The Family of Love

[SPEAKER_00]: You are listening to audio from Citizens Church located in Plano, Texas for more information about this ministry or to give to this ministry Please visit citizenschurch.com.

[SPEAKER_01]: Good morning.

[SPEAKER_01]: If you have a Bible turned to 1st John chapter 3

John 3 · chapter mention

[SPEAKER_01]: And we'll be in the verses that Messiah had just read for us, verses 10 through 18.

[SPEAKER_01]: If you're new to Citizens, welcome.

[SPEAKER_01]: It is an honor that you chose to worship with us.

[SPEAKER_01]: We don't take for granted that you believe everything we believe or that you are even a Christian or would call yourself a Christian.

[SPEAKER_01]: So if that's you and you're here, we're really glad that you are here this morning.

[SPEAKER_01]: My name is Jayman, and I'm one of the pastors here.

[SPEAKER_01]: Several weeks now into the series in the letters of John and the prevailing idea behind last weeks passage and this week's passage is that Christians are children of God that we belong in God's spiritual family and children of God as we'll see in this passage they become like their family.

[SPEAKER_01]: The most formative influence on your life for at least the first two decades of your life is the home you grew up in.

[SPEAKER_01]: If we were getting to know each other, we could not adequately understand who we are and how we came to be who we are without talking about your family of origin and the home that you grew up in.

[SPEAKER_01]: Families are formative environments.

[SPEAKER_01]: They are discipleship environments.

[SPEAKER_01]: There's a culture of that family.

[SPEAKER_01]: They're a values in that family.

[SPEAKER_01]: who you are.

[SPEAKER_01]: There's things shape, who you become.

[SPEAKER_01]: No one makes it out of their childhood home unaffected.

[SPEAKER_01]: Families have a profound shaping power on our life.

[SPEAKER_01]: The best commercials on TV right now are the progressive commercials.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like, sometimes we'll record a show and we'll like be fast-forwarding through the commercials and one of the progressive commercials will come on.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so don't be like, no, no, stop, we have to watch this.

[SPEAKER_01]: There's a guy named Dr. Rick and he says he's a life coach on a mission to save you from becoming your parents.

[SPEAKER_01]: Have you seen these commercials?

[SPEAKER_01]: It's a guy at a gas station and he's filling up a gas station, he's making small talk with another guy who's filling up a gas.

[SPEAKER_01]: And he's like teaching him how to clean his windows and he tells him what the bathroom room code is and all this stuff.

[SPEAKER_01]: And Dr. Rick comes along and he's like, hey, people don't want to talk to you at the gas station.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's these two guys watching these guys do construction from their house and they're talking about how awesome reinforced concrete is and stuff.

[SPEAKER_01]: And the punch line is progressive can't protect you from becoming your parents, but it can save you money or something like that.

[SPEAKER_01]: because it's true.

[SPEAKER_01]: As people age, they start to do things that their parents did, even if as a child they didn't like that their parents did those things.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like, I never understood.

[SPEAKER_01]: why my dad, when he was home, would just work.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like I never understood, he was always working on a project around the house.

[SPEAKER_01]: He always was fixing something.

[SPEAKER_01]: So even when he was not at work, he was always working on something around the house.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I remember as a kid thinking, when I'm older, and can do whatever I want, because that's how it works.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm just going to take it easy when I'm at home.

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, last week, I had a whole day off to do nothing.

[SPEAKER_01]: we were on break, I was off work.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so I spent four hours cleaning my garage.

[SPEAKER_01]: Sorted it, swept it, fought a ceiling, organized my tools, didn't take long, I don't have a lot of those.

[SPEAKER_01]: But I spent probably four or five hours cleaning the garage.

[SPEAKER_01]: And here's the thing, I enjoyed it.

[SPEAKER_01]: I really enjoyed doing it.

[SPEAKER_01]: And after I was done, I just kept walking back in the garage, just to be in it.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I have unprompted, unasked.

[SPEAKER_01]: I have told several people about having clean my garage.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it's like, if you would like to, you could just come stare at it with me, because it's so clean.

[SPEAKER_01]: Progressive can't protect you from becoming your parents.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it's funny because it's true.

[SPEAKER_01]: But it's only funny when it's true about things that don't matter.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's true about harmless things.

[SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes it's true at a level that's just not funny.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like if they wanted to make a serious commercial, they could say progressive can't protect you from inheriting your dad's anger.

[SPEAKER_01]: Progressive can't protect you from becoming overbearing like your mom.

[SPEAKER_01]: Now, that would change the tone and they probably wouldn't sell insurance.

[SPEAKER_01]: But it makes the same point.

