Love Incarnate

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Amen.

Amen.

Let's pray together.

Lord, we understand that uh Christ was born for a specific purpose at a specific time, uh, for a very specific reason, for a very specific people.

And so, Lord, today we uh we sit in adoration of the purposes of God, their realization in your time and their fulfillment in ours.

And so, Lord, the Bible tells us that angels long to gaze upon the things that we get to understand freely.

It's revealed in your word.

And so, Lord, we come on this fourth Sunday of Advent to slow ourselves down, to acknowledge the deliberate tension of the already and the not yet, and live with very clear realities being demonstrated in our life.

Realities like hope and like peace and like joy and today like love.

So, Holy Spirit, give us a God-informed definition and understanding of what love is, what it looks like, and how it acts.

This is our prayer today, God.

We prayed in Jesus' name, and everyone said, Amen.

If you have a Bible, I invite you to take it and open it up to 1 John chapter 4.

1 John 4 · chapter mention

And let me say, welcome.

Today is a unique kind of day.

It's not only the fourth Sunday of uh of Advent, which happens to fall on Christmas Eve.

It is a family worship day here, which means we have our little friends among us.

So if you hear a clicking sound, like someone's banging two pieces of wood together, it's because your kids were given toys as they came in.

Uh yet yes, we did that on purpose.

And so, boys and girls, here's what I want you to do while Pastor Neil is talking.

I want you to figure out how that thing works.

Don't show me that it works.

I want you to explain to me after church exactly how it works.

Uh, because some of you are holding up looking at kind of going, you get it figured out and come explain to me after church, and if you can, I'll give you a dollar, okay?

Okay, how about a 20?

Yes, now the older brother took it back from his little brother and said, I'm in charge of this.

Uh I want to talk to you this morning on the fourth Sunday of Advent about love incarnate.

And let me just give my little friends an explanation of what you see up here.

Advent is a word that means arrival or coming.

And Advent is the four Sundays, boys and girls, that lead up to Christmas.

It's the four Sundays before Christmas because we live, and Pastor Neal talked about it in my prayer, we live in this tension between, I said between the already and the not yet.

Sometimes preachers say things that eight-year-olds can't understand, and that's not good.

And so let me explain what I mean by that.

When I say the already, I mean that Jesus has already come once.

And the not yet is that Jesus, the Bible tells us, is going to come again.

And so, how do we live during that time while we're we recognize that Jesus came as a little baby born in a manger?

He came to say, rescue people and deliver us from our sins, but he's gonna come again.

He's gonna come in triumph, he's gonna come in judgment.

But in the meantime, we still gotta live.

We gotta play with our brothers and sisters.

We've got to help mom and dad pick up stuff around the house.

We gotta clean our room.

We've got to do what our mom and dad tell us to do.

But Advent is the four Sundays that lead up to Christmas, and we purposely slow down and take time to say, hey, here's kind of four things that we can that should be demonstrated in our life.

We should be people of hope while we wait for Jesus' second coming.

We should be people that are full of peace.

We the peace of God should be realized in our life.

While everyone else around us is kind of wigging out.

We should be the people that are at ease because we're centered down on God and the gospel.

Uh the third thing we should be demonstrating in the meantime is joy.

Not an emotion, but an understanding that comes from that's expression uh uh of a reality.

And today the Bible is gonna tell us that one of the things we should demonstrate is love.

Now, I I like about every other year I like to come back on the fourth Sunday of Advent and just stare at 123 words in 1 John chapter 4, starting in verse 7 and going down to verse 12.

1 John 4 · chapter mention

123 words.

There's only one big word in here.

And we get to that big word, boys and girls, I don't want you to check out and go, I don't know that, because I'll explain to you what it means, okay?

Uh I'm gonna tell you right now what it is, so you'll recognize it when we get there.

It's a big word called propitiation.

Propitiation.

Uh and the Bible uses it for a reason.

