1 John 4-5

You brought a Bible with you this morning? We're in first John, and we're in chapter into chapter four. Into chapter five today. if you didn't bring a Bible and you'd like to follow along with us, there's a Bible in your in the front seat, hopefully the chairs that you're sitting in and you can just reach in front of the back of your neighbor there and pull one out. And it's on page 186 187. You can follow along there as well. What we've been studying together is about being a new generation in Christ. One of my favorite quotes comes from a pastor named John Piper. He says, God is most glorified in me when you are most satisfied in him. And of all the things that we study here as a church family, for all the reasons that we sing songs, we look into the Bible together. Ultimately, it's for one purpose, and that is to encourage us as people to find satisfaction and joy in our relationship with the Lord. God desires for us to love him and enjoy him. And sometimes as people, what we tend to do is we get so obsessed with the things that we desire to accomplish in this world, that we forget to just enjoy life from day to day and enjoy the experiences we have with God in life from day to day. Honestly, this week has been a challenging week for me. Coming on Sunday, I didn't know what was going to happen because I managed to get two viruses on my computer this week.

I got one taken care of, got it all up, got working and running, and then a virus got on my computer again. Shut it all down. I've written this sermon three times for Sunday, and you know, it was good that I was going through this passage of scripture because normally I might have been getting aggravated, but it was reminding me that rather than get angry at what I needed to accomplish, but just simply enjoy my day with God. And we've been studying the idea of love in the book of First John as of recently. John wrote his book for one purpose, and that was for us as people, to be able to understand the significance and importance of our relationship with Jesus. Some people had begun to creep into the church, saying that they were followers of Jesus, with a lifestyle that denied anything that reflected Christ at all, with teachings about Jesus that weren't biblical or scriptural. And so John, at the end of his life, writes this book to us in First John, to remind us as people that what God desires for us more than anything is to love him. And the danger that we risk when we look at an idea of love is that we purely understand it from an academic perspective. I mean, as a pastor, I've studied it, right.

You asked me what love is. I can tell you take you to the love chapters. First John chapter four, first Corinthians 13. Love is patient. Love is kind. Love is gentle. It doesn't envy, it doesn't boast. I know what love is according to what the Bible shares about love on an academic level. But the question is, does it affect my heart? Is what I'm understanding about Jesus impacting and changing my life? Sometimes we fall into the pitfall. That's what pits are for. Of thinking. About. Thinking. We come to church and we come for the purpose of a download of information. We just get our sermon, we get our music, we walk out and really don't think much beyond that. I think one Sunday we'll take a poll after the sermon is done and I'll say, okay, everyone, what were the four points of today's sermon? To see how much we can remember, right? We don't want to do that. But the purpose is the point is that when we walk out of this building, our hearts and our lives should be challenged to love Jesus more deeply, to not treat it as some sort of academic understanding or a building up of knowledge. God doesn't care about how much you know about him unless it's impacting your heart. See, one of the things that we looked at in first John, he said in First John chapter four, beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits, whether they are of God.

Meaning what God wants us to do is just not to believe in any old thing. Half the spirits or one third of the spirits or demons we saw in Scripture. God's truth has been declared to us. And so what's important is that we begin to understand it with our minds, that we study it out. And we don't believe every spirit, but we try the spirits, whether they are of God, because many false prophets are gone out into this world. But once we establish what truth is, and we build our lives upon that foundation, it's with our whole heart that we're able to devote ourselves to that every aspect, even emotionally. Sometimes in Christianity, we have the tendency to downplay the significance of emotions in your relationship with Jesus. As a matter of fact, when we talk about discipleship when I was young and learning about my relationship with God in the beginning steps, I they someone presented to me this picture of this train and it said, oftentimes what we do is we let the caboose lead your train and the caboose is your feelings and the engine is the facts. And we just go with what feels good rather than what with what's true. And what we need to do is let the facts lead the train. Let the engine lead the train. Right. Make sense? We talked. We've talked about feelings. We make decisions in our lives, important decisions in our lives.