[SPEAKER_01]: Our families shape us.

[SPEAKER_01]: They form us.

[SPEAKER_01]: They influence who we are.

[SPEAKER_01]: A friend of mine who's a pastor in Dallas, he's a wonderful, wonderful father.

[SPEAKER_01]: And when his kids were very young, he decided to write out their family values.

[SPEAKER_01]: So he wrote out seven or eight family values and then he put them on the wall next to their dinner table, a values about how we treat each other and what we believe about God.

[SPEAKER_01]: And he was talking to dads.

[SPEAKER_01]: He's older now, his kids are grown now and he's talking to dads about

[SPEAKER_01]: encouraging them to write their own family values, and as he was describing it, he said something that I thought about a lot.

[SPEAKER_01]: He said, every family has values, most of them are just unspoken.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like every family has values, but we don't write them on the wall because a lot of families have values that they don't want people to see.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like if the unspoken values of the home you grew up in, were to have been written on the wall, what would they have said?

[SPEAKER_01]: Like I know, many in the room, you grew up in a godly home.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so you could testify to God's grace in your life.

[SPEAKER_01]: And you say, you know, we honored God in that home.

[SPEAKER_01]: And praise God for that.

[SPEAKER_01]: Many in the room grew up in homes where the gospel is absent.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so you would say, one of the values was, it's not okay to fail.

[SPEAKER_01]: And no one ever said that.

[SPEAKER_01]: No one ever put down the wall.

[SPEAKER_01]: we just believed it because it was lived, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: So whatever it is, these things shape you, these things shape you.

[SPEAKER_01]: They get into you at a level you don't realize, you believe these things that you don't even know that you believe because they were never necessarily taught but they were just lived out.

[SPEAKER_01]: My point in saying all of that is every family.

[SPEAKER_01]: Whatever that family looks like, every family unit is informational, it's cultural, it's, uh, every family is discipling their family, not necessarily towards godly things, it might be just discipling them away from godly things, but families in their nature are informational environments.

[SPEAKER_01]: And we could talk about how significant it is in your discipleship to know and name the values of the home that shaped you and to be able to know and name which of those are good that you want to hold on to which of those maybe you need to to unlearn, but that's not the point of the verses that we're in.

[SPEAKER_01]: We're in a part of the letter where John makes a different point.

[SPEAKER_01]: He's talking about family, but he's going to emphasize something else.

[SPEAKER_01]: And through Jesus, we've been made the children of God.

[SPEAKER_01]: Here's how chapter three starts.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's verse one.

[SPEAKER_01]: See what kind of love the Father has given to us that we should be called children of God and so we are.

[SPEAKER_01]: The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him.

[SPEAKER_01]: Beloved, we are God's children now and what we will be has not yet appeared.

[SPEAKER_01]: But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him because we shall see him as he is.

[SPEAKER_01]: So as a Christian,

[SPEAKER_01]: The family that now defines you is the family of God.

[SPEAKER_01]: Not your biological family, but your spiritual family.

[SPEAKER_01]: There's an image that John uses when he writes it out this in his gospel and just calls it being born again.

[SPEAKER_01]: You've been born again into the family of God.

[SPEAKER_01]: And there's so much grace in that.

[SPEAKER_01]: Just like you didn't earn your way into your biological family.

[SPEAKER_01]: You are alive, not because you decided to be alive.

[SPEAKER_01]: That was decided for you.

[SPEAKER_01]: You can't earn your way into life.

[SPEAKER_01]: You also cannot earn your way into God's family.

[SPEAKER_01]: Your birth was a gift.

[SPEAKER_01]: And your new birth into the family of God is a gift.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's why John says, what kind of love the Father has given to us.

[SPEAKER_01]: And here this, just like all families, your spiritual family is a foundational family.

[SPEAKER_01]: When you belong to it, it will change you, it will shape you, it will form you.

[SPEAKER_01]: Here at this way, you cannot change your way into the family of God, but if you are in it, you cannot help it be changed by it.

[SPEAKER_01]: He says it very strongly in verse 10.

[SPEAKER_01]: By this, it is evident who are the children of God and who are the children of the devil.

[SPEAKER_01]: Whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God.

[SPEAKER_01]: Nor is the one who does not love his brother.

[SPEAKER_01]: So he's saying is, because of that formational impact of the family of God, God's children live and look and act differently than the devil's children, because God's family has changed them.

[SPEAKER_01]: So John's already said a few things

[SPEAKER_01]: We won't be what we will be until Jesus returns.

[SPEAKER_01]: So he has already said, we will sin and when we sin, we need to confess that sin.

[SPEAKER_01]: So God only has one perfect child and it's not you and it's not me, it's bleaker.