But I want to talk to you about love incarnate, love with flesh on it.

And the Bible says it like this: 1 John chapter 4, verse 7.

1 John 4:7

Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God.

And whoever loves has been born of God and knows God.

Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.

In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only son into the world so that we might live through him.

In this is love, not that we have 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.

No one has ever seen God.

If we love one another, God abides in us, and his love is perfected in us.

There's about three or four things that the text tells us this morning about this, and I just want to jump right in and just point to the first one.

It's in verse 7 and 8, the Bible tells us that the love of God is an expression of God's character.

The love of God is an expression of God's character.

He says, Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God.

And whoever loves has been born of God and knows God.

That's the great news.

And then verse 8, he kind of lays the hammer down and said, Anyone who does not love does not know God.

Now you should ask yourself why the Bible speaks in such stark terms like this when he says, Anyone who does not love does not know God.

Here's why.

Get this from the get-go.

What's at stake here is more important than us defining love or having a concept of love.

What is at stake here is our understanding of what God is like.

Let me say that again.

John speaks with these arresting terms and this very stark language because what's at stake is not how we define love, because we live in a culture nowadays that love is kind of while while at one side of our mouth we say love is all we need.

Now the other side of our mouth, we fail to define what this love is that we profess to for everyone to need.

And God kind of lays it down and says, hey, what's bigger than that is not just your concept of love or your desire of love, and I want more love, but what's at stake here is your understanding of what God is like.

What do you mean?

He says, hey, anyone who does not love does not know God because God is love.

He's making a statement about who God is.

Now we've got to be careful because if you're not careful, then oh, does that mean that everyone that uses the word love, that means they're a Christian?

No.

It's important that what we grasp today is that we live in a culture that wants to separate the quality from the deity.

Let me say that again.

We live in a culture that wants to separate the quality of love, this attribute of love from the deity, from God.

They want to take the virtue of love and make it supreme.

And when we do that, we cease to use the word the way the Bible uses it here.

It means that the capacity to love others, the way God loves us, is something that only comes from God.

Let me say when it says, when God is love, it's agape, it's this unconditional uh love.

It doesn't mean that you just, hey, whatever person does, you just say, hey, it doesn't matter, I love you.

No, it matters because it's an expression of who God is.

This kind of unconditional love, that's why I say the love of God is an expression of God's character.

This unconditional love is a reflection and a representation of the moral character of God.

And so when you think about it in those terms, to say to somebody or something, I love you, is very intense, very big statement.

Okay, so be careful with that because in 1 John, when he talks about, hey, this love, and he uses very stark language, the reason he does so is because we're not just talking about a concept or a term, we're talking about God.

And so what is at stake, beloved?

It's not, hey, how do I define love?

But what is at stake is much bigger.

It's pan the camera back.

It's, hey, what is God like?

Second thing the Bible tells us this morning is that the love of God is visible.

He says in verse 9, in this the love of God was made manifest among us.

Now just ask yourself, in this, the love of God was made manifest among us.

In other words, he puts on display.

If God wants to display his love for the world, he wants to say, This is what love looks like, what do you do?

A lot of you have wrapped things and they're under the tree right now, and they are tokens or expressions of your love for the people in your life and people in your family.

God kind of says, Hey, in this is love.

Uh, in this, the love of God was made manifest among us.

What is this?

Here he goes on to explain it.

That God sent his only son into the world.

Just stop right there.

That God sent his only son into the world.

See, that's why we say that the love of God is visible.

You look no further than the incarnation.

God sending his son into the world through a virgin named Mary is the highest and most obvious expression of God's love for the world.

If you ever wonder, hey, does God love me?

I've done a lot of stuff I shouldn't have done, kind of got off track.

I don't know if I can get back.

That's the beauty of the incarnation.

That's the centering of Advent love, is to come back to the manger and kind of say, hey, God says it's on the record.

The Bible's on the record of saying it very clearly, in this the love of God was made manifest.

