Love Matters - Week 2

[00:00:00] Well, good morning. Good morning, Christ Church. [00:00:03] It's a beautiful, icy morning here, but I am glad to see you. And today we are going to continue our sermon series going through. First John started that last week. And First John is a book about love. And I know you probably got amazing Valentine's Day that's coming up, people, so you probably got great plans. But we're talking about what it looks like, what it means to love, and how God's at the very center of that. But before we get into it, would you bow your head in prayer with me, Father? We do love you, Lord. And we pray that you would be at work in each of our lives to shape us to be people who love like you do, Lord. Help us to know what that looks like. Help us to live that out, and help us to walk with you each and every day, Lord, so that we can love the people better in our lives. And I ask all this in the great name of Jesus. Amen. [00:01:10] Well, my girls are, you know, they're still pretty young, six and three. And they absolutely love makeup, lipstick, nail polish, any of it they love. And, you know, mom and dad, we don't encourage that because we don't want them, you know, painting up the whole house and everything. But they have these things called grandparents that. Have you heard of these? The rules don't apply with them. So they, you know, many times we'll get them a lot of nail polish and lipstick and stuff. So we have to kind of just set some basic rules, like, you can't use this without mom and dad, and definitely don't use it in the basement. Don't take it down there. Don't take it up into your room. You know, just basic stuff like that. And a couple years ago, my daughters went up to bed, and Allie went to get them in the morning. And in my oldest daughter's bed, Emery, it looked like a crime scene. [00:02:15] Red everywhere. All on her face, all on the pillow, all on the wall. And she had snuck some nail polish up there and in the middle of the night, had a good old time with it. [00:02:31] And, you know, I wish I could tell you that was the first and only time that's happened, but there's been a few others. And what's great about those moments is, like, we don't even have to ask what happened. You know, I don't have to be like, did you bring this up here? Did you do what we asked you not to do? The evidence is so undeniable. [00:02:58] We know they know. The world knows what happened in those Moments. And today, as we look at the scripture, we're gonna look at John, chapter two. One John, chapter two. And what that chapter is about is looking at the evidence of our own life that we are connected to God. See, one of the powerful things about this book of First, John is First, John says, kinda talk is cheap. You know, we can say a lot of things. We can say we know God. We can say we walk with God. We can say all these things. But John says, but I wanna know what's the evidence that it's real in your life? [00:03:45] Because it matters that we take time and we examine our own hearts and life to see the authenticity of our faith. So that's what we're gonna talk about today. And I'm gonna read through a lot of this chapter. I'm gonna kind of break it up, and then we're gonna explain it. But let's begin today at verse three. And it says this. And by this we know that we have come to know Him. Now just notice the language on that. By this we know that we have come to know Him. So John's saying, here's how you know for yourself that you know and have experienced God. He says, by this we know we've come to know him if we keep his commandments. Whoever says, I know him but does not keep his commandments is a liar. And the truth is not in him, but whoever keeps his word in him, truly the love of God is perfected. [00:04:53] By this we may know that we are in Him. Whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked. So you see, what John is doing here is he's saying, here is some way to look and see the evidence of the reality of your own faith. And I think that that's a really healthy thing for each of us to do at times. Now, unfortunately, many times we're worried about the authenticity of someone else's faith. And it's very easy to look at other people and question the realness of their faith. But John says, you know what? I'm not worried about other people. I'm worried about you looking at your own faith. And so in this chapter, he gives a couple different tests, a couple different ways to say, how do you find the evidence of real faith in your life? And the first one here is this test of what we might call the behavioral test. And he says, if you know God, then the evidence is that you're learning to walk with God. You're learning to walk as he walks. And that's kind of the first thing to look for. And I think that's a really interesting thing to think about. What does it look like to walk with God? And as I was just thinking about this in my own life, the first thing that I thought is that walking kind of generally involves two things. If you're walking with someone, it involves a pace and a direction. [00:06:37] And if either of those are different, you're probably not really gonna be walking with them. [00:06:44] Just last week, we took the kids to Great Wolf Lodge for a night. It was awesome. We had a great time. And if you've ever been to Great Wolf Lodge, it's like these really, really long hallways. It's very kind of long building. [00:07:02] And we were at the far end of one. But on the carpet in the hallways are designs. And there's these designs of like, rocks, like kind of these big rocks, and then wolf tracks. And the whole carpet is back and forth. Rocks, wolf