Good morning to everyone, good to see you all here this morning, a beautiful, sunny, cool morning. It's nice to just go outside this morning and see all my friends on the farm and everybody's happy and scratch some noses. 

So been an interesting week for weather. I think the other day it was 86 degrees at our house and humid until about 4 o'clock, and then by 5 it was 45, so interesting to live in this place. We're going to be continuing our study in 1 John chapter 4 this morning, and we've been through a couple of tough messages the last couple of weeks about false teachers, false spirits, and demonic spirits. 

In our text last week, we saw a clear distinction between that which is from God, the Holy Spirit, and that which is from Satan, the demonic spirits. And John encouraged us to test the spirits, to be discerning, knowing that many false prophets have gone out into the world. We saw that truth is from God, and that error and lies are from Satan and his demonic spirits, that they masquerade as angels of light and ministers of righteousness working in this world. 

These spirits are hard at work to deceive men, to draw them away from the truth and away from God and His love, His gospel, His gift, His Son Jesus Christ. But John tells us that we who believe Jesus, we are of God. We know God and we hear Him. We love His truth, the truth of His saving gospel, and we have a great desire to share this great love of God with all men. 

And that's what He's done in us, in saving us. And that's really what our text is about today: the love of God, the manifestation of this love in the person of His Son Jesus Christ, His saving work on the cross, and the fruit of that love produced through our lives as we abide in Him and love others. This is the good news. This is the explanation of our faith, of our lives, my brothers and sisters, the truth that He loves us. 

Look at our text in 1 John 4, 7 please. Beloved, let us love one another for love is of God, and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God, for God is love. In this, the love of God was manifested toward us that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world that we might live through Him. 

In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. I've given you four points on your outline this morning. First, we're going to see that God is love. Second, we're going to see love manifest. Third, that He loved us. And fourth, we're going to see the fruit of love. 

Well, first in our text in verses 7 to 8, we see that God is love. Beloved, let us love one another for love is of God, and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God, for God is love. We will see in our next couple of studies that John talks repeatedly in this section of perfect love, of love perfected in us. 

The word literally means full or complete. The love that John is talking about is a love that is lacking nothing, that cannot be improved upon, that is full, complete, it's perfect love. And this is the word agape, meaning not an emotional or feely kind of love, not a love of eros or phileo, but a self-sacrificing, all-encompassing, unconditional love. 

This kind of love, this perfect love is of God. It comes only from God. When I was studying for this message, I had an old country song come into my mind from way back in 1980. It was called "Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places." You remember that song? Featured in Urban Cowboy with John Travolta. I was a pagan then, you have to remember. 

So this is what the world does. It seeks love and fulfillment in all the wrong things, in all the wrong places. True agape, perfect love is found only in God. Because God is love. It is His nature. It is who He is. He defines love. He is love. 

And this speaks to the relational nature of God as well. God has existed in eternity past in a relationship within the Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And when God created, He said, "Let us make man in our image." God desired to have a love relationship with man, with His creation, and thus gave this nature, this ability, this desire to man as well—to live in a relationship with God and walk in fellowship with Him as Adam did in the garden. 

We see God's desire for a true love relationship and that He gave to Adam and Eve a will—a choice. He wanted them to choose to love Him. He gave them a will to exercise, to decide, to believe Him, to follow Him, to walk with Him, to obey Him, or to go their own way. Only in this way could there be love—a choice to love God. 

And Adam and Eve chose to disobey God. And they lost fellowship. They lost that relationship with God. But even in this—the greatest tragedy of human history, this monumental act which brought death and the curse into the world—even in this, we see that God loved us so much. He desired so much for a relationship with man that He was willing to give His own Son to redeem man, to bring us back into a right relationship with Him. 

God is love. God defines love. And He shows us who He is by His love. Love comes from God. Ephesians 6:23 says, "Peace to the brethren and love with faith from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ." Love comes from God. 1 Thessalonians 4:9, "But concerning brotherly love, you have no need that I should write to you, for you yourselves are taught by God to love one another." 

In 2 Thessalonians 3:5, "Now may the Lord direct your hearts into the love of God and into the patience of Christ." And 2 Timothy 1:7, "For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind." Verse 10 in our text explains this as well. 

