1 John 3:11-24 - What’s Love Got to Do with It?

We study through books of the Bible here at the village chapel, and uh we are able, I think if you would like a paper copy, raise your hand up real high.

Somebody will drop one off at your row, your aisle.

And we are currently studying 1 John and taking the last half of chapter 3.

If you want to turn there uh with me, and uh I'm gonna actually call this sermon uh What's Love Got to Do with It?

So just thought some of you are getting images right now.

I've can kind of tell what's happening there.

Um while Christian faith uh is never merely theoretical, uh, it is always thoroughly practical.

Uh what are the marks of authentic Christian faith in Jesus who declared once by the shell, men know that you're my disciples?

If you have oh, come on now.

One for another.

That's right, yeah.

In our own day and time, uh love is a word that's been reduced uh to pretty much the emotional realm and all but eviscerated of its deeper meaning.

We use the same word to describe our disposition of heart toward uh our favorite ice cream, sports teams, pizza, and oh yeah, people.

Um what could the term love actually mean then?

And why is the love human beings share with one another so fickle, fragile, and fleeting for that matter?

Jesus' followers believe there's a love that comes from beyond ourselves and uh is sourced in Christ.

We also believe the nature of love and scope of God's love reaches deeper and further beyond personal preferences and beyond how any one of us might feel in a given moment.

So as we walk through this last half of uh chapter three, it's my hope that we'll see uh how, as the Church of Jesus in this day and in this time, with all of the world's pain and suffering, with all of the injustice, with all of the violence and the darkness, especially here in the USA coming into an election year with all of the acrimony and outrage and division that might rise up, I think the church is uniquely positioned to both restate and demonstrate that there's a love that transcends all of that.

Do you believe that?

Um if you do, then we'll all join together in the goals that we have here for uh 1 John, our study of it.

Uh, more confident assurance of God's love for us.

Uh Pastor Matt led us through the first half of this uh chapter last week, which begins with, Behold what manner of love the Father has given unto us, that we would be called the children of God.

I remember as a kid singing that song and getting the rounds, we sang it in rounds and all that sort of thing.

It was a great, great reminder of God's love.

So God's the be, He's He starts this thing off.

And he sets his love on us sinners that we might be.

But the deepening experience of abiding in Christ, we're learning about that as well as we go through 1 John.

Increasing power over sin and temptation, so important.

If this, if this doesn't help us do that, if it doesn't help us in some way to live some kind of victorious Christian life, what good is it?

It's just head knowledge, just data.

And I really uh boy, I you know, there's one thing I pray and hope is that we aren't just giving you information and data, but that actually what we're doing as we study God's word is it leads us to transformation of hearts and minds.

So that's important.

Fuller sense of joy in your faith.

Uh man, we've talked about that a bunch, a greater love for a community of believers.

And I I I'm so thrilled as a pastor to see the love of God in motion in this church.

Um uh and maybe maybe I see it more than most because I'm in touch with all the different leaders and different groups, but it's awesome to be able to say this is a church that loves one another well and is learning to do that.

Doesn't mean we do it perfectly, but we're learning to do that.

When somebody walks through the door, bringing all the baggage that we each bring in with us, it's very uh diverse and in different levels and degrees and all that sort of thing.

But when you walk through this door, man, uh it'd be our goal that the love of God moving among the people of God uh would enfold and welcome everybody and then begin to change us as well.

Um so before I read, let's pray.

Uh, living God, help us to so hear your holy word today that we may truly understand it.

That understanding it we may believe, and believing we may follow in all faithfulness and obedience, seeking your honor and glory in all we do.

We pray for a clearer vision of your truth, a greater faith in your power, and a more confident assurance of your love for us through Jesus Christ our Lord.

We pray, amen and amen.

So John writes uh here as probably the last living of the original twelve disciples.

And uh this letter is to a church or some group of churches, we're not sure.

Back then they used to distribute these letters uh around, and people would read them from a lot of different churches.

Um, but John shows no sign of any kind of a superiority complex for having outlived the other disciples.