God makes his love for you and me.

It hinges not on our behavior, but it hinges on something as certain as the incarnation.

In this is the love of God made manifest.

This is where you see it most clearly and the brightest.

There's two things I want you to notice in verse 9.

Number one, notice the phrase was made manifest among us.

Was made manifest among us.

It wasn't a concept, it wasn't a thought, it was an incarnation.

God put on flesh, moved into the neighborhood.

You didn't have to go looking for it or try to figure out like it was a problem to be solved, because God made it obvious in a person, and that person, the Bible says, is Jesus, prophesied from of old and fulfilled in the new.

And so that's the first thing I want you to know.

He says it was made manifest among us.

The second thing I want you to know from this look from verse 9 is this.

Then he tells us why.

He says, look at the rest of verse 9.

In this, the love of God was made manifest among us that God sent his only son into the world.

That's what he did.

Here's why.

So that we might live through him.

So that we might live through him.

See, there's a different way.

The incarnation, Christ coming into the world, if it communicates anything, it communicates the love of God.

And here's one of the most loving things that God could do is God could come to people who've sinned and fallen short and kind of say, Hey, there is another way of doing life.

One of the questions I ask people in counseling, very basic, very simple.

And by the way, I've been counseled by my 20-year-old since she's been home from college this month.

Lots of good counsel.

And she said to one day, she said, Hey Dad, can we get lunch when I get up?

And I'm like, Well, you get up at 2 30.

I don't eat lunch at 2 30.

That's the first problem.

Uh, and I said, and besides, dad's got a full schedule today.

I I don't have any time.

I'm gonna probably just eat a sandwich at my desk.

And she goes, Well, what do you do all day?

And I said, I know you think I work on Sundays, but I actually work other days of the week.

And I said, actually, I have four counseling appointments.

And she said, Oh, oh, yeah, I forgot.

And so what are they about?

I said, Well, A, it's none of your business, and B, uh it's a it's a range of things.

It's marriage counseling, it's a single person uh who's 29 uh and said, I thought I'd be married by now.

Uh and that went well because I said Advent is a great time where we kind of live in this tension of the already and the not yet.

And so I'm not saying, hey, just, hey, isn't God great?

You're 29, you're not married, and you don't have kids, and that's sad and depressing, and it leads to self-medicating behavior.

But I am saying that Advent is a great time to not avoid that and and drink to excess to cover it up, which is what she does.

But it's a great time to lean into that and say, God is still real.

I don't have a husband and I don't have babies and I don't have a house, and I live in an apartment, and I'm getting my hours cut back at work, and I'm gonna have to take on a roommate.

This is not life as I envisioned it to be.

And my 20-year-old says, Well, what do you tell those people?

What do you know about being single, Dad?

You're less like an old married guy.

Say that again.

That was refreshing.

I mean, you've just been married like a long time.

I mean, I just think you need somebody single on staff to counsel single people.

And I said, the Bible actually speaks to that.

And she goes, Where?

When it says if the blind lead the blind, they both wind up in the ditch.

She did not think that was funny.

And I said, I'm I'm not saying single people can't have good counsel, but I'm just messing with you.

And she said, Well, I mean, what are you uh and I said, basically, are you asking me?

Because I don't have like one answer to every problem that walks in my door.

And I said, But one of the things I'm meditating on this week is I get ready and kind of think about the love of God in Advent is found.

And I reference this right here.

He says that he might live through them.

I said, so one of the questions, and I said this to the 29-year-old, I said, here's a question I want to ask you.

Are you open to the possibility that there might be a different and better way to do life?

And she looked at me, unlike my children looked at me.

She looked at me like I just invented the sun.

She was like, shut up.

And I said, No, I'm not gonna shut up.

And she goes, What are you saying?

And I said, I'm not here to kind of correct your moral behavior and kind of say, because there's some you're engaged in some sinful behavior, and sin never satisfies, because if sin could satisfy you, you could be the happiest person in the world and never know God.

