In the sermon titled 'The Love of God in the Soul of Man' by Scott Brown, the focus is on the profound significance of Jesus' prayer in John 17:26, where Jesus makes a vow to his disciples about the presence of divine love. Brown emphasizes the dual purpose of Jesus' prayer: intimate communication with God the Father and mentoring for his disciples. The sermon explores how theology should translate into practical, lived experience, highlighting that genuine theology is rooted in love. Brown draws on the teachings of Jonathan Edwards, who described love as a disposition whereby one is dear to another, emphasizing that love is a fundamental element of God's character and should be manifested in the lives of believers. The sermon underscores the importance of love as the essence of all Christian doctrine and its role in creating unity within the church. Brown cautions against equating worldly success with God's love and encourages believers to focus on the manifestations of love within their communities as evidence of God's presence.

Please open your Bibles to John 17 and verse 26. John 17 verse 26. Very last verse, the last phrase of Jesus before he moves into the Garden of Gethsemane to face his suffering escalating to the cross. Verse 26, these last words to his father, And I have declared to them your name, and will declare it, that the love with which you loved me may be in them and I in them." Let's pray. Father, these wonderful words, these thrilling words, these great promises embedded in this one verse are so helpful to see who you are and who you've called us to be.

And so we thank you for the clarity and the beauty of the clarity that's here in this verse. Amen. So the Lord Jesus Christ is praying. His disciples are overhearing the prayer. And I believe there are two things that are happening.

Well, of course, first of all, this is intimate communication between a Son and His Father. He's speaking directly to His Father in every word of it. At the same time, He's mentoring His disciples because they are overhearing it. Jesus does this. He, earlier in the Gospel of John, he prays to his Father and he prays out loud, he cries out loud, and then he makes a comment that he did it for the benefit of the hearers.

He prayed to his Father so that the hearers would benefit. And that's, I believe, what he's doing here. This is not only personal communication, it's personal discipleship. And the rich theology that is here, the dense, beautiful doctrine that exists here, is so obviously meant to be practically walked out in our lives. And in the last two verses, I was hoping to communicate that theology is meant to be worked out in shoe leather, street-level wisdom.

Your theology, if it is touching heaven, it'll touch earth. And all good theology is applied. And if your theology isn't applied in your life, then it will die with you. So when we come to these verses here, There's much that we could say about various matters of theology. The heart of the matter is centered around a four-letter word, love.

And what we learn from this is that, as Jonathan Edwards said in his commentary on 1 Corinthians 13, heaven is a world of love. And we find a helpful illustration of what love is. People want to know what love is. Where does it come from? How do you know it?

How do you experience it? And this final verse in John 17 reveals the secret of all love. If you don't see all of your theology being summed up in that one four-letter word love, then you don't understand theology because all of it is a declaration of the love of God. Every law of God is a law of love. That's what the apostle Paul said.

And every word of scripture is a word of love toward mankind. And that's why all of your personal life, all of your church life, all of your parenting, all of your singleness, all of your work life is dull if it's not moved by love. We know how difficult that is, but everything in Christianity is under the banner of love. And if you want to be a worker, or if you want to be a parent, or if you want to be a child, and if love is not the oil, if love is not the lubricant, then it turns dull or worse, harmful or worse, toxic because God has designed a world of love that His children would experience on the earth. I'd like to quote from Jonathan Edwards' book, Charity and its Fruits.

I highly recommend you read it over and over again. Edwards defines love like this, a disposition or affection whereby one is dear to another. Dearness is a manifestation of love. According to Edwards, He says that in the introduction of his book. He says, the spirit of God is a spirit of love.

And when the former enters the soul, love also enters with it. When the Spirit of God enters the soul, an alien virtue enters the soul. It's love. The power of sin is broken and the Holy Spirit begins to work its love and joy and peace and patience and kindness. Edward says this, there are not two works of the Spirit of God, one to infuse the Spirit of love for God and the other to infuse the spirit of love for man, but in producing one, the spirit produces the other also.

You get both. He says, it will dispose men to meekness and gentleness in their carriage toward their neighbors and not to treat them with passion, violence, or heat of spirit, but rather with moderation, calmness, and kindness that will check and restrain everything like a bitter spirit, for love has no bitterness in it, but is a gentle and sweet disposition and affection of the soul. It will prevent broils and quarrels and will dispose men to peaceableness and to forgive injurious treatment received from others. As it was said in Proverbs 10-12, hatred stirs up strife, but love covers all sins. And then he says, this will be my last quote of Edwards, the scriptures teach us that love is the sum of all that is contained in the law of God, and of all the duties required in His word." So Jesus concludes his prayer with that word love, and it makes it very clear here that he is declared God's name to them so that his love would be in them his name dominating their souls places love within their hearts for one another.

