Do You Love?

Transcript

Well, good morning Saints If I haven’t had the pleasure of meeting you yet, my name is Andre and I’m on staff here at Trinity Church. And if we haven’t met, I’d love to meet you, I’d love to get to know you, and if I or we as a church can serve you in any way, we would certainly love to do that. Well this morning we come back to the Word of God as we do every Sunday morning Our worship being centered around God’s truths The truths the realities of the gospel. And so this morning we come back to this topic of love If you’ve been with us the last a couple of months or so, you know that we’ve been walking through Paul’s letter to the Corinthian Church his first letter to the Corinthian Church And we’ve been studying this broader theme of Christian living in the current culture and as we’ve gone through first Corinthians

We’ve looked at a lot. We’ve seen this church that in many ways is fraught with a bunch of issues a bunch of problems and I Think if we’re honest if we saw these kinds of things in a church today We would really have a tough time calling that place a church There are some sins that are just so blatant so in-your-face that we’re going on in this Corinthian Church that it’s tough to think of how Christians can live in this way, right and Yet Paul in writing to the Corinthians Still calls them saints Still speaks to them as if they’re believers He still calls them to flee these different sins that are weighing them down that are hampering their witness to the broader world and as we’ve walked through this epistle we’ve seen Paul calling out sin Paul speaking about the need for holiness and purity in the church

Paul speaking about how the church works altogether individual parts of one body So Christians using their gifts Christians using their God-given abilities in order to minister to the people around them and the church being built up From all of these individual parts using their unique gifting in order to build that body up We’ve talked about love. We’ve talked about unity. We’ve talked about the miraculous a little bit We will get back to that next Sunday. And then last Sunday if you were with us I looked at first Corinthians 13, which is that famous chapter? Probably one of the most famous if not the most famous chapters in all of Scripture which speaks about love is patient. Love is kind and so on and as we dug into this topic of love We looked at love being the more excellent way More excellent than the miraculous more excellent than the greatest gifts that we could imagine

Do You Love?

More excellent than the best sermon you’ve ever heard more excellent than a church that works like a fine-tuned machine The more excellent way is the way of love and so this Sunday this morning I wanted to flesh out that topic just a little bit more and this Sunday We’re actually going to go to another book altogether in the New Testament We’re going to look at the letter of the Apostle John his first So the epistle of first John, so if you have your Bibles I’d like to invite you to open your Bibles to first John and we’re gonna look at chapter 2 Verses 7 through 11. And so as we continue to look at this topic of love the question that I want to answer for all of us and for every one of us to answer for ourselves is Do you love and that’s actually the title of this morning’s sermon?

Do you love and? As we dig into our text, I want to invite you if you’re able to stand for the reading of the Word of God Again first John chapter 2 verses 7 through 11 Beloved I am writing you no new commandment But an old commandment that you had from the beginning The old commandment is the word that you have heard at the same time It is a new commandment that I’m writing to you Which is true in him and in you because the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining Whoever says he is in the light and hates his brother is still in darkness Whoever loves his brother abides in the light and in him there is no cause for stumbling But whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness and does not know where he is going

Because the darkness has blinded his eyes. This is the Word of the Lord Please be seated Saints would you bow your heads and pray with me? Father would you speak to us this morning and Would you flesh out? this reality of living the more excellent way of Being a people defined by the more excellent way Being a people known by their love because we feel so strongly so overwhelmingly That we are loved by you Help us to see that perhaps in a way that we’ve never seen it before and Help us to honor you in the way that we listen to the preaching of your word. We ask in Jesus name. Amen

In the 1800s The American pastor and evangelist Dwight Moody led a Sunday school for children and there was a small child in his class who Was a part of their class for a long time, but their family moved away to and in another part of the city entirely But the little boy kept coming even though what it meant for him to come to this very Sunday school class was a walk Of five miles each way just to make it to the Sunday school class and every Sunday He walked past not one not two not ten, but forty churches with Sunday schools He walked past them all to the one that he attended and one Sunday He was asked why he would go so far why he would walk past so many churches why he would walk past so many Sunday schools that are also preaching the Word of God that are also teaching about Jesus and