In this is love. Not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. God is love. And love is manifest by God in that He sent Jesus to be the payment. That word "propitiation" means a full, satisfactory payment for our sins. This truth is really at the center of what John is saying, and it's at the center of everything concerning our faith and our salvation and our Christian life and our hope. 

We can only really begin to understand the love of God by looking at the cross. This is where the love of God—the agape, self-sacrificial love that God is—is manifest, is shown, is made known. This is what John tells us in verse 9 of our text. He says, "In this, the love of God was manifested toward us—" it was shown to us that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world that we might live through Him. 

In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. How can we know and understand perfect love? It cannot be found in man. It cannot be found in the things of this world. This world system and the men of this world are corrupt, filled with sin. 

Even we as believers in Jesus Christ are yet to be glorified, yet to be released fully and finally from the presence and the effect of sin that dwells in us. Perfect love can only be seen at the cross, where God gave His only begotten Son to die in our place for our sins to save us from the wrath to come. This is where Jesus willingly gave Himself for His enemies. 

This is love. Turn over to Romans 5 with me, please. Romans 5, beginning at verse 6. Paul explains this so well in this section. Romans 5:6, he says, "For when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die, yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die. But God demonstrates His own love toward us." 

Look at this: "And that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." Now flip back a couple pages to Romans 3:21. Paul, explaining justification here, says, "But now the righteousness of God apart from the law is revealed, being witnessed by the law and the prophets, even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ to all and on all who believe. For there's no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus." 

"Whom God set forth as a propitiation by His blood through faith to demonstrate His righteousness. Because in His forbearance, God had passed over the sins that were previously committed to demonstrate at the present time His righteousness, that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus." 

Notice what John says in verse 10 of our text. "In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us." He loved us even when we were against Him, when we were His enemies, when we were at enmity with Him, as Romans 8:7 says. He loved us. Love is from God. God is love. God initiated the plan of salvation in sending His Son to die in our place. 

And in this is the essence of our salvation—the truth of how a man can be made right, brought back into a right relationship with God, to praise Him and glorify Him and walk in fellowship with Him as God has always intended. It's so very important that we understand this truth, that He loved us. 

I know you're familiar with the parable that Jesus taught in Matthew 13, in verse 45, when He said, "Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant seeking beautiful pearls, who when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had and bought it." Matthew 13 is a series of parables that Jesus taught in order to begin to teach His disciples, to begin to prepare them for the ministry that they would have in the church age. 

They did not understand the gospel. They did not understand the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ at this time. They were looking for the king. They were looking for political deliverance and power in the kingdom. But they did not know or understand the reality of a period of time between Jesus' first coming and His second coming. 

In chapter 12 of Matthew, the Jewish leaders had fully and finally rejected Christ, committing the unpardonable sin, attributing the work of the Holy Spirit to the work of Satan. And now we see that Jesus turns to His disciples to focus on them, to prepare them for the ministry that He has for them, and He tells the parable of the soils. 

He tells the parable of the wheat and the tares and what things will be like as they go out and preach the gospel. In this context, in verse 45, Jesus gives them the parable of the pearl of great price. What is Jesus saying here in these two short verses? He tells us that there's a man, a merchant, who is seeking. He's searching for a treasure, for a pearl, a great and valuable pearl, and it says when he finds it, he goes and sells all that he has to buy it. 

I've heard it taught many times, and perhaps you have too, that we are the merchant, that we must deny ourselves, we must give up all that we have and are in order to buy Christ. That Jesus is the pearl of great price, and that salvation involves me giving up all and sacrificing everything to buy Christ. 

My brothers and sisters, this turns the gospel on its head. And I have to tell you that Paul has something to say about this in Romans 3:10. He says, "As it is written, there is none righteous, no, not one. There's none who understands. There's none who seeks after God. They have all turned aside. They have all together become unprofitable. There is none who does good, no, not one." 

We did not go seeking after God, and we certainly did not give everything nor anything to buy Christ, to buy our salvation. Titus 3:4 says, "But when the kindness and the love of God our Savior toward man appeared, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Savior, that having been justified by His grace, we should become heirs to the hope of eternal life." 

