to rebuke John, but John doesn't learn his lesson.

Everywhere you turn, everywhere John goes, he's doing things that are all about ambition and power and status. Another time, he comes up to Jesus with his brother James, and he goes, "Hey, Jesus, Jesus, you, my brother, have been talking here, and it's great. You're gonna be the Messiah, like the ruler of God's kingdom on earth, and it's awesome. But we just have just a little thing we want to discuss with you. We would like to have the thrones right next to you. And since there's two, as one on either side, James, you're on the left, and I'd like to be on there in the right-hand throne right next to you in the kingdom of God. We've been thinking a lot about this, and we would be good like vice messiahs." And Jesus again looks at John like, "Seriously, John? You've got to be joking." He says to John, "You don't know what you're asking." And what do you think John says? "Yes, I do. I do, Jesus; you are wrong." And Jesus says, "Do you have any idea what the Son of Man is about to suffer?" And John goes, "Yes, and I can endure that suffering." And Jesus is basically going, "You are asking to be vice president of suffering. You're out of your mind."

And everywhere you go, John is having another one of these experiences. After he sees Jesus in all his glory on the Mount of Transfiguration, on the way back down the mountain, what does it say? John is arguing about with the other disciples which one of the disciples is the greatest. They're not talking about Jesus at all, and John's arguing that he's the greatest disciple. He is a Son of Thunder. He's full of zeal for some sort of religious goal, but no love for people. John's religion as a young man is all about power and conquest and muscle and not about love at all. He is a Son of Thunder. But then something happens to John. John disappears from view until much, much later, except for a couple of very early mentions in the book of Acts. He disappears from the Bible. We know he spent years taking care of Mary, the mother of Jesus, and then he spent years in prison, out of the limelight. And by the time he shows up again and he writes the books that complete the Bible, he's a very old man, and he's changed.

His theme in everywhere he writes is three words: God is love. This is all he wants to talk about—how God is love, which, by the way, is very good news for me because I am a Son of Thunder all too often. John's transformation from Archie Bunker into an Apostle of Love means that I can make that switch too in my life. But there is a problem with the message: God is love, isn't there? And it's this: it can be misunderstood. I mean, there's a reason like nobody today picks on John and disagrees with John because God is love, right on, man. Everybody agrees with that because everybody defines love in their own way, and John understands this. He understands that the idea of love can be misunderstood. How do you define love? It can mean anything you want it to mean. I mean, in our culture, we think of love, and we usually think of Hollywood's romantic definition of this word.

I kneel before you not as a prince; it is a man in love. You have bewitched me body and soul, and I love, I love, I love you. I love you, I love you. I know. Can you feel the love, right? We think of love, and we think of feelings of infatuation, which can fade. We think of feelings of romance, which can fade. And maybe you think of feelings of love that somebody professed for you once, which faded. And so we hear the word love, and we bring to it all of this cultural baggage, all of these past associations. And that's why if there's one thing John does in his writings as an old man talking about how God is love is he defines what he means by that over and over. He wasn't mean that God is love. There are four things I want to look at this morning that John talks about in the book of 1 John.

First, he says, when I say God is love, I mean God is initiating love. God is generating love. In other words, God started it. John says we love because God first loved us in 1 John 4:19. Let's unpack this a little bit. Circle the two key words here: first, God. Think of it—the creator of the cosmos, the God that we've been studying these past three weeks, the God of power and holiness and presence, the one who said, "Let there be light," and bang, there was light—that God. And now circle first. Let me ask you a question. When did God first love you? Maybe you're thinking, "Well, on the cross when Jesus died for my sins." Well, he loved you then, but the Bible says his love started even before then. God started loving you according to the Bible before the creation of the world, before one of those stars began to shine. God had you in mind, and he loved you first.

