Sermon #1223
Title: God’s Everlasting Love for His Elect
Text: John 17:23-24
Subject: God’s Everlasting Love for His Elect
Date: Sunday Morning & Evening-
Tape # S-28 & S-29[1]
Introduction:
There
are certain, specific things revealed in the Scriptures that we are called upon
to behold as matters of
unquestionable truth, to behold with
confident faith, reverent wonder, deep gratitude, and exulting praise. Let’s
look at three of these wonders of Divine Revelation.
We will begin at John 1:29. “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away
the sin of the world.” I am calling upon you this day to behold the Lamb of
God as the sin-atoning sacrifice of God himself, who bore our sins, and bore
them away forever, in his own body on the tree.
Some
of you are here today without Christ, lost, under the wrath of God. The weight
of your guilt and sin is crushing your soul. The terror of God’s wrath is
driving you crazy. You simply cannot go on like you are. You feel that you are
sinking into hell, and there is nothing you can do about it. You are as
helpless as you are miserable and wretched. I call you now, like that very
first Baptist preacher called on his hearers, to “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.” Look
to Christ, like the Jews looked to the brazen serpent in the wilderness, and be
saved.
·
Isaiah 45:22
My
message is the same to you who are born of God, to you who are already heirs of
eternal life. Whatever your soul’s trouble is, whatever your need is, whatever
your heart craves, whatever your present condition is, this is what you need to
do this hour: “Behold the Lamb of God,
which taketh away the sin of the world.”
·
Behold the Lamb of God, and worship!
·
Behold the Lamb of God, and wonder!
·
Behold the Lamb of God, and be ravished with his mercy, love, and
grace!
·
Behold the Lamb of God, and find inspiration for your soul’s devotion
to him!
·
Behold the Lamb of God, and be broken over your sin and indifference!
·
Behold the Lamb of God, and be revived, renewed, and refreshed in him!
·
Behold the Lamb of God in all the Scriptures as he is prophesied,
typified, identified, crucified, and glorified!
Next, I want you to hear the Lamb of God
himself, as he speaks in Lamentations 1:12, and calls for us to behold with
reverence his sufferings and sorrows as our Substitute. “Is
it nothing to you, all ye that pass by? Behold, and see if there be any sorrow
like unto my sorrow, which is done unto me, wherewith the Lord hath afflicted
me in the day of his fierce anger.” Do you see the Son of God hanging upon
the cursed tree, suffering all the horrid ignominy and terror of God’s
unmitigated wrath? In his body, in his heart, and in his very soul, the Son of
God was filled with sorrow, suffering the hell of God’s wrath for us!
Yonder, amazing
sight I see!
Th’ incarnate
Son of God
Expiring on th’ accursed
tree,
And weltering in His blood.
Behold, a purple
torrent run
Down from His hands and
head,
The crimson tide puts out
the sun;
His groans awake the dead.
The trembling earth, the
darkened sky,
Proclaim the truth aloud;
And with th’ amazed
centurion, cry
“This is the Son of God!”
So great, so vast a
sacrifice
May well my hope revive:
If God’s own Son thus bleeds
and dies,
The sinner sure may live.
Oh that these cords
of love divine
Might draw me, Lord, to
Thee!
Thou hast my heart, it shall
be Thine!
Thine it shall ever be!
Samuel Stennett
The enormous load
of human guilt
Was on my Savior laid;
With woes as with a garment,
He
For sinners was arrayed.
And in the horrid pangs of
death,
He wept, He prayed for me;
Loved and embraced my guilty
soul
When nailed to the tree.
Oh love amazing! love beyond
The reach of human tongue;
Love which shall be the
subject of
An everlasting song.
William
Williams
“Behold, and
see,” our
Savior says, “if there be any sorrow like
unto my sorrow.”
1. What was the source of his sorrow? It was that, he says, “Wherewith the Lord God hath afflicted me in the day of his fierce
anger.” (See Isaiah 53:9-10.)
2. What was the cause of his sorrow? The holy, immaculate, spotless, sinless Son
of God was
made to be sin for us (II Cor.
3. Why did he endure such sorrow? He endured all the agony of our hell that he might
redeem and save his people, “that we
might be made the righteousness of God in him.” The sorrow he experienced
was our sorrow. The hell he endured was our hell. The death he died was our
death (Isa. 53:4-6).
