The Love of God, Part 4 A

God loves in a way that is consistent with His full glory. 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. Welcome to Grace to You with John MacArthur.

I'm your host, Phil Johnson. Today John continues a study that on the surface might not seem particularly controversial, but the simple phrase, God is love, can be challenging when you consider that He also judges people, even sends them to hell. So how can God be loving and yet punish people for eternity?

And how can He be a God of grace and still allow evil in the world? John is answering those questions and much more in his current series on Grace to You. It's a biblical look at the love of God. And with that, let's get to the lesson.

Here's John MacArthur. When we announced we're going to speak about the love of God, most people would think, well that's a fairly simple, straightforward, direct subject, one that would be easy to understand, easy to treat. But I think we have found in going through this concept of the love of God that it has some profound mystery and it has some depth to it that taxes our greatest intellectual and even our greatest spiritual capacities. At the very beginning when we started the series on God's love, I said to you that to say to people that God loves the world is simple, but to accept that statement as fact is not so simple. There are some probing, disturbing, and often unanswered questions that plague the minds of anybody who thinks deeply about the idea that God loves the world. For example, if God is love and loves the world, why is the world such a place of tragedy where so many people suffer so severely? If God is love and loves the world, why does He allow disease and death and why does He allow eternal hell? If God loves the world, why does He let people perish and why is He their punisher? If God loves the world, then why didn't He develop a plan to save the world?

If God is a loving Father, a loving Father of all humanity who cares so deeply, why doesn't He act like a human father would act who would never allow his children to make a choice that could destroy them if he could overrule it or prevent it? Now these kinds of questions are deep questions and when people struggle for an answer, it very often leads them to some seriously wrong conclusions. These very questions have driven people to universalism. That is the idea that in the end everybody will be saved and that'll solve the problem. God does love and in the end He'll just save everybody.

These questions have led some other people to what is called annihilationism, that God loves the world so much He could never punish people forever in hell so the believers will go to heaven and the unbelievers will just go out of existence and there will be no conscious punishment at all. These kinds of questions have not only driven people to universalism and annihilationism, they have driven people to hyper-Calvinism, to saying that basically God loves His elect and hates everybody else, feels no compassion for any other than those who are His by virtue of a divine decree and is content to send people to hell as He is content to send some to heaven. And others have solved this problem by being driven into Arminianism.

Arminianism is the theological perspective that basically says man is sovereign and God can't really determine what he's going to do. He just leaves it up to man and God does love everybody and certainly wishes everybody would get saved but everybody won't and so God's as disappointed as anybody else would be who would like to see that happen. But universalism or annihilationism or hyper-Calvinism or Arminianism are not biblical responses to this very, very important issue of God loving the world. We have to turn to the Bible to learn the truth and we can understand the problem clearly.

We can understand what is at stake here. We can't fully comprehend all of its implications but at least we can understand the problem if we can't fully grasp the solution and we have to go to the Word of God. And when we go to the Word of God, what I've tried to do is to simplify what it teaches about God's love into three propositions. Proposition number one, God's love to the world is unlimited in extent.

It is unlimited in extent. God so loved the world. He does love the world. There is an unlimited love of God which extends to all men and manifests itself in common grace, compassion, warnings, and the gospel invitation. And that is God's unlimited love. God's love to the world then is unlimited in extent.

That is, it extends to the whole world. But the second proposition that was essential for an understanding of God's love is this, God's love is limited in degree. He does love the world enough to give them common grace and compassion and warnings and a gospel invitation. But He does not love them the way He loves His own. The love that God has to the world is bounded by time and space. It is temporary.

It is temporal. It turns to hate for those who reject Him and ultimately He will cast those people into eternal judgment. His love for the world is not like His love for His own. In John 13 1 it says, having loved those who were in the world who are His own, He loved them unto perfection. Or He loved them, eis telos. Having loved His own, eis telos.

What does it mean? Perfectly, fully, comprehensively, completely, to the limit, to the max, to the last, eternally. All of that. God has a love for the world that is limited in extent when compared to the love that He has for those who are His own. And so we've looked at that unlimited love of God toward the world. We've looked at that limited love that God has toward His own.

That takes us to the third and perhaps most significant question, and that is how do we answer all of those initial queries? How do we understand the difference between the way God loves the world and the way He loves His own? On what basis does He do that? Why does God have a different love for some folks than other folks? All bound up in His own purpose, His own will, His own desire, His own decree.

