God's love: 'World itself could not contain the books'

I John 4:10: [10] Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.

The first time the word love appears in the Bible is in Genesis 22: [2] And he said, Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of.

The first time you read about someone loving someone is Abraham being told by God to take his son and offer him. The first occurrences of terms in the Bible are very important. They set the tone and definition of a word, says Richard Jordan. 

The first time it occurs it’s defined as the love a father has for his only son. Abraham did have another boy, Ishmael, but Isaac was the promised son. He was the one God had promised to him, produced by the miraculous birth when Abraham and Sarah couldn’t normally have children.

I John 4: 9: [9] In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him.

So the connection between the first time love occurs in the Bible, it’s connected right with God’s love at Calvary when He too sent His only begotten Son through a miraculous birth. To be a sacrifice.

Abraham’s given that information in Genesis 22, and one of the most wonderful pictures of the sacrifice of Christ at Calvary is found there as Abraham was told to take his son up on that mountain.

You see, the definition of love in the Bible is the love the Creator had for you and me. The love that would make Him step out of heaven, come down into our reality, into our flesh and our humanity and go to the Cross and die to pay for all of our sins. Give Himself completely for us.

John 3:16: [16] For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

Romans 5:8: [8] But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

You look at Calvary and you see what love is. I John 4:11: [11] Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.

You can’t love one another until you have the right motivation behind it. Trying to be good and love other people to get a paycheck doesn’t do it. You get the world we live in. Trying to be good and love other people just for the fact that it makes you feel good and it’s something you ought to do won’t get it.

Notice that the required motivation for producing love for others in the verse is “if God so loved us.” If you understood how God loved you, you ought also to love one another.

The required motivation for producing love for your brothers and sisters, for your fellow man, is to acknowledge that the Creator has come down to this planet as a man and has gone to the Cross and has died for our sins. He’s put away our sin by the sacrifice of Himself.

That is information that is rejected by every hell-bound sinner on the planet. It’s rejected by the atheists, by the evolutionists, by the academics, by the humanists, by the religionists, by the whole culture out there today.

In fact, what God’s Word would say on the topic is so foreign to the world we live in that just basic definitions that are founded on the Scripture are considered hate mail and hate speech today.

If you stand in our culture today and say marriage is designed by its Creator to be one man and one woman for one lifetime, you’re guilty of hate speech. Just simply reading Matthew 19 and the words of Jesus Christ on the radio can get you charged with hate speech.

The foundation has been destroyed simply because God’s Word has been rejected and if you want to do something to help people, go out there motivated by an understanding of how much your Creator loves you and loves them and share with them the truth of His love and His grace. That’s the key.

Someone has said the Lord Jesus Christ is the one who brings God out from behind the curtain. That’s what that word “exegesis” 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.” The last thing in the Book of John, he says, “If all the books could be written about the things that Jesus Christ did, the world couldn’t hold them":

John 21: [25] And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written. Amen.

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. 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.

Here’s the rest of the hymn:
“The love of God is greater far
  Than tongue or pen can ever tell.
It goes beyond the highest star
  And reaches to the lowest hell.
The guilty pair, bowed down with care,
  God gave His Son to win;
His erring child He reconciled
  And pardoned from his sin.

 O love of God, how rich and pure!
  How measureless and strong!
It shall forevermore endure—
    The saints’ and angels’ song.

When hoary time shall pass away,

  And earthly thrones and kingdoms fall;
When men who here refuse to pray,
  On rocks and hills and mountains call;
God’s love, so sure, shall still endure,
  All measureless and strong;
Redeeming grace to Adam’s race—
  The saints’ and angels’ song.”