And His gift is to give us His name. And knowing, knowing, and having His name is to know and have every good thing. When you pray in Jesus' name, you're praying for every good thing in the kingdom of heaven, every attribute of God that is so helpful to us. And now I want us to notice something else about this verse. One of the commentators pointed this out that I read.

This is a vow. Jesus is making a vow to his disciples. He says, and will declare it. He's making a vow that he will declare his name, that the love with which you loved me may be in them and I in them. Our Lord Jesus Christ is making a vow, all of his vows are unbreakable, that he would place his love within his children.

This is a vow. And I think it's striking that Jesus would make such a vow. Now he's made many vows in here already, if you look, if you go back and look, many promises get rolled out in this prayer. But this vow secures our love. God through His Son Jesus Christ has done something for us that we couldn't do for ourselves, and that is to launch a seed of love in our hearts.

And only God can do that. There are many false manifestations of love, but the love of God is something that comes as a result of His name residing. Here's something that I just want us to ponder. The life that we live in local churches today is a fulfillment of this prayer. We all know that we don't love one another perfectly.

We grieve over that. But the truth is that there really is the love of God in the true Church of Jesus Christ. It really is there. And what a blessing that is. God does many things to keep love alive in the world, his love alive in the world.

And one of the ways he does that is By securing love in a church among His people, the Church of Jesus should be the most loving place on the planet. We often disobey. We often—our love might grow cold. But what Jesus is vowing here is that His love will be in the church. I think we should recognize that it will be there imperfectly, but it is there.

And we should look for it. Okay, how about that? It's so easy to look for the negatives. It's so easy to look for the problems and the lackings in a church. It's the easiest thing to do.

Look for love. Look for the love that you see. Pray that God would inflame it. Enjoy every bit of it. You know, I don't know where, where, no fights broke out today here in the church.

That's pretty good. You know, there's a lot, there's a lot to rejoice in. But rejoice in the love of God in the church. Soak it in church, let's just soak it in. Let's have a love fest.

Let's have a happy hug in a way. Well, Jesus is vowing that his Love will be in the church. So look for it and soak it in. Every little bit of it. One time I had a guy working for me and he said, We were going through a really hard time.

He said, we ought to squeeze every ounce of good out of this moment. And it was a hard moment. Well, that's what we should do in the church. Squeeze every manifestation of love and focus on that. You know, you might be married to somebody, you might have a father or mother where you think maybe some, you know, love is lacking, squeeze every amount of good that you got in there.

You know, your father, maybe he isn't everything that he ought to be, honor every possible thing you can. How do you honor your father and mother, even when they're sinners? I mean, when they are really messed up, what do you do? Well, you honor every possible thing you can, because you are commanded to honor them. And we're called to do the same thing in the church, to honor one another, to prefer one another in honor.

That means that we should be looking out for every possible good thing, not just the bad things. Solomon did say love covers a multitude of sins. That should be our inflection point. We're all learning how to do that, aren't we? It's difficult.

John is the apostle of love. I'm pretty sure I was converted reading the gospel of John a long, long time ago. And as we've been going through the gospel of John, I keep getting taken back over five decades reading these words for the first time. And when John writes his epistle in 1 John, you find the same language of love. It's everywhere.

He really is the apostle of love. First John 4, 7, beloved, let us love one another. For love is of God, and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God, for God is love. In this the love of God was manifested toward us that God has sent his only begotten son into the world that we might live through him.

In this is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. And then he says this, no one has seen God at any time. But if we love one another, God abides in us. And His love has been perfected in us.

By this we know that we abide in Him and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent the Son as the Savior of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God, 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." Soak it in. Soak in the love of your brethren, however meager it might be.

Take every bit of it and savor it. This often is the difference between happy and unhappy people. The unhappy people savor all the bad stuff and they don't soak in the good stuff. But God is love. So Paul explained this to the Corinthian Church, how it works, in 2 Corinthians 4.

He said, Remember, heaven is a place where we hold the glory of God. But on earth, we also behold the glory of God. We can behold His glory now. His glory is shining through His Word. And He's given us His Word so that we would be transformed because it begins with glory, it begins with God's glory.

In Romans 8 39, the Apostle Paul made it very clear that love will not go out in the church. The light of love will not go out in the church. He said, For I am persuaded that neither death nor life nor angels nor principalities nor powers nor things present nor things to come nor height nor depth nor any other created thing shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Not separated from the love of God, never bereft of it, never, not for a second. Always able to manifest the love of God in our lives, however imperfectly.

The flow of love, the everlasting stream, the river of living water, the upper and the lower springs, those things always flow. Now we all know too that they often flow to the degree that we fill our hearts. We can inflame love by the Word of God and grow it exponentially. Now, the love of God is known in two ways. First of all, there are the manifestations of His love, God's love for His Son.

