Why Do All This?

Good morning, Good News Church. 11 weeks ago, we began this series,

How to Handle Relational Drama, and today we are finishing it up.

Along the way, like as we have gone through this series, there were a couple

of occasions where we said to you that in some ways this isn't a series,

but rather it's almost more like a big long sermon that had multiple points.

Do you remember me saying that? Do you remember us saying that?

And so if you think about it for 11 weeks, so if you go back to the,

so the first week was sort of the introduction of the sermon.

And then today is sort of the conclusion of the sermon.

And so the middle nine weeks were

like, those were the nine points that we wanted to cover in the sermon.

And so we addressed talking to people who have sinned against us.

We addressed how to be on the receiving end of a confrontation.

We talked about forgiveness and its importance. We talked about gossip and how to avoid it.

And of course, each of these points that we made had sub points underneath of them, right?

But one way of looking at this is that we had, basically we had a 400-minute

sermon that we wanted to give you, and we knew that it would be impossible for

you to absorb it and apply it if we had done it over the course of six or seven hours.

So we broke it into 11 parts, which means today is the final few paragraphs of the sermon.

Yeah. So what I, this is exciting. First service did not do that.

You are now my new favorites.

So what I want to do now since we're at the final paragraphs

I guess I want to look back at everything we've just said and I want

to and I want to ask this question why would we

do all this stuff and when I say this stuff I'm referring to all of the things

that we've talked about for the past two or three months all of the stuff that

we've been talking about why would we do it particularly I'm talking about loving

our neighbors forgiving those people who have wronged us living at peace with people.

Like, why would we do all this? So, here's the problem.

If you are new around here, like let's say today is your first time,

then it sounds like I'm just, I'm going to be referring to a bunch of stuff

that you haven't heard, right?

So, I got some bad news for you, and I got some good news for you.

The bad news is you are perceiving the situation correctly, okay?

You are hearing concluding remarks on some stuff that you missed out on.

The good news is the audio of all the previous sermons we have preached here

is available on our website.

The video of all of the previous sermons we preached in this series is available

on our YouTube channel. Okay. So you could catch up.

You could even binge watch them, okay? I looked it up and I did the math.

It would take six hours and 10 minutes with no stopping, which,

you know, who would want to stop?

All right, so six hours and 10 minutes and then you'd be caught up where we

are, okay? So there you go.

So for this morning, I'm just gonna pick up where we left off and I'm gonna

ask the question, why should we do all this stuff?

Why should we be difficult to offend?

Why should we confront people gently?

Why should we love our enemies? Why should we extend forgiveness graciously?

Why should we attempt reconciliation quickly?

I mean, after all, some of the stuff is completely unnatural, right?

Like not taking revenge. When someone wrongs you and you choose to not take

revenge, that feels unnatural, doesn't it?

When someone has wronged you, to go and talk to that person rather than about

them, it's not as satisfying, right? At least not in the short term,

right? It's more satisfying in the short term to talk about them.

It's very difficult in the short term to go and talk to them about it.

Trying multiple attempts at reconciliation is a lot harder than trying once and giving up.

Loving your neighbor as yourself seems impossible. So why would we actually do all of this?

And for that, we go to 1 John 4. And that's where we're going to end our series.

Our final text is 1 John chapter four. And I'm going to read to you verses seven through 21.

Some of these should sound familiar if you've been here all along,

because I've read some of these things at the end of some of the sermons.

But let me read the whole section to you now. 1 John chapter four,

starting in verse seven.

It says, Dear friends, let us love one another because love is from God.

And everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.

The one who does not love does not know God because God is love.

God's love was revealed among us in this way. God sent his one and only son

into the world so that we might live through him.

Love consists in this. Not that we loved God, but that he loved us.

And sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins.

Dear friends, if God loved us in this way, we also must love one another.

No one has ever seen God. If we love one another, God remains in us and his love is perfected in us.

This is how we know that we remain in him and he in us.

He has given assurance to us from his spirit.

And we have seen and we testify that the father has sent his son as the world's savior.

Whoever confesses that Jesus is the son of God, God remains in him and he in God.

And we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us.

God is love and the one who remains in love remains in God and God remains in him.

In this love is perfected with us so that we may have confidence in the day

of judgment for we are as he is in this world.

There is no fear in love. Instead, perfect love drives out fear because fear involves punishment.

So the one who fears has not reached perfection in love. We love because he first loved us.

If anyone says, I love God yet hates his brother, he is a liar.

For the person who does not love his brother, he has seen, cannot love the God he has not seen.