Come to this very one and he said because they love a fellow over there Love is an incredibly powerful thing It changes the way that we think about our faith. It changes the way that we experience our Christian lives And this is what I want for us to consider this morning. I want us to consider the centrality of love for the Christian the supremacy of love as who we are and how we function and how we live and what we’re known by and

Really the beauty of love for the followers of Jesus we talked about this a bit last time, but this is a word that we say and we use so much and Often the word is just kind of muddled and it’s kind of mixed in with so many other things and we would use the same word to describe our feelings for fried chicken as We were for our spouse and our children now I hope I pray When we say that we love fried chicken and we love our son or daughter that we mean different things by those two things but nevertheless when we use the word to describe any and everything and when it’s used so broadly and so generally in our culture as to describe any kind of love in any kind of Interaction and it becomes an entirely subjective thing. It’s tough to kind of figure out

Tested by Our Love

Well, what does it mean to be a people known by our love? What does it mean to love my brother and my sister in Christ? to love others is so inextricably woven into the fabric of Christianity that there aren’t really many other things which so Clearly defined the Christian as this one thing at the center of every Variation of the question of what it means to be a Christian what it means to have genuine faith in Jesus is this one thing love Loving one another is in a way basic Christianity We see here in our text that it’s referred to as an old commandment But then John says that this is a new commandment and what he’s referring to are the words of Jesus Found in John chapter 13 verse 34 a new commandment. I give to you that you love one another Just as I have loved you. You also are to love one another

This wasn’t a new commandment in that the people of God weren’t previously expected to love others But that Jesus exemplified this in a brand new way He showed what love looked like despite religious background despite ethnic background despite socioeconomic economic status despite all of the cultural baggage in which we would be able to kind of Distinguish is this person worthy of my love or is this person not worthy of my love? Jesus did away with all of that and he showed with his life with his interactions with his ministry What love looks like but most specifically he showed what real love looks like in his death and his burial and in his resurrection on behalf of Not holy people but sinners enemies People who hated him the very people that were killing him and nailing him to that cross He loved them and he cared for them

The bar of what it means to love others was raised significantly with the coming of the Messiah And the verses leading up to the ones that we’re studying John actually tells his readers that they are to obey Jesus’s commandments his commands and you see this in verses 3 through 6 of our chapter and then here in verses 7 through 11 He’s pointing to this one key pivotal commandment Our text tells us that if you say you’re in the light if you say you’re a Christian and There’s even a bit of hate for your brother. You’re in darkness. You’re not in the light without love. You’re not spiritual You’re not a Christian. That’s what John is telling us and this whole notion of being like, well, I’m a spiritual person Maybe I’m not religious. Maybe I’m not obeying the commands of Jesus as much as I should

Maybe I’m not following all of the rules that I see in the Bible Maybe I’m not as obedient as I should be but I am a spiritual person This notion is of spiritual versus religious most often this is just a self-seeking or a self-serving type of religion that is developed by people who don’t want to Actually look at the words of Scripture and see what God demands of us and I say the word demand Intentionally because a command is something that you can more or less disobey but a demand is something that is expected of you and So if we are to call ourselves Christian, we need to do away with all of these alternate explanations Alternate definitions of what that might look like and actually look at how Scripture defines spirituality and the spiritual person is one who is controlled by the spirit and that means showing the fruits of the spirit and as we

talked about last week the first of these the primary of these the one that encompasses all of them is love and Our obedience dear friends. What we do is we show loyalty and love to God and we show loyalty and love to his family And obedience will always be sweet to those who love him to those who treasure him to those who believe in his promises So with that in mind, let’s let’s take a look at this question Do you love now? this text falls pretty neatly into two parts verses 7 through 8 and verses 9 through 11 and verses 9 through 11 are actually a repetition of something that John wrote previously in his letter in chapter 1 verses 5 through 7 and Then again repeated in the verses just before ours and in chapter 1 verses 5 through 7 He says this is the message we have heard from him and proclaimed to you that God is light and in him is no