Uh he doesn't have much of a, you know, look at me, I I sat around a campfire with Jesus, therefore I know more than all of you.

There's none of that.

Uh he is this beloved apostle.

Thirteen times in this letter, first John, he refers to his readers as children, his children.

He's a probably an aged pastor/slash apostle.

And uh his heart is to instruct them and remind them of the things that matter, to comfort them.

Um and yet, man, when you go back into the Gospel of John and read the other three Gospels as well, you know that John, John and James, man, they were the sons of thunder.

They were sort of the bouncers among the disciples.

They were the ones that said to Jesus when he was kind of, you know, not so welcomed in Samaria there, they said to Jesus, you want us to call down fire and brimstone on these people?

And uh and Jesus, of course, said no.

But through the throughout this uh letter, 1 John, we uh we see that he uses the title God 63 times.

But he uses the word no 36 times and the word love 36 times.

He it's as if he were saying, there is a God, and he wants you to know that he loves you.

I think, man, if we could, you know, if that's if that's what we got after studying 1 John, I think that'd be great.

I've summarized uh the letter this way and added a little bit to it each week.

God wants us to rejoice in the knowledge of his love for us, expressed vividly in the person and work of Jesus.

And then God wants us to share his love with one another, and that's where we come to today as we read uh verses 11 and following.

For this is the message which you've heard from the beginning.

That we, he switches from you, we should love one another.

Now, I could almost just close my Bible and say, y'all have a great lunch.

Because that's he's gonna he's gonna spell that out a little bit more, but I mean that's the essence of what we're about to really kind of comb through.

And I'll even suggest that there's great value to continuing through to the end of their chapter.

Why?

Because all week long, as I'm marinating this and reading this, I entered the week thinking I'm a pretty loving person.

But the closer I got to learning and understanding what John and what Jesus means by the word love, the more I felt convicted myself, and the more I thought, I've got so much to learn about this.

Maybe that will happen for you as well.

Verse 12.

He says, Not as Cain, so he gives a negative example first, and Cain, you remember, Cain and Abel, Genesis chapter 4, okay?

Genesis 4 · chapter mention

Not as Cain, who was the evil one, slew his brother, and for what reason did he slay him?

Because his, Cain's deeds were evil, and his brothers were righteous.

Do not marvel, brethren, if the world hates you.

So there's gonna be some antipathy, some acrimony coming from the world.

And whenever John uses that term, he's referring to the world system, the way the world system thinks and acts apart from God or as if God doesn't matter.

Okay?

So that world system is gonna hate you.

Why?

Because they hate Christians.

They hate Christ.

And so they'll hate Christians.

It's not that they hate good people.

There's a whole lot of good people and in sort of the normal, sort of humanistic definition of good.

And they don't, it's not, he's not saying they hate good people.

He's saying they're gonna hate you because you're Christians.

That doesn't mean we run around with some kind of, you know, complex and become our own little sub-nation of victims.

We already have that mindset going.

We don't need more of that.

What we need to do is learn how to suffer well.

What we need to do is learn how to endure better instead of demanding that everybody fix us and do for us and tend to us.

Not as Cain, who slew his brother.

Why?

Because Cain was evil, his works, his deeds were evil.

Abel's were not.

Don't marvel if the world hates you.

We know.

I love whenever he says we know.

I sit up straight when he says we know, because I live in a world that doesn't know anything.

Skepticism rules in our day and time.

And it's almost as if you can't really believe in anything at all.

And there's all kinds of skepticism that's being pushed on us all the time.

But we know that we've passed out of death into life because we love the brethren.

He who does not love abides in death.

And John is so good at these contrasts.

He's gonna contrast light and darkness in this letter.

He's gonna contrast life and death.

He's gonna contrast love and hatred.

And over and over again, he's brilliant at uh teaching by contrast.

Verse 15: everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.

Now remember, Jesus is the one that kind of in the Sermon on the Mount raised the bar on what it meant in your, when your heart, in your heart, you hate someone or you think of them as a fool, or you you you you you get angry with them or whatever.