[SPEAKER_01]: We're just kidding, it's Jesus.

[SPEAKER_01]: And when we sin, God's perfect child, our brother, Jesus, is our advocate before the Father.

[SPEAKER_01]: He's the righteous one.

[SPEAKER_01]: So this is not about perfection, it's not about perfection, but please hear this truth.

[SPEAKER_01]: To be a part of the family of God means the values of God's family have changed and are changing your life.

[SPEAKER_01]: They're becoming evident in your life.

[SPEAKER_01]: And our lives will mostly, especially as we age with Jesus, our lives will be marked not mostly by the home we grew up in, but by the one we've been adopted into through Jesus Christ.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so here's what gets all the attention in these verses, and we'll give all of our attention to in the sermon this morning.

[SPEAKER_01]: If we're sitting at the dinner table, the family value on the wall of God's homes as this love one another.

[SPEAKER_01]: love one another and God your father expects his value of loving others to slowly but surely change you and come out of you.

[SPEAKER_01]: So would you do I think for this to mean anything this morning I need you to just take a moment and consider a question.

[SPEAKER_01]: If it's helpful to close your eyes, close your eyes is the love of God changing you.

[SPEAKER_01]: is it making you a more loving person, is it evident that you're part of the family of God by the way that you love others?

[SPEAKER_01]: I want to answer two questions.

[SPEAKER_01]: Why it matters and then what it looks like?

[SPEAKER_01]: Look at verse 11.

[SPEAKER_01]: For this is the message that you have heard from the beginning that we should love one another.

[SPEAKER_01]: Why does this matter so much to God?

[SPEAKER_01]: John says this is the message you heard from the beginning, and what he likely means is the first time the gospel came to this city, and so he's saying, when we first preached the gospel that Jesus is the Christ, we also preached with that gospel that you are to love one another, but John didn't come up with that, he heard that from Jesus.

[SPEAKER_01]: There's something like, um, 613 Old Testament Laws, if you, if you counted every single Law on the Old Testament, there's 613 of them.

[SPEAKER_01]: And when Jesus is asked, which of those 613 is the most important, he answers with two answers.

[SPEAKER_01]: He says, love God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.

[SPEAKER_01]: all of the law on the prophets, hang on these two commands.

[SPEAKER_01]: Love others as yourself.

[SPEAKER_01]: This really matters to God.

[SPEAKER_01]: The whole law hangs on it matter and to God.

[SPEAKER_01]: Our mission statement at our church is enjoy God, love people, and make disciples.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it would be wrong if it said anything else before people, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: Enjoy God, tolerate people, make disciples.

[SPEAKER_01]: Some of us are like, I could actually do that.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's my kind of church.

[SPEAKER_01]: But that's not what it says.

[SPEAKER_01]: And my point in bringing that up is this is all just so familiar.

[SPEAKER_01]: You're not surprised that you came to church in the message is that Christian should love other people.

[SPEAKER_01]: Why does it matter so much to God?

[SPEAKER_01]: Because this, I just think this says, it will enrich our view of what God's after and our heart if we understand this.

[SPEAKER_01]: This is who God has been since before the beginning.

[SPEAKER_01]: I've quoted this so many times, it's just worth repeating, because it's such good news.

[SPEAKER_01]: There's a theologian Michael Reeves, he wrote a book on the Trinity called Delighting in the Trinity, and he asked this question, which is just such a helpful question.

[SPEAKER_01]: What was God doing before he created the world?

[SPEAKER_01]: God wasn't Creator, He's always existed.

[SPEAKER_01]: Theologians will talk about this time as eternity passed.

[SPEAKER_01]: So you've got eternity passed.

[SPEAKER_01]: You have time, which is when you, us, and then you have eternity future, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: So He's asking the question, if God's just existed in all of it, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: What was God doing any eternity passed?

[SPEAKER_01]: Like before He ever said, let there be light.

[SPEAKER_01]: What was He doing for all of that time?

[SPEAKER_01]: Jesus tells us in John chapter 17, verse 24.

John 17:24

[SPEAKER_01]: Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, so that they will see my glory, which you have given me here it is, because you loved me before the world's foundation.

[SPEAKER_01]: What was God doing?

[SPEAKER_01]: And that span of eternity before you created the heavens and the earth and before trees and before Adam and Eve and before oceans and animals and stars and planets like an unknown periods of eternity that we don't even have categories for you.

[SPEAKER_01]: It would just break the brain to try to think about.

[SPEAKER_01]: And all of that, what was God doing?

[SPEAKER_01]: The Father was loving the Son, and here's what Michael Reeves says about it.