Darkness at all if we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness We lie and do not practice the truth But if we walk in the light as he is in the light we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus his son Cleanses us from all sin and then in verse in chapter 2 verses 3 through 5 He writes the following and by this we know that we have come to know him if we keep his commandments Whoever says I know him but does not keep his commandments as a liar and the truth is not in him But whoever keeps his word in him truly the love of God is perfected by this We know that we are in him now just like in those two passages Our text is actually a test to see whether or not a person is in the light and in this case

The test is love and so I actually wanted to look at our text in reverse order So first we’re gonna look at verses 9 through 11 where we’ll see that we are tested by our love and then we’ll look at the Command to love which we see in verses 7 and 8. So let’s take a look at verses 9 through 11 first Tested by our love. I’m gonna reread these verses for us Whoever says he is in the light and hates his brother is still in darkness Whoever loves his brother abides in the light and in him there is no cause for stumbling But whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness and does not know Where he is going because the darkness has blinded his eyes These three verses make a fairly straightforward a fairly simple point John basically says the way that you see whether or not you’re a Christian is by whether or not you love others

easy, right in Verses 9 through 11 the test is applied to a loving person and a hating person and it shows what both of those say about the person and Notice when John is writing this and he does the same thing in the next chapter in verses 11 through 24 He fleshes this notion out But John doesn’t actually present a middle ground between love and hate in the next chapter when he brings up this topic again What he brings up as the example of hate does not just like well, you’re not loving enough, but he brings up Cain Now for those of us who’ve read the Old Testament and for those of us who’ve studied the story of Cain and Abel We know that We shouldn’t be like Cain, right? And so what John is saying is if it’s not love Here’s the example of what the opposite of that looks like

Don’t be like the guy who murdered his brother Right, we can we can at least agree with that But John isn’t actually giving us something somewhere in the middle between the love of Jesus which is the perfect embodiment of love and the hatred of a brother killing his own brother because of jealousy and So we kind of want that middle ground, right? We kind of want this a very popular word right now, but we kind of want a little bit of nuance All right, we want to we want to flesh that out a little bit We don’t we don’t want to just go to one extreme or the other we want something maybe Like tolerance, right but that’s not quite love tolerance doesn’t actually do very much at all Tolerance it’s not that hard to just put up with people It’s not that hard to just kind of get along in a way with people but loving others. It’s much more than that

And so as we think about that, I think that most of our minds would go to well surely I don’t hate people Well, surely I don’t hate people because the way that Jesus defines hate when he’s Is that it’s equivalent to murder and he says when he’s preaching on the Sermon on the Mount when he’s speaking about not murdering and the command not to murder and to be obedient to that command what he’s saying is Equivalent to that the heart of that where all of that starts is with hatred for the person around you And so a way to check if we hate people according to John again according to the Holy Spirit is do we love them First John 3 16 by this we know love that he laid down his life for us and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers, but if anyone has the world’s goods and

Sees his brother in need yet closes his heart against him. How does the love of God abide? How does God’s love abide in him little children let us not love in word or talk but indeed and in truth This is another way that we can see do we love the people around us or do we hate them? Do we support the body of Christ? Do we provide for one another? Do we look out for each other? Do we seek opportunities to serve or are we just concerned with ourselves our own well-being our own comfort? The life that I’m building for myself Let me just pause here and say that I’m Regularly encouraged by how often I see you all responding to the needs of the Saints in our body. I See how quickly the meal trains fill up I hear about the stories of how you all visit one another and how you all care for each other