He's the one that says it's really all about whether whether you do something physically or not is not what matters.

What's going on in your heart is what matters.

Because that's where our sins come from.

The sin condition in our heart leads to acts of sin on the outside.

And so here he is saying, you know, if you are hating someone, you're actually wishing them death.

Now you're saying that never happens to me.

And I'm saying, yes, it does, on I-65 and on 440, and in the grocery line.

And there's so many other ways in which we all roll our eyes and think with contempt.

I mean, it might have even happened to you on the way to church this morning.

And here you are worshiping the Lord.

Yet you had murder in your heart.

You know, and it's happened to me.

I mean, this morning, on the way here in the car, somebody cuts me off on Hillsborough Road.

I look over at my wife and say, I just had murder in my heart.

And then it turned out to be a TVCer that was, no, no, no.

No, no, it wasn't, it wasn't, it wasn't.

But it could have.

It could have been.

That's why I was very, let's be careful about this whole thing, right?

Verse 16 is another we know statement by John.

We know love by this, that he, using this personal pronoun, he's gonna refer to Jesus now.

He's had Cain as an example of hatred that leads to murder and death.

And now, in contrast, here's Jesus, who's gonna be the ultimate example of love that sacrifices himself so that others might live.

This is the most unusual thing, isn't it?

It's so unique about the Christian faith.

He laid down his life for us, verse 16.

We ought to lay down our lives then for the brethren.

Then he he spells that out a little bit, and you know, lest you think that you actually are gonna have to take a bullet for somebody, like a secret service guy jumping in front of a bullet's been shot at some leader or whatever.

No, it looks like a whole lot of things.

Whoever has the world's goods, verse 17, and beholds his brother.

Now it's singular.

It's getting real specific.

I mean, it's really easy to love the whole world, isn't it?

It's when it gets really hard, is at the Thanksgiving table when your cousin Eddie is there.

Or your weird aunt, you know, what was her name?

Aunt Bethany.

Yeah.

Some of you know what I'm talking about.

Yeah.

She's asked to say the blessing, and she says, I pledge allegiance to the to the flag.

He's just, Aunt.

Okay.

Jesus, because he is love, sacrifices himself so that you and I might live.

You see?

Two contrasting examples.

Whoever has the world's goods and beholds his brother in need and closes his heart against him, how does the love of God abide in him?

In other words, this isn't just theoretical, like I said earlier.

This is practical.

How can it be that so many people are hungry and yet we have the world's goods?

That general phrase?

How can that be?

How can it be or go further?

How can it be that there's nearly 30 million people caught up in human trafficking when we could do something about it?

Or we could be working toward freeing them.

Little children, let us not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and in truth.

John Stott so beautifully always used to say the gospel is to be heard and seen.

It's in both word and deed that the gospel comes alive in our world.

So verse 19, a little bit of a change here, but nonetheless, I think it's connected.

We shall know, another we know, by this, by what?

Well, by what he just said.

We'll know by this that we're of the truth, and shall assure our heart before him.

In other words, if the love of God is flowing among the people of God, and the people of God are meeting the needs around them, this is how we know that God is moving among us, that the life of God is in us, and the love of God is flowing through us.

And it will assure our heart before Him.

And see, that's really, I won't encourage you, that's what you really want as a follower of Jesus.

You want the well done to be from the only lips that matter.

The well done that you're looking for in life is from Jesus.

Not from looking in the mirror, not from the number of likes or the follows or any of that stuff.

The well done that really matters is the well done from Jesus.

And whatever our heart condemns us, verse 20, he's talking about a healthy conscience.

For God is greater than our heart and knows all things.

Man, when I read that, I was like, God is greater than our heart?

I live in a day, we live in a day and time when it's all trust your heart.

Everything is about your heart.

And the Bible is saying, no, God is greater than your heart.

As a matter of fact, Jeremiah says the heart of man is wicked, deceitful.

In other words, nobody lies to me more than me.

Sometimes when I tell myself, I'm horrible, wretched, all that stuff, pummeling myself over and over again.