It is in consideration of all these things
that the apostle John calls upon us to behold, with deep gratitude and joy and
exulting confidence and praise, the love of God for his elect in Christ. “Behold, what manner of love the Father hath
bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God” ( I John 3:1).
I
want to talk to you now about the love of God. Specifically, I want to talk to
you about God’s Everlasting Love for His
Elect.
Proposition: God’s everlasting love for his elect is the
fountain of all grace and salvation and the reason for all that he does.
I
want you to turn with me to John 17:23-24. As you know, John 17 contains our Lord’s prayer for us as our great High Priest. It not only
records his desires for his people, which cannot and will not be denied (What
Christ desires, Christ shall have!); but this great, intercessory prayer is
filled with gospel truth and is a very instructive portion of Holy Scripture.
Verses 23 and 24 teach us two tremendous truths about God’s love for his elect.
Let’s read the two verses together.
“I in them, and thou in me, that they may be
made perfect in one; and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and
hast loved them, as thou hast loved me. Father, I will that they also, whom
thou hast given me, be with me where I am; that they may behold my glory, which
thou hast given me; for thou lovest me before the foundation of the world.”
Divisions: Without question, these two verses teach us much more than we
will be able to consider today; but two things are here clearly and distinctly
taught in these verses about the love of God. Both are stupendous, glorious,
soul-comforting truths. I want so very much for our hearts to be humbled,
ravished, inspired, and filled with praise to our God by these two things.
1. God loves his elect in
Christ as he loves Christ himself.
2. God’s love for his elect is
an everlasting love.
I
cannot tell you which of these facts I find more astounding. They are both
glorious gospel truths, truths which could never be known except by divine
revelation, and truths both honoring to our God and, to the extent that we are
able to believe them, comforting to our souls.
I. First, our Savior says, “Thou hast loved them, as thou hast loved
me.” Thus, he tells us that God our Father loves his elect in Christ as
he loves Christ himself!
That
is such an amazing, stupendous thing that were it not written in Holy
Scripture, I would not dare to think it, much less speak it. But there it
stands. And, oh, how my soul rejoices in it. It is our Savior’s desire and
purpose that the whole world shall know that God loves us as he loves him; and so
it shall be!
“When
God’s elect have all been gathered together in one (John 11:52), when the glory
which Christ received from the Father has been imparted to them, when they
shall have been made perfect in one, then shall the world have such a clear demonstration
of God’s power, grace and love toward His people, that they shall know that the One who died to make this
glorious union possible was the sent One of the Father, and that they had been
loved by the Father as had the Son, for ‘When Christ, who is our life shall
appear, then shall ye also appear with him in
glory’ (Col. 3:4); then ‘he shall come to be glorified in his saints and
admired in all them that believe...in that day’ (II Thess. 1:10).”
A.W. Pink
When
our Lord says, “Thou hast loved them, as thou hast loved me,” that little
word “as”
implies three things.
A. First, there
is a similarity of cause between God’s love for Christ and his love for us.
1. God loves us in
Christ.
God’s
love is not a universal sentiment for all men. God’s love is in Christ. Apart
from Christ, God is a consuming fire. This needs to be understood. These days,
men everywhere are taught and universally presume that God loves them. Nothing
could be further from the truth. Until
you are united to Christ by faith, you have no reason to imagine that God loves
you. Our faith in Christ does not cause God to love us. Our faith is the
fruit and result of God’s eternal love for us. But, until a sinner trusts
Christ, only the wrath of God is revealed and known to him; and the wrath of
God is upon him.
·
John 3:36
·
Ephesians 2:3
2. God loves us for
Christ’s sake.
Thomas Manton wrote, “The elect are made
lovely, and fit to be accepted by God, only by Jesus Christ...The ground of all
that love God beareth to us is in Christ.”
As we
saw last week, We are “accepted in the beloved.” God accepts our faith, our worship, our
works, and our persons only because of Christ, because we are in Christ and
because of what Christ has done for us.
3. And God the
Father loves us for the same reason that he loves his Son as our Mediator.
Be
sure you get this. It will help you. God the Father does not love us for the
same reason that he loves his Son as his Son. He loves his Son as his Son
necessarily because his Son is one with him in perfection and praise. He cannot
but love Christ as God. Else he would cease to love himself. But God’s love for Christ as our Mediator is
based upon his perfect obedience unto God as our Mediator.