[SPEAKER_01]: And that is the God revealed by Jesus Christ before he ever created, before he ever ruled the world, before anything else, this God was a Father, loving His Son.

[SPEAKER_01]: The most foundational thing in God is not some abstract quality but the fact that He's Father.

[SPEAKER_01]: And since God is before all things of Father and not primarily a Creator or ruler, all His ways are beautifully fatherly.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's not that this God does being Father as a day job, only to kick back in the evenings as plain old God.

[SPEAKER_01]: He is Father all the way down.

[SPEAKER_01]: Thus, all that he does, he does his father.

[SPEAKER_01]: And hear me, I know some of us need to hear this.

[SPEAKER_01]: The kind of father he is is unpolluted by the way that role has been marred by sinful men.

[SPEAKER_01]: He is a good father.

[SPEAKER_01]: He's not a cheat on his wife's screen when you mess up, forget your birthday, drink too much.

[SPEAKER_01]: Self-righteous, hypocritical, angry, never around, never keep his word abusive, apathetic, negligent, dad.

[SPEAKER_01]: He's not like that.

[SPEAKER_01]: He's the kind of father that the best earthly father's only offer a glimpse of.

[SPEAKER_01]: And his fatherhood is expressed, it's tied up in his attributes.

[SPEAKER_01]: We can all say about our Heavenly Father.

[SPEAKER_01]: He is holy and merciful and just and gracious and kind and sovereign and wise.

[SPEAKER_01]: He is a good father.

[SPEAKER_01]: And God, the Father, has always turned to be past.

[SPEAKER_01]: He has always loved God the Son and God the Spirit.

[SPEAKER_01]: Which means this, God has always been a family.

[SPEAKER_01]: He's a familial God.

[SPEAKER_01]: Father's son and spirit, the Father does not simply love one another.

[SPEAKER_01]: The family is love.

[SPEAKER_01]: Love defines the very heart of the divine eternal life of God.

[SPEAKER_01]: And chapter four, John says it famously and clearly this way.

[SPEAKER_01]: God is love.

[SPEAKER_01]: And if this is true, if God is always, if this is who he has always been,

[SPEAKER_01]: and what has defined the very heart of our God, then what we know about creation is that He created out of love, think of it this way, if God has always been anger, then He creates a world because He needs an outlet for His anger.

[SPEAKER_01]: If God has always been lonely, then He creates a world because He needs friends.

[SPEAKER_01]: If God has always been anxious, then He creates a world to try and find peace, but if God is and has always been love, then He creates out of love that His creation might share in His love.

[SPEAKER_01]: So we see in Genesis 1 and 2.

[SPEAKER_01]: So what God does?

[SPEAKER_01]: He creates.

[SPEAKER_01]: He makes all of creation.

[SPEAKER_01]: He makes a garden as a home.

[SPEAKER_01]: And what does he place in that garden as the crowning achievement of his creation?

[SPEAKER_01]: He places a family, a family, a family.

[SPEAKER_01]: A family that might image his love, a family that might receive his love, and a family that might offer to one another, his love.

[SPEAKER_01]: This is why it matters so much to God, because love was always the plan for the world.

[SPEAKER_01]: Love is older than hate.

[SPEAKER_01]: older than hate.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's older than jealousy.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's older than bitterness.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's older than apathy.

[SPEAKER_01]: It predates all of that.

[SPEAKER_01]: Love one another is not just the greatest command.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's the most ancient reality.

[SPEAKER_01]: So stay with me.

[SPEAKER_01]: This is about to be a hard turn.

[SPEAKER_01]: Genesis 4 verse 3, in the course of time, Cain presented some of the lands produce as an offering to the Lord, an able also presented an offering, some of the first born of his flock and their fat portions.

Genesis 4:3

[SPEAKER_01]: The Lord had regard for able and his offering, but he did not have regard for Cain and his offering.

[SPEAKER_01]: Cain was furious and looked despondent.

[SPEAKER_01]: If you don't know, Cain and Abel are brothers.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then the Lord said to King, why are you furious and why do you look despondent?

[SPEAKER_01]: If you do what is right, won't you be accepted?

[SPEAKER_01]: But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at the door.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's desire is for you, but you must rule over it.

[SPEAKER_01]: King said to his brother, Abel, let's go out to the field.

[SPEAKER_01]: And while they were in the field, King attacked his brother, Abel, and killed him.

[SPEAKER_01]: We're four chapters in.

[SPEAKER_01]: to the story that began because a loving, familial god who created to share his love with the family he created were four chapters in and then we get this.

[SPEAKER_01]: Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's the first instance of domestic violence in human history.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's premeditated.

[SPEAKER_01]: Let's go out to the field.