And other times when I'm telling myself, you're pretty good there, Jim.

God's pretty lucky to have you on his team, in he.

Nobody lies to me more than me.

And I would suggest to you that nobody lies to you more than you.

But God is greater than our heart, he knows all things.

Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God.

Whatever we ask, we receive from him because, see, now some of you are thinking whatever we ask, we receive from him, is that God is the pinata and prayer is the stick.

And that's not right.

Now, this we know that whatever we ask, we receive from him, because we keep his commandments and do the things that are pleasing in his sight.

When we ask for what he wants, when we adjust and align our vision to what he sees, the way he sees things, and we ask for those things, we want what you want, Father, just like Jesus in the garden.

Not my will, but thine be done.

That's that's the model right there of the sort of tension between what we want and what God wants.

We should always be saying, not my will, but thine be done, along with Jesus.

That's a very good prayer right there.

Um and that we we're seeking to please him.

We want to be pleasing in his sight.

Why?

Because we love him.

Uh and this is the his commandment.

I love verse 23.

It's so beautiful.

The way that he just, again, spells it out so simply.

Clarity is John's uh gift as well.

This is his commandment.

This is what God really wants.

That we believe in the name of his son Jesus Christ and love one another just as he commanded us.

Love God, trust Jesus, love the brethren and sister.

Okay?

Love the brothers and sisters.

The one who keeps his commandments abides in him.

There's that word.

We haven't heard that word in a few sentences, a few verses, have we?

I love that word, abide, 16 times in 1 John 1.

Or 1 John rather.

Abides.

If you want to abide in him, you keep his commandments.

And he in him.

There's this reciprocal, there's this mutual thing that's happening.

This union with Christ means his life in us, our life in him.

I find my identity, I find my life, my being, everything in him.

And then he gives me his life.

That's really a great, wonderful union or communion, if you will.

And we know by this that he abides in us by the spirit which he has given us.

Okay, so four ancient Greek words that some of you are familiar with.

And eros is the word for love.

It describes, as we might have guessed, uh erotic or sexual love, which the Greeks used to talk about, Eros.

Storge, second word for love, referred to familial or family love, the kind of love between a parent and a child, between family members in general.

Philia, um uh Phil, we get the city, Philadelphia is named after the brotherly love thing.

So this is the kind of friendship or affection.

And then agape, which is agape, as some of you will call it, um, or pronounce it, is what is John's using here.

He's talking about this um love that is unconditional love.

It's a love that gives without condition, without expecting anything in return.

It's a love that can be given to the unworthy, the unlovable, and to someone who is unappealing in every way.

It can be given to that person.

That's the person I was when Jesus first got a hold of me because I was running the other way.

And so were you, whether or not you acknowledge it or not.

But he came and loved you first.

We'll learn that over and over again that we love him because he loved us first.

And so it's so, so important there.

What is uh what's love got to do with it?

Yeah.

Popular recording artists have written thousands of songs about love, haven't they?

Um All You need is let's see if you can kind of help me out with some of these.

They claimed that uh love will keep us together, and then at the same time, some songwriters were puzzled and said, I want to know what yeah.

Some warned us that we might become addicted to, or we might even be a victim, because after all, love is a oh I didn't think anybody would get that.

Oh, yeah.

See, I thought that was much nobody was gonna get that one.

Right here in the front remo.

Six months free note timing.

Um just kidding, just kidding.

Some have surprisedly admitted, I think I think I love you.

Yeah.

Others have claimed to have a whole lot of.

One time a group of singers confessed, I'm Mamov.

Yeah.

Well, another confessed, I just called to say I yeah.

If you were about to travel somewhere, they told you to get on board the love.

One songwriter who was apparently bruised in their relationship said, You give love a hey, you did that one pretty well too.

I thought that's really good.

Interestingly, the songwriters have also asked some very direct questions about love.

What is love?

What about love?

And what's love got to do with it, the title of our sermon.

So I have to ask you, is love more than a feeling?

Feelings are fleeting, fickle, and fragile.

Is love more than that?

