Jeremiah 31:3 The LORD has appeared of old to me, saying, Yes, I have loved you with an everlasting love… I. A DECLARATION OF GOD'S LOVE. God is love; that is His nature — love in the abstract; not simply loving, kind, tender, benevolent, good, but love. This love displays itself in Christ. The fatherhood of God is nowhere seen in its royalty, but it is in its exhibition in Jesus Christ. This love He declares has this peculiarity — that it is everlasting. 1. It had no birthday. Go back through a past eternity, still you find no date for its commencement. Find out a day when the Lord Jesus was not loved by the Father, and you have the day when the Church was not loved by Him; you will arrive at the time when His love first began to the Church, for He says, "Thou hast loved them as Thou hast loved me, and Thou lovedst Me before the foundation of the world. It foresaw all the rebellion, backslidings, frailties, sins, infirmities — everything that would characterise the individual upon whom that love rested; and yet the Lord loved you, because He would love you; and that is the only reason that love itself can assign, because He would keep the covenant which He made with His own Son for you. 2. As it had no birthday, so it has no changing day. Like its Author, it is immutable, unvarying. There is nothing that can occur in reference to the objects on whom God s love is fixed that He did not foresee, and there is no change that can occur in the Divine mind as to any improvement in His plan and order of government, or manifestation of mercy to man. (1) This love bestowed upon you the greatest blessings before conversion. Strange to say, and yet it is a great and solemn truth, that while you were an enemy it gave you Christ-gave you the Spirit to regenerate you. Love, ere you were born, was manifested towards you — made the covenant, formed the plan of mercy by which you might be saved. (2) This love changes its dispensations, not its nature. Who questions a father's love when he corrects a rebellious son? Who doubts the teacher's love when he compels his pupil to apply his mind to the subject of instruction? So God acts. If it be necessary to make you diligent in His service, to overcome temptation, to draw you away from the world and its vanities and its corruptions, He may deprive you of property, He may remove an idol, He may stain your pride, He may bereave you of one who is as your own soul, He may prostrate your honour in the dust, He may suffer your own family to rise against you; and the very spring of all this is love. 3. It has no dying day. Love is a golden chain, one end of which is fixed to God s throne in eternity past, and the other end to His throne in eternity to come. This love of God is a bond not to be dissolved, a union never to be broken, a depth which cannot be fathomed, a height which can never be scaled, a length which can never be traversed, a breadth which cannot be measured, a science that passeth all knowledge, a fire which many waters cannot quench, a flame which the floods cannot drown, a sovereign stronger than death, a constrainer which cannot be overcome, a breastplate which cannot be pierced, a safeguard which casts out all fear, an inhabitant that can never be removed, a preventive to every evil, a catholicon for all woe. "For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life," &c. II. THE MANNER IN WHICH THIS LOVE IS DISPLAYED, or the evidences by which we may ascertain that we possess it. 1. See how with loving-kindness He has drawn you in the paths of providential arrangement! Begin with the earliest dawn of. memory: why were you drawn to such a school? Why did you form such friendships? Did not that love draw you to a situation, a locality as foreign co your thoughts as can well be, give you prosperity, make you influential, happy and blessed, and a blessing to others? What a constraint, often inexplicable, has it put upon your inclinations to accomplish an object which, had it been granted, you afterwards saw would have been your ruin! But the cord stayed you, the love was thrown around you to keep you back. Afflictions, too, have been some of the most beneficial cords of love that have visited you — cords which confined your aspirations and checked your vanity, taught you to pray, taught you to sympathise with others, taught you to love. 2. In the progress of regeneration this is wondrously manifested. 3. In the experimental enjoyment of His favour we see this Divine discovery. Your life has consisted of so many steps from one manifestation of Divine love to another. 4. Practical remarks. (1) Every soul who hears me may be interested in this love. (2) How humbling the contrast of our love to God! How inconstant, how feeble, how spiritless is our level(3) Let us imitate God in His dealings with us. If we would prevail with others, we shall find that the cords of love are better than the rod of Moses. Neither ministers nor private Christians can scare men into the ways of godliness; no threats will frighten a man to be holy. (J. Sherman.) Parallel Verses KJV: The LORD hath appeared of old unto me, saying, Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee. |
    |