And we have this command from him, the one who loves God must also love his brother.

And so I think this section of scripture really answers the question, why would we do all this?

There is a lot in all of those paragraphs and I'm not going to cover every single

word of that today, but I do think that there are two answers to our question

this morning that are found in that portion of the Bible, okay?

So reminding you, here's the question. The question is, why should we have relationships

that are characterized by love?

Why should we have relationships that are characterized by forgiveness?

Why should we have of relationships that are characterized by reconciliation.

Okay, and two of the answers are in here. They are number one,

because God did it for us.

And number two, it is evidence of our relationship with God, right?

Why should we have relationships this way? Why should we follow God's word in this way?

Because God did this for us and it is evidence of our relationship with God.

So let's start with the first idea, the idea that God did it for us.

And for that, I mean, it's all in there, but let's look at 1 John 4,

10 and 11, but really 10 I'm going to focus on.

It says, love consists in this, not that we loved God, but that he loved us

and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins.

So notice, like the way that love is defined is by how God has done it.

And God is the one who initiated love for us.

Do you see that? It says not that we loved God, but that he loved us.

God is the initiator. It's not as if God looked at the world and said,

okay, well, I'm going to look at all the people who love me and then I'm going

to love them, right? I'm going to love them back.

All these people have chosen to love me first, then I'm going to send my son

and I'm going to love them. No, God is the initiator, right?

Not that we love God, but that he loved us. And how did he love us?

How do we see it? He sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins.

So God's love for us, the primary way it's shown to us is in the gospel.

That's what's being referenced here. His son being the propitiation for our sins.

Propitiation is a big word that people do not use very often.

It's hardly used in church. It's almost never used outside of church.

You may not even know what it means, but I will give you a dictionary definition that I found.

You can go online and find it. Here is what propitiation means.

We're going, okay, he sent his son to be the what for our sins.

So here's the, there's just a dictionary definition of the English word. Okay.

The act of gaining or regaining the favor or goodwill of someone.

Okay. Propitiation, the act of gaining or regaining the favor or goodwill of someone.

So if there is someone who, your relationship is not the way it should be,

right? It has been messed up.

And then it's when When something is done that turns away wrath,

when something is done that gains the favor or the goodwill of the someone, that's propitiation.

God sent his son to be that for our sins, right?

To bring us back together again. Well, how did God do this through Jesus?

How is God, how is Jesus the propitiation for our sins?

And how does God cause it to where we would gain favor or goodwill with him

when we deserve his wrath? So here's the thing.

Jesus died on the cross for our sins, paying the price for our sins.

That's the way that God showed his love for us.

God's justice regarding sin is real and it is appropriate, okay?

When I say God's justice, I mean like as judge of the world,

when God looks at sin and says, that's bad, when God looks at sinners and says,

they are bad, this is not good, this is messed up and I have to react to it, I have to do something.

Like wrath, judgment, punishment, that is what is deserved. Sin and sinners

are bad and so something must be done.

God's justice is real and it is appropriate. And there are times where people

do not like that. There are times people don't like that that's in the Bible.

There are times when people make comments, particularly about the Old Testament,

that they will say, oh, in the Old Testament, God was so wrathful, isn't that awful?

No, God had every right to be wrathful whenever he was wrathful.

In fact, I want you to think about this. This is true if God is God.

He has never overreacted to anything ever, right?

So his justice regarding sin is real and it is absolutely appropriate.

However, God's mercy towards sinners is also real and appropriate.

And for it to be appropriate, a cost had to be paid by him. That's why we get

to this part of the verse.

For his justice to be appropriate, it just needs to be the people sinned and

he reacted appropriately, right? With justice.

But for God's mercy to be real and appropriate a cost had to be paid.

A judge that just lets people off without the problem being taken care of or

the debt being paid is not a good judge, right?

I mean, this should be obvious to us. If you just imagine like a judge on this

earth and there's this whole thing where they present all the evidence and it's

obvious that the person is a criminal, right?

You look at the preponderance of the evidence or you look at the whatever it

is, everything has been said.

It's so obvious that by the end of the case, it's obvious to the judge,

like, this person is a murderer, or this person is a burglar,

or whatever the thing is, right? And they go, that is for sure what happened.

There's just no way out of it. It's incontrovertible. And then if they react

to that by going, all right, so it definitely happened. This person's definitely broke the law.

And my reaction to that is, eh, nothing. We're going to do nothing about that.

Is that a just judge? No. And it's obvious. And if If you're the victim, it's even more obvious.