tracks. Rocks, wolf tracks. Well, my daughter Abby loved that because for her, the rocks meant that that's how you stayed out of the lava. [00:07:28] And then the wolf tracks also kind of is how you stayed out of the lava. And so when we would, like be walking anywh, she would not walk with us. She would run. She loves this girl does not like to walk. [00:07:44] She only wants to run. She did not get that from me. [00:07:50] Always running, always moving. So she'd be sprinting down the hallways, and then she'd say, dad, yell out, you know, rocks. And so, like, when the rocks would come, I'd say rocks, and she'd like, skip across the rocks. And then when it was wolf tracks, I'd say, wolf tracks. So the whole time we were there, I was at the end of the hallway just yelling out, rocks. Wolf tracks. Rocks. Allie's like, this is really kind of obnoxious. I was like, I agree, but it's kind of fun too. I don't know. [00:08:19] And so the whole time, she was always just sprinting ahead of us. And it's hard to have meaningful conversation when you're living at two different paces. Amen. [00:08:33] Now, here's what I think is fascinating about that. When you think about your life and my life, what does it mean to walk with God? Well, I think one of the things that it means is that we need to learn a different pace in our lives. There's this really interesting book called the 3 mile per hour God, and it's written by Kosuke Koyama, and he lived before World War II in Japan, and so he saw the build up to World War II. And then he saw the destruction of World War II. And in the destruction, he said that Japan was just leveled to ashes. And then he saw the rebuilding. By the 70s, everything was rebuilt. And he. He writes about all the things that he learned about the spiritual realities of these things. And one of the big things he says is that there is a speed to love and that God works in our lives, usually way slower than we want him to. Can anybody give me an amen on that? The Lord's pace is usually not our natural pace, but what he says is that when Jesus walked this earth, the average walking speed for humans is 3 miles per hour. And so he said that in our technological world, we rarely live life at that pace. We're speeding around, we're going to event to event. Everything we do is just moving at these insane speeds. But he says, but God is often at work in our life at a different pace, and we need to learn to adjust to that. And I don't know about you, but I think there's a lot of truth to that. There's this very, very famous conversation that a man named Dallas Willard had with another pastor. Dallas Willard was a philosophy professor at the University of Southern California, but he was also a devoted follower of Jesus. And there was this young, up and coming pastor that had this very prestigious role in this very prestigious church. And he said to Dallas Willard, who's this very wise sage, he says, how can I keep my soul healthy as I go into this role? That's going to have a lot of pressure, a lot of responsibility, just kind of this very big thing. And Dallas Willard said to him, you need to ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life. [00:11:21] Ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life. And he said, okay, I got that. What else? [00:11:30] And he said, that's it. [00:11:32] That's what you need. And I think there's something to that church. It's hard to love people well when we're always in a rush. [00:11:42] It's hard to hear God when I'm sprinting around in my life. [00:11:50] It's hard to walk with God when I'm running down the halls ahead of him, doing my own thing. But John says, but part of knowing God is recognizing that he goes at a different pace. And I need to adjust my life to him and not expect him to adjust to me. That I realize that I need to learn what it looks like to walk with him because he matters to me. Now, John uses these words, love and obedience, and he sees them as two things that are connected, that if I love God, I will obey Him. Now this is really, really significant. Cause maybe some of us, we grew up obeying God, but it wasn't out of love. [00:12:50] It was out of fear. Anybody, that's a different thing. That's not what John is talking about. John says, no, no, no. If you know God, if you're connected to God, then you will obey Him. Not because you're afraid he's going to just cast you away at your first mistake, but you will obey him out of love. Because he matters to you. He's important to you. Right? In a healthy marriage, you want to honor the desires of your spouse. Amen. [00:13:27] When we're healthy and at our best, that's what we wanna. What our spouse cares about, what they think matters. We do that out of love. We don't do that because we're afraid. If we don't, they're done with us. We do it out of love. [00:13:42] I buzz my head a lot. And are you surprised by that? [00:13:48] And one of the things that drives Ally crazy is hair anywhere. So this is a bad recipe for our marriage, you know. [00:14:00] And so out of love, out of my Christ like heart. [00:14:08] Thank you. Thank you, Bob. Yeah, I was fishing for something there. [00:14:13] I buzz it in the garage. [00:14:16] Yeah. And most of the time, most of the time, and I'm, you know, shaking, cold icicles are forming. [00:14:25] But as I'm doing it every day, I say, I love my wife, I love my life. I've gone hypothermic a few times, but it's out of love. But every so often I just can't take the cold. And I go inside and do it. And she always finds out. No matter how good I think, I clean it up and amen. But the point is that love is a different motivation. And so John says, man, do