We don't base it on emotion. We base it on facts. You go to buy an expensive car. You study what? What's the good car to buy for your money? You get a new job. You study. What job would be a good job for your hat? What's involved with that job? You think with your mind before you make those decisions. And it's the same with your faith. Study those things whether they are true. But once you establish what truth is you love with all your heart. We ask the question last week. I want to look at it again where does love come from? First John four nine and verse ten, it says this. By this the love of God was manifested in us, that God has sent his only begotten son into the world, so that we might live through him. And this is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Love starts with Christ. Matter of fact, it tells us in this verse that we don't even really earn love, that God gave it away in verse ten. While you were still a sinner, Jesus came to this world and he died for you. Meaning there's nothing in this world that you can do to make God love you more. There's nothing in this world that you can do to make God love you less.

He loves you beyond what you can even imagine. God loves you. And the idea of love or the purpose of love as Scripture is declared to us, is that love is the decision of your will. It's not based on emotion. It's based on a decision of your will that you determine in your heart and your mind, with all your strength, that you're going to place your affections upon something and love it with everything that you are. And Jesus has done that for you. And despite or regardless of any sin that you've conducted in this world or will ever conduct, Jesus still came to this world and he died for you because he determined by his will that he would love you. And out of his love he created you, that he could lavish his love upon you regardless of how you respond to him. And so it tells us in looking at Jesus's love, we respond in love as well. We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this love is perfected within us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment, because as he is, so also are we in this world. We love because he first loved us. The Bible says by abiding in the love of Jesus, we are perfected.

That as God has loved us, we respond in love in him, and we abide in understanding our love towards him. It's just as Jesus has entirely given himself to us. We as people have the opportunity to respond by giving all of ourselves back to him. Not just academically, with our mind, but with everything. And Jesus gave us the greatest commands to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. What was being defined there, according to Christ was everything that made up the identity of a person. That is what you devote towards Jesus. Not just all of your mind, but along with all of your heart, physically, mentally, emotionally. You just surrender that to Christ that you may be abiding in him and understand and be perfected in that love. So many a times people struggle with the idea of love and God, and whether or not God loves them and view their relationship with God as if they have to continue to do certain particular things in order to earn God's favor in which they might receive his love. But the way that the Bible describes it is that you can never do anything to earn God's favor. But and yet, while you were still sinners, Christ died for you. This morning, what I would like to do is not just simply affirm our minds of this, but let our hearts reflect upon it. You think about just your week. And maybe you were a great Christian this week and you read your Bible every day, right? And you prayed every day during those times.

Did you let your heart get lost in the love of God? Did you do it to get it done? Did you study the Word of God just simply on an academic level, or did you understand that the purpose of God's Word is to connect the love of God with your heart? I'm going to show you a beautiful picture. This is to relate to the nerds. This is how you know if you're a nerd, you know whether or not you can do that right there already. You know whether or not you can do your hand like that, right? If you have walked around in your life holding that position for more than a minute, you qualify under this. All right. You know the interesting thing about Spock? That's who that is, right? The thing about his character on Star Trek is that Spock was an emotionally detached person. That was the intrigue of his character. He mentally understood and could process everything. But like a trained dog, if you were the captain, you told Spock to run into a building and die. He thought nothing of it as far as his heart went. There was no connection there. The Bible talks about people like that. It says in James, even the demons believe and tremble. And James chapter two In the context of what James is trying to describe to us as people is that big deal.

If you have a belief that's according to knowledge, but a belief according to knowledge does nothing for you. So what matters is whether or not the truth in which you are understanding and you're receiving and you're growing and learning about God is beginning to affect your heart. The interesting thing about the character of Spock is that he's emotionally detached from anything in life. But the bad part about the character of Spock is that he's emotionally detached from everything in life. I mean, what kind of woman wants to marry a guy like that? It would be like hugging a cardboard box. Dictionary. I don't know what that means. But it's the same with your relationship with Jesus. Does God feel like he's connecting to a cardboard box? We talk about love, and we've studied it all academically, and we walk away from such a topic. That's the danger that we risk. Let me show you a more beautiful video. This happened to me this week. Happened to caught it on tape. It's the first time this ever happened to me as well. It's the first time it's ever happened to me. But it made me very proud and happened to catch it. And I just want to share it with you this morning. I love you. Hi. Hey. Yay! I love the love. I love you. Oh. Oh, Yeah. See kids in the sermon.