Uh, when we say we love somebody, what do we actually mean?

This has been helpful uh to me.

Uh I I I don't do this, uh I rarely do this kind of a thing, but here's I just took a phrase from each verse and wrote down, but this will be on the slides.

I won't spend much time with this other than to read it and say what I think the essence of it is.

The timelessness of love from the beginning.

This is the message which you've heard from the beginning.

That you should love one another, or that we should love one another is more correct.

Uh, the opposite of love, verse 12, clarity, the contrast brings, not as cane.

In other words, to love is more than gritting our teeth and tolerating someone.

That's not loving somebody.

Love is more than not entertaining thoughts of hating someone.

So if you think there's somebody who is sort of the repugnant other, you don't love them.

Now, you're like, I don't, there's nobody in my mind like that.

Oh, yeah, there is.

We're going into an election season.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Some of you recoil.

You're just, you know, filled with sort of animosity towards those people.

How could they be the way they are?

And we gotta, we gotta, we gotta show the world there's an antidote to the problems of the world.

And it begins at least right really close, right in our hearts and minds.

The antipathy of the world uh toward God's love is verse 13, of course.

Evidence of life through love, we know that we passed out of death into life because we love the brethren.

Do you understand how huge that claim is?

You've passed out of death, and he's not talking about physical death here.

He's talking about clearly, he's talking about spiritual death.

You've passed out of death into life when you love the brethren.

And there's so many of us that have so much animosity toward church people, towards believers of other stripes.

That's one of the most beautiful things about Tim.

His kindness toward others, even others he disagreed with.

Yeah.

May we all catch that really good infection, right?

The impact of the absence of love, that hatred sets us on the road to murder, hopefully, only figuratively.

But Jesus always concerned about what's going on inside our hearts, doesn't want us to be murderers at heart.

Our hearts were not designed to entertain murder or hatred.

That just, we're not wired for that.

It's like a piece of electronic gear that you're straining and under heat or something, and it's about to burn up.

You weren't made for hatred.

You were actually designed to bear the image of God who is love.

The generosity of love.

It's eager.

Verse 17, the sacrifice of love, verse 16, rather.

The opposite of hatred, murder.

It's uh the self-sacrifice of Jesus dying on a cross that we might have life.

Verse 17, the generosity.

Love eager to give, not obsessed with what it gets.

Practicality of love.

If it looks like something, what does it look like in your relationship?

How about verse 18?

What does that look like?

Don't love with word or with tongue, but indeed in truth.

What would that look like if you took that seriously in your own household in a new way?

Because some of us settle back and get, we we kind of coast, and now we're just on cruise control, and we're not actually thinking about how to actually show love to the people we live with.

And yet that should be right where we're experiencing the love of God.

Um yeah, verse 18.

19, the assurance of love, we shall know by this and be assured, we will be assured in our heart before Him.

Again, before God.

The only set of eyes that matters.

You know?

The only set of lips that well done comes from that matters.

Um, verse 20, which I think is really powerful.

Let me put that up there too.

I think I got there you go.

There it's up there.

The proper condemnation of a healthy conscience.

Now, some of you are going, well, there's no such thing as proper condemnation.

Yes, there is.

A conscience is a gift from God, it keeps me from doing things that my ego wants to do.

My unfettered selfishness wants to do.

My pride wants me to do.

It's this kind of thing, this gift that God has given us in terms of conscience, that actually makes me refrain from doing bad, and even, conscience even works in a positive way because it's a gift from God, to prompt me to want to go and make a difference and sponsor children from compassion and make sure I'm giving to the work of the Lord and make sure I'm involved in helping and serving in any way I can, and that in any given moment of my life, I'm prepared to be inconvenienced.

I'm prepared to actually love somebody.

And I hope that's true for all of us.

That's what we need is a proper, healthy conscience.

Verse 21, the proper confidence of gospel-based faith.

A scripture-informed conscience has the knowledge of God's will and ways.

In other words, there's the truth that will set you free.

Read the words of Jesus.

Do the commands of Jesus.