the desires of God matter to me? Does what matter to God? Is it matter to me more and more? John says, if it doesn't, then I might think I know Him. [00:15:08] But in reality, I'm not sure that I really do. You with me on this? So that's the first test. Now he's gonna then go on to the second test here. And it begins at verse seven. He says, beloved, I'm writing to you. No new commandment, but an old commandment that you had from the beginning. The old commandment is a word that you've heard. At the same time, it's a new commandment that I'm writing to you, which is true in him and in you. Because the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining. Whoever says he is in the light and hates his brother is still in darkness. Whoever loves his brother abides in the light. And in him there is no cause for stumbling. But whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness and does not know where he's going. Cause the darkness has blinded his eyes. So this is kind of the second test. So John says, number one, if I know God, if I say I know God, part of the evidence is that I'm trying to walk with God. I'm trying to adjust my life to God's ways. And what matters to God matters more to me. That's the first test. The second test here is he says if I say I walk with God, then I cannot live with continued hate in my heart. [00:16:39] That if I walk with God, then that means that there has to be this growing capacity in me to love other people. [00:16:53] That this quality of love, this commitment to love, this capacity to love will be growing more and more real in my life. Now, John says something interesting here. And it's kind of a little bit confusing when you read it. But remember how he said, it's not a new commandment, it's an old commandment, but it's kind of a new commandment. He kind of remember that. Just like 5 seconds ago I said that. [00:17:21] But what he's sharing there is, I think, something really profound. See, in almost many of the different religions and ideologies of the world, you will see a theme about loving people. [00:17:39] And so there's a sense where that's been around. If you read the Old Testament, you will see that theme there about loving people. And so there's a sense that, all right, this has been around for a while, But John says, but there is something new to it as well. And here's what's new, is that Jesus said, yes, love one another, but he gave a certain qualification to it. And in John 13, when Jesus was sharing with his disciples, this is what he said. A new command. I give you love one another. But then here's the part, as I have loved you. [00:18:23] That's what's new about it. What Jesus is saying is the standard for love is not what you think love looks like. [00:18:35] It's not what I think love looks like. [00:18:39] It's not what I think they deserve. The standard of love is, how has Jesus loved me? How does Jesus love people? [00:18:53] That's the standard that Jesus says we're called to if we're his follower. Now, if you explore that standard and you try to look at what that means, that is an incredibly, incredibly high standard. You with me on this. [00:19:12] You will not find a higher quality of love than the love that we see in the life, in the ministry, and in our own personal experience of Jesus Christ. You will not find a more merciful, a more gracious, a more truthful, a more committed love. I mean, whatever category you want to pick, the standard of Christ is so much higher. And so what John is saying is that this is the way that love is meant to look like in our life, that we're meant to strive and say, my standard is not what I think this person deserves. It's not maybe the wrong way that I learned love growing up, but my standard is how Jesus Christ loves people is how Jesus Christ loves me. That's the standard. That's the calling, and that's what is new about this command. And he says, and part of the beginning point of how that looks is not having hate in our hearts. He says, if there's hate in our hearts, then we're still lost in the darkness. Now, I think what's interesting about this is that most of us would probably say, well, I don't hate anyone. [00:20:41] There's some people I strongly dislike, but I don't hate them. Most people would not admit that we have hatred in our heart. But I wanna remind you that again, I think Jesus defined these things differently. [00:20:59] The most famous sermon in the world is the Sermon on the Mount, and Jesus gave it. And in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says this radical, radical thing. He says, you've heard it said, do not murder. And everybody's like, yep, murder is a bad thing. And people that do it are bad people. [00:21:20] And just like, yeah, right. [00:21:23] But I say to you that if you have anger in your heart towards your brother, you have murdered, you've committed murder. [00:21:33] Everybody's like, whoa, I don't like that. [00:21:36] Because we're all guilty of that. And think about it this way. If murder is the highest expression of hate, which I would say that it is, because murder is wanting the destruction, wanting absolute harm on someone, then harboring anger in our hearts would be evidence of this hate that John is talking about. [00:22:03] And now what that means is that as we connect to God, part of what God does is he helps us to sort all that junk out in our hearts. [00:22:19] Because we do go through life and we do hate people. [00:22:24] We don't call it hate, we call it something else. But part of God's work in our life is helping to process that through forgiveness, through reconciliation, through all these types of things. And