And that leads us to the third proposition. God's love to the world is qualified by the demands of His glory. God's love to the world is qualified by the demands of His glory. That is to say that however God loves, He will love in a manner that is absolutely consistent with who He is, with His glory. Now I want to address that this morning with you because it is an absolutely essential truth to understand. Because God loves the world does not mean that He is obligated to be an unqualified lover of everybody equally.

That is not the case. He is not a prisoner of His own love and nor is He a prisoner of man's desire for that love or of man's reasonings about that love. God does not have to love everyone the same no matter what, no matter who, just because people expect it or men think it's fair or equitable. And so I say again, because God loves does not mean He is obligated to be an unqualified lover of all people equally.

Obviously He is not. He loves the world in one sense. He loves His own in a far greater way.

Let me say it another way. Because God loves does not mean that His love is separated from His other attributes. It does not mean that that love exists as it were in isolation from everything else, as if it was untouched, unmodified, and unmixed, and unaffected by holiness, wrath, righteousness, judgment, and every other attribute. God is neither the jailer and nor is He the prisoner of any of His attributes.

Each of them acts not independently but in perfect harmony with all the others. If God then is to glorify Himself, He must put all of His attributes on display. And whatever His love accomplishes can in no way obliterate His other attributes.

Whatever His mercy and grace and kindness and goodness and tenderheartedness achieve cannot obliterate what will be made manifest by His hatred, His anger, His wrath, His vengeance, and His justice. All of God's attributes have a place in the demonstration that He carries out through the purposes of creation. And so we can simply say this, that 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. If you understand this one great surpassing truth about God, it's going to answer all those difficult questions that I posed at the beginning.

If you only understand this, you're on the way. And that is the simple truth, although it is profoundly revealed and much of it unknown to us. The simple truth is God does whatever manifests the fullness of His glory. Whatever puts His glory on display, and His glory is the sum of all of His attributes. God cannot in doing one thing cancel out something else. God's glory is the issue.

And I want to lay that foundation down as well as I can for you to understand it. So turn to Psalm 31. This is not like a sermon but more like a Bible study, but it's very important to understand this if we're going to deal with these hard questions. In Psalm 31 the psalmist is coming before the Lord and talking about God's power and salvation and deliverance. And he says basically that there is obviously trust in God's ability to save and deliver and rescue and help and strengthen. But that's not what I want you to focus on.

What I want you to focus on is the reason why. But let's start with verse 1. In thee, O Lord, I've taken refuge. Let me never be ashamed. In thy righteousness deliver me.

Incline thine air to me. Rescue me quickly. Beat out of me a rock of strength, a stronghold to save me. For thou art my rock and my fortress.

Now you have a lot of statements there. In your righteousness deliver me. Listen to me. Rescue me. Be my rock. Be a stronghold. Save me. You're my rock.

You're my fortress. All repeating God's saving, delivering, rescuing work. And when he's done with all of that, he says in verse 3, For thy name's sake thou wilt lead me and guide me. Whatever you do in my life, God, is not so much for me as it is for you. It is for the sake of manifesting your glory in order that people might see that you are a God in whom we can take refuge, that you are a God of righteousness, that you are a God who hears, that you are a God who rescues, that you are strong, that you are a Savior, that you are a leader, and you are a guide. Do it, God, to put yourself on display. That is the prayer of a knowing saint.

Not for my sake, but for your sake. That is the reason for everything, that God might display his glory before the angels and all creation. So whatever God does is not going to be because the majority of evangelicals have voted him to do it.

It is not going to be because it seems the most rational and the most reasonable thing to do, or we think it's the most equitable. It will be done without regard for what we would desire, but with regard only to that which would be consistent with the display of God's glory. And whenever you see for thy name's sake, the concept of God's name is just an embodiment of all that he is. When you remember confronting Moses, he said, my name is I am that I am.

In other words, my name is who I am. So God is going to display who he is in what he does. He is a God of salvation and he is a God of judgment. He is a God of grace and he is a God of vengeance. He is a God of mercy and he is a God of justice. And he will display all of that because that puts his name in a place to be respected, revered, honored, and worshiped. In Psalm 79, and I'm giving you just a few brief samples, a small little sampling of many verses that address this, but in Psalm 79, 9, the psalmist here is crying out to God because he fears the destruction of Jerusalem. That is the historical notation on this psalm. He says, help us, O God of our salvation, and then this, for the glory of thy name and deliver us and forgive our sins for thy name's sake.