[SPEAKER_01]: They probably went out to the field together a thousand times.

[SPEAKER_01]: Abel's cane's little brother, so Abel thinks nothing other.

[SPEAKER_01]: He trusts him.

[SPEAKER_01]: He has no idea that cane is plotting murder in his heart.

[SPEAKER_01]: And the Hebrew word used there says cane killed Abel.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's a violent, brutal, slaughter kind of verb.

[SPEAKER_01]: Cain destroyed his brother.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's devastating.

[SPEAKER_01]: Simmel Berry makes this observation.

[SPEAKER_01]: The first person ever born on planet Earth murdered the second.

[SPEAKER_01]: And here's what John says about that moment, thousands of years later, the text that we're in right now.

[SPEAKER_01]: Verse 12, we should not be like Cain, who is evil.

[SPEAKER_01]: He was of the evil one and murder his brother.

[SPEAKER_01]: And why did he murder him because his own deeds were evil and his brother's righteous?

[SPEAKER_01]: Don't be surprised, brothers, that the world hates you.

[SPEAKER_01]: We know that we've passed out of death in delight because we love the brothers and sisters, whoever does not love the bids in death.

[SPEAKER_01]: Everyone who hates his brother or sister is a murderer, and you know that no murder has eternal life abiding in him.

[SPEAKER_01]: Why's John bring this up?

[SPEAKER_01]: At this point, he's lettered.

[SPEAKER_01]: He's making the case for what he just said in verse 10.

[SPEAKER_01]: By this, it's evident who are the children of God and who are the children of the devil, whoever does not practice righteousness, not of God, nor is the one who doesn't love his brother or sister.

[SPEAKER_01]: So here's the point, there are two and only two spiritual families.

[SPEAKER_01]: There's something about John's writing that makes me uncomfortable because he writes in such stark contrast, such black and white.

[SPEAKER_01]: And that it makes me uncomfortable is not a problem with the Bible.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's a problem with me.

[SPEAKER_01]: But what's helpful about is what's helpful is just that he just speaks with such simplicity and clarity to say this.

[SPEAKER_01]: There are only two families.

[SPEAKER_01]: The devil, the children of God and the children of the devil, and the devil is not a good father.

[SPEAKER_01]: The one time he's described his father, he's called the Father of Lies, and his family is not known by their love, but by their hate.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so here's what John's doing.

[SPEAKER_01]: John is taking us back to the very beginning of the hatred story of the world.

[SPEAKER_01]: sin enters in Genesis 3 and the very next scene is the way that sin attacks the family and destroys the family and divides the family and where Cain was made to receive God's eternal always and forever love, offer that back to God and then offer that to his brother instead sin crouched at his door and instead of ruling it he was ruled by hate because his own deeds were evil and his brother's righteous.

[SPEAKER_01]: John Stotz says this about it, jealousy lay behind

[SPEAKER_01]: Not the jealousy which covers another's greater gifts, but that which resents another's greater righteousness.

[SPEAKER_01]: This same envy which made the Jewish priest demand the death of Jesus.

[SPEAKER_01]: Underneath the murder was hate.

[SPEAKER_01]: Underneath the hate was jealousy.

[SPEAKER_01]: Not the kind of jealousy that says, I want your life.

[SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't stop there.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's the kind of jealousy that keeps going and says, I don't want you to live.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so, John is offering this, friends, as this kind of very first emblematic moment, this emblematic story, it's a defining moment of the family of hate, where Cain, who's a son of the father of lies, out of hate kills his brother.

[SPEAKER_01]: And you know this, we live in a Genesis four world today.

[SPEAKER_01]: People hate each other.

[SPEAKER_01]: People hate each other.

[SPEAKER_01]: Scroll through your feed, checked in on current events, read the comments underneath the next door post, and you just thought, wow, people love each other, you know?

[SPEAKER_01]: This whole world is just a big family of love, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: We are living.

[SPEAKER_01]: incredibly divided, polarized, violent, degrading, dehumanizing moment in history, and beloved, this is why Christians have to get this right.

[SPEAKER_01]: This is why Christians have to get this right about God.

[SPEAKER_01]: The world that was made by a God of love who created from love, for creation to share in that love, it has been infected with hate and hear me hear me so have we.

[SPEAKER_01]: John does not sugarcoat this.

[SPEAKER_01]: Everyone begins life in the family of hate.

[SPEAKER_01]: There is no middle ground family.

[SPEAKER_01]: There's not the children of the devil and the children of God.

[SPEAKER_01]: Then in the middle, there's the children who are not great, but they're doing okay.

[SPEAKER_01]: They don't love like they should, but they don't kill people.