But God created you, you were born with this desire, with this need for God.

It hadn't, I don't know if it's been realized or awakened in you, but I'm just asking you a basic baseline question.

Are you open to a different way of doing life?

Because you've been doing life this way for 29 years, and I just got a simple question.

How's that working for you?

And she said, Are you making fun of me?

And I'm like, No, how do you how do you get that question from what I said?

I'm just asking the question.

I said, Because the incarnation, Christ coming into the world.

I said, the Bible talks about it in 1 John.

He says, Hey, and this the love of God is made manifest.

God loves you so much that he comes to offer a different way to do life.

And she goes, I don't know what you mean.

I said, Well, all through the New Testament.

You ever read the New Testament and you hear this phrase?

In him, through him, in him, in him, in him.

I said, I talked about it a couple weeks ago in my church.

I said, You can be close to some realities and not be in these realities because we were created to live in him.

And she said, Well, I I do know that I'm very lonely.

I do know that there are many nights I lay in bed and I think it shouldn't be this hard.

And I said, What I'm talking to you about is that maybe there's a God in heaven and he's whispering down from heaven saying the same thing.

And maybe the voice you hear when you say, It shouldn't be this hard, it can't be this hard, I don't know how long I could go on with it being this hard.

Maybe that's not that that thought doesn't generate with you.

Maybe it starts with God, and you're just hearing God kind of saying, Hello.

Thank you.

Aren't you glad they're here today?

Take that, take that kid to a drive-thru on the way home today, mom and dad, and reward that behavior.

Yes, yes, that's God kind of just saying, hey, maybe.

And so we talked for 20 more minutes.

I said, Well, let me pray.

I have another appointment.

And I said, What is your biggest takeaway?

By the way, if you want to be humbled, ask people after 75 minutes of counseling, what is your biggest takeaway?

Uh because it won't be anything profound that you you said I said this, this was really insightful.

It's usually something really simple.

And she said, My big takeaway from the day is going to be that possibly just maybe there's a different way of doing life.

And I said, The Bible says that's why Jesus came.

He didn't come to beat you up and tell you, hey, you drink too much, you can stop it.

He came just to kind of say, Hey, maybe there's a different way that involves you living through him.

This is what John says.

I just want to point to that this morning and just kind of say, hey, the love of God, it's not some mystical thing way out there.

It's visible, it's obvious for the world.

In this, the love of God is manifest.

Third thing the Bible tells us this morning is that the love of God is defined.

The love of God is defined.

We're getting close to the bottom of the funnel, and so it gets to get a little more granular and a little more specific and a little more spelled out.

You say, What do you mean?

Left to ourselves, we would all come up with a definition of what it would look like for God to love us.

And it's just a matter of time before that definition wasn't sufficient anymore.

Allow me to explain.

Let me say it again.

Left to ourselves, we would all come up with a definition of what it would look like for God to love us.

Well, if God loved me, God would this.

Or you come up with a definition, and then it's just a matter of time before, hey, that just that just doesn't do it anymore.

And if you if you want to see what I'm talking about, tomorrow when you have Christmas, if you have little people in your family, watch them and then watch the old people in your family.

There's probably not anybody in your family over 50 that's asking for an iPhone 10.

But I have a 14-year-old who has said to me multiple times, hey dad, uh, my phone, you know, it's old.

And I say back to her, does it work?

See, that's old people talk.

That's people that pay the bill talk.

And so I said, Does it work?

Yeah, but my case is cracked.

And I said, Well, it sounds like you need a new case.

And then she says, Well, Dad, it's an iPhone 5C.

And I say, That means nothing to me.

I don't know what you mean.

Well, they have a 6, a 6 plus, a 7, an eight, and I don't think they made a 9, but they got an iPhone 10, and that's awesome.

And I said, What's awesome about an iPhone 10?