So I’m not in any way saying like bad Trinity Church I’m not in any way saying that we’re not doing this But what I am saying is that on an individual level We need to constantly be analyzing our hearts because the thing that we see regularly in scripture is not just that we ought to be Doing the external thing that’s noticeable, but that we ought to be analyzing our hearts Which only God can see and so as we do these things I am so encouraged by you It’s a beautiful thing to see and so I just want to encourage you as you’re serving as you’re finding these Opportunities as you’re going out of your way to bless the people around you and care for them and provide for them and love them Well, don’t grow tired of that I think it’s really easy to Maybe serve and to pour yourself out and to do the thing that God calls us to and then just say but I’m tired

It’s been long enough. I’ve done this enough. I don’t I don’t even know if people notice I don’t even know if it matters all that much and I just want to encourage you. It does matter. It does matter God says that we are to give to the people around us that we are to care for the people around us This is not just something that we do. This is who we are We are a people known primarily and predominantly by our love and by our willingness to serve the people around us and it’s it’s a gift to be able to do this you glorify God in the way that you love and you serve and you Care for others and you point people to Jesus when you serve people in that way You’re actually functioning in a way as to point that person to Jesus

You’re pointing that person to the God who is actually providing for them by sending you their way and You all have been the hands and feet of Jesus for our family so many times This has been an incredibly encouraging thing for kite Santa as we’ve been members here and as we’ve needed help and as we’ve needed prayer and as we’ve needed meals and things have come Up and illness and surgeries and you all know the stories But it’s been such a huge blessing for us to receive that love From God through you guys and it’s a beautiful thing and it’s an encouraging thing and I just I want to encourage you don’t miss those opportunities don’t gloss over those things and If you feel discouraged It’s okay. It happens. We all feel discouraged. Sometimes we all feel like I’ve done enough. I’m tired. I’m done

And I just want to encourage you that it’s in those very moments in our moments of weakness and in our moments of frailty that God Actually uses our ministry and our love and our kindness and our compassion to bless others and so don’t miss those opportunities Saints and Then John in verse 11 He kind of wraps up this thought when he says that hatred is not being able to see Accurately, this is a really interesting way and so consider the fact that when we think about hatred when we think about withholding love from somebody when we think about Not going out of our way to care for someone not going out of our way to provide for someone and sometimes we actually need To find excuses to be able to do that Sometimes we need to kind of excuse why we shouldn’t be doing that or maybe why this person doesn’t deserve that

Right consider the fact that our hatred can actually change the way that we see people We judge because we hate, we’re cold, we’re condescending, we mistreat, we gossip We choose to keep some people at a distance because our hatred has caused us to view those people a certain way It’s caused us to see them in a negative light and there’s a number of ways that happens Sometimes it’s something that they did to us Sometimes it’s a worldview or a belief that they hold that to us might be offensive And so we find ways to excuse keeping those people at a distance We find ways to excuse of seeing those people a certain way maybe a person who’s not deserving of ministry and love Maybe a person who’s not the right kind of Christian maybe the person who doesn’t think or function or view the world in the right way and

if we in the process of that of Viewing that person that way if we begin to wonder why others maybe don’t see them that way why they have other people around them who love them and care for them and Serve them and our friends with them and we don’t really understand why they don’t see that what the thing that we see Can it be that we can’t see in someone what others see in them because our eyes are darkened with hatred? Can it be that when I look at somebody and I think that they’re a lesser Christian Not worthy of friendship not worthy of love not worthy of my ministry that my eyes are distorted Because I don’t love that person and I don’t care for that person when you can’t believe the best about someone Saints and everything you hear about them in the negative confirms your own suspicions and