[SPEAKER_01]: John doesn't give us that option.

[SPEAKER_01]: He says this.

[SPEAKER_01]: We know that we've passed out of death into life because we love the brothers and sisters.

[SPEAKER_01]: Whoever does not love abides in hate.

[SPEAKER_01]: So if we're thinking to ourselves, I'm never killed anyone, I don't really hate people, this passage isn't for me, that misses the point.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's not enough to ask, do I hate like cane, we have to also ask, do I love like God?

[SPEAKER_01]: And that's not natural to us, because we are born in a Genesis 4 World, we are part of the Genesis 4 World, we have contributed to the fractures and failures of love in God's good world.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so here's what we need, goodness, we need God to do something, we need God to do something.

[SPEAKER_01]: This is why it's so empty to just

[SPEAKER_01]: to just regurgitate the command that you should love.

[SPEAKER_01]: We can't, we can't, we don't have the resources in our self to love others, especially not to love others at the standard that God loves.

[SPEAKER_01]: So God has to be the one that does something.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so look at verse 16, it's beautiful.

[SPEAKER_01]: By this we know that He laid down His life for us.

[SPEAKER_01]: And we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.

[SPEAKER_01]: By this, we know love that he laid down his life for us.

[SPEAKER_01]: Love is a word that is so...

[SPEAKER_01]: It means so many different things to so many different people.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's almost meaningless to just say love others.

[SPEAKER_01]: So what John does is instead of giving us a definition for love, he gives us a picture of it.

[SPEAKER_01]: Instead of defining it and multiplying words, he tells the story and what he does is he tells the story of the cross.

[SPEAKER_01]: By this we know love that he laid down his life for us.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's the moment when Jesus our Savior was crucified for the sins of the world.

[SPEAKER_01]: He gives it.

[SPEAKER_01]: And here's the good news that into that Genesis 4 world the loving father sends the loving son to create a new loving family through an act of love that's stronger than hate.

[SPEAKER_01]: Jesus is the opposite of Cain.

[SPEAKER_01]: What John does is he works these two stories in this passage where he has the story of Cain killing Abel and then he has the story of Jesus on the cross and it's just beautiful.

[SPEAKER_01]: Cain goes into the field with death in his hands.

[SPEAKER_01]: Jesus goes to the cross with mercy in his heart.

[SPEAKER_01]: Cain hated Abel because he gave the better offering.

[SPEAKER_01]: Jesus loves his enemies by being the final sacrifice.

[SPEAKER_01]: Cain killed his brother because his brother was righteous.

[SPEAKER_01]: Jesus is killed by the unrighteous to make them his brothers and sisters.

[SPEAKER_01]: The God who has always been love and has always existed as a family of love.

[SPEAKER_01]: He does not retreat from the world in response to sin and violence and jealousy and hate, but he enters into the world with life-giving love that triumphs over sin and violence and jealousy and hate.

[SPEAKER_01]: The first family then is made through this act of creating love.

[SPEAKER_01]: The second family is made through this act of sacrificial love.

[SPEAKER_01]: The Father, the Son, and the Spirit.

[SPEAKER_01]: God is love working in love to make sinners as children.

[SPEAKER_01]: And listen from if you are a Christian.

[SPEAKER_01]: When you become a Christian, in that moment, you are adopted into the family of God, adopted into this family.

[SPEAKER_01]: And that's your story.

[SPEAKER_01]: Whether the Lord saved you young and you've been a Christian for 70 years, or maybe the Lord saved you on the way to church this morning.

[SPEAKER_01]: Either way, you were rescued from a family of hate and into a family who is and has always been love.

[SPEAKER_01]: Your heavenly Father loves you.

[SPEAKER_01]: And the father of love is greater than the father of lies.

[SPEAKER_01]: And the devil more than the devil wants to destroy you your heavenly father delights in you.

[SPEAKER_01]: And your brother, Jesus does not hate you.

[SPEAKER_01]: He's not jealous of you.

[SPEAKER_01]: He's jealous for you to know the love of God and be part of the family of God.

[SPEAKER_01]: So you're a Christian and you're a Christian because the divine Trinitarian eternal love of God won out in your life and it won out over your sin and over your pride and over the devil's lies and now the truest thing about you is that you are a beloved child of God.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's why this matters to God.

[SPEAKER_01]: As a beloved child of God that same sacrificial love that you received that welcomed you into the family

[SPEAKER_01]: By this, we know love that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers and sisters.

[SPEAKER_01]: We're 17.

[SPEAKER_01]: If anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him?

[SPEAKER_01]: Little children, let us not love in word or in talk, but indeed, and in truth.