That is always the issue. Do what is consistent with who you are. Do what is consistent with your glory, with your name, with the manifestation of your character, your nature, your attributes. In Psalm 143, 11 is another very brief comment. For the sake of thy name, O Lord, revive me. For the sake of thy name, O Lord.

Again, that is always at issue. And so we can't go to God and say, look, Lord, now we're trying to figure out how you ought to treat this world and we think it wouldn't be fair for you to let some people go to hell because that's not very nice and that's not loving. And so we'd like to suggest to you a view called universalism and just ask you if you'd please adapt that to your plan and let it happen. Or we might say to God, we don't like that idea of a conscious punishment of the ungodly forever and so we would like to suggest to you that we've taken a vote and we vote for annihilationism. Or Lord, we think the whole thing shouldn't resolve itself in your character because that puts too much pressure on you, so we would like to suggest Arminianism and just let man be completely responsible for whether he's saved or lost and that way he can bear the whole brunt of the deal and it doesn't reflect on you at all.

But what we want and what we desire is not the issue. We are the pot and he is the potter. We are the created and he is the creator. We are the maid and he is the maker and we're here because he put us here and he's in charge of everything and everything that he does will be a consistent reflection of who he is. And if you understand that, you are on the path to resolving all the difficult questions because the answer to whatever might seem to you to be inequitable or unfair or difficult or hard to understand is that it must in the end bring God what? Glory. Now look at Daniel chapter 9.

I want to give you a couple of illustrations that I think will be most helpful to you. In Daniel chapter 9, Daniel is praying a marvelous prayer, one of the model prayers of Scripture. He is anticipating that God is going to deliver his captive people out of Babylon back to their land because God promised that he would after 70 years.

So he reminds himself when reading Jeremiah the prophet that the captivity was for 70 years, the 70 years is nearly up. And so he starts to pray to the Lord. Verse 4, he calls him the great and awesome God who keeps his covenant and loving kindness for those who love him and keep his commandments. And then he launches into this confession. We have sinned, verse 5, committed iniquity, acted wickedly, rebelled, turned aside from your commandments, ordinances.

And he keeps talking like that all the way down. Verse 11, all Israel has transgressed thy law, turned aside, not obeying thy voice. So the curse has been poured out on us along with the oath which is written in the law of Moses, servant of God, for we've sinned against him.

Now let me stop you right here. First of all, what Daniel is saying is this. God, you've punished us severely, dispossessed from their land, slaughtered in the assault that came, carried off into captivity. They have been severely punished. And they have been living in idolatry prior to that time, so the punishment of God was a just punishment. God then, by showing that idolatry is a severe sin worthy of destruction, has glorified his name. It magnifies the holiness of God, doesn't it, when he has a holy reaction against idolatry.

And Daniel would agree to that, that what you've done to these people, they deserve, and it does not impinge on your glory at all to do it. It exalts you, and honors you, and glorifies you that you have judged this iniquitous and wicked people with a severe judgment because it tells us how holy you are. So God is glorified in the judgment. God is glorified in having showed that idolatry is a severe sin worthy of destruction. That magnifies his glory. But now God has promised that he's going to restore his people to the land, and the prophet is now going to say, God, glorify yourself now with your mercy.

It isn't either or, it's both. And so he prays in this prayer for the Lord to bring the people back. Go down to verse 17, Daniel 9. So now our God, listen to the prayer of thy servant and to his supplications.

And here it is. For thy sake, O Lord, let thy face shine on thy desolate sanctuary. That is again on Jerusalem and on the mount where the temple was. Oh my God, incline thine ear and hear. Open thine eyes and see our desolations, and the city which is called by thy name. For we are not presenting our supplication before thee on account of any merits of our own, but on account of thy great compassion. O Lord, hear.

O Lord, forgive. O Lord, listen and take action for thine own sake, O my God. For you put your grace on display. Put your mercy on display.

Put your restoring power on display. That's the point. You've glorified yourself in your wrath. Now glorify yourself in your mercy. In Isaiah 49 3, God said, You are My servant Israel in whom I will show My glory.