Or if someone in your family is the victim, it's really obvious that that's not fair.

So in this case, for the judge of all of us to show mercy and maintain justice,

he would need to pay the price for sin.

For him to be simultaneously just, I can't just say, let's pretend it didn't

happen, but I also wanna show mercy on sinners.

The only way he would do that is he would have to pay the price.

He would have to bear the debt that needed to be paid by the sinners.

And that's why Jesus died on the cross.

He never sinned. He didn't deserve the penalty of death. We are the people who've

sinned. We deserve the penalty of death.

He took that on himself in our place for us.

So the primary way that God showed his love was by sending his son in our place

so that we could be redeemed.

And after John says that, he sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins.

The next thing he says is, dear friends, if God loved us in this way.

We also must love one another.

If God has done this for us, then we must do this.

In fact, eight verses later, it says, we love because he first loved us,

right? If you're wondering, well, why should we live in the way that we live?

Why should we live a life of love as God has commanded us? Why would we do that?

We love because he first loved us.

And this matches other parts of the Bible as well. And in fact,

it applies to more than just love.

Like we love because he first loved us, but there's other verbs that the Bible uses in the same way.

For instance, earlier in this series, under one of the forgiveness weeks,

we learned that in Colossians, it says, just as the Lord has forgiven you,

so you must also forgive.

It's quite similar to this, right? Just as the Lord has loved you,

you are supposed to love. Just as the Lord has forgiven you,

so you are also to forgive.

We see this in the parable of the unmerciful servant. Do you remember the parable

of the unmerciful servant? That came up in the series. I believe it was one

of the weeks that Doug Davison was the preacher.

And he talked about this story that Jesus told about this wealthy landowner.

And he had multiple servants, remember? And one of the servants owed him millions of dollars.

You recalling this story? Right. Guy owed him millions of dollars.

And the master forgave him the debt of the millions of dollars.

And then that servant went and found another servant who only owed him a few

dollars and then did what? Can you remember?

Yeah. If I remember the story right, I think he choked him out,

right? He started choking him saying, you must pay back what you owe me.

And the point of the story was, how dare this man who has been forgiven of millions

of dollars of debt turn around and not forgive the smaller debt that was done

by his fellow servant, right?

So because of, and this is the point here, because of God's forgiveness of us,

we can afford to forgive others.

God's love for us is the model for how we treat others.

And it is the motivation for like why we should treat others the way that we do.

So that's the first point. Why would we do all of this? Number one,

because God did it for us.

And then number two, this is

the second and final point, it is evidence of our relationship with God.

Why would we live life this way? Why would we do this? Because it is evidence

of our relationship with God.

Why should we obey the Bible's instructions on this matter?

Because our obedience reveals whether we actually know God or not.

Did you notice that in the passage that I read to you? Because that was a thing

that kind of came up over and over again in the passage.

I'll just pick one of the places where it said it, because it was just really stuck out to me.

Look at verse 20, 20 and 21, but really just 20.

1 John 4, 20. If anyone says, I love God, yet hates his brother, he is a liar.

Can you believe that's in the Bible? For the person who does not love his brother,

he has seen, cannot love the God he has not seen. Like, isn't that incredible?

I wouldn't have written that, right? I don't know. I think sometimes people

think like, oh, Mario gets up on Sundays and he sort of gives his opinions about God.

Not really. I mean, yes, I try to teach the Bible and yes, I try to make sure

my opinions match the Bible but I don't get up here and just say things that I would say.

Sometimes I read it and I go, whoa, that is hardcore.

I would not have said it that way. I wouldn't have said that.

But then I look at it and go, well, that's what he said. So yeah, that's my opinion now.

If anyone says I love God yet hates his brother, he's a liar.

The Bible is saying something.

I think it's a huge deal here. The Bible seems to be saying you can reject relational reconciliation.

All the stuff we talked about in this series. Okay, hate your enemies,

withhold forgiveness, take revenge, right?

Don't ever talk to the person anymore. you can reject relational reconciliation

and choose to hate people.

But the Bible says, if you do that, then you're a liar if you also claim to love God.

Now, I do not assume that if you hated your sister for a week back in September,

that means that you 100% for sure don't belong to God right now.

Now, we do struggle with sin and God does forgive us and hate is one of the sins that God forgives.

But my assumption regarding this passage and regarding other passages that are

like it, and they're all over the book of 1 John,

my assumption on these passages is that if you unrepentantly persist in disobedience,

you are showing yourself and the world that you do not belong to God.