[SPEAKER_01]: So here we are, the family of God.

[SPEAKER_01]: And if we're at the dinner table in the family of God, it's all those who have been adopted by the Father through the death and resurrection of our brother.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it's a diverse group of people, the family of God, to spiritual family.

[SPEAKER_01]: Some are married and some are not.

[SPEAKER_01]: Some have kids and some don't.

[SPEAKER_01]: Some grew up in Godly families, some are the only Christian in their whole family.

[SPEAKER_01]: Some make a lot of money, some are paycheck to paycheck.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's all colors, all classes, all kinds of people were diverse, all part of the family of God.

[SPEAKER_01]: And on the wall, the value written says something like this, we value sacrificial love.

[SPEAKER_01]: We love others in ways that are costly.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's the kind of costly love John describes in these verses that we just read, if Jesus laid down his life for us, then we laid down our lives for others.

[SPEAKER_01]: We're not jealous of others like Cain.

[SPEAKER_01]: We are generous to others.

[SPEAKER_01]: We see their needs, we don't close our hearts, but we open up our hands and give them our resources.

[SPEAKER_01]: We don't just say that we love, but our actions match our words.

[SPEAKER_01]: Talk is cheap, love is costly.

[SPEAKER_01]: The spiritual family of God was created through an active sacrificial love, so that kind of love defines the children of God, is evident in the children of God.

[SPEAKER_01]: You cannot change your way into the family of God, but once you are in, you cannot help it be changed.

[SPEAKER_01]: And one of the way, maybe, one of the most essential ways God wants to bring that change in your life is changing, changing.

[SPEAKER_01]: Not just the way you love, but how you define it, what your standard of love is.

[SPEAKER_01]: Is that happening in your life?

[SPEAKER_01]: Is God changing you in this way?

[SPEAKER_01]: And I think for this to really matter to us, we can't just ask it about the people we enjoy.

[SPEAKER_01]: the people that we'd say are easy to love.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's, are you learning to love that guy at work who's just the worst?

[SPEAKER_01]: He does everything you hate.

[SPEAKER_01]: Are you learning to love him?

[SPEAKER_01]: Your marriage is just way more challenging than you could have ever imagined and you feel misunderstood in every conversation as pregnant with a fight.

[SPEAKER_01]: Are you learning to love?

[SPEAKER_01]: Brother, are you learning to love her in a way that feels like you're laying your life down?

[SPEAKER_01]: Sister, are you learning to love him in ways that feel expensive because love is costly?

[SPEAKER_01]: Your hyper online and your hyper into the political discourse and there's the people that you feel like are the opposite of you in every way, are you learning to love them?

[SPEAKER_01]: They don't look like you, they don't believe like you, they don't vote like you, they don't think like you.

[SPEAKER_01]: You look at them and you don't see your image, but God looks at them and he still sees his.

[SPEAKER_01]: Are you learning to love in a way that's laying your life down?

[SPEAKER_01]: If you were to just ask God to bring to mind the person that you most want to withhold love from.

[SPEAKER_01]: Are you learning to love them?

[SPEAKER_01]: Because in the family of God, we don't love when it's useful.

[SPEAKER_01]: If that's how God loves, we'd be in trouble.

[SPEAKER_01]: We don't just love when it's easy.

[SPEAKER_01]: We were brought into this family through costly love.

[SPEAKER_01]: And we show we are part of this family when we love and costly ways.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm really good at reading the first few chapters of a book.

[SPEAKER_01]: and I'm really bad at finishing books.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I could fill a bookshelf with books that I've read the intro of, or the first chapter of.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then I just either bailed on it or got distracted or heard started another chapter of another book.

[SPEAKER_01]: My wife's different if Carrie starts a book, she has to finish it, even if she doesn't like it.

[SPEAKER_01]: She has to see it through.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm just way more comfortable breaking commitments than she is.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so I'm good at starting things.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not great at finishing things.

[SPEAKER_01]: case in point, but there are a few books that I have read cover to cover, and then I've gone back to and re-read cover to cover, and then I've gone back to and re-read cover to cover.

[SPEAKER_01]: And one of those books is a book called The Hiding Place by Cory Tinnboom.

[SPEAKER_01]: If you haven't read it, you should read it.

[SPEAKER_01]: She was a Christian woman who was arrested during World War II because she was

[SPEAKER_01]: protecting Jewish men and women in her home.

[SPEAKER_01]: And she was taken when she was caught.

[SPEAKER_01]: She was taken eventually to the most brutal concentration camp in Germany, and she just saw unspeakable horror.

[SPEAKER_01]: And the hiding place is her autobiographical telling of her story.

