Everyone Craves Love

Real life presents the Jack Hibbs podcast with intention and boldness to proclaim truth, equip the saints, and impact our culture. Listen friends, if you're skeptic in the house today, listen up. When the gospel is preached in a crowd, even of some ruffians, and then somebody comes along under the power of the Holy Spirit, and he proclaims the truth from the Word of God, and those people woke up to the love of God. And that kind of love that you realize that God loves you with causes you to turn right around, and love God back. You can get the outlines of this podcast by going to jackhibbs.com slash podcast. Today, if this podcast lifts you up and encourages you to live a more fulfilled life in Christ, then make sure you leave us one of those five star ratings. To us, that's like saying, amen or yes, then that rating will encourage others to listen. Now open your hearts to what God's word has to say to you. Here is Jack Hibbs. Then the Bible, when you open it up, it tells you right there that God is love. Romans chapter 5 verse 8 tells us that God demonstrated his own love toward us and that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. That's an amazing statement. Look at that verse. The scriptures are demonstrating to us because that's God's will for you to know that even while you were yet a sinner, Christ died for us in the cross. That speaks about the infinite, awesome power of God to know you before you ever born, because he's God, and we'll talk about that in a moment. But when Jesus died in the cross for your sins in mind, he actually knew you by name, though you had not been born yet. This is God's awesome and tremendous ministry of atonement. First John chapter 4 verse 16, first John 4 16 says, and we have known and believed the love that God has for us. God is love. And he who abides in love abides in God and God in him. Can someone say, man, that is good news. Our God loves us. And we need to respond to that love. But I listen, I'm going to warn you right up front. If you really believe that God loves you, then it is going to be, what's the word, incumbent upon you to show love. Not only to God, but to one another. And what I've said this before, I'll say it again, every time I say I love God, I feel like I'm a fool, because it seems so hollow. But God's love is amazing. Here's a fun verse, 1 Corinthians 13, 13 says, and now abides faith, hope, and love, these three. But the greatest of these is love. And the world doesn't know love today. The world is looking after all of these pursuits to try to find some sort of fulfillment and they miss love altogether because they think it's the love of sex or the love of things or the love of power. And it doesn't work. No, it's just the love of God. The love of God is the only thing that can satisfy your life. And I love that passage in 1 Corinthians 13 because it says that the three, the Trinity of God's goodness is faith, hope, and love that he makes available to us. But did you know something? When we go to heaven, will there be faith in heaven? Will you need to have faith in heaven? You'll have no need of having faith in heaven. What do you have faith for in heaven? You're walking around, you're living it. He's there. You have no need of faith. Faith is going to be done with faith. Gone. Mission complete. What about hope? If you're talking to Jesus in heaven, are you going to need hope? You're not going to need hope. Listen, hope is now. Hope takes you all the way to the end of your life. And then listen, when he shows up, what are you hoping for? All hope has been fulfilled. Isn't it awesome though that the Bible says, but the greatest of these is love. And love will never fail. Love is the only thing that you and I can experience in this life with God that is only going to intensify in heaven forever with him. And none of us can even begin to imagine what that's going to be like. The love of God flowing in and out of us like the waves of the sea. Remarkable. So church marked this down if you would. So give God your love. And it starts with this. Seen him for who he is. Seen him for who he is. And I got to tell you with the time that I have left this morning, it's a disgrace because we could spend months talking about his attributes from the Bible. And so there's words and I'm going to blow these off. You can look at him later. I don't want to take the time. When he says things like this, read in your Bible with me. He says, I say through the grace given to me. So Paul, circle the word me. Paul is saying, God has given me grace. And he's speaking to the believers in Rome to you, to everyone who is among you. I love this through grace that has been given. Grace is a gift from God. Look what he says. The grace that has been given to me. Christian, Paul does not walk away with it and say, I'm so glad God gave me that grace and I'm just going to hang on. Do it. Nope. When God moves in your life, it can't work that way. It's extremely volatile in the beautiful way. It's not only given to me. He says to everyone who is among you. So here's what Paul is saying in a modern day time. He would be saying this to us. God has given me grace. And I want all of you to have the same grace. And I want you to have that same grace. Watch how he does this. When he says to me, to everyone, to those among us, he says to you, it's absolutely universal to the application. Understand this church he is saying? God