And if you do actually love God, and remember, this is all part of his series of helping us understand and be assured if we actually have saving faith, then that's what happens.

You don't do this to get saving faith.

You do this because you have saving faith.

And it's the evidence of saving faith that you begin to have proper confidence in a gospel-based faith.

Verse 22, the realignment of our affections from the loving God.

That is, as we love God, he realigns my affections.

We keep his commandments and do the things that are pleasing in his sight.

And then verse 23, dare what pleases God?

All right, there it is.

Boom.

Verse 23, right?

Says it right there.

That we believe in the name of his son, Jesus Christ, and to believe in the name of means that we believe everything the Bible claims to be true about Jesus.

That he is the Savior, that he is our Lord, that he knows better than I do about literally everything.

And because of that, I am eager to show my love and express my love to him through loyal obedience to him.

And part of that is loving one another, okay?

The deep communion of abiding love, that verse 24 is there, is so beautiful as well.

Union with Christ, the object of our faith.

It's one of the most unique things about the Christian faith.

That is that the object of our faith, we actually are placed in union with the object of our faith.

You don't see that with other religious belief systems.

This one is like we're actually in union with Christ.

Matter of fact, the Apostle Paul uses in Christ or in him like 150 times or actually, it's more than that.

That's how, I mean, if you want to know the definition of a Christian, it's somebody who's in Christ.

Not just somebody that believes that Christ existed, but somebody whose life is in Christ.

That's the that's a completely deeper, uh, richer, uh fuller meaning, isn't it?

So we have these categories of evidence, the theological evidence, belief that Jesus, the moral evidence, obedience to his commands, and the social evidence and uh love for one another.

And we see this all through, and we've been, every week we've been putting posting this up on the screen because it's all through 1 John, and we need to keep seeing it and keep seeing it.

Love is means so much more than I think this world would say.

And I'd like to, I'd like it, it is not a veneer.

It is not a slogan at all.

It's way deeper than that.

And it's really important, I think, that we understand that.

There was once a bumper sticker I read that said, I love humankind.

It's people I can't handle.

That's what I was saying earlier.

It's really easy to say, I love everybody, when you don't really know everybody.

And you're not really close to a lot of people.

And you keep yourself from getting close to people.

Because I don't know about you, but the closer you get to somebody, the more you see the warts.

And the more you start to understand how human they are, you know?

And it takes harder, it's it's a harder thing to do.

But love one another occurs 13 times throughout the New Testament.

Love one another.

Those three words together in that phrase.

Thirteen times in the New Testament, six times here in the letters of John.

1 John 3, 11, verse 23, chapter 4, verse 7, verse 11, verse 12, and then in 2 John verse 5.

When it comes to loving Jesus, we show authentic love for him by obedience to him and his commandments.

Loving Christ is transformative.

It results.

It changes as I love Jesus more, it changes the way I love you more and you love me more as we grow in our love for the Lord Jesus.

John says we can't love God, though, if we will not love others.

So if you're sitting here saying, I'm sorry, that one I'm not gonna love, well then how can you say you love God?

Because do you know that Jesus came to die for that one?

That repugnant other that you can think of right now?

Jesus actually came to die for that one.

What would happen to us if that sank in a little bit deeper, you know, over the next couple of months?

I like the way C.S.

Lewis clarified the whole thing about love in general versus love in specific.

He says it's easier to be enthusiastic about humanity with a capital H than it is to love individual men and women, especially those who are uninteresting, exasperating, depraved, or otherwise unattractive.

Loving everybody in general may be an excuse for loving nobody in particular.

Ah, that's really well said.

Raise your hand if you think loving others is easy.

Good, don't raise your hand.

Raise your hand if you think somebody's thinking about you right now.

That's probably true.

It's more than a feeling.

What's it got to do?

What's love got to do with it?

Everything.

Literally everything.

It's the sign by which we show that we indeed belong with Jesus.

Uh let me read the parallels from the gospel.

Notice the number of times uh Jesus would say things like this New commandment I give to you that you love one another just as I've loved you.

You're also to love one another.