Everything that person does is wrong Biblically speaking that’s hatred and the implications of this are many for us today, and I think that I Gosh, I’m really trying to avoid reading the news altogether but man I just the amount of vitriol that pours like from across the political aisle about just how Just how bad and dumb and broken and backwards and whatever The people who don’t think like me are that’s that’s all you see online This is the entirety of our cultural engagement This is the entirety of our cultural moment right now and and I think that we’re incapable of actually looking to somebody who’s different than I am and who thinks differently than I do and who functions differently than I do and seeing in them a person who is worthy of love a person who God created in his image a

person who if they’re a Christian Jesus died for and So Saints, I just want to encourage you the world is going to be doing that. That’s an obvious thing But Far be it from us to look at somebody who goes through life differently who functions differently and I’m not talking about like clear sin I’m not talking about things that scripture very clearly outlines. I’m talking about secondary tertiary issues Worldview issues whatever and if we’re incapable of actually seeing in that person someone that Jesus Loved enough to die for Maybe the problem isn’t with them. It’s with us And so Saints we got it we got to watch our hearts so that our eyes are not darkened with hatred And if we start to excuse it, it’s like I don’t hate that person they’re just wrong and then you start to see everything that they do and hear everything that they say through a negative lens and with a

critical ear Maybe we don’t love them as much as we think we do According to Jesus and according to John if you’re not for love You’re for hate and that’s why there’s no middle ground given to us here And that’s why Jesus equated calling somebody a fool with murder It sounds extreme and it sounds so far out of the realm of like how we interact like no surely It’s like it’s fine to just call that guy dumb and I’m guilty of it, too. I’m not saying this is somebody who’s figured it out. I feel it in my heart I feel my blood pressure rising. I feel that too and there are things that are offensive to me And there are things that are offensive to me and there are things that are hurtful to me And I there’s a lot that I have to repent for on a regular basis Saints. We got to watch our hearts

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Commanded to Love

Hate is the evidence of blindness and love is the evidence that our blindness has been overcome And so let us love This brings us to verses 7 and 8 Where we are not just suggested to love but we are commanded to love. Let’s reread those two verses Beloved I’m writing, you know new commandment, but an old commandment that you had heard from the beginning The old commandment is the word that you have heard at the same time. It is a new commandment Excuse me at the same time It is a new commandment that I’m writing to you Which is true in him and in you because the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining So what is it that we’re being commanded to do? Well, since we moved backwards through the text, we actually already got that answer We see that the command that John is referring to is to love our brothers and our sisters

It’s safe to assume that he’s talking about the love commandment in John 13 34, which is which is what Jesus calls the new commandment We read this in our introduction and we gain even more insight into this in 2nd John verse 5 Not as though I were writing you a new commandment But the one we have had from the beginning that we love one another the commandment that is both old and new is the commandment to love one another and The people of God have always had certain commandments. They’ve always had certain rules They’ve always had certain guidelines Which would set them apart from the broader culture which would show the broader culture that these are people that are separate These are people that are noticeably different. These are people that operate with a different system of values

These are people that have their allegiance to something other than what the surrounding nations and the surrounding peoples have Here under the new covenant. We are called to love others as Jesus has loved us and So we’re set apart. We are noticeably different Not by our dietary choices Not by the clothing that we wear Not by any other Secondary thing we are set apart we are noticeably different because when the whole world is filled with hatred and condemnation and division and Finding the things that we can argue over the people of God are loving others Loving their enemies Loving people that are very different than them We are called to consider others as more important than ourselves We are called to shift our very thinking about ourselves and other people. We are called to be known By our love and so this is when we encounter things like that

We ought to be asking ourselves. What are we known for? What is the thing that people know me for? Well, if you ask some of my friends from outside the church co-workers, whatever in this case, it would just be people at the church or Oshawa, but Hopefully the thing that we are known for man So and so is just such a loving person. She’s so kind. He’s always there to help. She’s always serving. She’s always available And if we’re known for other things if we’re known for other Affiliations if we’re known for other lesser things about us Maybe we ought to reevaluate what it is that we’re putting out into the world what we want our identity to be John calls this an old commandment. What does he mean by that? Well ever since the gospel was first preached love has been a part of it in