You know, one thing that proves to me his love cannot be based on your performance. That proves it, right? Because long before you did anything good, long before you even had good intentions, long before you could be sorry for your sins and like the right way, long before you even drew your first breath, God loved you with infinite love. This really meant a lot to John. He'd been the alpha male, the high achiever trying to prove his worth, and he's got to be blown away by the truth that God doesn't love because, or love since, or love if, or love when, or love only. God loves first. And so the key for you and me is this: when we think about God, start with God's love. Don't start with what you do for God; start with the fact that God loves you first and let that draw you to his number two: life-giving love.

Look at these two beautiful verses: 1 John 4:9-10. 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. This is love—not that we love God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Atoning sacrifice—that can confuse people. How do you understand this? A very simple illustration of this: quick show of hands. How many of you have ever watched the show Extreme Makeover: Home Edition? Can I see a show of hands? All right, it's a great show. Sometimes there are very touching stories, like the one I'm gonna show you. There was an episode where they tell the story of Anaya Rucker. She was a little girl who saved her even smaller sister from certain death by a speeding car that was about to hit her little sister. She pushed her out of the way and took the brunt of the car's hit herself.

In nearly done, rainy and darker than usual, she was always cautious, and she didn't look both ways. She didn't see that a car had come from out of the store. A truck was coming. We tried to hurry, but by the time she was about to cross the street, it was too late. I decided to push Cameron because I knew she would survive. She just had enough time to get her sister out of the way, and she took out the blow. When I got here, her body landed here, and I saw my child in there looking lifeless. She wasn't breathing, and she didn't have a pulse. I was just so hysterical. I'm just sitting in the road, just yelling my head off, "Somebody just please help me!" When she opened her eyes and took that breath, I felt just relief come over me. They told me that both of her legs were broken and that she also had a broken neck. She lost a kidney and has spleen damage. They kept trying to get her blood to flow in the left leg, and it wouldn't, so they said they would have to amputate her leg. I was like, "Well, as long as she's gonna be alive, take her leg, 'cause I can't risk losing her." Realizing that my leg was gone, it was like a big sad moment for me. But if I wouldn't say, "You can me, who else was a very, I think, nice a hero 'cause she saved my life."

And isn't that a powerful story? I want you to think: how would you feel if somebody loved you like that? Well, guess what? God did. He took the punishment that he saw headed your way. This is how I know he loves me. See, I know God is powerful by looking at the stars and nature, but I know he is loved by looking at the cross. When I see Jesus dying on the cross for me, I realize he's the one who shoved me out of the way and took the hit for me. He took my sin for me. He absorbed the hell that was due to me. Kind of, to put it in Santa Cruz terms, you know, he took the effect of my bad karma, right? All of the debt of sin that I've been building up, Jesus took the brunt of it. And so the key for you and me is simply to say yes to God's love.

Now, before you turn the page and go to page two here, let me just answer a question about this, and then I want to introduce somebody to you. Sometimes people ask me as a pastor a question that maybe you've had: Why do I need to say yes to Jesus? Why couldn't God just sort of have pronounced me forgiven, snapped his fingers, "You're forgiven"? Why did he have to go through all this? Why do I have to go, "Yes, I received Jesus Christ"? Well, God can do anything he wants to, so why didn't he do it like that? Well, for God, it's all about the relationship. It's all about the love—not just about technically forgiving you; it's about being with you. And in any relationship, any relationship you've ever had, somebody makes a move, and then the other person responds to that move, and so on. The move that God made was the ultimate move. He came here into a time in human history and paid the ultimate price to push you out of the way and save your eternal soul, and now it's your move to respond to that act of love to continue it into a relationship.

So what does that look like to respond to an act of love from God to begin that relationship? Before the second half of this message, I'm gonna ask somebody to share about how he responded to God's love, and some people might think this is an unlikely person—a professor in the robotics engineering program at UCSC. Would you please welcome Dr. Bill Dunbar as he comes up to share with us?