And He did. He showed His glory in judgment and He showed it in mercy. He showed it in justice and He showed it in grace. He showed it in vengeance and He showed it in forgiveness. You cannot isolate God to just one attribute. You can't make God the prisoner of one attribute. He is glorified in the full range of His glorious nature. And Daniel is saying, God, do this for your own sake.

Do it to glorify yourself. Look at Isaiah for a moment, chapter 48. Isaiah chapter 48, and here we find the same kind of perspective. Verse 9, here God says, Isaiah 48 9, For the sake of My name I delay My wrath.

How interesting. God shows His glory in His judgment, His wrath. He shows His glory in His mercy, His grace. And He also shows His glory in just His patience, in delaying wrath. And He says, For My praise I restrain it for you, in order not to cut you off. You can glorify Me for My justice, you can glorify Me for My grace, and you can glorify Me for My patience. Verse 11, here's the key. For My own sake, for My own sake, I will act.

That's the key. You ought to underline that and never forget it. Whatever God does, He does for His own glory. For My own sake, for My own sake, I will act. I cannot let My name be profaned and My glory I will not give to anyone else. I will do whatever My glory dictates I must do. And My glory is a glory manifest in wrath. It is a glory manifest in forgiveness. It is a glory manifest in restraint and patience.

Whatever it is, I will do it if it's consistent with My glory. We could sum it up by saying God has an unswerving commitment to act for His own glory. You're listening to Grace to You with John MacArthur. Today he highlighted the rich nature of the love of God. That's the title of his current study, The Love of God.

John teaches each day on this broadcast, and he also serves as Chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary in Southern California. Now, today, John, you said that God does whatever manifests the fullness of his glory, and so with respect to the love of God, is it fair to say that whenever God shows his love, the only thing that matters is that he's receiving the glory. I can imagine some people being confused about that, thinking that somehow it is wrong or selfish for God to demonstrate his love primarily in order to glorify himself. The only time it's wrong would be if you didn't deserve it, because the Bible even says this, Honor to whom honor is due. Respect those who are over you in the Lord.

Show them honor. No, the Lord has even told us that if we are faithful to him, we will receive a reward. For those things that are deserved, honor is the right response, and since God is the ultimate one who deserves all honor and all glory, it is only right to give him that glory.

In fact, not only do we not give him too much credit, we are abysmally sure to be even giving him the credit that he deserves. We don't have the capacity to do it in these bodies in this life, and that's one of the things that people don't think about when they think about heaven, but the reality of heaven is finally I will be able to give God all the glory that he deserves, of which my glorified person is capable. My ability to glorify God is limited now.

It's not what it used to be. I'm growing in grace and in the knowledge of Christ and glorifying him more as sanctification continues in my life, but I'm a far cry from the capacity that will belong to all of us in his presence. So glorifying God is the right thing to do, because God is so absolutely worthy. I want to remind you again today that this and all kinds of other insights and truths are available in the book, The God Who Loves. You need to understand the love of God. It's a common subject you're going to deal with in dealing with non-believers.

There are answers to their questions about the love of God. The God Who Loves is the book. It's available. You can order it from grace to you. Right, and for times when you're dismayed by circumstances or you wonder how God could save a sinner like you, this book provides great encouragement, showing you God's unfailing love for his children. To get a copy of The God Who Loves for yourself or to give to a friend, contact us today.

It's available for $13 and shipping is free. To order, call 800-55-GRACE or visit our website, gty.org. The God Who Loves makes an ideal resource for family devotionals or to read with someone you're discipling. Again, to order, call 800-55-GRACE or shop online at gty.org.

And when you finish reading the book, let us know if it deepened your relationship with, and your love for, God. We'd also love to know if you've been spiritually enriched or strengthened by John's teaching on the radio, by an article you've read on our website, and especially if the Lord has used this ministry to bring you, or someone you know, to faith in Christ, please email us at letters at gty.org. Once more, that's letters at gty.org. Or if you prefer regular mail, write to Grace to You, Box 4000, Panorama City, California, 91412. Now for John MacArthur and the entire Grace to You staff, I'm Phil Johnson. Keep in mind you can watch Grace to You television this Sunday on DirecTV, Channel 378, or check your local listings for Channel and Times. And also join us tomorrow for another half hour of unleashing God's truth, one verse at a time, on Grace to You.