And she said, Well, they have these animal emojis that you can put your face in and goes on, tell me all about it for like 25 minutes.

And in my mind, I'm thinking, that's I thought this was a phone.

Not a not a video studio where you're you're you're you're teleported into the phone and you become a unicorn that talks.

And she thinks, because I'm listening, that she's building a case for the fact that she needs this.

And so I'm doing this, and my wife is in the background, kind of going, and I'm thinking, never gonna happen.

And then she just lays this on me, just like a kid.

She says, and there, I said, and how much is an iPhone 10?

Well, I think they're like a thousand dollars.

Like, hey, let me just roll down the window and throw that out there.

They're like a thousand dollars.

Oh, yeah, I got that in the ashtray of my truck right now.

And that's what I want to do with it, too, is I want to spend it on you so you can sit in your room and stare at it and make yourself talk like a unicorn.

And I said, let me circle back.

Does the phone you have now, does it still work?

Yeah.

And in a moment of clarity, she slipped.

Because the look on her face was like, oh.

I said, Does it work?

She said, Yeah, it works fine.

And I went, and she went, well, I mean, I mean, I what did I hear?

She said, but dad, it's an iPhone C.

I said, that's not the issue.

Does it work?

Because you could get a flip-flone if you wanted.

I'll buy you one of those.

Now, what am I saying?

I don't think there's many people.

You come to my house, there's presents under the tree.

I think one of them has my name on.

The rest of them have the name of my children on.

I prefer it that way.

Why?

Because I'm old.

I would say I'm a little bit more mature.

My wife, my kid said to me yesterday, said, Dad, why don't you ever get presents for Christmas?

I said, Oh, people in the church are gracious.

Somebody gave me a Starbucks gift card the other day.

I was like, Yes, let the love rain down.

I'm not against receiving presents.

I said, but I would rather give you guys something than give me something.

You said, I don't know what you mean.

If you're a kid, you're excited about tomorrow.

If you're a parent, you're excited about watching your kids experience tomorrow.

See, because as you get older, your appetite changes.

And so there's hardly many of us are kind of going, man, I can't wait to get an iPhone 10 so I can put myself in there and be like a talking unicorn.

Now, by the way, I don't care if you get your kids an iPhone 10.

I don't care if you have fun.

That's not the point.

The point is this the love of God, the Bible says, is defined.

If left to ourselves, we would all come up with a definition of the love of God that would be insufficient because we would outgrow it in just a matter of time.

And so the Bible comes along and God takes initiative upon himself and he defines it for us with these words in verse 10.

And this is love.

Not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins.

There's the big word, boys and girls, I told you was coming.

Notice that the love of God doesn't focus on a people as much as a problem.

Let me say that again.

Notice that the love of God doesn't focus on a people as much as a problem, and the problem of sin.

And the problem is so big that the Bible uses A really big word to describe it.

Propitiation.

Hear it again in context in verse 10.

In this is love.

Not that, see, in verse 9, he expresses love.

In verse 10, he defines it.

He kind of sharpens the focus a little bit.

And this is love.

Not that we have loved God, but that he has loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins.

This is how we know that God loves us because he has done something, not for a people in general, in some vague general kind of way, but in a very specific, problematic way.

He did something about the greatest problem that plagues all of humanity.

He sent his son to be the propitiation.

Now, that word, boys and girls, is that big word I told you about.

And it means this.

It means that an offended, angry God has been appeased and satisfied.

And now the relationship is not only restored, but it can be enjoyed.

Let me say it again.

Propitiation means that an offended, angry, by the way, anger is always God's response to sin.

The Bible says that he's angry with the wicked every day.

He never stops not being okay with sin.

But when propitiation, it means that this offended God has been appeased and satisfied, and not only that, but the relationship is not only restored, but now it can be enjoyed.

Now, boys and girls, if you're still listening, look at me.

Here's what that big word means: propitiation.