By this all people will know that you're my disciples.

If you have proper doctrine, or if you go to the village chapel, or if you tithe, or if you wear a tie to church.

No.

It's if you have love one for another.

That's at the words of Jesus.

It's my commandment that you love one another.

How should we do that, Jesus?

In what manner would our love, what should our love look like?

Just as I have loved you.

The problem is that a bunch of us think we're lovable.

We think, you know, Jesus has a pretty easy job loving me.

Mom Jim.

Everybody loves Jim.

You know.

And not so.

The commandment I give you that you love one another, John 15.

The Apostle Paul echoed the same thing, didn't he?

Be devoted to one another in brotherly love, give preference to one another in honor.

Think about if we did that more.

Could this at lunch?

Look for a way to honor somebody.

You know?

And we would do it, we say, happy birthday, happy anniversary, congratulations on your new job.

We do all that kind of stuff.

How about you honor somebody?

You know, this morning I got a I got a call on WhatsApp from over in Spain, from a friend of mine, the pastor in Mallorca.

Another friend of mine, his pastor, is over there preaching.

So the two of them, they called, and their church, they've already had church, and they they just called to, you know, say I love you.

And which they did.

And and and I I love these guys because we love and honor each other.

And we express that to each other.

So look for uh opportunities to do that.

I think it's really important.

Oh, nothing to anyone except to love one another, for he loves his neighbors, fulfilled the law.

This is God's will for you.

This is God's ways for you to walk in, loving one another.

You're actually going against his will, working against how you were designed when you don't love one another.

Um, when you nurture feelings of anger and hatred toward one another.

First Thessalonians 4, Paul says, Now, as a love of brethren, you have no need for anyone to write to you, for you yourselves are taught by God to love one another.

The Apostle Peter weighs in as well.

Since you have in obedience to the truth, purified your souls for sincere love of the brethren, fervently love one another from the heart.

That's so hard to do, isn't it, sometimes, from the heart.

Um anybody, when you were a kid, did you have a fight with your sibling, and your parents turn around and say, now apologize?

And so you say, I'm sorry, I'm saying.

And then your parent says, say it like you mean it.

You know?

And then you start to go, I'm sorry.

You know, a little more, we think a little more juice is gonna make it feel better or look, sound better, or whatever.

How is this possible that I could love others from the heart when my heart isn't in it?

And that's kind of the answer, isn't it?

Get your heart in it by giving your heart to Jesus.

And behold what manner of love the Father has given unto you that you should be called the children of God.

Now that you know that, that you have that indicative, operate out of that indicative.

Respond to his imperative out of the indicative.

Love others because he first loved you, and realize how much love he has loved you with and how little you deserved it.

And that should change pretty much everything about us.

Peter, again, above all, keep fervent in your love for one another because love covers a multitude of sins.

Uh, Pastor Ray Ortland Jr.

from Emmanuel Church has become a friend uh over the last year or so.

I love this quote by him.

He says, one another is that I can't find in the New Testament.

Humble one another, scrutinize one another, pressure one another, embarrass one another, corner one another, interrupt one another, defeat one another, disapprove of one another, run one another's lives, confess one another's sins, intensify one another's sufferings, point out one another's failings.

Yeah, those aren't in the New Testament.

Cancel one another, not in the New Testament.

No.

Into a contentious world that's being choked out by the acrimony, anger, and outrage, which I would call the kudzu of our culture.

It's choking us out.

Um, into that kind of world, the word of God calls Christians to be a living antidote to all of those ills by doing what Jesus did, simply learning to love one another.

The Christian community, says uh Fleming Rutledge, when it's working properly, offers men and women a way of being related to one another that cuts across all the things that divide us.

There's nothing else in human life that levels distinctions and creates new relationships like the knowledge that one has been saved by grace.

All people who have placed their faith and their confidence and trust in Jesus for salvation belong to Jesus.

Don't belong to myself anymore.

Don't belong to my feelings, don't belong to my circumstances.

I belong to Jesus.

This community of believers is made up of people who are neither perfect nor sinless.