Good morning. I'm Renee. I asked how I once would have finished the sentence "God is dot dot dot" and how I finished that sentence now and what's made the difference. So I'll start with background. I was born in Northern Virginia on October 5th, 1974. I'm 37. I was baptized as a baby, but church was not a part of my upbringing. Aspects of my life growing up were very tumultuous, but I was surrounded by family and people who loved me. My parents were highly educated. My dad has degrees in economics and law, and my mother in philosophy and statistics. So education was a god of sorts. I was in a very competitive and ambitious, like the Son of Thunder, I guess, and I did well at school. I graduated summa cum laude from Virginia Tech in engineering, and then I went from there to UC San Diego, where I met my wife, Rebecca, who more recently became my best friend. I got my PhD at Caltech in 2004. I came to UC Santa Cruz soon after that in August 2004 to begin a tenure-track position in the School of Engineering. So the education God was good to me, and I worked hard for it.

This God is made of people, though, and people can be moody and mean, myself included. Depending on approval from people is like depending on the weather forecast in Santa Cruz—very unpredictable. Other gods of mine were exercise, including running, and especially surfing. I turned two other academic jobs down because they were inland. Due to events I won't relate here, the God became a personal and important part of my life toward the end of high school and more when I was at Virginia Tech. But I wasn't a Christian. But from that time, I did know that God had a plan for me, and when I moved here, Rebecca and I and our firstborn, I knew we were supposed to be here. But I had no idea Jesus was waiting here for me. What a place to find Jesus! It was really a shock. It was not on the academic calendar, that event. God used my drive for surfing and achievement against me. He introduced me to Mike and Sarah Gerhart, accomplished big wave surfers and Twin Lakes Church regulars. And so he's resourceful; he'll use what he can.

Only two people, those two people made a huge difference in our life, and in the winter of 2007, we came to Twin Lakes, my wife and I, and our two young kids at that time. I wanted to become—I’ll tell you why I wanted to come to Twin Lakes—because my wife needed it. We were arguing often. I judged I had a spiritual life, and she needed one, so fix her up church. That's how I was looking at it. And we came for about nine months, and I was totally unprepared for what happened. Sitting up there in the upper decks one Sunday morning in the fall of 2006, so there's really nowhere safe to sit in here; it just happened. Anybody? God is very patient. We, I think most of us know that. In that nine months of coming here before this experience here, I was really surprised how drawn I was to the services here at Twin Lakes. But that fall morning, Renee was nearing the end of a sermon while leading us in head bowed prayer. He asked anyone who wanted to invite Jesus into their life to raise their hand. He did it last week if you were here, and seemingly involuntarily, my hand went up. I was deeply moved at that moment, and I was for four weeks and months after that. I'm still moved—obviously, I'm up here.

I've always been very sensitive and emotional and reactive, but this was different. This is a deep shift. I'll give you one example of how, in hindsight, that shift happened that morning. Music was a god to me my whole life. I grew up playing the drums, and you know, one thing I did was obsessively practice "Good Times, Bad Times," a Led Zeppelin song, and I was gonna master it with one bass drum pedal and play it better than people who played it with two bass drum pedals, you know? I just—weirdo. But music, every kind of music was a god to me. And since that Sunday, again, really, I'd say largely involuntarily, I've had zero desire to listen to anything but worship music. Just completely ruined. You know, this collection is useless to me now. So not sure what I'll do with it still.

So God gave me a real change of consciousness in that moment. I can be very undisciplined, and he knows that. So in some areas of my life, including music, God just like literally wiped the drive. In other areas, there was not such an immediate transformation. But I can tell you that over the last four years, God has moved mountains that were literally suffocating our family. He gave Rebecca, my wife, and I a new marriage together as we fully embraced the retro vibe program and continue to participate in that ministry. One of the most amazing things in my life now is seeing God at work where I work. Up on the campus there, one of my former graduate students, Dr. Daniel Keraldi, was a real inspiration to me. He's been a follower of Jesus his whole life. Just to give you another indication that God was waiting on me before I was ready, Daniel came to work to UC Santa Cruz to pursue graduate school with me from Bob Jones University. So this is before I became a Christian. You know, I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess that this is the first graduate of Bob Jones to come to UC Santa Cruz—just to guess, a Christian school in case you haven't heard of it, Bob Jones. So that's—he's a real missionary, isn't he?

