1 John: Behold the Love of God

My mentor was here last week, Scotty Smith, and he preached, perhaps you were here, he preached a great, great message on the lavish love of God.

It was incredible.

Oh, I was just sitting there, I was soaking it up, I was relishing in it, and we went back to my house after lunch, and we're watching the falcons get demolished.

And somewhere within that horrible game, I said, Scotty, do you realize what you've done to me?

I mean, you come into town and you get 1 John 3, 1 through 3, and then you leave, and then I get 1 John 4 through 10, and there's stuff about sinners or of the devil, and there's the devil, right?

I mean, I'm like, thanks, thanks, thank you for that.

You really uh helped me out.

You took the good one and you left me with this.

Because I know when we read it, some of you are like, Great, what's he gonna do?

What's he gonna do with this?

How's this gonna work out?

Well, here's the key with a passage like this.

The key with a passage like this is that this passage is amongst other passages.

We can't isolate it.

Meaning, whenever we read a given text or a given passage, it's within the context of other passages.

So we don't isolate it.

We read four through ten, knowing we just read one through three, and we read one through ten in the context of the entire book.

Not only that, we read 1 John in the context of all of his work, and we read all of his work in the context of the metadarrative of the entire scriptures.

Now, that's a lot to do, but that's also the work of beginning to try to understand the scriptures.

Now, Scotty showed this painting last week.

This is Rembrandt's The Return of the Prodigal.

So if we look at it, up in the upper right corner, we have uh the moral elder brother who is in arrogance and judgment over what is happening here because his younger brother, if you know the story of the prodigal son, the younger brother took his inheritance, ran off, lived it up, did what he wanted to, and then when he was bankrupt, he came back to his father in brokenness and need.

And the father, this father is welcoming in this younger, broken son.

And so maybe you see yourself and you go, oh man, I've had some of that arrogance of that older brother, or maybe you go, like, no, I know the position of that younger son when you're broken and in need.

For most of us, you probably recognize yourself in a little bit of both.

Priest and author Henry Nowen sat in front of this painting in St.

Petersburg's Russia for days contemplating this painting.

Out of that, he wrote a book called The Return of the Prodigal.

Here's a quote from the book.

Rembrandt is as much the elder son of the parable as he is the younger.

When during the last years of his life he painted both sons in return of the prodigal son, he had lived a life in which neither the lostness of the younger son nor the lostness of the elder son was alien to him.

Both needed healing and forgiveness.

Both needed to come home.

Both needed the embrace of a forgiving father.

So last week, Scotty talked about these two hands of the father, if we look at the painting, and he said, you know, take note.

I had never noticed it really.

I've looked at this painting many times over.

Uh, and one hand is a masculine hand representing the strength and the hold of God, and the other hand is a feminine hand, representing the nurturing heart of God.

And so Rembrandt's point is a beautiful point for us, and it's that God holds us in both strength and tenderness.

That's why John says in 1 John 3:1, see what kind of love the Father has given to us that we should be called children of God.

1 John 3:1

And so we are.

This is the imagery and the understanding that we're carrying into this context of verses 4 through 10.

Two weeks ago, I took my six-year-old daughter on a date.

We went and we grabbed some pizza, and then we went up to the square to get some ice cream.

So we we parked in the parking deck, we're walking out of the parking deck, and there's the dilemma, if you know the square.

It's either Sarah Jean's or Sweet Treats, big divide in Marietta, uh, depending on which one you are.

We have a we have a family divided on that.

Two daughters are, you know, Sarah Jean, and uh, but Greta, my youngest, she is uh she's sweet treats, which is across the square.

So so we cross the street, and then all the streets were blocked off setting up for the arts festival.

So we kind of meander around, which is fun.

So six-year-old to get a walk in the street, that's amazing.

And so we're walking the street, and then we go over to the train, then we go to the fountain, then we make it over to Sweet Treats, and we come back and we sit on a bench, we go back to the fountain, we go over the train, we go back, you know, we were just all over.

Finally, we make it back to the car.

Now, there were times that we backtracked, there were times we stopped, there were times we looked at like a bird or you know, like dropped our ice cream and stuff like that.

There's all of that, but we simply kept moving forward in the direction we were going.

