God's Eternal Love

[00:00:00] Let's look to God once again in prayer. [00:00:09] Father, just as we have sung, we pray that you would give us insight. [00:00:18] For we recognize that we do not always think clear. [00:00:25] We do not always see the things in your word that we should see there. [00:00:31] And at times, in our vain imaginations, we are tempted to make up things that are not even there. [00:00:43] But all of this is not due to your Word, which is perfect and holy and pure. [00:00:51] And we recognize that the default is with us. [00:01:00] But we also recognize that you have given each and every one of us who have come to faith in Christ, the Holy Spirit working in our lives. The same Spirit who has given us the Scriptures and preserved the Scriptures is at work in our lives to help us to become more and more, day by day, conformed to that perfect image that is in Christ Jesus. [00:01:40] And so, Father, we ask as we come to your word, that you would open it to our hearts and minds. [00:01:49] And we ask this in Jesus name. Amen. [00:01:58] Please turn to Jeremiah, chapter 31, and I'm going to be reading the first nine verses of this chapter. [00:02:39] At that time declares the Lord, I will be the God of all the clans of Israel, and they shall be my people. [00:02:51] Thus says the the people who survived the sword found grace in the wilderness when Israel sought for rest, the Lord appeared to him from far away. [00:03:04] I have loved you with an everlasting love. Therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you. [00:03:14] Again I will build you up. You shall be built, O virgin Israel. [00:03:21] Again you shall adorn yourself with tambourines, and shall go forth in the dance of the merrymakers. [00:03:31] Again you shall plant vineyards on the mountains of Samaria. [00:03:36] The planters shall plant, and they shall enjoy the fruit. For there shall be a day when watchmen will call in the hill country of Ephraim. Arise, let us go to Zion, to the Lord our God. [00:03:56] For thus says the Sing aloud with gladness for Jacob and raise shouts for the chief of the nations. Proclaim, give praise and say, O Lord, save your people. The remnant of Israel. [00:04:13] Behold, I will bring them from the north country and gather them from the farthest parts of the earth, among them the blind and the lame, the pregnant woman and she who is in labor together, and a great company shall return here. [00:04:34] With weeping they shall come, and with pleas for mercy I will lead them back. [00:04:42] I will make them walk by brooks of water in a straight path in which they shall not stumble. [00:04:49] For I am a father to Israel, and Ephraim is my firstborn. [00:04:58] Thus ends the reading of God's perfect word. Please be seated. [00:05:32] Verse 3. [00:05:35] The second part is the phrase, I have loved you with an everlasting love. [00:05:49] And that's what I want to tell you about this morning. [00:05:53] I came across a particular quote, and it really hit me hard. [00:06:00] It was a quote from a man based on this text. [00:06:04] And the reason it hit me so hard in particular is it had to do with my sense of humor. [00:06:13] On our trip to presbytery, I was asked about my and my sister Mickey, where we got our sense of humor. It was from our parents. Both of our parents had a good sense of humor. [00:06:27] I also had a grandmother who was quite humorous. [00:06:33] So we come by it naturally. [00:06:37] And there's something that I enjoy doing when I'm around people who are new to me and don't know me. Many of you have known me for a few years now. [00:06:48] But when I'm around people, sometimes the subject comes up. Because in my generation, almost everyone in my generation smoked at one time or another. [00:07:01] I never touched the stuff. [00:07:04] Someone asked me one time why I had never touched it, and I said it was our mother. [00:07:12] Because my mother nagged my father for over 40 years until he finally gave up smoking. [00:07:20] And I couldn't stand the thought of having her nag me. [00:07:25] And so I had no problem when someone said, chicken, why don't you try it? You might like it. No way. [00:07:34] Well, because of that experience, when conversations start up about smoking, I always interject and I say, you know, I never have been able to quit smoking. [00:07:48] And people look at me and they say, you smoke? I said, no, the reason I can never quit smoking is that I never started. [00:08:08] Let me read you a verse, a quote from Gerhardus Vos, a great theologian. [00:08:16] And it was based on his quote was a comment on Jeremiah 31:3. [00:08:23] And he says, the reason God will never stop loving you is that he never began. [00:08:37] And because of my little joke about smoking, that really hit me. [00:08:45] He never began. [00:08:53] The verse here says that God loved you with an everlasting love. [00:09:03] And that Hebrew term there for everlasting doesn't mean something that will go on into the future forever, but it equally points to the fact that it goes as far back as you can go in time and beyond. [00:09:27] Paul confirms this in the New Testament. Please turn with me to Ephesians chapter one. [00:09:46] At presbytery, we got to hear a very, very good presentation of part of chapter one of Ephesians. [00:10:06] And here in Ephesians chapter one, and beginning with verse three, Paul says, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in Him. [00:10:36] Before the foundation of the world. [00:10:41] Before the foundation of the world. [00:10:47] I took a lot of classes in philosophy, didn't take a lot of science classes, but I took enough to realize that even science recognizes that time is a part of this world. We would say a part of the creation. [00:11:13] In the beginning is a reference not only to the beginning of creating things, spirits, but it refers to the beginning of time itself. [00:11:37] God has not revealed everything in the Scriptures about Himself or about his plans or about what he has done, but the things that he has revealed to us, we need to accept them, not necessarily get our minds around them, because I cannot get my mind around timeless before time. [00:12:09] One of my earliest memories in life, I must have been somewhere between two and three years old. [00:12:19] And I was riding in the Jeep that my dad owned a Jeep station wagon. [00:12:27] And this was in the days before seat belts and child safety gear and