The Love of God, Part 4 B

You cannot isolate one attribute of God and let it erase all the rest. So God will love, but in loving He will not obliterate His judgment. God is God.

And God will consistently and purely and with absolute holiness enact everything that is consistent with every characteristic that He possesses. Today, because of smartphones and the internet, you can be certain that whenever tragedy strikes, you'll hear about it. In fact, it's hard to avoid being bombarded with reports about the coronavirus pandemic, riots, murders, natural disasters. The bad news is rampant.

And you know what else you can be certain of? Your friends, your family, your co-workers are hearing those reports as well, and they could be wondering why God allows such calamities. Because after all, isn't God a loving God?

Why would He allow things to happen that could make Him look uncaring and cruel? John MacArthur has answers today on Grace To You as he continues his series titled The Love of God. Now before John starts the lesson, we need to take a minute to talk about some important ministry partners, men and women, who have a direct role in your ability to hear the broadcast you're hearing right now. John, it's only fitting to remind our listeners about how important these behind-the-scenes partners are.

Yeah, and Phil, I know what you're referring to, and it's the precious folks who are staffing the radio stations on which our listeners are hearing this. People occasionally ask me, with all the Internet and development of digital access to data and to information, is radio still important? And my answer is it's more important than it's ever been.

It is, for most people, the entry point. Radio is critical for our ministry. It hasn't diminished.

In fact, we believe it's escalated in importance. But what makes radio such a valuable partner is the staff of the radio station. We thank the Lord for these people.

We wouldn't be reaching the people that we reach without that partnership. So I'm just going to urge you listeners—I know you're grateful for our ministry coming to you on your radio station and others as well—you need to let those people know. Write them a letter, give them a phone call, send them a text, whatever means you use, an email, and tell the folks at the radio station how much grace to you means to you. Let them know the ministry has touched their lives.

And be specific. Give your testimony to them, because they need to hear that. In the end, when you connect the station in a personal way to your life, you also affirm the ministry of grace to you. So as a listener, take the opportunity to thank the folks who partner with us to make this ministry possible. They need your gratitude as much as we do. So do it today, won't you? And tell them thanks on our behalf as well. Yes, please do that. Send a letter or email to the team at this radio station. I know it will encourage them. And also, know that we'd love to hear from you.

I will pass on our contact information after the lesson. But right now, stay here as John continues his study on the love of God. God loves in a way that is consistent with His full glory. God loves in a manner that is consistent with His full glory.

God glorifies Himself by manifesting all of His person. And God's saving purpose and God's love is tied to God's glory, not man's. It is tied to God's purposes, not man's.

It is tied to God's desires, not man's, and God's will, not man's. Now look at Jeremiah 14, and this is nothing new but another illustration among many of this great principle. Jeremiah 14, verse 7, although our iniquities testify against us, although our iniquities testify against us, O Lord, act for Thy name's sake. You see, the prophets really understood this, that God was compelled to do whatever revealed His glory. That's what He did. Our iniquities testify against us, but O Lord, act for Thy name's sake.

What is He saying? Forgive us because that too will display Your glory. Later in the chapter, look at verse 20. We know our wickedness, O Lord, the iniquity of our fathers, for we have sinned against Thee. Do not despise us.

Why? For Thy own name's sake. Do not disgrace the throne of Thy glory. Remember and do not annul Thy covenant with us. In other words, what they're saying is, God, You made a promise to this nation. You can't leave us in this kind of situation.

You've got to come back. Your glory is at stake. What aspect of His glory? Not His wrath, not His grace, not His patience, but His faithfulness, His promise because He made a covenant.

Do it for Your own name's sake. Don't disgrace the throne of Your glory. Remember and don't annul Your covenant. So you see, the Old Testament prophets and the psalmist all understood, and so did the people that whatever God did, He did for His own glory.

That's the simple truth. And if God chooses to save some and not others, that is to the glory of God because God does what is consistent with His glory. In Romans chapter 1 and verse 5, Paul says that the grace of God, which called Him to be an apostle, by which He preached the gospel, which brought about the obedience of faith among the nations, end of verse 5, was for His name's sake. Again, salvation is for God's glory.