·
John 10:14-17
Do
you understand what our Lord is teaching us here? God’s love for us is free and, at the same, time fully deserved! He
said, “I will love them freely” (Hos.
14:4). Yet, his love, mercy, grace, and salvation flow to us upon the grounds
of Christ’s obedience as our Substitute (Eph.
Let
me quote the puritan Thomas Manton again. “God
could not love us with honor to himself, if his wisdom had not found out this
way of loving us in Christ...God was resolved to manifest an infinite love to
man, but he would still manifest an infinite hatred against sin; which could
not be more fully manifested than by making Christ the ground of our reconciliation...How
could the holy God, the just God...love such vile and unworthy creatures as we
are? The question is answered - He loveth us in Christ, and for Christ’s sake.”
B. Second, this word “as” suggests a likeness of love.
This
means that the Lord God loves his people in the same way as he loves his Son.
Again, let me stress the fact that our Lord is comparing God’s love for him as
our Mediator to his love for his elect. Christ, as our Mediator, is the first
object of God’s love. He loved Christ as the Head of his mystical body, the
church, and us as members. He loved Christ for his own sake. He loves us for
Christ’s sake.
God
the Father loved Christ the God-man as “the
express image of his person” (Heb. 1:3). So he loves his people who in
Christ have been (and those who yet must be) renewed “after the image of him” (Col. 3:10; II et. 1:4). He loves Christ
as his only begotten Son; and he loves us in Christ as his adopted sons (I John
3:1). Because the Savior says, “Thou hast loved them, as thou hast loved
me,” we are assured that...
1. God loves his elect freely. - As we have already seen, the Lord Jesus Christ
earned his Father’s love as a man by his mediatoral obedience. Yet, when our
Savior came into the world, the Lord God loved the child freely, delighting in
him even before he had fulfilled his will (Isa. 42:1). Even so, he loves us
freely (Deut. 7:7-8; Hos. 14:4).
2. God loves us tenderly and affectionately. - As the Father’s love for
his Son is a tender, indescribably affectionate love, so is his love for us
(Isa. 62:5; Zech. 2:8).
3. God’s love for his elect is immutable. - The Lord willing, I will
say more about this later. For now, let me simply remind you that there is no
possibility of change in our God (Mal. 3:6, James
·
Romans 8:35-39
The
famous Arminian preacher, founder of the Christian Missionary Alliance
denomination, A.W. Tozer, made these
statements about the love of God. - “God must love and will love man until hell
has erased the last trace of the remaining image (of God in him). Men are lost
now. But they are still loved of God...I believe that God now loves all lost
men...(But) the day will come when lost man will no longer be loved by God
Almighty...I believe the time will come when God will no longer love lost human
beings.”[2]
Such
fickle, useless love may be worthy of fickle, useless man, but not of the great
and glorious Lord God. Our God does not
love today and hate tomorrow! His love is unchangeable!
C. Thirdly, our Lord intends
for us to understand that the effects and fruits of God’s love to him and his
elect are alike.
Love
that has no effect and bears no fruit is a useless love. Love that is never
known by the one loved is a frustrated passion that destroys one’s own peace
and happiness. Love that never sees benefit and blessing upon its object, but
only misery and woe, is a tormenting love. But that does not describe the love
of God. Oh, no, a thousand times no! God’s love toward us, like his love toward
his Son as our Mediator, is an effectual, fruitful, beneficial love. Here are five
things mutually enjoyed by Christ and his people as the fruit and
effect of God’s love.
1. The Revelation of Secrets
All things are open, common knowledge between
people who love one another. As all things are manifest and made known to the
Son as our Mediator by the Father (John 1:18; 5:20), so all things are manifest
and made known to God’s elect by the Son (John 14:21; 15:15).
2. The Bestowment of Spiritual Gifts
God’s
love is a bounteous love. He has given all things to the Son (John
3. Strength and Protection in Life
As the Lord Jesus was upheld, strengthened,
and protected throughout the days of his obedience to do his Father’s will
(Isa. 53:1), so the Lord God upholds, strengthens, and protects us, the objects
of his love, throughout our days of obedience in this world (I Cor. 12:9).
4. Acceptance of All We Do for Him
Everything
that Christ did for God was accepted and well-pleasing to him because he loved
him (Eph. 5:2). And everything we do for God is accepted and well-pleasing to
God through the merits of Christ because he loves us as he loved him (I Pet.