[SPEAKER_01]: She obviously she survived, and then she spent the years after the war was over, sharing her testimony, and preaching that the gospel of Jesus can heal the horrors of war.

[SPEAKER_01]: She spoke at a church event, years into her ministry, and afterwards a man came up to her and thanked her for speaking, and he was one of her German prison guards.

[SPEAKER_01]: He was the one who had stand outside the shower room and mock her in her sister as they were forced to shower in front of these men.

[SPEAKER_01]: And after the war, that prison guard came to faith in Christ.

[SPEAKER_01]: And he's at this event where she's speaking.

[SPEAKER_01]: And he walks up to her.

[SPEAKER_01]: And he tells her he's become a Christian.

[SPEAKER_01]: And he celebrates the love of God.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then he sticks out his hand to shake her hand.

[SPEAKER_01]: And she can't.

[SPEAKER_01]: She can't shake his hand.

[SPEAKER_01]: At that moment, she's just full of anger towards him.

[SPEAKER_01]: And her mind floods with these awful memories of him.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so she keeps her hand at her side.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then she writes what happened next.

[SPEAKER_01]: Even as the angry, vengeful thoughts boiled through me, I saw the sin of them.

[SPEAKER_01]: Jesus Christ had died for this man, was I going to ask for more.

[SPEAKER_01]: Lord Jesus, I prayed, forgive me, and help me to forgive him.

[SPEAKER_01]: I tried to smile, I struggled to raise my hand, I could not.

[SPEAKER_01]: I felt nothing.

[SPEAKER_01]: Not the slightest spark of warmth or charity.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so again, I breathe the silent prayer, Jesus, I cannot forgive him,

[SPEAKER_01]: And as I took his hand, the most incredible thing happened.

[SPEAKER_01]: From my shoulder along my arm and through my hand, a current seemed to pass from me to him, while into my heart, spring, a love for this stranger that almost overwhelmed me.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so I discovered,

[SPEAKER_01]: that it is not on our forgiveness any more than on our goodness that the world's healing hinges but on his.

[SPEAKER_01]: When he tells us to love our enemies, he gives along with the command the love itself.

[SPEAKER_01]: Story of a woman who lives so much of her life surrounded by hate, who was loved by the father and learned love in the family of God and then offered costly love to others.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I just love the image of a hand outstretched in faith, asking God to give the love that we don't have.

[SPEAKER_01]: We don't look inside of ourselves for the source of all this, but we look to Jesus and we say, Jesus, what I lack, you are so rich in.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I wonder if you'd pray with me.

[SPEAKER_01]: And maybe the most honest response this morning is to pray a prayer like Cory Tin Boom and to just ask God,

[SPEAKER_01]: that maybe an honest confession of our heart is, there's actually very little love for others, and God doesn't have that problem.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so God, we need you, what you are rich in can be so shallow in our hearts,

[SPEAKER_01]: We can be poor and love, and so we need you.

[SPEAKER_01]: Beloved, your Heavenly Father is inviting you today through His word to love sacrificially.

[SPEAKER_01]: Even if that means the best you can do is offer a hand and pray that the love of God would flow through you to someone else.

[SPEAKER_00]: So would you turn this into prayer with you and your heavenly Father?

[SPEAKER_00]: In the first step is not to make a lofty promise to God.

[SPEAKER_01]: The first step is not even the obedience that says, okay, I'll... Love this person and this thing.

[SPEAKER_00]: The first step is to acknowledge before God that you are His beloved child.

[SPEAKER_01]: You could just say it to God like this, I am your son and you love me.

[SPEAKER_01]: I am your daughter and you love me.

[SPEAKER_01]: And your love for me is costly, unconditional, and inexhaustible.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then as somebody who has received the costly love of God, which you just asked God by his spirit.

[SPEAKER_01]: just to help you name a step of obedience.

[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe you know, maybe the Lord's already been working in your heart, and it's like, okay, the person that I most want to withhold love from.

[SPEAKER_01]: This has to turn into a conversation with them today, not tomorrow.

[SPEAKER_01]: Repentance forgiveness.

[SPEAKER_01]: And when we do those kinds of things, what we are doing is we are demonstrating

[SPEAKER_01]: and what family we belong to.

[SPEAKER_01]: God, in heaven, your love and only your love will heal this world.

[SPEAKER_01]: And your love and only your love can mend relationships, soften hearts.

[SPEAKER_01]: And we just wanna be found faithful, like Ina prayed right at the very beginning, God,

[SPEAKER_01]: We want to be a church that is known by costly love.

[SPEAKER_01]: Help us.

[SPEAKER_01]: We need you.

[SPEAKER_01]: Amen.