So I suppose I wanted to end this series by pointing out that these teachings

that we've learned over the past 10 weeks, they weren't simply happy principles

to help you handle arguments better.

I mean, they were that, but they were more than that.

God's word about conflict and hate and love and forgiveness is related to our

spiritual lives, not just our horizontal lives with other humans.

What God has said we are to do and we do this because he has done it for us

and because it is evidence of our relationship with God.

So let me end with a story that I heard. This is a story about a five-year-old girl.

Well, she grows up and becomes an adult. The adult version of her is the one

that tells the story. I heard the story years ago. I think I might've told it

here, but it's been a long time.

Adult woman goes to a counselor because she's got whatever some issues that

she wants to talk to a counselor about.

And apparently as they're discussing things, they're trying to get to the bottom

of whatever the problem is.

And somehow they start talking about her relationship with her family,

particularly with her father, going back to her childhood.

Why does she have a hard time getting along with her father?

And so she tells the story to the counselor of what she thinks was maybe the

beginning of her having a poor relationship with her father.

And so this is the story she told the counselor. She said, when I was five years

old, I went into the backyard and I saw my mother and my sisters and they had

washed my dad's like button up white work shirts and they were hanging them

on the clothesline to dry.

Okay. This story apparently took

place a long time ago because there's no washer and dryer in the story.

So this was either a very old story or this is very rural America.

But anyway, so apparently they're washboarding, whatever.

Okay. And then they've got these white shirts and now they're putting them on

the clothesline and five-year-old daughter comes out and wants to serve her

father like the rest of the ladies in the family are.

And so she grabs one of the nice white work shirts and she wants to hang it

up to dry, but she cannot reach all the way up to the clothesline because she's

a little girl. And so she hangs it on the side of the wheelbarrow.

And the wheelbarrow was a rusty wheelbarrow. So some of you have already figured

out where this is going, right?

So when you take a wet white shirt and you put it on an orange rusty wheelbarrow,

it puts the orange rust stripes onto the shirt.

And she said, and dad came home and saw it and he was so angry at me.

And she said that the counselor it was a Christian counselor she said the Christian

counselor said to her do you want to know what your heavenly father would have done in that,

situation and she said yeah and she said he would have taken the shirt and he

loved you and he'd have worn it like the shirt that you stained you stained

his stuff he would have taken it and he would have worn it to work the next day.

And I've always thought that was such a powerful story because it's true.

Like he took our stains upon himself.

And yet that doesn't even come really even super close to what God really did

for us. Like what God did for us is actually bigger than that.

Like that illustration I think

is correct, but it's an argument from the lesser to the greater, okay?

What God has done for you and me is actually way bigger than the idea of a father

putting on the stained shirt.

Because in the story, The girl stained the dad's shirt on accident.

We've all sinned against God on purpose. And the cost that the dad would have

had to pay in the story was to wear the shirt and it would have been,

I guess, humiliating to go to work with the rust stains on the shirt.

But that would have been the cost that had to be born, right?

The humiliation. The cost that God paid in order to rescue us was the life of his son.

So the cost was way higher for a sin that was way worse, and yet we can say,

and there's the sense in which that's exactly what God did for us in Jesus Christ

as the propitiation for our sins.

He wore our stains, and so applying that to this particular sermon,

I guess I'm saying this, he bore our stains on himself.

That's what he's done for us, so now we are to be like him, And so when we get

into situations where we are wronged, when we are sinned against,

what do we do? We are to be like him.

We are to bear the stains of other people, people who have sinned against us

and they don't deserve our forgiveness.

They deserve our revenge.

And we do what? We get really mad at them or no.

We take the shirt on and say, I'm gonna wear it. I'm gonna wear this thing you

stained because I love you.

And as we go around wearing our rusty shirts, we could look at each other and

go, wow, I know whose kid you are.

You dress just like dad, right?

That's why we do all this stuff. Let's pray.

Lord, I thank you for all of the things we got to talk about these last 10 weeks or so.

I do thank you that they are practical. Like they do have a horizontal effect

that is good much of the time.

And I think I'm aware of stories,

where people have followed your word and applied it to a situation and it went

from being adversarial to being peaceful.

And so we thank you for that.

But I think today was a good time for us to realize it's not just about trying

to turn adversaries into peaceful people for the sake of the fact that we like peace.

You bore our sins in your body.

Father, you watched people abuse and murder your son and then forgave them.

And then you said, be like me.

That's, it seems to me what John's saying in 1 John is that is what you will do if you belong to me.

And so I pray that we will do that.

In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.