2:5). God our Father accepts our paltry
efforts at serving and pleasing him for two reasons.
a. He accepts our poor, sin
stained obedience upon the merit of Christ’s perfect obedience.
b. He accepts our efforts at
pleasing him because of his fatherly love for us in Christ.
Illustration:
A Boy Trying to Walk in His Dad’s Footprints
5. Honor and Exaltation
The
Lord Jesus was honored and highly exalted by God the Father as the object of
his love. He was given preeminence in, possession of, and power over all things
(Ps. 2:7-8; Heb. 1:8). The Lord God, our heavenly Father, will do the same for
us (John
Hear
the Son of God, my brothers and sisters in this world, and rejoice! “Thou hast loved them, as thou hast loved
me!” What a pillow upon which to rest our heads! What a comfort for our
poor, aching hearts! What a glorious theme for daily meditation! What a cause
for adoration, praise, and worship! We may be despised, misunderstood, abused,
and hated of men, but we are loved of God! God our Father loves us even as he
loves his darling Son; and he has so loved us from eternity!
·
Romans 12:1-2
What
would you give, what would you do to have the
enjoyment and assurance of such love from God? Perhaps, you are thinking,
“Pastor, I would do anything to know the love of God like that.” Let me ask you
this - Would you do nothing to have? That is what you must do, nothing. If you
would rest in his love, simply trust the Son of God.
II. Now look at
the last sentence in verse 24. Our Lord Jesus said, “Thou hast loved them, as thou hast loved me.” Here he declares, “for thou lovedst me before the foundation
of the world.” With those words he
teaches us that God’s love for his elect is an everlasting love.
“The
doctrine of God’s everlasting, unchangeable, and invariable love to his elect, through every state
and condition into which they come, is written as with a sun-beam in the sacred
writings.” John
Gill
I am again in water that is way over my head;
but I never did like to wade around in puddles. I like to swim in deep water.
When we dive into the
A. The Eternality of It
God’s love for us did not begin yesterday. It
is not something born in time. His love for us does not begin with our love for
him. “We love him because he first loved
us”(I John
·
Jeremiah 31:3
·
Ephesians 1:4-6
·
Ezekiel 16:8
The Father loved us ere we
fell,
And will forever love;
Nor shall the powers of
earth or hell
His love from
‘Twas love that
moved Him to ordain
A Surety just and good;
And on His heart inscribe
the name
Of all for whom He stood.
Nor is the Surety short of
love;
He loves beyond degree;
No less than love divine
could move
The Lord to die for me.
And O what love the
Spirit shows!
When Jesus He reveals
To men oppressed with sin
and woes,
And all their sorrows heals.
The Three-in-One, the
One-in-Three,
In love for ever rest;
The chosen shall in glory be
In His love ever blessed.
God’s
acts and works of grace performed for us before the world began arise from and
are demonstrations of his everlasting love for us.
1. Election was an act of God’s eternal love (Eph. 1:4).
2. The covenant of grace was established by the triune God in eternity
because of his great, everlasting love for us (II Sam. 23:5; Rom.
3. Giving us into the hands of Christ as our Surety was a work of God’s eternal
love (John
B. The Immutability of It
God’s
love, like all his gifts bestowed upon men, is without repentance. He will
never cease his own to cherish. Those who are loved of God have been loved of
God from everlasting and shall be loved of God to everlasting. His love is
eternal both ways. He will not depart from the objects of his love or cease to
do them good, for he cannot change (Jer. 32:40; Mal.
3:6; James
The salvation of God’s elect does not stand
upon a precarious foundation of time, but upon the immutable foundation of
God’s everlasting love.
1. We change often, but there
are no changes in his love.
2. Our love is sometimes hot
and sometimes cold; but his love is invariably the same.
3. God graciously and wisely
changes the dispensation of his providence toward his people, hiding his face
and chastening us because of our sin; but his love never changes (Isa. 54:10;
Heb. 12:5-11). His chastisements are evidences of his love.
4. Even when we sin against
him, as we often do, God’s love does not change! (Illus: David - Peter)
5.
This is the thing I want us to get hold of - God’s love toward his elect is from everlasting, and never changes to
any degree or for any reason.