Verse 24 later on in our chapter John says let what you heard from the beginning abide in you if what you heard from the beginning abides in you then you too Will abide in the Son and in the Father not necessarily speaking about the beginning of creation But from the beginning of the word the logos Jesus When we say that love is the criteria by which we judge our standing in the light. This isn’t anything new. This is basic It’s inseparable from how Christianity is to be understood and from how it’s always been understood in chapter 3 verse 11 We see further confirmation of this for this is the message that you have heard from the beginning that we should love one another He sums up his whole message his whole message with this Note what he’s saying here friends because this helps us define Christianity in a much more thorough way

This helps us understand it in a much deeper way The message is not just that Jesus came into the world for it to die for sinners But that we as his people are to love one another The way that people come to see the love of Jesus in and through us in and through us individually But in and through us as a church is our love for one another John 1335 Jesus words by this all People will know that you are my disciples again What are we relying on to be a clear sign of the fact that we are Christians Is it the fact that I dress differently than the people in my workplace? Is it the fact that I maybe don’t listen to the same music as they do is that if the fact that maybe they eat? Or drink something that I don’t eat or drink

Jesus words by this all people will know This is what it means to be a Christian. This is what it means to be changed by the gospel This is what it means to experience the love of God and live it out So friend, let me ask again. Do you love your brothers and sisters?

Not just like Yeah, I Love what’s his name again? Do you love your brothers and sisters are these? the most important people to you is your life defined and known by the way that you walk through life with these people the way that you care for these people the way that you serve these People the way that you sacrifice for these people

We’re an amazing rebuke for the modern-day gospel We seem to share the gospel without saying that love would be required of you We seem to share the gospel just by saying just broadly that God loved you and enjoy the rest of your life Like how much have we watered down what Jesus did I

Think that we gloss over this like spend some time if you haven’t done this in a while pull open one of the Gospels pull Open John and just read through it and just read through the life of Jesus I mean, when all you get is people misunderstanding your motives—imagine Everything you do you do because you love people like imagine that world You’re all you do is I love people and I’m here for them and I want to serve them and every turn his motives are Misunderstood he does good beautiful miraculous things must be the power of the devil He Calls himself who he is the son of the true living God heretic kill him Everything he does is because of his love for people and Jesus said this very important thing Jesus told his people his disciples to consider the cost of following him

Do we consider the cost of following him? No, it’s not just that you might get made fun of at work a little bit Although that might be something that’s difficult for us to stomach. No, it might not be that you lose Money, or you lose your job, although that may be part of the cost and that’s a difficult thing to bear And that’s a difficult thing to get through But when Jesus told his people to consider the cost of being his disciples This is the message that we are to consider when we preach the gospel This is a sacrifice for us. This is a sacrifice for The people of God and following him we are to consider what it means to love others as ourselves We love ourselves. Well, we look out for ourselves. Well, but to think of others that doesn’t come all that naturally

Matthew 16 24 if anyone would come after me let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me John 8 31. So Jesus said to the Jews who believed in him if you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples This is at the heart of genuine true Christianity when we preach the gospel What we tell people is that Christ died for sinners like us and on the basis of that atoning death God offers to sinners forgiveness Hope and power to change and what are we changing from and what are we changing into we go from being rebellious? Selfish lovers of self to worshippers of God and lovers of men Those that are difficult to love those that may not love you back Those that may want you dead Because that’s how Jesus loved you do this because you understand how loved you are

You do this because you understand what a privilege it is to share that love with others You can’t have any of it forgiveness hope the power to change without taking the whole package. This is the gospel The gospel changes us. It doesn’t just give us another thing to believe It may make us uncomfortable. But what this teaching does is it takes away assurance from disobedient Christians? We seem to have this really good understanding about the perseverance of the Saints like I’m saved so I’m not gonna fall away But what this letter does is it actually takes a lot of that assurance away Because it forces you to look in the mirror and it forces you to answer the question. Am I actually this person? Or have I maybe lied to myself? It does away with the notion that you can be saved and remain unchanged