so what John is saying is that if we're going through our Christian life and there is still this anger and hate in our hearts, then something's not connected. [00:22:55] We can say that it is. We can say we know God. But John says, no, if you are connecting to God, then this stuff is getting flushed out of our system. Not overnight, not instantaneously, but it's moving in that way. You with me on this, and probably so many of us at some time in our life, we've met people that claim to be Christians, but they were filled with hate. [00:23:24] We've met people that they could say they believe the right thing, they know the right thing, but then out of them was some really dark ugliness. And John is saying, hey, you need to look at the evidence in your own life, and you need to test the authenticity of your faith, because hate has no place here. And then he says this really interesting thing. He says, whoever loves his brother abides in the light, and in him there is no cause for stumbling. [00:24:04] And I thought, that's a really interesting phrase. [00:24:08] Have you ever found yourself stumbling in your relationships? [00:24:13] Stumbling. And here's. And when you stumble, you know, you're kind of usually sort of tripping yourself up. [00:24:24] You know, you're losing your own footing a little bit, your own balance. And in our relationships, one of the things that can damage them is just stumbling over our own brokenness, our own fears, our own unhealthy sensitivities, things like that. [00:24:47] Making things too much about us. Many years ago, I was in this leadership conference, and there was, like, I don't know, like 50 or 80 people in this room. And we were listening to a speaker, and the speaker said, all right, I wanna, like, do a little poll here and see how many of you are, like, sensitive to criticism. [00:25:13] And the lady said. She said, here's how we'll do it. [00:25:17] If someone's really harsh with you or they say something that's really kind of critical, how many of you will think about that for, like, three days to a week? And she said, just go ahead and raise your hand. And so I was like. I put my hand up. I was like, for sure. Well, I look as I put my hand up, I look at the room, and there's only one other dude with his hand up. [00:25:40] And I was like, either you're all a bunch of liars in here, or maybe I'm more sensitive than I thought. And I still don't know what the answer to that is. [00:25:50] But she said, well, you're more sensitive, but, you know, when I Look at my life. I can be sensitive in an unhealthy way. [00:26:02] I can hang onto things that are better. [00:26:07] Let go of you with me on this. See, what I keep realizing in life is that I can choose to be offended. I can also choose not to be offended. You with me, I can choose to hear something and give people the benefit of the doubt. I can choose not to do that. You with me, I can choose to let things roll off my back, or I can choose not to. But when we choose not to, that's when we stumble, and that's when we can make things more about us than they're meant to be. [00:26:44] Married people, you. You know when you're talking to your spouse and, like, something gets said and you're like, okay, I can go nuclear on this and it's gonna be a long night, or I can let it pass. Amen. Or am I the only messed up one in this room? You know that. Thank you. Praise God. We've got one Christian in the room here today. [00:27:06] But, you know, there is a sense of, I can let this be something to stumble over, or I can step over it. You with me? And part of what God helps us to do is to step over those things. Part of what God says to do is, you know what? Give some grace. Give the benefit of the doubt. Keep moving on, keep moving forward. Life is short. There's bigger fish to fry. Amen. And that's healthy, and that's good. And God helps us to do that. So what John is saying is that the second test is that it is my capacity to love people growing. [00:27:46] See, some of my capacity is about looking at the example of Jesus and saying, I need to be more like him. I want to be more like him. I want my standard of love to reflect his standard. Part of it is looking at my own heart and saying, all right, man, there's some things that are poisoning the system. [00:28:11] I've got some anger, I've got some hate. I've got some unforgiveness. And I need God's grace. I need to bring those into the light so they can be disinfected. [00:28:22] And part of it's just about saying, you know what? I'm going to try and grow in my capacity to step over things rather than stumble upon them. And that all helps me to love people better. And then John goes into this next section, and I'm just gonna speak briefly on this. But he has these beautiful verses, and these are all just different ways to bring encouragement. Because as soon as you start thinking about loving people like God loves people. It's easy to get really discouraged. [00:29:00] Cause it's easy to think about all the ways we failed in this over the years. [00:29:06] It's easy to think about all the ways we've let things get in the way of loving the people in our life. All the ways we've missed the calling and Saturn of Christ. So then John just kind of ends this section. And he brings some powerful encouragement that we all need. Here's what he says. He says, I'm writing to you little children, because your sins are forgiven for his name's sake. I'm writing to you fathers, because you know him who is from the beginning. I'm writing to you young men because you have overcome the evil one. I write to you children, because you know the father. I write to you fathers, cause