Third John, that little epistle says in verse 7, they went out for the sake of the name. They preached the gospel for the sake of the name, for the glory of God. Salvation is for God's glory. Vengeance is for God's glory.

Patience is for God's glory. Faithfulness is for God's glory. Every aspect of God's nature puts His glory on display. And you cannot isolate one attribute of God and let it erase all the rest. So God will love, but in loving He will not obliterate His judgment.

In showing compassion, He will not eliminate His justice. God is God and God will consistently and perfectly and purely and with absolute holiness enact everything that is consistent with every characteristic that He possesses. So for the purposes of His eternal glory, God does what He does, whether it is to save sinners or damn them.

We can say it this way. While God loves the world, while God is not willing that any should perish, while God finds no pleasure in the death of the wicked, while God feels compassion for all who die in their sins, while God offers warnings of judgment and a gospel invitation to the whole world, in the end He will still be glorified by the damnation of sinners. Or He wouldn't do it because He will always do what gives Him glory. His sincere and legitimate and real love to sinners is not separated from His ultimate glory. His ultimate glory demands that He not save everybody, or He would.

You say, well then how can His love be real? Well, a human judge may have a sincere compassion for a guilty criminal, sincere pity, real tenderness, and yet be forced to have him executed to uphold the standard of justice. You see, enacting justice does not necessarily eliminate compassion.

You can weep over one because you love that one, while at the same time upholding the standard of righteousness. R. L. Dabney writes about Chief Justice Marshall, who wrote a book called The Life of Washington, actually several volumes on the history of George Washington. And he writes several volumes on the history of George Washington.

And one section in that work on Washington deals with Major Andre, a famous name you remember. And Marshall in writing about Washington says this, perhaps on no occasion of his life did the commander-in-chief obey with more reluctance the stern mandates of duty and of policy, end quote. In other words, he felt compassion and love and affection for the man, but the standard of righteousness had to be upheld in order to maintain the integrity of his office and the dignity of his person. About that incident, Dabney comments, in this historical instance we have these facts. Washington had plenary power to kill or to save alive.

He was commander-in-chief. Yet he signed his death warrant with spontaneous decisiveness. He goes on to say, every deliberate rational volition is regulated by the agent's dominant subjective disposition and prompted by his own subjective motive. But that motive is a complex, not a simple modification of spirit.

That's well put. To make that kind of judgment doesn't mean the only thing he felt was justice. There was a complex of motives, a complex of attitudes, but the end result was the result of the most compelling of those. Dabney goes on to say the motive of a single decision may be complex, involving many intellectual considerations of prudence or righteous policy and several distinct and even competing propensions of the optative powers. Washington's volition to sign the death warrant of Andre did not arise from the fact that his compassion was slight or feigned, but from the fact that it was rationally counter-poised by a complex of superior judgments and propensions of wisdom, duty, patriotism, and moral indignation. He says the pity was real, but was restrained by superior elements of motive.

Washington had official and bodily power to discharge the criminal, but he had not the sanction of justice. And God has that complex of motives which in the end must manifest justice, not in every case, but in some at His own discretion. Now, this should be obvious to any thinking person who looks at Scripture. It is obvious God seeks His own glory, right? It is obvious that everything He does is for His glory.

His glory is the manifestation of the fullness of who He is. Therefore He's going to get glory in wrath as well as in grace. So He's going to do what manifests wrath as well as grace. We see that throughout the Old Testament. Some people live and are forgiven and some were killed by God directly in their sin, right? And God made those choices and was glorified in either case. When He judged and destroyed the people in Israel, that gave Him glory. When He forgave and restored them, that gave Him glory. And the point is that God will be glorified in all those ways. Now there are some people who don't want to accept that.

And so this is the scenario that they will come up with. God loves everybody so much, God wants everybody saved. And God is calling everyone to be saved, but the power to be saved is not His, it's in man.

And man refuses to exercise that power. He refuses to make that move and make that choice because He loves His sin. And His sin is more powerful than God, right? Wouldn't you have to conclude that? If God wants everybody to be saved and the power is in man and God wants them to be saved and God does everything He can do to get them saved but they don't become saved, then whatever is working in them is more powerful than God.

