Joshua and Judges: The allotment of the land, part 26 - Predestination

Title: Joshua and Judges: The allotment of the land, part 26 - Predestination - what is love? Jos 14-17.

Announcements / opening prayer:

One final note about the will of God, the truth from God, pure action in God as opposed to the judging of man in the knowledge of good and evil - the love of God.

1Co 13:2 And if I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.

1Co 13:3 And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.

It should not surprise any believer that in his lifelong study of the word of God that he would return to the subject of love quite often and more often than any other.

This one word, agape, is a decisive word which marks the distinction between man in disunion with God and man in union with God, his origin.

As we have seen many times, God's love encompasses all other virtues. When the Bible states that God is love it is stating that God is all divine virtue.

It is clear in this passage that there is a recognition of Christ, a powerful faith in Him, and a conviction and devotion to Him unto death that is all without love.

We must avoid the temptation to water the passage down. A person may be found prophesying, have a great amount of biblical knowledge, have a powerful faith, be devoted to the poor and devoted to Christ to the point of death, and all of it without love. God says that it is as if he has done nothing. We should ask ourselves what such a mind would look like.

Prophesying was a temporary spiritual gift only in use during the first century. By the Holy Spirit, the believer with this gift would proclaim God's truth in a home or a church and the listeners would benefit greatly by such knowledge, just like we do when we study the Bible. What would prophesying look like with love and without it?

What does biblical knowledge look like with love and without it?

What does devotion to the poor look like with love and without it?

What does devotion to Christ to the point of martyrdom look like with love and without it?

What does powerful faith look like with love and without it?

Imagine a small group of soldiers pinned down by enemy fire with no hope of escape and another soldier is nearby, unknown to the enemy, but with enough ammo to have a hope of getting to his men, pushing back the enemy, and providing the way of escape. Let's say his odds of success are one in a thousand and there's a very good chance that he will die trying. He decides to attempt it and that decision alone makes him a hero. But God would ask him why he did it. Did he do it so that he would have a chance at glory for himself, so that he would be known as a hero and promoted? Or did he do it because he loved his men and was willing to lay down his life for them, not at all caring whether anyone ever knew about his courage or not? I think this is what powerful faith looks like with love and without it.

Without love all of these acts are for self and with love they are only for others with no thought of self.

Php 2:3 Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind let each of you regard one another as more important than himself;

Php 2:4 do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others.

Php 2:5 Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus

1Co 13:2 And if I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.

1Co 13:3 And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.

This is quite sobering to the Christian and causes a certain examination of self to see if he is in the faith. This is not to say that love is distinguished from these things, but that only love truly does them. God has not given us something complex to figure out so that so many of us will have thought we have done His will only to be found lacking love and so did nothing. The subtlety only lies in the motivation of the Christian. If he is giving to the poor and devoting his life to Christ he must simply ask himself why he is doing so and if the honest answer to that question is anything other than love, which as we will see comes to him from God and is the person Jesus Christ, then he must cease immediately and behold Christ before he does another thing.

The truth that this passage conveys makes obvious that love cannot be defined by what one does. It is not a human attitude, a conviction, a devotion, a sacrifice, a feeling, a brotherhood, a service, or an action.

We have just heard that all of these, without exception, can arise without love and so they cannot be used to answer the question, "What is love?"

"Everything that we are accustomed to call love, that which lives in the depths of the soul and in the visible deed, and even the brotherly service of one's neighbor which proceeds from the pious heart, all this can be without love, not because there is always a "residue" of selfishness in all human conduct, entirely overshadowing love, but because love as a whole, in its essence, is something entirely different." [Bonhoeffer, Ethics]

In humanity, human love abounds and is heralded. Human love often takes the face of the very personal, meaning, true love finds devotion to a person over and above anything else; over the truth, over the objective, over the impersonal. Things like love endures above all things, conquers all things, etc.

Cross that rules the Southern Sky!

Stars that sweep, and turn, and fly,

Hear the Lovers' Litany: -

"Love like ours can never die!" [Rudyard Kipling]

Truth is truth and love is love,

Give us grace to taste thereof;

But if truth offend my sweet,

Then I will have none of it. [Alfred Edgar Coppard]

To man, human love becomes a superior ethos to everything else, even truth. It is beyond the real world and becomes a way to God, but this is all a very good lie. That is the description of an eros love and not an agape love. Love does not lead to God. Fallen man knows nothing of God's love. Man's love is not entirely divorced from God's love completely in that it has its origin in God's love but has become a fallen and severely limited thing.

Man often regards love and truth as mutually conflicting, but this is not true of God's love.

1Co 13:6 [love] does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth;

Often man attempts to define love as it conflicts with other things, but God's love knows nothing of conflict. You cannot define Christ by what He is not.

That will get you nowhere, and by nowhere I mean empty, shallow, grey, void of life nowhere.

A love which embraces only the sphere of personal human relations and which capitulates before the objective and real can never be the love of the New Testament.

There is no conceivable human attitude or conduct which can unequivocally be designated by the name of "love." Love lies beyond man's disunion with God and so we must go beyond man on onto God to find it.

What is love? The Bible does not fail to give us the answer.

1Jo 4:16 God is love

The emphasis is on the word God and not love. Only he who knows God knows what love is. We do not come to first know what love is and then find and know God.

No one knows God unless God reveals Himself to him. Man cannot seek for God. And so, no one knows what love is except in his own revelation of God from God.