you know him who is from the beginning. I write to you young men, because you are strong and the word of God abides in you. And you have overcome the evil one. [00:30:06] Now, this is a really cool group of verses here. [00:30:11] And notice how he's speaking to different categories of people. We get the children, little children, young men, fathers. It's kind of a little bit of this family picture. And I think there's a couple reasons for it. And I think the first one is that our journey with God, it is a journey, and we go through different stages, we go through different phases. And we, you know, the Bible says that as God begins to work in our life, we're born again and we're spiritual babies. And guess what? If you haven't been around babies in a while, they demand a lot of attention and a lot of care, and they can't do a lot of stuff for themselves. But then we begin to grow. And so John is showing us that our journey with God, it's about growth. [00:31:06] And today all of us are in different areas of growth, different phases. And the point is not where you're at, but the point is just, are you growing? Are you moving forward? Growth in my life is gonna look different than growth in your life. [00:31:25] None of us are going to arrive, but arriving again is not the point, but it's just, are we taking steps forward? But then he says, but also, I have a blessing for you in each of the phases of life. I just thought these were so cool. Says, you know, little children, you need to know your sins are forgiven for his name sake. [00:31:53] And I was just thinking about that this week and thinking, like, when we're young, what do we need to know most? [00:32:02] We need to know that God forgives us because we're going to make a lot of mistakes. [00:32:09] We are going to stumble and fall and we need to know that hey, that's okay, right? People who have had many decades of life here, you've made a lot of mistakes, but you turned out okay. Amen. [00:32:25] For the most part. Yeah, you turned out so, so. [00:32:29] But you can't get through life without making a lot of them, right? [00:32:35] And young people, you're gonna make em, you're gonna fail. But here's what John's saying, but God's got you covered and he is gonna be at work in your life for his name sake. Which means that when God looks at your life, it's not just about you, it's also about his glory. [00:32:57] That God is at work in your life, not just to bless you, yes, that's part of it. But ultimately something deeper than that to glorify his name. But here's ultimately what that means, is that he's never gonna stop being at work in your life. He's never gonna stop helping and working for you and guiding you and forgiving you because his namesake is also tied up in it. So John says, you need to know the freedom of his forgiveness and you need to trust it. Then. I love what he says about young men here. Let's look at verse 14 again. Young men, you are strong. [00:33:42] What I loved about these verses is I feel like our culture tells young men something radically different than what this is. [00:33:52] Our culture tells young men you are weak, you are fragile, you are not spiritually strong. But John says, no, no, here's what God says. You are strong. [00:34:08] God has given you all the strength that you need for the challenges that you will face in this life. [00:34:17] Everything you need, God's already put in you. And you do not have to question it. He says, but not only that, the word of God abides in you. [00:34:28] The truth of God, the reality of God lives within you. And look at that. And you have overcome the evil one. See, John is saying, young men, if you submit to evil, it's only because you chose to, you did not have to. [00:34:51] He's saying, young men, when you fall away from God, when you fall into struggle, in sin, it's not because you had to, it's only because you chose to. Because God has put within you all you need to overcome. How cool is that? I think, young men, you need to know that the strength of God is in you. [00:35:14] You have all that you need. His Word is in you. And then he says, and fathers, you have known him who is from the beginning that you know, the God who transcends it all. [00:35:34] And you have wisdom and experience to pass on to others. [00:35:40] So here's what John is telling us today. All that we need to love the people that God wants us to love, God has already given it to us. [00:35:52] And all that we need to be the people God wants us to be, it's already in us. It's already at work. We just need to walk it out each day, one step at a time. And so today I just want you to think about. I want you to think, what does it look like to love the people closest to me the way God wants me to in this season today? What does it look like? What does it require of me? What does it call out of me to love the people that are nearest to me the way God wants me to? Let's pray. Father, would you help us and bless us in this? [00:36:36] Would you, Lord, give us the vision and the wisdom that we need to love the people in our lives the way you want us to love? [00:36:47] Father, could we walk in the light in such a real way that we bring light into every relationship? [00:36:56] Could you help us to see, Lord, that the strength that we need, the knowledge that we need, the forgiveness that we need, that's already here, that we don't have to live life focused on what we don't have, but what we do have is more than enough. [00:37:16] And Lord, I pray we could see evidence that our faith is real, that it is active and that it's shaping our relationships. So help us in all this, Lord. In Jesus name, amen.