And this is the word walk that John taught us back in chapter one, and we talked about it.

I actually told a story that time about my daughter and I going on a hike.

All right, I just did the same thing again with ice cream, by the way, if you're picking up on what I'm doing.

And so this word walk is this imagery that is being carried through 1 John.

And we don't give it up when we come into verses 4 through 10.

And here's the point from the previous context.

Point number one.

Knowing Christ is an imperfect relational walk toward love and obedience.

Okay, now we read the opposite of that point.

1 John 3, 4 through 8.

Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness.

Sin is lawlessness.

You know that he appeared in order to take away sins, and in him there is no sin.

No one who abides in him keeps on sinning.

No one who keeps on sinning has either seen him or known him.

Little children, let no one deceive you.

Whoever practices righteousness is righteous, as he is righteous.

Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning.

The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil.

Alright, so this passage has been used for a lot of shame, a lot of shame-based faith.

A lot of legalism has come out of this passage, because if we leave all the earlier context that John is building for us, this idea of what a walk is with Christ, the idea that Christ is sufficient, the idea of lavish love, the idea of abiding in Christ.

If we leave all that and just read this, I mean, you could end up thinking that if you sin, you're not a Christian.

You could end up thinking that Christians must be perfect.

That's not what John's saying.

All the security and the lavish love's already been communicated to us.

John's now writing about a group of people that left the church.

They've denied Christ as being God or them needing Christ as Savior, and they're causing chaos.

And John's fired up.

He's letting it rip.

He's saying those people willfully have no care for the destruction that sin causes.

They don't care about it.

There's no regard, there's no repentance, and there's no imperfect movement toward love and obedience.

See, in the grace of God, Christians, we don't live perfect lives.

But we grow in awareness of our imperfection and sin, and in that lavish love of God, we live repentant lives.

Verses 9 and 10.

No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God's seed abides in him, and he cannot keep on sinning because he has been born of God.

Now, this is all in the imagery of a walk, an imperfect movement toward something, but as a Christian is an imperfect movement toward love and obedience.

Verse 10 By this it is evident who are the children of God and who are the children of the devil.

Whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother.

So we have the reference to devil.

Well, devil, the word devil is really the word liar.

I mean, I actually, when I read the scriptures and I read through, because when I read the word devil, there's actually a part of me that sort of laughs.

There's this part of me that is so stuck in the caricature of like a Halloween costume that I sort of chuckle a little bit.

And I have to just replace that word in my mind with the word liar.

And then all of a sudden I start to get it a little bit more.

And here's point number two The devil is an evil force with personality, which can be understood as liar or slanderer.

British theologian John Stott said it this way: He said, We need to rid our minds of the medieval caricature of Satan.

Dispensing with the horns and the hooves and the tail, we are left with the biblical portrait of a spiritual being, highly intelligent, immensely powerful, and utterly unscrupulous.

So perhaps you've been places and the idea of the devil was behind every single thing.

Like children didn't misbehave, it was the enemy at work, right?

Randy Joe didn't have an affair on his wife.

It was the enemy.

What Randy, you know, heaven forbid, it was the enemy at work.

And in that language, personal responsibility can be downplayed.

And that's very dangerous.

Now, on the flip side, maybe you've come from places where there was absolutely no recognition of the devil as a legitimate spiritual reality.

Now, here's what I think.

Take it or leave it, there's a spectrum here that I think we're all gonna land on at different places.

But here's what I think is perhaps a healthy place to land.

I think it's safest to put human responsibility on the human depravity.

Put responsibility on human depravity until there's no other explanation.

And then when we're at the point there's no other explanation, then we can become open and go, maybe the enemy's at work here.

See, what this could do is what this means is it doesn't build a culture of blame and excuses, but it allows us to still remain open to the reality of evil.

This passage is an odd passage, I think, but I do think it breaks us because it makes us look at our lives and realize we are not perfect.

There's a little bit of fear when we read something like this and go, oh no, who am I?

Where am I in this?

So it breaks us a little bit, and at the same time, it woos us back to the love of the Father because even amidst all this strong language, John can't resist writing verse five.

In the midst of it, he says, You know that he appeared, you know, you know.