·
Psalm 89:19-37
·
John 13:1
C. The Gifts of It
Love
gives. The gifts of God’s free and everlasting love are too many for us to
calculate. Let me just show you three things that are clearly revealed as the
gifts of God’s everlasting love to his elect. In comparison with these three
all others, great as they are, must be considered to be far, far less.
1. The Lord God has given us himself because of his great,
everlasting love for us (Ezek. 37:27).
2. The gift of his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, to
suffer and die as our Substitute was and is the great commendation of his love
to us (John
3. The gift of his Spirit to regenerate, call, and
seal us in his grace in “the time of
love” is the gift of God’s everlasting love to us (Ezek. 16:8; Tit. 3:3-6).
“Indeed,
all that God does in time, or will do to all eternity,
is only telling his people how much he loved them from everlasting.” John Gill
‘Twas not to make
Jehovah’s love
Towards the sinner flame,
That Jesus, from His throne
above
A suffering man became.
‘Twas not the death which he
endured,
Nor all the pangs He bore,
That God’s eternal love procured,
For God was love before.
He loved the world
of His elect
With love surpassing
thought;
Nor will His mercy e’er
neglect
The souls so dearly bought.
John Kent
D. The Distinctiveness of It
Let
me spend a little time here. It is utter nonsense to talk about God loving all
men. I sometimes hear preachers try to soft peddle God’s sovereignty by
assuring people that there is a sense in which God loves all men with a love of
benevolence though not with a love of complacency and delight. They say God
loves all men as his creatures, just as he loves trees and toads. If you can
get any comfort from comparing God’s love for you to his love for a frog, I
guess I should not take that away from you, but it simply is not the teaching
of Scripture.
1. God loves his
elect distinctively.
God does not love all men. I would not
emphasize that fact, were it not for the fact that those who teach that God’s
love is universal are guilty of three horrible crimes.
a. They make the love of God
changeable.
b. They make the love of God
meaningless.
c. They destroy the greatest
motive there is for godliness and devotion. Try telling you wife that you love
all women aike. See if that inspires her devotion to you!
The
Word of God tells us in the plainest terms possible that God’s love for his
elect is a special, sovereign, distinctive, and distinguishing love.
·
Isaiah 43:1-5
·
Romans 8:29
·
Romans 9:11-24
2. God loves his
people delightfully.
I
mean by that that God delights, takes pleasure in, and is complacent with his
elect because of his love for them. God so loves us that he smiles on us
perpetually, even when he appears to be frowning upon us!
It is high time that all attempts to divide
the love of God into categories, stages, and degrees be laid aside. They do
nothing to help men and only obscure the glory and grandeur of our God. If God
loves me, he delights in me. If he does not delight in me, he does not love me.
Again I say, try telling your wife,
“Honey, I really do love you. I wish you well. I want nothing but the very best
for you, and am willing to do anything I can for you. But you do not please me.
You are offensive to me. I do not enjoy your company. In fact, I really do not
want to look at you.” If you still have a wife tomorrow, let me know.
Our God loves us as he loves his darling
Son. That means he is well-pleased with us (Matt. 7:5). The Father and the
Son are one; and the Son of God tells us that his “delights” were with us
from eternity (Pro.
E. The Efficacy of It
God’s love is more than a wish or desire in
his heart to save sinners. God’s love for us is an effectual love. That simply
means that those who are the objects of
God’s love shall be saved precisely because they are the objects of his love.
Otherwise the love of God is an utterly useless thing.
1. God’s love is sovereign
(Rom.
2. God’s love is sacrificial (I
John
3. God’s love is saving (Ezek.
37:27).
4. God’s love is steadfast
(John 13:1).
5. God’s love is for sinners
(John
Application: Let’s finish the day as we
began it, by reading John 17:23-24 together. “I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and
that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou
hast loved me. Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with
me where I am; that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me; for
thou lovest me before the foundation of the world.”
What
an amazing, stupendous revelation of God’s love for us! Men tell me that such
teaching as this promotes licentiousness and antinomianism,
that it discourages godliness and good works; but that is absurd. When I think of the things we have been
meditating upon today, that God loved me when I hated him, that he loved me
before the world began, that he loves me as he loves my Savior, that his love
for me will never cease, never change, and never vary, these thoughts compel me
to love him, and lay me under the greatest obligations possible to reverence
him, worship him, devote myself to his glory and his will, and serve his
interests while I live in this world.
·
2 Corinthians 5:14
·
Titus 3:5-8