Welcome

[00:00:03] All right. Hey, welcome back to The Gospel Course. My name's Thomas. I'm a pastor here in Portland, Oregon, and it's my privilege to be with you during this time. Thanks for tuning in. We have seen so far in The Gospel Course that the gospel means good news. It is the good news of the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

[00:00:23] We saw last time why that good news matters, that we have a sin problem that God in- intends to change and fix in our life. And today, we're gonna ask the question: why would God wanna save me at all? If I'm a sinner and he had to do a whole lot to save me, why would he wanna save me? So let's jump right in.

[00:00:44] We're gonna look at 1 John Chapter 4 today, and we're gonna figure out why God wants to save me. And we'll just tell you the answer right away. God wants to save you because he loves you It's as simple as that. Maybe you've heard it before, Jesus loves you, and that is so true. Today, we'll see how He loves you, and we're gonna look at five ways that God loved you in the Gospel.

God’s Love Is Evident

[00:01:09] So the first is that God loves you in a way that's very evident. It's real, it's tangible, it's understandable for you. the Bible says, " In this was manifested the love of God toward us." In verse 10, it says, "Herein is love." So this love, already you probably have things swirling around in your mind when you think about love and what does that mean in the context of relationship or in the context of the world around us today.

[00:01:40] But here, the Bible says that love is manifested. God's love is to be made known or visible. That's what manifest means. So it's possible for us to know how God loves me in a, in a real, tangible kind of way. And perhaps most famously, the Bible says in John 3:16, "For God so loved the world." There's something that He did.

[00:02:05] If you know that verse, you know how it goes. There's something He did to show His great love for us.

God’s Love Is Personal

[00:02:12] Secondly, we see that God's love is personal. In verse nine, it says, " Because that God sent his only begotten son into the world." You see, God loves you in such a personal way that he did something incredible, something that we would never do, even for the people we love.

[00:02:32] We would never go this far. He says he sent his only begotten son into the world, and this word begotten is the only one of his kind. It's to be born out of, and so we know Jesus is born out of the Father. He is one with the Father, a part of the Trinity in-- from eternity past. He is God. So God himself came to Earth.

[00:02:57] He was manifested in the flesh. He took our sins on on the cross. He did not outsource his love for you.

God’s Love Is Sacrificial

[00:03:06] That is the great love wherewith He's loved us. God's love is also sacrificial. We see in verse 10 That He sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Have you ever heard of cheap love? Maybe a love that you could buy, or a love that is convenient. Maybe you could think of a time when the people that were supposed to love you did not show up for you.

[00:03:35] They weren't good for their words. Well, God is not that way. He is always good for His word. And He ha- He uses this word here, propitiation. It is a big Bible word, and it simply means to appease for God's wrath, to appease for sin. It is kind of like a gift that appeases something. And so as we saw last week, we're all sinners.

[00:04:02] what Jesus did for us on the cross was to take away God's anger for our sin, so that we would no longer be the subjects of God's wrath. He took it away for us.

[00:04:16] He said in His own words, Jesus did in John 15, "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." And that's what Jesus did. He laid down His life for others. He said in another place, "To give His life a ransom for many." And that's what He did.

[00:04:37] He was a ransom. He bought us. He loved us so much that He paid for us in His own blood. But check this out, you really have to love someone to take their consequence for yourself. That's what the Bible says Jesus did for us. Maybe for you, it would be kind of like this. If somebody you knew was serving a prison sentence, and they were going away for life for a really long time, but you loved them so much that you said, "I wanna be in their place so that they can go free Now that would be a huge sacrifice, and essentially that's what Jesus did for us.

God’s Love Is Life Giving

[00:05:22] He said, " I will die so that they can live." This is real love. This is a way that love sacrifices, and that's what Jesus did. His love is life-giving, as it says in verse nine, that we might live through Him. See, that's why Jesus truly came and died and rose again, that we might live through Him.

[00:05:51] As we saw in our first week, that if we would just simply believe the Gospel and what He has done, He will give us life, l- life that we did not have before because we were dead in our trespasses and sins. Ephesians tells us, "You hath He quickened." He made you alive. The quick is the living part of your fingernail that you feel when you trim it too short.

[00:06:18] To be quickened is to be made alive, and that's what happens when you believe the Gospel. God gives you life. It's called being born again. He gives you His Holy Spirit to live inside of you. We see this from John 3:16, " For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life."

[00:06:47] See, Jesus gave His life for you, and real love denies self so others can live. That's what real love is. That real love was modeled for us in Jesus as we see that He gave Himself for us,

God’s Love Is First

[00:07:05] Our fifth thing that we see on God's love is that He loved first. you can never say that you loved Him first He made a move towards you before you ever made a move towards Him.

[00:07:21] In verse 10 of 1 John chapter 4, it says, "Not that we loved God, but that He loved us." He made this decision that we were valuable before we ever were actually valuable. See, Romans tells us that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. This is that incredible love that loves one's enemies and says, "You are my enemy, and I will lay down my life to restore you back to me."

[00:07:55] The Bible says that none seeketh after God.

[00:07:58] It's not in your natural person to seek after him. He made a way for you to come to him. So God seeks you out before you ever considered him as a possibility for your life. He has died for you on the cross and drawn you to himself because he wants to be in a love relationship with you. And don't worry, God loves all people.

[00:08:22] He's not willing that any should perish. He wants all people to come to faith and repentance in Jesus Christ, and that includes you. But how about you? Do you believe that God loves you? Have you ever thought about how much he sacrificed for you just so that you could know him? Maybe you need to take an inventory of that and consider what the Bible says versus how you feel or how you were raised.

[00:08:53] If you will truly see what the Bible says about the gospel, you'll see that the God of the Bible is a God of love unlike anybody else has loved you. Nobody else has laid their life down for you like Jesus has. I hope that you'll continue into our next lesson where we're gonna see how God changes you when you actually choose to believe the gospel.

[00:09:17] We'll see you on the next one