It's a winner already, isn't it? And that was a great moment for me as a dad. But I think about God in those moments, too. I think more than anything, what God would desire for us is with that same gentleness to come to him and just say those words. If you read 20 chapters of Scripture this week, big deal. If your heart never connected to God in such a way like that. And that's the purpose. And we may be saying in a moment like that, well, did Grayson even understand what he was saying? My answer would be probably not. He was probably simply just repeating what he heard. But as a dad, it was a proud moment for me because it's something I regularly say to him. Because I understand the way that God has portrayed himself in Scripture reflects a father. I don't think that God is a physical father, but I think that the reason that God has chosen to use the word father to reflect himself in Scripture is because he wants us to understand what he's about, and the way that an earthly father is intended to love his children. And so he chose a word for us to be able to create an idea in our mind of what he is like as well. And every day I choose to remind my son of the love that I have for him, and it's not because of anything that he did.

It's because God has given him me. And more than anything, I just want to love him. It's the same for God with us, regardless of before we've even done anything in this world, God's desire was to lavish his love upon you. Grayson probably didn't understand all that love was intending to mean, but, if I understood all that God's love was intended for me, my heart probably wouldn't wander as often as it does. I think none of us are ever going to run the risk in this world of getting to heaven one day and hearing God say, you know you prayed too much. You read my word, but man overboard, right? Did you really have to go with all your heart on that one? I don't think that risk is ever there. You know, I don't think this world has yet to see someone who is totally devoted. Everything that they were to Jesus. Maybe the Apostle Paul was close. But could you imagine what would happen if everything that we are, we understood and we studied about the truth of God, but we took it within our hearts, and we saw it every time that we reached out to God to learn about him and grow with him, we devoted everything within our hearts to see him. It's not about just getting it done, it's about experiencing the joy in that relationship with him. So the question becomes, well, how do we know that love is being expressed? How do we know that we're really loving God the way that we should? And John begins in chapter five, the last chapter of this book.

In this way he begins to describe for us the way for us to understand whether or not we're truly loving him. And maybe I could think about grace and saying that he loves me and response. What in his life could I begin to look at to identify? Okay, Grayson, you do understand what that means. And you do love me because of this. And so John begins to write in this chapter. He says, whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God. And we've seen that term. Jesus is the Christ. Jesus is the word referring to the humanity of Jesus, and Christ is referring to the God nature of Jesus. Anyone that believes in this is born of God, and whoever loves the father loves the child born of him. What he's saying is, the way that you see the reflection of God's love in you is the way that you love other people. The evidence of your love for God in this world is through other people. God isn't physically tangible on this world, so we can't do things to serve him and to show our love for him. But he says, what I love is people. And for the way that you can demonstrate the way that you demonstrate my love in this world is by loving others that which I love myself, that which I died for.

And what's crazy about what he says next? In verse two he says, by this we know that we love the children of God. When we love God and observe his commandments. We love others. We love God by loving others. And now he's saying we love others by loving God. It's like a crazy cycle. But what it's saying to us is people in this moment is when. When as a husband, I walk through the front door and I get into my home and I see my wife sitting down in her place of study, and she's reading the Word of God as a husband. I get excited about that. And whatever Grayson's doing to be distracting, I start pulling him away and I get him out of the room, and I and I let her spend her time devoted to Jesus, because this is what I know. The more that she seeks after Jesus in her life, the greater her understanding of love for people and others in this world is going to grow. And the more she's going to love me and I'm going to benefit from that. Amen. Do you understand what I'm saying? Right. Your relationship with God is so important because it strengthens your love for others. And then your love for others reflects your love back to God. That is life. Connecting yourself with the truth of God's Word that your heart may grow in understanding of him.

Giving your heart to him. Don't be Spock. No one walk out with pointy ears today. We shave them off. Giving of your heart. You know, the whole point of this passage, I think, is to remind us to be intentional. You think even about your marriage or relationship. A marriage just doesn't grow. You just wake up one day and all of a sudden you're on this super level of intimacy. You work at it. You do things to invest in the life of another person. It's the same with Jesus. Be intentional about your relationship with God. It doesn't just happen. Be intentional about seeking his face, and come to the Bible with the yearning of your heart to want to understand and grow with him. I mean, if we just if we just thought this morning, okay, we want to determine our sincere love for God by the amount of time that we spent praying this week, we accumulated those moments in just our conversation with God. How many minutes would we get to? Seeking him with all of our hearts, and the way that we begin to love others is by loving God. And for this, the love of God, that we keep his command. This is the love of God that we keep his commands and his commandments are not burdensome. John is saying to us is simply that he wants us to follow Jesus.