We were not seeking Christ. We did not give everything to buy Christ. But Jesus did come seeking us. God did send Jesus to accomplish salvation and to save us. And my friends, the whole point here, the whole message here is that it was Jesus who gave everything. It was Jesus who laid down His life to save us. Luke 19:10 says, "For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost." 

John 3:16, we love that verse, "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved." John 15:13, "Greater love has no one than this than to lay down one's life for his friends." 

1 John 2:2, "And He Himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the whole world." John tells us in our text, "In this, the love of God was manifested toward us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him." 

In this is love—not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and He sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. We have to get this straight, my friends. The gospel of Jesus Christ, the good news of salvation by grace through faith, is not that we loved God, not that we did some great work for God, not that we earned our way to God or sought after Him, but that He loved us—that He came seeking us, that He gave all and sacrificed Himself and paid the full, satisfactory payment for our sins, that He took the punishment that I deserved. 

And that by faith—and faith alone in Jesus alone—we can receive the righteousness of God and come back into a right relationship with Him, a true love relationship with God. It is not that we loved Him, but that He loved us. In fact, we were against Him. We were His enemies as sinners in Adam. We were the ungodly—not the good people, but the ungodly. And praise God that it's the ungodly, the one who does not work, but believes. This is the one whom God justifies. 

Romans 4 explains this so clearly. Let's turn to Romans 4 and just look at those first few verses. Romans 4:1, this falls on the heels of what we read in Romans 3 about justification by grace through faith in Jesus Christ and His sacrifice. 

Romans 4:1, "What then shall we say that Abraham our father has found according to the flesh? For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. For what does the scripture say? Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness." Look at verse 4: "Now to him who works, the wages are not counted as grace, but as debt. But to him who does not work but believes on Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is accounted for righteousness." 

"Just as David also describes the blessedness of the man to whom God imputes righteousness apart from works. Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven and whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord shall not impute sin." 

I was at the farmer's market yesterday, and a guy came up and he said, "Boy, I'd like to buy a lamb roast, but I don't have any money." And I said, "Well, we take debit cards now." "Oh, okay." So he pulled out his debit card, and I swiped it on that little thing you plug into your phone, and I got home and I opened up my email and it said, "You have cash." 

When he swiped his card, his money was credited. It was imputed to my account. I don't know how all that works, but I appreciate it. So this is what we see here about justification. When we believe Christ, when we place our faith in Christ, God imputes our sin to His account, and He imputes His very righteousness to our account. This is an amazing and profound truth. 

And it's also an amazing commentary on religion. Who goes to heaven, my friends? Who does God justify? Is it the good people? The religious people? The ones who are trying their best and doing all that they can to earn their way into God's favor? No. It's the ungodly. The one who knows that he is ungodly—that he does not deserve to go to heaven—but he believes Jesus, trusts Christ and what He has done, what He finished at the cross, and casts himself wholly on the grace of God, taking God at His word and His promise. 

Taking that for himself through faith. It is the man who realizes his sin and his need and turns to Jesus in faith. This faith, this man is justified—not by works, but by faith. And to him is imputed the righteousness of God. This is grace. This is love manifest, shown, demonstrated to us in the cross of Christ. 

I like for you to just listen to Jesus' words in Luke 18 as He explains this. "Also He spoke this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and despised others. Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself. God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this tax collector. 

I fast twice a week. I give tithes of all that I possess." And the tax collector, standing afar off, would not so much as raise his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast saying, "God, be merciful to me, a sinner." I tell you this: this man went down to his house justified rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted. 

So we see that God is love. We see that we did not love Him, but He loved us, and that He manifests this love at the cross of Jesus Christ—the ultimate act of agape, self-sacrificial love. And it's through justification by faith that we can be brought into a right relationship with Him. Realizing our need, realizing our sin, and turning to Him in faith alone. 

Finally, this morning, we see the fruit of God's love in our lives as believers. This truth forms the bookends of our text this morning. Look at verse 7 with me, please. "Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God, and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God." 

Verse 11, "Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another." And I like verse 9 where he says that God's love was manifested for the purpose that we might live through Him. How do we live? How do we love? Through Him. Through Jesus Christ. Through His life in us. That's what we're going to see. 

God's intention for us—for His children, for those who believe Jesus—is that His love would be poured out through us to others. This is sanctification. This is holiness. This is obedience. This is the command of the new covenant, which we've seen in this epistle, to believe Jesus and to love one another. 