A little over a year ago, I asked Daniel if we could pray for God to guide my research. I was hitting dead ends and feeling frustrated about not knowing what I should do and, in particular, if even God wanted me to be there at all. I was so used to doing a lot of my activities as a professor for self-interested motives. So, you know, when I had that shift, it was like, "Should I even be doing this anymore?" And I can't even begin to tell you from that prayer till now how God is just blowing the doors off. One example is I'm starting a company with another Christian graduate student. I know what you're thinking—there can't possibly be two graduate students who are Christians at Santa Cruz. But we prayed, and now all things are possible, right?

So remember Renee in the early in the series was talking about Aslan from Narnia being a wild—and this depiction of God, this characteristic of God—and that's an appropriate word for what's been happening. I can't wait to see what happens next. And from John, there's 1 John 1:16: "From his abundance, we've all received one gracious blessing after another," and this is my story. And this is my home, this church. And in the series, I pray to let God use me as wildly and fearsomely as he wants. I also thank God for my life exactly as it is at this moment, and I love you, church, and I thank you, Renee.

Man, God is love, and that means initiating love, and that means life-giving love. And number three, John says it is such lavish love—extravagant, overflowing. Top of page two in your notes: 1 John 3:1: "See what great love the Father has lavished on us." God's love isn't stingy; it's lavish—a foreboding waterfall of love as big as the universe. The rest of the verse: "How lavish is love that we should be called children of God." And that is what we are. You know, I read this verse, and I often think of that famous picture of John John Kennedy when he was a toddler playing under the desk of his dad, the President of the United States, John F. Kennedy. To everybody else, that office was intimidating because it was the center of power in the Western world, but John John was welcome and loved and at home, relaxed. Now do you get that? In the throne room of God, you're welcome. You're at home. You're confident; you're relaxed because you're beloved.

Man, really getting this—this is why John could write this verse: 1 John 4:16. And I want you to say this out loud with me. Ready? Here we go: "And so we know and rely on the love God has for us." God is love. I want you to circle the phrase "rely on the love God has." Do you realize how reliable the love of God is for you? Because it's as infinite as his power. It never stops; it goes on and on and on and on and never ends. It is rock-solid reliable. Listen, I don't think most of us realize this—not even people who call themselves Christians. I'll illustrate it this way. Do you see this? This is a little daisy. Now, I want to ask you a question: when you were a little kid, did you ever pluck a daisy from the ground and pluck its petals off and go, "She loves me, she loves me not, she loves me, she loves me not"? Right? How many people ever did that when you were a little kid? Right? A lot of us did at some point in life. You put away the daisies, except for one relationship, in my observation—your relationship with God. Author Wayne Jacobson points this out. He says mentally we do this: "I got a raise; he loves me. I didn't get the promotion I wanted; he loves me not. Something in the Bible inspired me today; ah, he loves me. My car needs a new transmission; he loves me not. I gave money to the poor today; I feel so good about myself; he loves me. I fell back into that stupid old habit; he loves me not."

But God doesn't love like that. We're the ones that are pulling the petals off, right? Not God. God is the one who keeps making the daisies, and with each one, he's saying, "I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you," billions of times. And so the key for me is to soak in that—to soak in God's love. It's not he loves me when I'm good; he loves me not when I'm bad. It's he loves me, he loves me, he loves me, he loves me. With God, you can never say the phrase "he loves me not" because the truth is always he loves me. Don't just believe that when you quote-unquote get saved, but live in it, soak in it, immerse yourselves in it. I think that for all those years that John was off the scene, he was immersed in this. He was just thinking about the way God loves us. This is the way—this is what changed John.