You may find this hard to believe, but when Pastor Neil was little, I got in trouble like a lot.

And I grew up in a time where we didn't have timeout.

We didn't go to our room with our iPhone 10 and and make emojis or anything.

We got, you can look this up in the history book, boys and girls, or you can Google it when you get home.

We got what's called a whipping.

Yeah, a whipping.

No timeout, no anything.

We got the sound of my dad's belt coming out of the belt like a like a rattlesnake coming to get you.

And a lot of times when Pastor got a whipping, some of my friends go, Oh, you mean a spanking?

No, you had to live in the city to get a spanking.

I lived in the country.

And in the country, you got a whipping.

That's just what it was.

And it wasn't abuse.

And so my dad would whip us and we would cry.

And people say, Well, did you cry because you want him to stop?

No, that's what you con men do.

I cried because it hurt.

It was physically uncomfortable.

It was negative reinforcement.

And but here's the part I didn't understand, boys and girls.

My dad would whip us.

It was our fault.

We did something wrong.

And my dad would whip us negative reinforcement to say, Don't do this.

You experience things you don't want to experience.

And then we would cry.

And after a couple minutes, my dad was done with the crying.

And so my dad would say this, hey, quit your crying.

I'll give you something to cry about.

And my little seven-year-old mind, I was like, You did give me something to cry about.

That's why I'm crying.

You crazy old man.

But I wouldn't say that because I had this thing called respect for my parents.

You can Google that too.

And so I would be sitting there as a seven, eight, nine, ten-year-old, 11-year-old kid, just be kind of like, and I knew my dad meant business.

He'd give you a couple minutes and he'd say, hey, hey boy, quit that crying.

You've cried long enough.

And have you ever tried to stop crying?

That is one of the hardest things you do.

You're kind of like.

And then he'd look at me and go, That's enough.

Hey, and why am I telling you this?

Hey, don't miss this.

And then there's that magical moment where you kind of calm yourself down.

And then this happens.

You get that first deep breath.

And it's over.

And my dad would go, now go wash your face.

And then I, after I'd washed my face, I didn't know how to approach my dad.

And for all his whatever, my dad would always come to us and say, Hey, I'm not mad at you.

I've whipped you because I love you.

I don't want you to do stupid stuff.

And I'd be like, that makes sense.

Nirr.

But here's the thing that was magical, and it took a while for me to learn this as a kid.

Just because my dad disciplined me doesn't mean my dad was mad at me for the rest of his life.

Look at me, boys and girls.

If you hear anything, hear this, because Pastor Neil's just about done.

Propitiation means that God's not mad anymore.

And you can get on enjoying your relationship with God.

It's that first deep breath after you cry.

You say, Okay.

We can get back to enjoying each other.

That's propitiation.

So when the Bible says the love of God is defined, this is what it means.

Propitiation means it's over.

You don't have to feel sad all the time, kind of, oh yeah.

No, no.

God punished Jesus.

So you don't have to live in fear of punishment.

The last thing the Bible tells us is that the love of God is the standard.

Here's where it kind of gets down to where you and I live.

He says, What do you mean?

Look at verse 11.

Beloved, if God so loved us, we also uh ought to love one another.

No one has ever seen God.

If we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.

Now, notice that little phrase in verse 11.

He says, Beloved, if God so loved, uh excuse me, if God so loved.

Now I talked to you about him last month about the so love of God, and here it is again in 1 John in verse 11.

Beloved, if God so loved us, in other words, he is, it's hutos is the Greek word.

If he so loved, in other words, there's a demonstration, there's a picture in mind.

If God has demonstrated his love for us, if he's so loved us, when you hear that phrase thing, so loved us, like in John 3.16, for God so loved the world, he is pointing to a specific demonstrated reality and saying, Hey, you guys are without excuse for what it looks like for someone to love somebody else.

And so this happened in my office last week.

Somebody came to see me and said, Hey, I'm not a very religious person.