And then there is our feelings of His love. Got that? They're the manifestations of His love, and they're our feelings of love. I think it's important that we distinguish that. God's love for His Son is the chief manifestation of His love.

And That love is secure. We've said it a couple of times. It is, His love is so secure, literally secured by His love for His Son. His love for you is secured by His Son, unalterably chained to that chain of love. And He loves us the same way that He loves His Son.

So those are the manifestations of His love. It's hardwired, unbreakable. I hope you feel that today. But we have a problem with our feelings. They are often betraying us, lying to us, and hurting us in many ways, sometimes because of the things that we've cultivated in our feelings.

But our feelings are changeable, And our feelings are subject to many different forces, various circumstances, different emotional makeup, sensitivity to sin. There are different things that affect our feelings. We all think our feelings are important, but they're not all important. We don't live in disembodied souls. We live in bodies.

And our bodies are affected by lots of things. Hormonal things, physical things, feeling sick for a long time can make you have a dim view of a lot of things, because your body is moving you. People have different memories and different experiences, and Our feelings are affected by that. Things that we did in the past, sins that we committed, they still affect us. They still make us sick in some ways.

So we're not disembodied souls. We're not just souls. We're souls that live in bodies. And so we should not expect our feelings to always be right. It's an immature person who always wants his feelings to be exactly right and exactly the same.

Because life isn't like that. And particularly when you have Christians that they just live by their feelings. You have very unstable people, unhappy people, and sometimes the hardest people in the world to live with if all they think about is their feelings and be driven by their feelings. We're all subject to that to some degree or other, some more than others. But we have to recognize that God's love for us supersedes our feelings about us and about Him.

Thomas Manton said it like this, the feelings of His love, the Feelings of His love are fleeting and changeable. Don't you wish it weren't that way? That you could just always be on such a high of everything, but it isn't that way. And God's made us that way. God, he knows our frame, says David.

And, but, we also need to recognize that love follows knowledge. To be filled up with the knowledge of his will is To be filled up with the knowledge of His will is to be filled up with the characteristics of His name. And that's why David said, my meditation of Him shall be sweet in Psalm 104. Because your meditations of Him are tremendously helpful drivers to your feelings. Now, one more thing about this thing, about happiness and all this, and God's love.

It's wrong for us to think that if I'm successful, It's a manifestation of God's love. If I'm rich, God must love me more. If my son doesn't die, God loves me more than the father whose son did die. That God doesn't love me because of a calamity. Here is one of the most important things we need to recognize about God's love and that is this, worldly success is no measure of God's love.

Worldly success is no measure at all of God's love. Have you noticed that the richest people on the planet today, who I think control about 25% of the globe's gross national product. They're all ungodly people. They're atheists, they're immoral, decidedly, boldly, overtly so. The richest people in the world are not the godliest people in the world.

Don't think for one second that worldly success is a sign that God loves you. Now, I would have to back up and just qualify that a little bit. The Bible does say that He does bless His people and sometimes, you know, with tremendous financial wealth. So I would never deny that. God does do that.

But don't look for that as your sign, because God shows His love to you in many ways. I heard the story of this pastor who labored for years and years and years, and his church never grew, got smaller typically, just kind of bumped along. The guy down the street had all this, had this massive big beautiful building And he gets to heaven and he says, Lord, I was faithful to you just like that guy down the street. Why didn't you bless me? Why didn't I see the fruit?

And in the story, fake story, The Lord says, you were the fruit. I was manifesting my glory through your trials, through your deprivations. I was manifesting my glory when you didn't have what you needed and wanted, when things weren't going well, just like Job. You know, God used Job to belittle the devil, because the devil said, he only loves you because he's rich. And God says, think again, Sam.

He loves me because of me. So God says, OK, take everything away. Test him. Everything Everything goes away. He loses everything.

Massive wealth, the richest man in the region. He lost it all. And what did he do? He worshiped God when everything was gone. So don't think that worldly success is a sign of God's love.

It is not a sign of God's love. Again, it is not a sign of God's love. Don't look for it. He may give you tremendous wealth and resources, but it's not a sign. All it is is that God puts something in your hand to use for His glory.

That's all it means. Well, enough of that. So in this prayer, the divinity of the Son of God is displayed, and the purpose for all of that rich theology, the divinity of the Son and the Father, is to declare love, and to manifest it in the world. And so your theology is really designed to reveal the infinite love of God and His kindness toward mankind. And love sums up everything that the Bible teaches about church life, about family life, about community life.

And you need to, you know, if you have a family and you're building a home, remember what it represents. It represents the home in heaven. It represents the family of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. And that family is a world of love. That family is a world of happiness and delight.