So I want you to think about the way he loves you as infinite as his power is. That's how infinite his love is for you, right? So think of the most powerful thing you know—the greatest display of power you've ever seen. We've been talking about that so far in the series. That's how he loves you personally. It's kind of like that David Crowder song says, "He loves like a hurricane, and I'm a tree." Or if love and grace were an ocean, we'd all be underwater right now, sinking, soaked in his love. It's that huge, that powerful. And what happens to you when you soak in it? Like that same song says, "All of a sudden, I'm unaware of these afflictions, eclipsed by glory, and I don't have time to maintain these regrets." When I think about the way he loves us, God lavishly loves you. Let me ask you something: what more do you need? The God, the maker of the universe, the king and ruler of everything, lavishly infinitely loves you. What could possibly get better than that? What could you add to your resume that could possibly top that?

I want to invite you to do an experiment in living in God's love this week. What would—what do you think would happen to you if every single day when you woke up in the morning, you said to yourself, "You are God's beloved child. He lavishly loves you. You can rely on his love." And what if you lived the day being aware of that? And then before you went to bed at night and laid your head on the pillow, you reminded yourself, "You are God's beloved child, lavishly loved by God." It would change everything about you. And if you really get that, then it becomes the final thing that John talks about: contagious love. You know, acceptance is contagious, right? I'll say it again: acceptance is contagious. And if you believe that you are accepted by God like this, then you're gonna love others the same way. John talks a lot about this: 1 John 4:11. And I'd like us to read this out loud together too, all right? It starts out, "Dear friends." Let me hear you: "Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another." This week, everywhere you go, every place you drive, eat, work, at the beach, on the road, wherever you are, and you see other people, think, "Now God loves me, and God loves them, so I'm going to love them, or at least I'm gonna try."

In fact, let's practice this right now. I'd like you to turn to two people, look at them in the eyes, and just for practice say, "God loves you, and I'm trying." Go ahead and say that to two people next to you: "God loves you, and I'm gonna try." Now it's easy to go, "Yeah, man, that's right, love is the answer," right? On the Beatles said it: "All you need is love," but what does that really mean? John defines it again; he's all about defining this and not leaving it vague. 1 John 3:17: "If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person?" Do you know anybody in need?

Last month, the food bank did something that they called the Paper Plate Project. They brought white paper plates like this to food pantries all over the county that they work with, like our own People's Pantry, and they asked people, "Could you just write down anonymously what receiving this food means to you?" See, according to their research, a whole lot of people in Santa Cruz County—about 25% of the population here—is what they call food insecure. They barely make enough money to cover all their bills, and sometimes they don't have enough money to pay for food. So what kind of responses do you think we got? Well, here's just some of these. This food they got here at this church, provided by Second Harvest, in part: "This food means we eat each week. Without this, what would we do? Thanks to all who support us." "This was my first meal today. It may be my only meal today. I don't get food stamps or government help." Did you know this is common? Because we live in an expensive place, people here make too much money for food stamps or government aid and not enough money to pay the bills. This is very common in Santa Cruz. Most of the people who get food from our food bank are not unemployed; they're employed, but they don't make enough money but too much for government assistance.

This woman writes, "It means a lot to me to receive healthy food for myself and my son. Without this, I wouldn't know if I could provide for our food needs." Well, these are real people in need, and John would say, "Love these people." He'd say, "And my children, we should love people not only with words and talk but by our actions and true caring." And so the action step, the key for me is to spread God's love. Don't just soak in it, but spread it. And you're thinking, "Okay, how do I put this into action?" Well, you heard us talk about how this year we want to raise—remember that goal? One million pounds of food to feed a village near the Somalian border for a full year. Now look at this slide. That is an enormous goal. In fact, you know what? I'd go so far as to say that is a ridiculous goal. I'd say that's a crazy goal. I say that's an over-the-top goal and an outrageous goal. But you know what? That's the kind of love God shows. That the God of the universe came here and sacrificed his life for us—that's crazy. That's enormous. That's outrageous, inexplicable. And God says that's exactly the kind of love that I want you to show in practical ways to others because when you do, John assures us, then you're going to be living in love, and you will know the love of God.