And then you have to add another component. And they say also the difficulty is that Satan is making a lifelong effort to keep the person from believing. So the combination of their own fallen flesh and sin and the efforts of Satan are just more clever and more powerful than God. I can't accept that because those who believe that are saying God wants everybody saved and He's exerting all His power, all His omnipotence that He can muster on the free will of the sinner, hoping He'll repent and believe for salvation. God is not indifferent.

He is loving. He's compassionate. He's working as hard as He can to get people saved and they just won't. Now such a perspective saves the sincerity of God. It saves the love of God at the expense of the power of God and the sovereignty of God, right? He's really not in charge and He can't pull it off, though He is sincerely compassionate and He does love them. That diminishes God's glory. On the other hand, let's go the other way. Some would say, no, God has the power.

By the way, that was an Arminian approach. Some would say God has the power and God has the sovereignty. He just hates sinners. So He doesn't care about them. He doesn't feel anything toward them.

That's a hyper-Calvinist perspective. He's not loving. He's not compassionate.

He just loves His own. And what you've done there is you've saved the sovereignty of God and the power of God at the expense of what? The love, the compassion of God.

You can't do that either because the Bible is replete with evidence that God loves and is compassionate. How else do you explain the tears of Jesus, Luke 9? How else do you explain the tears of Jesus, Luke 19, 41, when He wept over Jerusalem? How do you explain the tears of God that were cried through the eyes of Jeremiah?

How do you explain the tears of Paul? God loves and God is compassionate and God grieves and God aches because He cares about sinners. His pity is real. His compassion is real.

His love is real. But that does not mean that He saves everyone because pity and love and compassion are overridden by weightier matters in God's eternal purpose. God truly pities, but that pity is counterbalanced by superior motives so that even though He pities the sinner, He does not will to save the sinner because if He did, He would. The all-wise mind of God can look at the multiplicity of issues in His vast kingdom and He has good reasons and motives to do every single thing He does, actions for which we have not the least conception.

We have no idea why. But we do know this. His ultimate goal is not to please the evangelical majority. His ultimate goal is not the greatest aggregate of well-being among His creatures.

His ultimate goal is what? His glory. And we don't know all the ways in which God may deem His glory is most highly promoted. All that we can say is this, whatever God does in saving, whatever He does in damning, whatever He does in electing, whatever He does in rejecting is the most for His glory beyond anything else and apart from every other consideration. God's purpose is not to make the most sinners in the universe happy. His purpose is to glorify Himself. And God may see in His omniscience divinely rational ground for every single thing He does, though we can't see it at all. God knows and does what brings Him glory.

And obviously He is glorified when vessels are fitted for wrath, just as when vessels are prepared for glory. A monarch, let's say, benevolent king has two murderers before him on trial, both guilty. Murderer A has committed a crime equal to murderer B.

Their culpability is exactly the same. However, murderer A is a physician, a medical practitioner. Murderer B has absolutely no knowledge of the craft. Murderer A is not just a physician, he is the best. The king finds both A and B equally guilty, yet he reprieves A.

Why? Because he is in his kingdom there is a plague and that plague is destroying lives. And he knows that the skill of this physician can save lives. So A is reprieved simply because of his skill to help the suffering. B is hanged. He's hanged for murder. But some people think he's hanged for not going to medical school.

But that's to miss the point. A, who escapes, was equally guilty of murder. Isn't it true then that B was really hanged because he didn't know medicine?

No. B was hanged because he murdered. A was spared because there was a purpose which the king knew he could fulfill. So it is with God. We all should be damned. But God has designed for some of us to fulfill a redemptive purpose and purely on that basis alone we are redeemed, though as guilty as those who perish. So that it's all of grace and it's all for divine and holy purposes which are unknown to us apart from the unfolding of those in the experience of our lives and someday perhaps in retrospect from glory. God knows what His purposes are. He is wise. He is sovereign.

His motives are unrevealed to us. But this we know whatever He does, He will do for the sake of His own glory. He will put Himself on display as a God of justice, judgment, vengeance, wrath, punishment. He will put Himself on display as a God of mercy, grace, love, forgiveness and everything in the middle, a God of patience, a God of faithfulness. The salvation of some sinners and the eternal misery of others all focuses on God's glory.

And friends, that's all we need to know. And then we just worship God for His glory. And then when we think about our own salvation, what does that elicit? Gratitude, overwhelming gratitude. Why, oh God, why out of all, why was I in the A group?