And I love those kind of conversations.

And I said, Okay, tell me, what are you telling me by saying I'm not a very religious person?

Well, I don't want you to think I know the Bible and everything.

I'm perfect and have it all together.

And I said, Great, that makes two of us.

And the person looked at me and said, Aren't you supposed to be like, I don't know, in charge of this?

And I said, No, no.

Now I'm not, I'm not telling you I live in sins of no, no, no, no.

I just, I don't want you to think that I'm up here and you're down here.

That's not the way this is.

What can I do to help you?

And the man said to me, My brother is coming to town and I hate him.

I said, now we're talking, so you want to talk about that?

He goes, Yes, I can't stand him.

I mean, from the moment he gets in my house to the moment he leaves, I am not myself.

And I said, Why do you let your brother have that much power over you?

He said, I don't know.

All I know is that I hate him.

And I said, Okay, well, let me ask you a question.

I don't want to hold you to the standard of the Bible.

If the Bible's not your standard, do you consider yourself a Christian?

He goes, I don't consider myself a Christian.

I am a Christian.

I said, Great, great.

I said, So you have a picture of what it looks like to love someone.

And I said, let me ask you why you hate your brother.

And his brother basically embezzled money from him like seven years ago in a business partnership, and the thing went bankrupt and went legs up, and they never paid him back, and it's been bad, and they fight all the time.

And he said, our wives get along, but we don't.

And I said, and they're coming.

He said, Yeah, everybody in our family knows that my brother and I don't get along, and we're mad at each other.

And I said, So what are you gonna do?

And he goes, I just want to do something different this year at Christmas, and I came to see if you had any ideas.

Yes, I do.

And I said, How about this?

I said, Are you open to the possibility and the prospect of forgiving your brother?

He goes, Absolutely not.

He doesn't deserve it.

And I said, That's a great question.

Matter of fact, I asked that question because I figured you may say something like that.

And I said, So you're not open to the possibility of forgiving your brother because he doesn't deserve it.

And he puts his fist on my desk and says, You dang straight he doesn't.

And I said, Does that remind you of anybody?

And he said, What do you mean?

And I said, When you think of somebody who does not deserve forgiveness, do you think of anybody besides your brother?

No, I can't think of another person in the world that forget deserves forgiveness less than he does.

Really?

And and and you're Christian.

And he said, Are you doubting my salvation?

And I said, Not at all.

I'm doubting your understanding of uh of just one of the fundamental tenets of Christianity.

And he, what do you mean?

And I said, Can we read from the Bible?

And he said, Well, if you must.

Okay.

And so I read verse 11 and verse 12.

Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.

No one has ever seen God.

If we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.

And I said to him, What I say to you as I close this morning, he says, Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.

The way that God loves you is the standard by which you love others.

Beloved, if God so loved us, see, because God has so loved you, he's loved you in such a way, you are without excuse for saying, I don't know what it looks like to love somebody else.

And he said, So, so you're saying, I said, No, no, no, wrong pronoun.

Not me.

The Bible says that if God has so loved you, that that is the standard by which you love, but he doesn't deserve it.

I get that.

Does that remind you of anybody?

And all of a sudden the light went on.

And he said, So you're saying to me that I don't deserve the love of God?

That's exactly right.

And yet you got it anyway.

You did not only did you not deserve the love of God, you did not deserve forgiveness.

And God gave it to you anyway.

And I'm saying to you, you are more wicked than your stealing, money-grubbing brother to take the love and forgiveness of God and not go out and give it to people that don't deserve it.

Well, I don't know if this has been helpful.

Would you like some more coffee?

And he said, man, this isn't easy.

And I said, No, it's not.

And so I say to you, to every one of you, that not just because it's Advent, because it's the Bible.

In this, in this is love.

Not that you've loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins, the atoning sacrifice.

And beloved, if God so loved us, and he did, we also ought to love one another.

No one has ever seen God, but if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.