That world is a world of honor and glory and beauty and thanksgiving. That's what you see with the Father and the Son. There's this interplay of love, this world of love that exists in heaven. And God has given you, if you're a parent, a home to prepare your children for heaven you know That's why Jonathan Edwards says heaven is a world of love and I can't resist He said, Heaven is the palace or presence chamber of the Supreme Being, who is both the cause and the source of all holy love. Since He is an infinite being, it follows that He is an infinite fountain of love.

It shines forth in full glory. In beams of love there are fountains there the fountain overflows in streams and rivers of love and delight enough for all to drink at and swim in yea, so as to overflow the world as if it were a deluge of love." I'll bow to the temptation and continue. You should not read long quotes in sermons. It's just you guys who are preachers don't do this. The Saints eternally receive and return the ever flowing love of God through Christ.

As the saints will love God with an inconceivable ardor of heart, and to the uttermost of their capacity, so they will know that He has loved them from eternity and that He still loves them and will love them to eternity. And all this in a garden of love, the paradise of God, where everything has cast, has a cast of holy love and nothing to interrupt its exercises, where everything is fitted by an all-wise God for the enjoyment of love under the greatest advantages. So the whole history of the world is summed up in the words in John 15 verse 9, As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you. There you have the history of the world and a commentary on everything that's happened on this planet. I want to conclude by turning to 1st Corinthians 13.

So go ahead and open your Bibles there. In 1st Corinthians 13 there are at least 15 distinguishing marks of love that manifest itself in the Church of Jesus Christ, in the homes that pray and adore His name, and His, particularly I pray, his churches all around the world. And it really is the supernatural result of the love of Jesus Christ. And love is a fruit, you know, love comes from something that means that love is real. Love is not something that's put on, it's a fountain of love.

It comes, it's real from a real source, from the Holy Spirit. It comes from the real indwelling of the Holy Spirit. That's where love comes from. So I'm gonna give you these 15 marks without much explanation. I just want them to sort of rest upon us and look for these manifestations of love in your spouse, in your children, in your church.

Look for these. It's easiest to hear these manifestations of love and think of that other person who's not loving. That's what we like to do. Let's don't do that. Okay, we're just gonna just block that out.

Can we just like have a little mind block here and block all that out. Forget that and look for the love that's demonstrated here. Number one, love suffers long when wronged. That's what Jesus Christ did. Christ was patient, long-suffering, slow to anger.

Number two, love is kind to the unkind. Christ loved us and made us alive when we were dead and enemies and insolent and rebellious idolaters. Number three, love does not envy when someone else prospers. Number four, love does not parade itself in self exaltation. Number five, Love is not puffed up over his own opinions.

6. Love does not behave rudely when responding to others. 7. Love does not seek its own in relationships. 8.

Love is not provoked when challenged. Number nine, love thinks no evil, keeping a record of wrongs. Number 10, love does not rejoice in inequity, celebrating worldliness. Number 11, love rejoices in the truth. Even when truth is not appreciated.

Number 12, love bears all things, even when you're hurting. Number 13, love believes all things, even when you're tempted to doubt. Number 14, love hopes all things when things seem hopeless. I think I want to say that one again. Love hopes all things, even when things seem hopeless.

They're not hopeless. FYI. There's always a way through. Love endures all things even when life is hard. So the ultimate purpose of divine unity in this doctrine that's observed in this prayer is love in the world manifested from God the Father to the Son and to the children who love the Son.

And this is the essence of the life of God in the soul of man. It is love. The unity of the Father and the Son manifests itself in the unity of the Church, which results in the world believing. And all these are gifts of God. Jesus already said it this way, that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them as you loved me.

And it all wraps up What Jesus said in John 3.16, For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, That whoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. It's very telling that Jesus ends the time in the upper room in the same way he began it. He began by saying—or John began the saying, or John began the discourse by saying he loved them to the end. And now John closes with this prayer of love. I was listening to someone a couple of weeks ago talking about the love of God.

And he said, if you were out in the middle of the ocean and thrown overboard, and you were thrown into the ocean of the love of God. He said you could swim 10,000 miles and not reach the end of the love of God. You could swim 20,000 miles. And if you traveled, if you traveled a billion light years into space, to find the end of the love of God, you would never find it. It's everlasting, And it's yours.

It's the free gift of grace for all those who believe and follow the Lord Jesus. So soak it in. There's a long road ahead of sweetness. One last comment. I don't know, you know, some of you are facing some hard things.

What you face in this world are the hardest things you'll ever face for all eternity because you will not face any of them in eternity so persevere there's an end in sight a never-ending sight of heaven let's pray Lord we thank you for this marvelous testimony of grace. We thank you for this doctrine of the divinity of the Son of God, His being sent by His Father, His being loved by His Father, His love forming an infinite, unbreakable, unalterable chain of love from the Father to the Son and the sons and the daughters for all eternity. We praise you for this beautiful gospel. Amen. In.