And this is also the great means of confidence, of assurance for the believer. John keeps coming back to this great truth in light of his main purpose to give us assurance of our salvation. John says everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Love is the hallmark of the Christian life. Only believers can love in an agape, self-sacrificial way. 

Because only believers have been released from the controlling power of sin in Adam, and only believers have the very life of God—the Holy Spirit, Jesus Christ—living in them. It's in this way that we can live. That we can produce the fruit of love through our lives. Down in verse 12, John says, "If we love one another, God abides in us and His love has been perfected in us." 

You see, my brother, my sister in Christ, we now love because we have been changed—because we've been made new. We've been born of God, and God's love has been perfected in us. This is amazing truth. God has put His love into us. 

And we see this fruit of love poured out through us as we believe and abide in Him one day at a time. As we trust Him, as we look to Him, as we depend on Him. This is assurance to us. This is evidence of our faith and our salvation in Him. 

Now this comes back again, not to our performance—not in living up to some objective standard of law or level of performance—but this comes back to your heart's desire, your deepest passion, and the fruit that is produced through us. The love manifest toward God and men, especially the brethren. 

Examine your heart, my friends. Think about what it is you most want. What really matters? What is your deep passion in this life? Is it to love one another? Is it to give of yourself and to glorify God? Is it to bring men to faith in Christ? Your loved ones, your co-workers, your neighbors, and every man for whom Christ died. Are these the true desires of your heart? 

And do you see this fruit of love manifest in your life? Let me ask you, where did that come from? How does this come about? Is this something that you mustered up yourself? Is this something that you foster by chanting chants and lighting candles or giving money and practicing rituals? 

Or is this who you are? Because of what God has done in you. Have you been born of God? Do you know God? Is it God who has worked this work in you and poured out His love filling your heart? 

If you love, then you have been born of God and you know God. That's what John says. And this love is a fruit of the work and power of God in us—not something we bring about on our own or do as an obligation or religious exercise or duty. 

In Romans 5:5, Paul said, "Now hope does not disappoint because the love of God has been poured out into our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us." It's a full, complete, perfect love that God has put into us. For when we were still without strength in due time, Christ died for the ungodly. 

Galatians 5:22 says, "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control, and against such there is no law." The fruit of the Spirit is love. It is the Holy Spirit in us that works in us, that empowers us to love. 

And it is Jesus Christ living His life in and out through us that pours this love out to others in a real and tangible way as we abide in Him through faith. Turn over to Ephesians 3:16. We've looked at this passage many times, but I think it's so important to understand how God intends to work this out in our lives. 

Ephesians 3:16, Paul's praying for the believers in Ephesus, and he says that He, God, would grant you according to the riches of His glory to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man that Christ may dwell in your hearts, how? Through faith. 

"That you being rooted and grounded in love may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height to know the love of Christ." To know it experientially through my life by His power. "To know the love of Christ which passes knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God." 

You see, this is perfect, complete, full love, my friends, and it's He who is able to accomplish so much more than we could ever ask or think. It comes by the Holy Spirit who was given to us and the life and work of Christ in us, out through us, pouring His love out to others by faith. 

I live by faith. By trust in Him. I'm a branch abiding in the vine. He's producing the fruit through me. This is true self-sacrificial love—giving of ourselves, our time, our resources, our money, our very lives to glorify God and bring others to Christ. 

In 1 John 3:18, he said, "My little children, let us not love in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth." We do not give pious platitudes or love in pretense, but we love in deed and in truth, in reality. 

Bobby's been reading a book on farm marketing for your business—a short little book that a lady wrote, and it's called "Marketing from the Heart." It's an instructive good little book, really. But the premise of this book is that you need to show people that you're here to meet their needs, that you're here to make their life better, that you need to give the appearance of genuineness. 

And I thought, I genuinely do love people. I genuinely do want to make their lives better. I do think that what I'm doing is good for them—producing quality food, quality meat. But most of all, I want to have the chance to witness to them. I want to tell them about Jesus. 