So he's writing all this, and he's like, Oh man, this is heavy, but he says, You know, you know that he appeared in order to take away sins, and in him there is no sin.

You know that.

We've already talked about that.

And it's not that in you or in your merit there is no sin, but it's in him that you are hidden in Christ.

Your sin is taken from you even while you're imperfect and sinful, and you are deemed righteous.

Point number three is this last point.

The lavish love of God is always enough for you.

The lavish love of God is always enough for you.

If we think back on the return of the prodigal painting, we see the destruction of sin.

We see it in the condition of that broken down prodigal and uh in his feet and his clothing.

I mean, he's on his knees.

He is worn down, exhausted.

You can see the destruction of sin.

You've seen it.

You've seen it in your family, you've seen it in friends, you've seen it in culture, you've seen it in yourself.

We also see the destruction of sin in this elder brother.

Refusing to be a part of this celebration that his brother's home.

He stands in that much arrogance and judgment.

He can't get out of his own pride.

And you've seen that.

You've seen that in your family, and you've seen it in your friends, and you've seen it in your culture, and you've seen it in yourself.

I have.

And then we see the lavish love of a strong and tender Abba Father.

I love the way the New King James Version has verse one.

Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us that we should be called children of God.

I love that word, behold.

We don't use it much anymore.

You probably hadn't used it in a while.

I don't think when you took your kids to the Grand Canyon, you opened the door and you said, Behold the Grand Canyon.

This is why we came here.

Behold it, children.

Probably didn't say it.

No, you said, look at this.

Look at, look at, we came all this way to see this.

Look at this.

Don't, no, no, no, no, no.

We're not going back to the gift shop.

No, look, look at, we're gonna sit here for a little bit.

Two and a half minutes, probably.

But look at it, relish in this.

Christy and I were married a little over 15 years ago at Snellville United Methodist Church.

It's about an hour away from here.

Beautiful sanctuary.

And the day of our wedding, I woke up and I was running errands and packing, getting ready for the honeymoon.

She was getting ready for the wedding.

And she was getting all pretty hair done, makeup done, and all of that.

And finally, by late afternoon, we're both up at the church.

I'm with my groomsmen, and I get my tucks on, and you know, that took about you know six and a half minutes uh for me to get fully ready.

And you know, her like eight-hour process of getting ready was finishing up, and she was with her bridesmaids.

At some point, uh somebody came and got me out of our room and he said, Come on, and took me into the sanctuary, had me stand right at the altar, they cleared the entire sanctuary, big, beautiful sanctuary, cleared it out.

Nobody was in there at all.

And then the the rear doors opened up, and she walked in.

Behold, I was not counting how many pews there were in that room.

I was undone to see my bride.

And she walked down the aisle toward me and we talked and we prayed, and I was not looking at how the choir loft blended into the pulpit.

I was not looking at how the ceiling came down and went into the sidewalk, right?

I mean, I was I was locked in.

I couldn't take my eyes off of it.

Behold, relish, pause.

Don't move, don't move on.

Don't move on.

You're gonna do a lot in your life.

You're gonna do stuff with friends, maybe have a family, maybe you'll stay single, maybe you'll go places, maybe you won't, maybe you'll have a quiet life, maybe you'll have a very visible life in this world.

You will have success, you will have failure, you'll have both.

Fine, fine, right?

But behold that there is a God that could not, an Abba Father that could not love you any more or any less based on anything that you have done, doing, or will do.

Not if you're in Christ.

Let me pull out the lawn chair, sit down and relish and gaze and look at the love that never ends for you.

Don't move on.

Don't move on.

The very thing that empowers and animates that imperfect relational walk toward love and obedience is the behold the love of the Father for you.

My brothers and sisters, behold the lovest, the lavish love of the Father who holds you in strength and tenderness.

Let's pray together.

God, thank you that you do not hesitate to call destruction what it is.

Help us to see more and more of the ways that our hearts are prone to wander and woo us back to greater faith and belief that in Christ we have all the forgiveness and all the righteousness we ever need, and would that create such great healing, such great worship, that we would be more enamored by your goodness and your love for us, a love that never ends, a love the world cannot match.

I love the promises of sin cannot match.

And may our lives honor you in greater ways.

Amen.