1 John 4:16 And we have known and believed the love that God has to us. God is love; and he that dwells in love dwells in God, and God in him. I. IN THE CARES OF HIS UNIVERSAL PROVIDENCE. In the exercise of the love of benevolence He has not only conferred existence on a great variety and number of creatures, but He has bestowed on them countless properties and advantages, to minister to their utility and their welfare. For us, the sun shines, the rain falls, the air breathes, the seasons change, the harvests ripen, and all nature seems put in requisition to minister to our well-being. This love is impartial; for our heavenly Father makes His sun to rise on the righteous and the wicked, the rain to descend on the just and unjust, and is kind to the unthankful and the evil. It is constant. "His mercies are new every morning and every evening," and He crowns successive years with His goodness. It is universal. The bounties which flow from its exercise are dispensed to the beasts of the field, the fowls of the air, the fishes which pass through the paths of the seas, and to the smallest insect which floats in the breeze, and the meanest reptile which creeps on the face of the earth. It will be perpetual. For we are assured that the ordinances of heaven and earth shall stand fast so long as the earth continues. "While the earth remaineth, seed time and harvest." II. IS THE MERCIFUL PROVISIONS OF HIS GRACE. And this is the love of compassion. Look at this "love" in the gradual preparatives for the full development of its displays. See it in the first promise, which raised the prostrated hopes of our sinful pro genitors; in the numerous and expressive types which were to usher in the bright day of discovery; in the accurate and splendid predictions of that long line of holy men "who testified beforehand of the sufferings of Christ and the glory which should follow." At length the predicted time arrived for the full disclosures of the love of God to man. Does this close the exhibition of this scene of love? Did God give His Son to die the just for the unjust, to restore to us the favour which we had lost? Are we left to shift for ourselves as we passed through the wilderness of this world? "He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?" What innumerable blessings flow down to us, from the exaltation and the advocacy of the Saviour! How rich are the results of the communication of the Holy Spirit, with His gifts and graces! And what shall we say of Divine ordinances, which are the mediums, the organs of conveyance of all spiritual good, to the souls of men? III. IN THE PROCESSES OF HIS AFFLICTIVE DISCIPLINE. 1. The most painful trials of life have often proved the means of conversion. 2. The procedures of His disciplinary providence have contributed to sanctification. They have proved the means of repressing or of extirpating corruption from the heart. They have quickened in your bosom the spirit of prayer. IV. IN THAT HOME OF REST AND JOY, WHICH HE HAS PREPARED FOR THE RECEPTION OF THE FAMILY OF HIS REDEEMED (Ecclesiastes 12:3-5). Happy, thrice happy they, who fall asleep in Jesus! (John Clayton.) Parallel Verses KJV: And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him. |
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