has extended grace and this is where we begin. He would be announcing and understanding the very person of God. The God of the Bible among so many attributes is a God of grace. And grace is that word that means God bestows upon you that which you cannot earn. And we don't really appreciate that much until we need it. But mark this if you would. The fact that God is all sufficient, can you write that down? He's the all-sufficient God, the God of the Bible. You'll find this in no other references of deities throughout human history except the God of the Bible. He's all sufficient. So what does that mean? That means he has all that he has. He is all that he is and needs nothing. There is a discipline in theology. It's rarely ever mentioned, but it is the doctrine of Asiati. Asiati simply meaning this, that the God that you worship today, I trust you do. I trust you know the Lord Jesus Christ, that the God that you worship today, the doctrine of Asiati means this, that he needs nothing from you at all. I like that. If I worship a God that needs something from you to keep him going, I need a new God. Are you hearing me? If someone propagates to you, evangelizes to you, introduces you to some sort of deity that needs your help. That's the wrong God. Can I say, I'm going to say it? I'm not even going to ask. I'm just going to say this. I don't watch Christian TV unless it's on the real-life network. Did you get that? That was a little plug. Forget it. Moving on. You want to know why? This is what I hear on too much of what is called Christian programming. If you don't send the $100 now, if you don't send in the money, we're going to go, the station's going to go out of business, we're going to shut down. We won't be able to preach the gospel to you anymore. You need to send in the money. Really? Or how about the one that says, the one that's praying and he's praying and Jesus, we need to get all the people to give money to send in the money and they're talking about money and the money. Every time I hear that, I just reach for my wallet and make sure it's safe because you know like an AI arm could come out from the screen and grab your wallets. If you're worshiping the God that you've got to say to people, if you don't give money, we're going to go off the air. I shout back to the screen. You probably should go off the air because listen, you're announcing to people that God is broke. He needs your help. He is all sufficient. My God, your God I trust, the God of the Bible. He doesn't need us for anything. You say, you have a dindy creatus? Of course he created us. There's a big reason for this but it's not because he needed us. What do you think he created us for like what a basketball? He needed somebody to play with? He's not, listen, he made humans. He's not human. I love saying that because it kind of makes the hair on their neck go up. The Bible says he's spirit and God had dwelt as spirit until Christ was born into the world, the second person of the Trinity. God, the Son, took on human skin to not only relate to us but most importantly for us to be able to relate to him. None of us in this room can say, God doesn't know how I feel. He knows exactly how you feel and he knows exactly how to fix you from feeling that way. He knows all about it. The Bible teaches us that this God that we should love and honor and obey. People get all witty. Love, honor and obey. So as you could do in a wedding service, yes, that's right. And you know it's so cute about it. The audience at a wedding has no problem. Do you pledge today to love, honor and obey? The audience goes like this, oh my goodness, what? Both of them are looking at each other like this. You could, I could have said and you both pledged to jump off the bridge together. They'd go as long as we're together. Listen, when love is the driving force of your life, there's none of this stuff that has to be brought up because it is coming out of you. It happens remembering this that our God is the uncurated God. He's not created. God was not created. There's always those people you and I bump into. They think they're so smart. They say things like this. So did God create everything? Yep. Who created God? And it's so funny because they think they're so smart. Yeah, so God created everything, right? Yeah. So who created God? It's like, oh no, you stumped me. He's the uncurated God. For something to be created, it's got to have a beginning and because it's created, it will have an end. He's the uncurated God who dwells outside all that you and I know and have been exposed to in our physical earthbound life. And so we think we can question God. Question God about this. Question God about that. Somebody questioned me last service about the fires. Where was God in all this? Excuse me, where was God in all this? He was right there. Who wouldn't he do something about it? I said, he is doing something about it and he did do something about it. It may not meet up to your estimation, but what God is doing, he does for the eternal purpose. Yes, the fires were horrible, but read your Bible carefully. The Bible makes it very clear that Satan does a lot of things in this world. I find it awesome that when Jesus was woken up by the disciples in the midst of a storm on the Galilee and they were all going to drown and they said, wake up, don't you care if we perish? Jesus stood up and he rebuked the waves in the wind and the same word he used as