all that kind of thing. And I am standing on that front seat of the Jeep and I have my arm on my dad's shoulder just towards his neck. [00:12:51] But if you ask me about anything that happened before that, I just, I don't remember. [00:13:03] I was born in the hospital, had to take my mom's word for that. I mean, after all, she was there. [00:13:18] But I was speaking to this text in Ephesians in a congregation that was almost half kids from 10 years old and younger. [00:13:36] It's in a college town, it's in Manhattan, Kansas, where K State is. [00:13:42] And I went there. It was in the summertime. I don't know what I was thinking. I thought I'd have a bunch of college students and I had prepared to talk to them about time and all these kind of things. And then I saw these kids and I said, how am I going to get them to even thinking about this? [00:13:59] And often if you can get the kids to thinking about it, you can get the adults to thinking about it as. As well. [00:14:08] And so it came to my mind to ask the children of the congregation there, when did your mother first love you? [00:14:19] And some of those kids were not hesitant to answer that question. [00:14:25] They didn't take it as a college student would have taken that as a rhetorical question. And. But they replied, and several of them spoke up and said, when I was born. [00:14:37] And I said, have I got news for you. [00:14:41] Your mother loved you before you were born. [00:14:47] Your mother knew that you existed before your dad knew that. [00:14:58] And when she shared that with him, he loved you. [00:15:07] I'm Here to tell you that God loved you before the world began, before time. [00:15:27] And a God who has loved you and chosen you in Christ Jesus, before the world was created, will never stop loving you. [00:16:00] We struggle. [00:16:03] We struggle in this world with our love for others. Often there are some people that are easy to love. [00:16:12] We all know that. [00:16:15] And then there are others that are more difficult to love. [00:16:24] But God's love is such that no matter how difficult you are, he still loves you. [00:16:36] And no matter how much you may struggle with that, There are marriages where one partner in the marriage, or maybe even both, have their doubts about the other. [00:16:55] And sometimes those doubts are because there's a wrong suspicion of the other person. [00:17:03] And sometimes maybe there is something going on. [00:17:09] But often I think those doubts arise within ourselves that we really question. [00:17:22] We question whether someone could love us because we know ourselves in a way that even our closest relationship does not know. [00:17:42] That just because you're married to a person or just because you grew up in the family together. [00:17:50] But what we need to realize is that God knows us perfectly. [00:18:00] And he has determined before we were born, before we were conceived, he has determined to love us with an everlasting love, a love that never fails. [00:18:30] Many loves in this life may fail you. [00:18:34] I don't know all of you and your background. I remember when I was pastoring a small community church, that there was a lady in the church and she told me one week that she didn't like coming to church on Father's Day or on Mother's Day. [00:18:55] And I had an opportunity to sit down with her and talk to her. Her parents treated her horribly and she didn't even have a sibling. She had no brother or sister that the two of them could lean on each other in those kind of situations. [00:19:15] But it was a real eye opener for me that someone could grow up with that. [00:19:23] But this same woman who had no doubt that her parents had no use for her, realized the love of Christ in her life. [00:19:47] That her parents, who didn't seem to go out of their way to help her in life at all, that she had a Father in heaven who sent his only begotten son to die for her sins. [00:20:09] And that didn't happen because of anything good in her. [00:20:20] The answer to the question of when did God first love you? [00:20:27] I can't answer that one for you. [00:20:30] I think some of you here though, could answer the question, when did you first realize God's love in your life? [00:20:41] Was it as a child? That was the case for me. I was raised in the home of our Mother was a believer, our father was not. [00:20:51] But I knew as a child. I knew of the love of Christ for me. [00:20:59] I know others who grew up in homes where there was very little of that, very little thinking of that. And it was when they were in high school or college or maybe later in life. [00:21:17] There was a man that I heard of who was. I believe he was 90 years old when he first came to Faith in Christ. [00:21:29] And he didn't know how to act in church. [00:21:40] The people there really loved him. [00:21:43] But it was a little difficult when he, in church one day, needed to get out of the pew and he wasn't sitting on the end. [00:21:55] And he looked to the people, to his side there as he stood up. And he said, I've got to go pee. [00:22:03] And of course, there was laughter at that. [00:22:09] God waited until late in that man's life to bring him to himself. So do not imagine that you're too old to be one of God's elect, nor that you are too young to be one of his elect. [00:22:29] The gospel call goes out to all. [00:22:34] But those who respond are those who've been given that gift, that gift of faith and the grace of God. [00:22:51] The reason God will never stop loving you is that he never began. [00:23:03] Let's look to God in prayer. [00:23:10] Father, you know us well, each and every one of us. You know our hearts, and you'd know our limitations as well. [00:23:20] That you have given us finite minds. Not a mind like yours that is infinite and comprehends all things. [00:23:31] But, Father, you have revealed certain things to us. [00:23:35] And as difficult as it may be for us to wrap our minds around these concepts, you have a purpose for giving them to us. [00:23:47] We dare not neglect. We dare not neglect your word and the things that you would teach us. [00:23:59] Help us, Father, to receive by faith that truth that you have loved us long, long before we were ever born. [00:24:22] That you have loved us before there was time. [00:24:31] And that you will go on loving us forever and ever. [00:24:44] Give us, Father, the joy of your salvation through Jesus Christ. [00:24:55] Amen.