And he tells us the way to do that is through the commandments. And now all of a sudden, we grow this nervous energy, energy because it says commandments and no one's telling me what to do, right? But he tells us that if we understand the commandments of God correctly, that the way that it shouldn't be received for us as people is burdensome. So how in the world can we look at the commandments of God and not understand them as burdensome? And what are these commandments? Are they even burdensome? Why am I worried about something that I shouldn't even be worried about? I think John begins to address it in the next few verses, sharing with us the importance of these commandments, because Jesus shared with us in the beginning of these of John chapter one, that he is light, and in him there is no darkness. And so if we want to walk with him, if we want to enjoy him, if we want to saturate ourselves in his love and be loved by him, and abide in that love, and have that love be perfected in us, the place that we need to be is in his light, and the way that we get there is through following after him. We walk from the darkness into the light, and what he says to do to sustain the light is to obey his commandments. And so he goes on in verse four it says, for whatever is born of God overcomes the world.

Meaning for us as people, we have the opportunity to overcome the world, and whoever believes overcomes. You think about your relationship with God and His commandments beginning this way. I don't have to worship God today. I get to. Amen. You didn't have to come to church today. You got to. God has given you one more day on this earth to share and show his love. Your love towards him. And the moment you begin to look at your relationship with Jesus as I have to, rather than I get to you, robbed of the joy. We ask ourselves the question apart from the opportunity of having a relationship with Jesus, where would we be? Bible tells us it was a place of no hope. But Jesus came to the world in first John 410 is the propitiation for our sins, as the payment for our sins to give us the opportunity to enjoy a relationship with him. And so Paul says, for whatever is born of God overcomes the world. You don't have to worship God, but he gave you the opportunity that you get to worship him. Second part of the verse says this. And this is the victory that has overcome the world, our faith. I would say this to us as well. He only gives you his commandments because he loves you. Our faith and everything that's established in our faith is what God has brought for us in this world to believe and understand and receive through him.

And in doing that, we get victory over the world. And God has only brought us that victory because he loves us. The commandments that God gives us in the world are simply because he loves us. An earthly father in this world, when he when he loves his child the way that he loves his child, when he gives his child rules, is to help this child to grow up disciplined and loved, and protect this child from the things in this world that might harm him. And when God gives you something that he desires for you to do, it's not because he wants to rule over you and dominate you. It's because he wants you to enjoy your relationship with him. You're walking into the darkness of this world, and it's going to burn you. And while you get burned in the darkness, you could have been sitting in the light enjoying his presence. And so Jesus tells you what he desires for you to do in order to accept him and live with him and love him and enjoy him. And it's moving from the darkness into the light. But when you're in the darkness, you can't enjoy him. And so God has given you this faith to believe in him, to understand and to grow with him and experience that love. Faith is this. Excuse me. Fifth verse. Who is the one who overcomes the world? But he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God? Third, I would say you don't obey to enjoy God's favor.

You follow to enjoy his presence. Those who believe overcome. Those who trust him. His commands overcome, those who accept what Jesus has for them. Overcome. And it's not about earning his favor because he's already given us his favor. It's about enjoying his presence. So he says in verse six. This is the one who came by water and blood, Jesus Christ, not with the water only, but with the water and with the blood. It is the spirit who testifies because the spirit is the truth. John is saying to us as people in this passage, there are believers in the church that are denying different teachings about Jesus, and he's validating Jesus as a rabbi, as a teacher, and as of God in these verses ahead. Anytime a rabbi taught in the Old Testament, he had to be affirmed by 2 or 3 witnesses declaring that what he shared was truth. And Jesus came in Matthew chapter five, and he was baptized in the Jordan River by John. It says he was affirmed by John, who was preparing the way for him. But then it says, As Jesus was baptized in the Jordan River, the spirit descended upon Jesus, and the father spoke from heaven by the witness of 2 or 3. Jesus began his ministry and sharing in this world and reflects back to that moment, letting us know that Jesus was a physical person, that Jesus lived on this earth and that Jesus died.