I don't have to put on a pretense of genuineness because I genuinely want for men to be saved. And it's God that's put that desire in my heart. It's God that's poured out that love into my heart. I get a little distracted sometimes. I don't always renew my mind to His truth. I find myself not witnessing, not thinking about those things. And I need to come back. 

I need to repent of that. I need to turn back and remember my first love and get in His Word and think about why I'm really here and what I really want. But all the time, my heart is for men to be saved—to hear the truth, to encourage the brethren. 

This is what God has done. In 1 Thessalonians 2:8, Paul said, "So affectionately longing for you, we were well pleased to impart to you not only the Gospel of God, but also our own lives, because you had become dear to us." This is the love that God poured out through us. Into us. 

And He works to pour out through us. And our life as believers in Jesus Christ is a response to this love of God manifest at the cross. Please get this, my brothers and sisters. Our life is not a life of works and religions and rituals trying to earn God's favor. Our life is a response to what Jesus has done. 

Our life is a life of thankfulness to God for His great love with which He loved us in Christ, for His indescribable gift. I read an unbelievable story this week about a man in India. He lived in a small village surrounded by mountains. 

In order to get to the nearest town, the people of his village had to either travel over a very steep hill, a small mountain, and straight down the other side, or they had to go a much greater distance all the way around that range of mountains into that next town on a little path. And one day in the 1950s, this man was working nearby, and his young wife came to bring him his lunch. 

And on the way, she slipped on the rocks and fell and sustained serious injuries. And because it took so long to take her all the way around those mountains on the narrow road to get to medical attention in the nearby town, she died on the way. And the young man was overwhelmed by these events. And he determined that no one else would suffer such a fate. 

And for the next 22 years—this is the 1950s in rural India— for the next 22 years, he took a hammer and a chisel and he carved a road through that mountain. It's almost impossible to fathom. But he was determined to sacrifice the rest of his life if necessary, so that his fellow villagers would have access to the hospital if someone experienced life-threatening injuries. 

Through solid rock, I saw a picture of it—this man carved a path 360 feet long, 30 feet wide, and 25 feet high so that they had a clear road through the mountain to the next town. For 22 years, he hammered and chiseled away stone, giving his life so that his neighbors could live. 

Can you imagine watching this man work day by day from your youth if you lived in this village? Perhaps mocking him, poking fun at the crazy old guy. But then one day realizing—perhaps as your young wife falls ill or suffers injury—that the sacrifice of this man and his life saved the life of your loved one. There'd be an overwhelming gratitude that would pour over you, a thankfulness that could hardly be expressed. 

My brothers and sisters, how much more? How much more our gratitude, our overwhelming thankfulness to God for the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross to secure my eternal life? That is what John is saying in verse 11 of our text: "Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another." 

Why do we love? Why do we sacrifice ourselves? Why do we want so badly to lead men to Christ? Is it to earn a jewel in our crown as my mother used to tell me? Is it to earn our way to heaven? Is it to be good people and to have people think well of us? 

Our life is a life of gratitude, of thankfulness, of worship of Jesus Christ because He loved us and He gave Himself for us. In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul wrote, "But thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." 

2 Corinthians 2, "Now thanks be to God who always leads us in triumph in Christ and through us diffuses the fragrance of His knowledge in every place." 2 Corinthians 9:15, "Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift." 

When we come to the end of ourselves, when we come through the truth, through the Word of God, to the reality of who God is and who we are—to our utter sinfulness and our need and our inability—and when we hear the good news of salvation in Jesus Christ by grace through faith because of His sacrifice on the cross—when we turn from idols to serve the living God, and when we come to a fullness of the understanding of the grace of God, of His great love with which He loved us, what can we say but thank You? 

How can we live but thank You? This is our heart. This is our faith, our dependence on God for every breath, for each and every day of life by His grace. Our life, our submission in presenting ourselves, our bodies as a living sacrifice to God. Our heart attitude is one of thankfulness, deep abiding thankfulness for what God has done in Jesus Christ. 

Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. Let's close in prayer. 

Father, we're so thankful for Your gift of Jesus Christ. Thank You that You loved us even when we were against You, when we were Your enemies. Help us to really grasp the Gospel. Help us to really understand the truth. And help us to live in thankfulness as You pour Your love out to others through us. And let it all be for Your glory for the sake of Jesus Christ. In His name we pray. Amen.