Don't expect that, but come in expecting to love yourself.

You love.

Don't measure how much you should love by how much you are loved by the other imperfect people in the room and the other people who are not sinless.

When you come in here, you take up the mantle and you love.

Be a host, not a guest, when you gather together with God's people.

Someone who's exemplified this well, uh, Pastor Tim Keller, and uh, as you heard earlier in our prayer time, um, succumbed to a three-year battle with pancreatic cancer.

I checked my quotes repository, my document that I keep all my quotes in because you know I do a little bit of quoting.

Um I have saved over 400 quotes by Tim Keller, second only to C.S.

Lewis.

Some of you thought I was gonna say John Stott.

I've read so many tributes to his life and ministry.

One said Keller provided an intellectually coherent way to be a Christian within the bustling metropolis.

That's true.

He really did.

Another written by someone who happens to be a friend of some of us here at TVC, Trevin Wax, expressed some of the same thoughts that I have about Tim.

He said, Keller's writing a minister became an anchor for me.

He exuded a sense of calm no matter what was taking place.

He didn't get caught up in the drama.

He was the epitome of a non-anxious presence.

I love that.

It's great.

Could we be non-anxious presence going into the next year and a half?

Could we be non-anxious people?

Yeah.

And Tim had a deep-rooted security in his faith that allowed him to interact with people of various beliefs with respect and kindness.

And he cared deeply about the future of the church and the spread of the gospel globally.

And uh I want to do that as well.

Tim said we must strive to hold ourselves accountable, to practice forgiveness and reconciliation.

Our mutual love for one another is how the world will see Jesus and who he is.

Okay?

And Jesus said that too, right?

By this shall men know that you're my disciples.

So, in a world choking on the consequences of its unfettered acrimony and outrage, Christians are called to rise above the fray, love one another so well, presents the world with another alternative to its self-obsession and seeming addiction to chaos.

Tim would also say, love is counting someone else's needs and interests is more important than your own needs and interests or comforts.

So while we want to present who Jesus is through our relationships and the way we love one another, there is still yet one more thing, and Tim would agree with this as well.

There's still yet one more thing.

The love of God's people for God's people will do beyond all that we've said so far.

One final point, and it comes really from our older brother John Stott.

I wonder if anything's more urgent today for the honor of Christ, for the spread of the gospel, than what the church should be and should be seen to be.

What by God's purpose and Christ's achievement it already is, a single new humanity, a model of human community, a family of reconciled brothers and sisters who love their father and each other, the evident dwelling place of God by his spirit.

Wow.

Only then will the word world believe in Christ as peacemaker.

Only then will God receive the glory and do his name.

So, village chapel, I implore you, I beg you, if I must, as your pastor, for the good of your own soul, for the health of this community of faith, and for the glory of Jesus, which we should all be about.

Let's find ways to move closer in from the fringes of a marginalized faith and a trivial sense of love.

And learn what it means to actually be engaged in Christ-exalting love with each other.

What's love got to do with it?

Pretty much everything, didn't it?

Yeah, that's what John would tell us.

It was God's love that motivated Jesus to become one of us in the incarnation, to die for all of us in the crucifixion.

And it was Christ's love for us that drove him to defeat our last and greatest enemy, death itself, when Jesus burst forth from the tomb in his glorious resurrection.

Romans 5.5 says that the Holy Spirit is busy shedding the love of God abroad in our hearts.

Can you look back and see some of that happening in your own heart?

And it shows up in your relationships.

It shows up in your disposition of heart toward the others and the one another's, even the ones that are hard to love.

It shows up there.

Do you see it flowing in your life?

I hope that you can say yes.

And I encourage you by saying that when I run out of mine, Jesus is the fountain of love divine.

So we turn to him when we need help loving somebody.

And let's turn to him and pray, even as we close out today.

Father, may the good seed of your word find fertile soil in our hearts and minds.

May the Holy Spirit use our study of it today to dig roots and bear fruit in our lives, especially the fruit of love for the glory of Jesus.

In his name we pray.

Amen and amen.