The Light Already Shining

The Apostle John’s first letter the whole topic of this letter is the assurance of salvation. How can I know? He’s writing to Christians that are brand new that don’t have the whole Bible that don’t have this long history and systematic theologies and everything fleshed out and so these Christians that are like a month ago were pagans or following another religion altogether or you know Just confused and living and just a really messed up way and he’s writing to these people and they’re asking Well, how can I know it like am I truly saved and he’s writing to them and at the heart of all of this Repeated throughout this letter over and over and over love of God love for people love of God love for people if God places people around you love those people you don’t love those people. Are you really a Christian?

Yes, then love those people, but it’s hard. Are you really a Christian? Yes, then love those people. That’s it This is such an integral part of the faith This is this is so central to who we are to how we function to how we live And if it’s so integral what then makes it a new commandment It seems that the word already in the eighth verse speaking about the light It’s it’s an important word for us to consider Isaiah chapter 60 verses 19 and 20

The Sun shall be no more your light by day nor for brightness shall the moon give you light But the Lord will be your everlasting light and your God will be your glory Your son shall no more go down nor your moon withdraw itself for the Lord will be your Everlasting light and your days of mourning shall be ended

— Isaiah 60

(ESV)

The Prophet speaks of a day when all would be light and John says that true light is shining That true light is Jesus That light has come he’s already here God’s light includes God’s love the light the life to which he calls us the life which he gives us the holiness that we are To pursue these are inseparably linked to his love and to his light The newness of this command is seen in the demand to reflect the new light Jesus We are like mirrors who reflect his light to the world Elsewhere in this letter John says that God is light chapter 1 verse 5 He says that God is love chapter verse chapter 4 verse 7 Jesus says that he is the light of the world in John 9 and that the greatest love that one can show to another is To lay down his life for his friend

He also says then that we are the light of the world and that we are to love one another as he has loved us And that this will give glory to God and this will help people see that we are his Disciples light and love flow from God through Jesus into the world Are you seeing Saints more and more how this is an optional for us? If we’re not doing this if we’re not living in this way, it doesn’t matter how gifted I am It doesn’t matter how well I carry out my ministry it doesn’t matter how much scripture I can say It doesn’t matter how many books I’ve read It doesn’t matter how much money I give if this isn’t what defines me Do I know him have I felt that love have I experienced his love Any presentation of the gospel or of the Christian life that doesn’t teach

That something would be demanded of you and that something is love It’s not the whole picture Understanding this Believing it living it out This is what’s going to protect us both individually and as a church from legalism and from antinomianism It’ll keep us in the middle pointed to Jesus This is what’s gonna bolster us to a beautiful genuine Christianity And notice he’s not just saying this is like, oh, yeah, do it He’s saying the commandment is true because the light is already shining Love is the light of the kingdom and it’s already shining in your heart Love is the expression of eternal life of the light already shining the love of God in you being perfected So if you don’t have this love if you don’t have this light You may not be born again Friend if that scares you if that makes you uncomfortable then that may be exactly what needs to happen

If you’re here and you’re wondering like have I actually been saved have I actually been born again? Do I know this Jesus do I understand this love have I experienced this forgiveness? Maybe it’s time to really think about how you view your faith and whether or not you’ve experienced that love This may be a time to consider if you’re living in sin and disobedience If you haven’t given your whole heart over to Jesus and entrusted your whole life and eternity to him Maybe it’s time to consider if you’re still trying to earn your own salvation. You’re still trying to figure it out on your own Friend it’s not gonna happen Friend it’s not gonna happen God is holy. God is perfect. We can’t do it on our own But the one who did it Did it because he loves? sinners And he saves them not because of how good they are or how much they’ve done