the word he used to rebuked devils and demons. You want to put blame where blame is due and somebody says, where is God in all this? You need to first of all say this is exactly the kind of world that Satan wants you to suffer through as a world without hope knowing this. Jesus said, I've come to give you life and that more abundantly, but Satan has come to rob you to kill you and destroy you. Remember that everybody. The Bible has the answers, but know this. He's the uncreated creator. Colossians, chapter 1, verse 16, am I yelling at you? I feel like I am. I'm sorry I'm excited. No, it's, I just, Colossians, chapter 1, verse 16, all things were created through him and for him. Okay, here it comes. Colossians, chapter 1, verses 16 through 18 says, all things were created through him. Mark this down. Follow this. All things were created through him and for him and he is before all things. He existed before all things physical ever appeared and in him all things consist the atomic glue. All things are held together by him and he is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the first born from the dead that is, listen, that in all things he may have the preeminence. Christ Jesus rose again from the grave and listen, on the day of Pentecost, God's Holy Spirit gave birth to what is called the church. The church is the family, the body of believers of, I love this, listen, of every color on every continent of every, if you name the name of Christ based and understood by the Bible that he died for your sins and rose again from the dead. He's your savior that he died for you and putting faith in him is your salvation. He is it. He says, believe in me and you say, I do. I recognize Lord, I am a sinner. You died for me and you rose again from the dead. I believe you. I give you my life. Listen, when that happens, you have come home. You don't even realize that. You have come home to the God that has made you and that verse is powerful because it screams the preeminence of Jesus Christ. The Bible says all things were made by him. Revelation 4 verse 11, the Bible says there, John witnesses this, you are worthy of Lord to receive glory, honor, and power for you created all things and by your will they exist and were created. I love that Exodus chapter 3 verse 14 and God said to Moses, I am who I am. Now the context is this, Moses was just commissioned by God to go back down the mountain to tell the children of Israel who sent him. So Moses rightly says, who do I say sent me? What do I tell them? I know these people, they ask so many questions. And God says, when you go down there, tell them, I am that I am sent you. The I am that I am is the eternal existing self-contained, self-sufficient God. Moses, you go down and tell them that the one who sent you is the God who needs nothing to sustain himself and no one. This should cause us friends to be a very humble people. You should never see an arrogant, proud Christian. Now we do see them, just know this. When you see a proud, arrogant Christian, I just want you to know this. Can you keep this between us? Because I don't want to go to a pastor's conference somewhere in the world and get in trouble. This is our thing. If you see a Christian who is proud, they may be a Christian, but they're far from God. They may be a child of God. They're going to heaven, but they've wandered away from the awe of who God is and humility has evaporated from them. Do you hear what I'm talking about? Christian should never be arrogant. The more we view the incredible magnitude of our great God and get to know more of Him, which is only one way by reading this love letter to you called the Bible, the more you realize who He is, the littler you become. But that's a good thing. But listen, but when we are Christians and we start to get puffed up in our head or in our chest, so to speak, we've lost sight of God and His grandeur and His greatness. You need to be re-exposed to the great things of God. Moses could have come down the mountain like this. Hey, everybody, stay away. God and I are up there talking. We're talking about you guys. He could have. He didn't. He came down the great I am. Wow, what an exclusive name. Of course, there's no other name. The self-sufficient one. Interesting. John chapter 8, verse 58, Jesus said to them, most assuredly, I say to you before Abraham was, what's the word? I am. It's the same word. If somebody ever tells you Jesus never claimed to be God, they don't know what they're talking about. In fact, Jesus said that right there and they got ready to kill him for saying that because if he committed blasphemy, if he wasn't God, the cool thing is he was God. And we are to be in great awe and honor. Church, we need to, I'm not saying this is our problem, but it might be your problem or it might be someone's problem. We need to be very careful that we don't just treat God like a big buddy, a big pal. Well, do you need to say that we could call him Abba? Yeah, that's a great term of endearment, but the Abba in Hebrew means that the kids really respect dad, Abba. You don't call your dad. If your dad's name is Mike, you didn't go, hey, Mike. I mean, that's pretty sick. We're to be an awe of him more than ever. This Jack Kibb's podcast, as well as all the broadcast outreach opportunities, are listener supported. Will you consider partnering with us through a special gift? Go to jackhibb's.com to learn more and stay connected.