Why? So a true compassion and love for sinners is restrained by a consistent and absolutely holy motive so that it never takes the form of a will to regenerate. God's compassion is real. His love is genuine. But overruling it is an immutable and sovereign necessity to display His glory in His judgment.

And that's why He doesn't save everybody. His glory demands the true and complete satisfaction of all His wondrous attributes. And when we look at our own lives and we see that we have been saved and we have been forgiven and we have been given eternal life and been imputed the righteousness of Christ and we're on our way to eternal glory, purely at the discretion of God who prompted our hearts, it is an overwhelming cause for praise and worship and adoration, isn't it?

It should fill us with thanksgiving that should come out with every breath, every breath. You say, what about the people on the other side? Well, the Bible addresses them. And all I can say is this, to those of you who don't know Christ, the issue is always your unbelief. You can't look around to see if your name is on a list of the chosen.

There's no list, at least in this world. You don't need to try to talk to somebody who can find out for you from God whether you've been chosen. What you need to do is repent and believe because that's what the Bible tells you to do. In fact, the Bible says God has commanded all men everywhere to repent. And Jesus said, Him that comes to Me, I'll not turn away. And the book of Revelation ends with this invitation, whosoever will, let him come.

It's not an issue of trying to find out if you belong to the ones that God has chosen to display His grace. It's an issue of whether you're willing to turn from your sin. And that's what God says to you, turn from your sin. In fact, the prophet said, why will you die? Repent, turn, turn, why will you die?

As if to say it doesn't have to happen. These inscrutable truths about the glory of God are beyond us, but one thing is not beyond us. If you confess your sins and believe in your heart that God raised Jesus from the dead, you'll be saved and on your way to heaven and numbered among the elect. And you forever and ever and ever will be an agent through whom God will display the glory of His grace and His love and His mercy and His forgiveness and His kindness and not one through whom He will display forever His justice and His judgment. And so, I say to you what Jesus would say if you were here, repent and believe the gospel. Believe that Jesus died and rose again for you. Embrace Him as Lord and Savior, turning from your sin and become one of God's own children and enter into the sphere where God is glorified through His goodness and His grace. Let's bow in prayer. Father, these passages and these thoughts that come from Your Word are so profound and yet so essential for us.

We can't go through life dictating to You how You ought to act, what You ought to do. We need to gladly submit ourselves to the one compelling driving motive of the whole universe and that is that You would be glorified. Oh God, we thank You for glorifying Yourself. You are worthy to be honored and praised and exalted by all created beings. Father, thank You for calling sinners to repent and believe. And may sinners do that even this day and enter into Your grace and the manifestation of Your glory through the means of Your love for all eternity. We thank You for such a privilege, such a wonder in Christ's name. Amen. This is Grace to You with John MacArthur.

Thanks for being with us. John has been Grace to You's featured speaker for over 51 years now. He's also Chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary. His current study is looking at how the Lord loves you and how you can demonstrate that love to others.

It's simply titled The Love of God. Well, friend, can I ask you to do something for us? If the teaching you hear on Grace to You has benefited you, maybe in the trials you faced during the coronavirus pandemic, would you let us know? Your testimony would greatly encourage John and our staff. When you have time, jot a note and send it our way. Email is a great way to reach us. Just write to letters at gty dot org.

Once again, that's letters at gty dot org. Or if you prefer regular mail, you can send a note to Grace to You, Box 4000, Panorama City, California 91412. And if you're looking for a more in-depth study of God's word, let me encourage you to download our free app, simply titled The Study Bible. It gives you the text of Scripture in the English Standard, King James, and American Standard versions, along with instant access to thousands of online resources, including blog articles, study guides, and John's entire sermon archive. The notes to our flagship resource, the MacArthur Study Bible, are also available as an affordable in-app purchase. To download the free Study Bible app, visit gty dot org.

That's gty dot org. Now for John MacArthur and the entire Grace to You staff, I'm Phil Johnson with a question for you. How can God be a God of love if He takes some people to heaven and sends others to hell? Consider that tomorrow when John continues his series, The Love of God. Be here for another half hour of unleashing God's truth, one verse at a time, on Grace to You.