But because he is a good God who’s abounding in love and kindness and mercy and if we just come to him Contrite hearts and repent of our sins and entrust our hearts to him. He promises us that he will save us The thing is we aren’t just commanded to love by Summoning some strength within this by just being better doing better. We love because he loved us

So as we kind of start coming to a close Friend do you think about that if you’re a Christian? Do you stop and think about that? God loves you Brother sister God loves you He cares for you. He walks with you. He leads you where you should go. He provides for you We can talk about this we could have just done a whole series just talking about the love of God Just focusing in on how beautiful it is that I am known Completely can you imagine? Somebody knowing you completely like every thought Every desire every mistake that happened behind closed doors. Everything said everything not said. Thank God Somebody knowing all that about you and loving you completely Well, that’s God That’s God’s love. He knows you completely in and out He wove you together in your mother’s womb He knew everything that you would do before you did it and he still loves you

That’s a beautiful thing we can we can focus a lot on theology and good teaching and these things are very important But at times we can forget the fact that God loves me That’s a beautiful reality. Do you recognize friend how great that love is how overwhelming how all-encompassing? With this knowledge with understanding this reality God says to us go and love This is often the case when we hear about what we should be doing When we’re not doing it, we have this tendency to feel guilty and just think about what it is that I need to change How do I get past the guilt? Brothers and sisters we must come to grips with the fact that the mercy and the grace of God are immense Because he knew if you’re a Christian before saving you that you would struggle with this And guess what? He still loved you

God isn’t saying he wants us all to just be miserable and to beat our chests in shame But he’s saying that there’s hope and in seeing these things accurately we can acknowledge that we fail at times And we mess up and we trip up but as Christians the hope is that we have a Godward direction And I do see that in you all And in fact John’s next few verses when he’s writing this and when he’s encouraging these people to analyze their love and their walk The next few verses are actually an encouragement. It’s like a hymn that he’s singing He’s like this song that he’s singing to these people and encouraging them in their walk And notice that when John says these things to believers He’s not just saying them in an attempt to tear down and to make them feel guilty But in verse 8 he says that he’s saying these things to encourage them in their walk

But in verse 8, he says I see the light in you He’s encouraging them And honestly analyzing ourselves. We must set ourselves to aspire for holiness saints We must set ourselves to be a people that point others to Jesus a people known primarily and overwhelmingly For being his people not for anything lesser So we ought to ask ourselves what are we aspiring for Am I trying to be rich beautiful popular successful? What are we aspiring for and these things aren’t bad in and of themselves, but are they worth building a life over?

Are they are they worth investing everything into and might we just be building our houses on sand just waiting for that inevitable crash We build our lives on Jesus the firm foundation And as we see areas where we may need to repent where we may need to change and grow God has given us the gift of his people And as we think about well who am I to love and how am I to love Primarily these people the people that god has placed around you’re to love the people on your left and your right And these are actually the very people Who will help you grow in love? In being loved and in being served by them We can each grow in the very love to which we’re called God’s grace is seen in the process of how we grow to resemble Jesus more and more is actually by being here and by doing life together and by loving and being loved by serving and being served

So let us help each other strive for the more excellent way saints Let’s grow in love together Amen Would you pray with me Amen Lord again, we come before you The second week in a row recognizing that we don’t love like we ought to And so father we ask that you would help us We ask for your continued grace Toward people who are weak who are struggling But who have been loved by you and who want to make you known To the people around us who want to point sinners To the savior that saved us And who want to encourage the brothers and sisters that you’ve placed around us So father, would you help us? Would your spirit move among us? Would you fill us with the love? That we know we so desperately needed from you when you saved us And that you so freely continue to pour out on each of us

Help us be a people not known by Our political affiliation by our socioeconomic status by anything other Than a people who love you and who are loved by you Help us to love in that way we ask in jesus name and for his glory. Amen