A love that just keeps growing on and on

“How do you know who God the Father is? How are you going to have God revealed to you? It’s going to be by God the Son.

“By the way, when he says ‘No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.’ (John 1:18)

“That means every time God appeared in the Old Testament, what we call ‘theophane,’ who was it? It wasn’t the Father, it was the Son because nobody’s ever seen the Father, but there are times in the Old Testament when people did see God. Moses, for example. But who was he seeing? He was seeing God the Son. Why? Because God the Son is the revealer. He’s the Word. He’s the one who communicates to us from the godhead.

“Someone has said the Lord Jesus Christ is the one who brings God out from behind the curtain. That’s what that word ‘exegete' means. It means you take it out from obscurity and put them on stage and put the light on them. And that’s what the Lord Jesus Christ does.

“There’s not any religion on the face of the earth that does or ever has had anybody like the Lord Jesus Christ. There’s not a philosophy, or a religion, or a system of economics, or politics, or academia, that has anything like Him. No religion.

“One of the fascinating things about these things is people talk about, ‘How do you know something is true?’ There are a lot of evidences that are not just direct evidences but just common-sense evidences that come along.

“I was reading a book where the guy made the point, ‘Where’s anybody that ever sang, ‘Oh, how I love Buddha, O how I love Buddha’?’ Nobody sings, “Allah paid it all. All to him I owe. Sin had left a crimson stain; Allah washed it white as snow.’

“You know there are thousands of songs written about one person, the Lord Jesus Christ. Love songs. You know, that’s the kind of songs people write. I mean, hillbilly songs, rock songs, contemporary songs—people write love songs. They write about what they love, they value, they esteem, what captures their heart.

“John 20 says, ‘Many other signs did Jesus.’ Last thing in John he says, ‘If all the books could be written about the things that Jesus Christ did, the world couldn’t hold them.’ So the songwriter says, ‘Could we with ink the ocean fill,
And were the skies of parchment made,
Were every stalk on earth a quill,
And every man a scribe by trade;
To write the love of God above
Would drain the ocean dry;
Nor could the scroll contain the whole,
Though stretched from sky to sky.’

“How in the world do you explain the fact that no religion in the world has anybody writing love songs about their religion, how much it’s done for them, and along her comes the Lord Jesus Christ?! . . . Psalm 69 says ‘He’s going to be the song of drunkards.’ Even drunks write songs about Him!

“You get out into world . . . You remember the lyrics, ‘Chicago, Chicago, the only town Billy Sunday could not shut down.’ You know that line? Why? They’re bragging about the fact Billy Sunday went all over America preaching the gospel and getting people saved . . .

“You know, in northwest Alabama there’s a little town called Reform. The Billy Sunday of the South was a man named Sam Jones. He went all over the southern part of the U.S. doing what Billy Sunday did in the Midwest and Northeast. He went into that town, and they were a mecca of gambling and the liquor trade and Jones went into that little town and preached the gospel for about three months and people got saved left and right, and the newspaper accounts of it are that by the time he got through with that revival meeting, if you wanted to cuss, you did it under your breath. All the liquor establishments were closed down. All the bars were closed down. All the gambling houses were closed down and the city council voted to change the name of the town to Reform!

“What is that? That’s the power of a person, the Lord Jesus Christ. Acts 20:28 says, ‘Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood.’

“Who was it on the Cross shedding His blood? The Lord Jesus Christ. But whose blood was that? Who really was that on the Cross? It was God. God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself. And it was God’s blood that flowed through Emmanuel’s veins ‘and sinners plunged beneath the flood lose all their guilty stain.’

“You just keep on and on . . . you know just about everything you can think of you can think of a gospel song or hymn that takes that experience in life and relates it to a love affair with the Lord Jesus Christ. He’s the one who brings God into every aspect and facet and experience of our life.

“By the way, He does it because of the Cross. I John 4:7 is a fascinating verse of Scripture: ‘Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God.’

“If you’re going to love people, you’re going to have to know God. And if you don’t know God, you’re not going to know how to love people.
(new article tomorrow)