Let me just point to one last thing and we'll be done.

You still with me?

Look at me.

I want you to notice something about God.

God is so secure in his godness that he loves you and he doesn't demand that you love him back.

Look at what the Bible says in verse 12.

He says, No one has ever seen God, but if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.

Or it's come complete.

In other words, what completes the cycle of the love of God is not that you turn around and love God.

Because God doesn't, his God's being does not depend on you loving him back.

He says, Hey, you want to know who God abides in?

Look at the person that loves other people.

Because, beloved, how hard is it to love God?

He's perfect.

Where you get down in the trenches with it is when you love imperfect people.

And so God doesn't say, Hey, I need you to love me back because I love you.

He says, Hey, the love of God is perfected in us.

When?

When we love other people.

Because this is the essence.

This is what he means when he says, Hey, this is when the love of God is perfected.

In other words, this is when and how what it looks like for God's love to come full circle in us.

And so I want to close this morning by asking you this simple question: Who is the hardest person for you to love these days?

I said to my friend, I said, What's your brother's name?

Tell me his brother's name.

And I said, I'd like us to close by praying for your brother.

He had his head bowed, and I said, Before we pray, I want you to pray out loud for your brother.

And he unbowed his head and looked at me like, and I said, Yes, yes.

The Bible invites us into these strange, frustrating realities.

Because this is how the love of God is complete, this is how it comes full circle.

And I watched a grown man grapple for the words to say to God for his brother.

And I looked at him and I said, Hey, by the way, I'm proud of you.

And he said, Aren't we still praying?

And I said, Yeah, this is a little time out.

God doesn't mind.

I just want to acknowledge that I know that was hard for you.

And I just want to cheer for you and say, Man, I'm so proud of you.

I know that was different.

And I said, Hey, when you see your brother this year, maybe you could just start with this.

Hey, I want us to talk about maybe this relationship being different.

Because he said, I don't even know how to, I just don't.

And I said, maybe just start there because you're the person that has the love of God inside of you, and he is the person that needs to hear and see and experience that.

And you think I could do that?

Absolutely.

Here's why.

Because God so loved you.

Let's pray together.

I want you just to spend a moment on this fourth Sunday of Advent asking yourself, if God has so loved me, who can I not love?

What feels unfinished and unformed in you today, beloved?

And this is love.

And this is love.

The Bible always points us to specific behaviors, tangible realities.

Otherwise, we're gonna get a definition of love that will outgrow in six months.

When we get a new favorite song or a new version of an iPhone, when we continue to download the upgrades, and what we have now becomes redundant and it won't keep up.

That's why the Bible points us to a reality outside of our circumstances and says, In this is love.

And because you've experienced this love, you're now required to love in this way.

Because again, beloved, what's at stake is bigger than your definition or experience of love.

What's at stake is a right understanding of who God is.

Let's ponder this for a moment.

Father, because to be loved by God is to always be loved by God.

So we have to learn to live in what is forever, to outgrow the temporary, the small, insufficient affections that plague our lives at different points in our life.

Paul said it like this when I was a child, I spoke as a child and I reasoned as a child, but I'm no longer a child, so I put away childish things.

I don't want what children want anymore.

And so, Lord, because of love, let us put off what is ill-fitting and insufficient today.

And let us put on what we were created for.

Let us love in such a way that when we love people, when they experience the love we have for them, they are reminded that there is a God, that God is real and tangible and to be considered and contended with.

Thanks for wrangling your children.

By the way, they're not inconvenient.

You don't have to manage their behavior when they come in here.

We do family worship days because we want your kids to see you worshiping and being spiritually formed.

Okay?

Stand to your feet.

Let me speak a blessing over you.

Hold your hands out.

To be loved is not to be liked, and it's not to be tolerated.

It is to be enjoyed.

God loves you because He intends to enjoy you.

Depart now and return the favor.

In the name of the Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

Bless you.

You're dismissed.