How did Jesus express his love? He really came and he really died. He did something about it. He demonstrated it. How do we know that we really love? We do something about it. It's demonstrated we don't just simply say we love, but when we say we love, we can look back over the evidence of our life, and it determines whether or not we truly love Jesus. And he's saying, this is the one who came by water and blood. Jesus came by water. He was baptized. He affirmed into the ministry, and he conducted his ministry after his baptism by John the Baptist and by blood all the way to the cross, he died. And today we have the Spirit of God that lives within us to testify to the truth. Oh, it didn't save. First, John goes on, and it shares in first John five. I just want to share these other verses. It's supposed to be on the slide. This is part of the virus this week. It says in. Excuse me in verse seven for the. There are three that testify the spirit and the water and the blood. And the three are in agreement. If we receive the testimony of men, the testimony of God is greater. For the testimony of God. Is this that he has testified concerning his son.

The testimony is this You guys ever hear of someone? Just share their testimony with you. Their experience? Difficult to argue with experience from someone else. People share a testimony of something they've encountered in God in their lives. Well, more importantly than any of that, the Bible has God's testimony. It's kind of cool to see all the other people might share their testimony with you, but God shares his testimony and it starts in verse 11 and it says, and this is the testimony that God has given to us eternal life. And this life is in the son. He who has the son has life. And he who does not have the son does not have life. We talk about understanding and receiving a relationship with Jesus. What's the point? So that you can live for the first time in your life, you really get to live. And it's not just about living forever. Bible says he who has the son has life. You're living now, and the moment that you accept what God says, what God's testimony declares to us about Jesus, the moment we place our faith in everything that Jesus has done, nothing that we've done, we accept him. The moment for our life is now. There was a lady named Princess Alice. Not in Wonderland, but of Great Britain. Princess Alice was Queen Victoria's daughter, Prince Albert's daughter. She lived in the 19th century. A very loving lady, she was devoted to nursing.

She particularly enjoyed nursing military men who had been wounded in combat. Back to health. One day the Prime Minister, William Barton, went before the House of Commons and he had to share of the abrupt news of Princess Alice's death. And as he was sharing about her death, he began to share about her life. And Princess Alice's love for nursing and caring for other people. What happened was her family came down with diphtheria, and she left her duties of caring for the military needs of people, and she went home to take care of her own family. As Princess, Alice was caring for the needs of her family, her own daughter became ill and surely lying on her deathbed. Diphtheria is highly contagious. When a person begins to die, one of the things that they lose is the ability to breathe. They eventually suffocate and their life ends. And as Princess Alice is caring for the needs of her family, trying to maintain her own health so that she doesn't catch the disease to care for her family, she notices her young daughter on the bed, can no longer breathe, and in love for her daughter. She picks her up and begins to cradle her close and rocking her back and forth to loosen up the congested ness in her chest that she could just take some breath. And as she's rocking her daughter and her final moments, her daughter whispers to her, mom, mom, will you just kiss me? Princess Alice gives her daughter a kiss.

Moments later, her daughter dies. A few days later, Princess Alice contracts diphtheria and she dies as well. But in the moment, in the opportunity of love, to look at her dying daughter and just abandon all other things and run to her and meet her need and love her, is what Jesus has done for us. He looked at a world that is dying and decaying from sin and disease. Recklessly. He left his kingdom on high and he came to this earth, and he died for your sickness and your sin, to demonstrate to you how much he loved you. He gave everything that he had to hold you in his arms, and he asked for no love in return. What we get as people this morning is the opportunity to respond. We don't have to. We get to. We get to take our understanding of God's truth as we've learned it together, and connect it with our hearts and worship with everything that we are. That is beautiful. To think that the love that Princess Alice expressed is the same sort of love that we see in Jesus every day, and he continues to run towards us with his arms wide open, telling us he loves you. He loves you, he loves you. How do we respond? Everybody bow your heads and close your eyes for just a moment. As we think about God's love for us. Here's my prayer and hope for us this people today. We understand this.