See, here's the big idea: John says this is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us, and so we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. Lay down our lives—that's the book of 1 John in a nutshell right there. We've had so much fun in our family going through our attic and going through our garage and just finding stuff that we're not using anymore and selling it on Craigslist and so on to raise money for the food drive. It's a little bit of an effort; that's not even close to laying down our lives. But you know what? We've grown in our sense of God's love for us by helping to meet needs in practical ways like that, and we're not doing it out of duty; we're doing it because it's fun to show God's love. In fact, you could put it this way: we love others as we believe ourselves to be loved, right? How do you truly believe yourself to be loved? If you realize God lavishes love on you, then you're just gonna want to lavish love on others.

Let me close with this. Wednesday, I'm in my office, and I'm studying this, studying 1 John, and something happens. It's almost like something out of a movie. I see an old brown book with leather binding that's cracked, brown pages up on a shelf, and I take it down, and I literally blow dust off this old volume. Dust clouds just kind of go like this because I haven't opened this book in years. It's about a hundred years old, and it creaks as I open it—crack, crack, crack, crack. It's a book of old sermons by a preacher who preached a hundred years ago named Charles Spurgeon, and I opened it up because I dimly remembered that there's a sermon in there on 1 John, and I figured, "Oh, let me see what he has to say just to glance at it." So I sit down—actually, I was standing, kind of looking at this book, and I'm riveted to that spot. I literally don't move while I'm riveted by his words, and before I'm done with what he says in his sermon on 1 John, I'm crying with a sense of God's love for me.

And so I'm gonna take a big risk for a pastor to take at a church in 2011. I'm gonna read you the end of a sermon that a guy preached in the late 1800s, but I hope it'll move you like it moved me. Here's how he wraps up his message: "And now I must spend a minute in putting the truth of my text to the test, and I want you not to listen to me as much as to listen to your own hearts. If you're believers, what is it that we've been talking about? It is God's love for us. Get that thought into your head a minute: God loves me—not merely bears with me or thinks of me or feeds me, but loves me. Oh, it's a very sweet thing to feel that we have the love of a dear wife or a kind husband, and there's much sweetness in the love of a fond child or a tender mother. But to think that God loves me, this is infinitely better. Who is it that loves you? God, the maker of heaven and earth, the Almighty, the all-in-all. Does he love me? Even me? Who is it that he loves? Me! He loves me, an insignificant nobody, full of sin, who deserved to be in hell, who loves him so little in return. God loves me. He says, 'Beloved believer, does this not melt you? Does this not fire your soul? And how did he love me? He loved me first. He loved me before I was born, before a star began to shine. He loved me when I sinned. He loved me when I have forgotten him. He has loved me, and when in the days of my sin I cursed him, he loved me. And he will love me when my knees tremble and my hair is gray with age, and he will love me when the world ends, and he will love me forever and forever and forever. And he loved me so much that he gave his only begotten Son for me. Oh, chew the cud of this blessed thought. Roll it under your tongue as a dainty morsel. Sit down this afternoon if you have leisure and think of nothing but this—his great love wherewith he loves you. And if you don't feel your heart bubbling, if you do not feel your soul yearning towards God and heaving big with strong emotions of love toward God, then I am much mistaken. You will love him because he first loved you.' God bless you, brothers and sisters, for Christ's sake. Amen.

Let's pray together. Bow your heads with me. Lord, I just pray that if anybody hasn't received that love of Jesus for the first time, that today they would pray something like this: 'Lord, I receive your love shown through the death of Jesus on that cross for my sin. I don't understand it all, but I receive it. Thank you for your love. God, help me to grow in it.' Now, with everybody's heads still bowed, I want to afford you an opportunity to do what Bill talked about when he shared earlier. If this is the day that you are saying to Jesus, 'Jesus, I've been kind of on the fence. I believed in God but not sure about this receiving Jesus, but today I have received Jesus into my heart. I am responding to that act of love from God,' would you just slip up your hands so that I can pray for you? If today is the day that you made that decision. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks. Heavenly Father, I pray for those who are putting up their hands right now. May they grow in love, and Lord, I pray that those of us who have received that love may it not grow cold. Help us to live in love each day in your marvelous love, and we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.