Episode Transcript
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Please remain standing as we turn again
to first John, this time chapter four,
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first John, for let's hear God's
Word now, from verses seven,
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versus seven through verse ten. Seven, eight, nine and ten. Beloved.
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Let us love one another, for
love is from God, and whoever
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loves has been born of God and
knows God. Anyone who does not love
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does not know God, because God
is love. In this the love of
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God was made manifest among us.
That God sent his only son into the
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world so that we might live through
him. Into this is love, not
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that we have loved God, but
that he loved US and sent his son
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to be the propitiation for our sins. Amen, you may be seated.
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As you may remember, in this
letter John has been helping us to understand
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what a Christian is, what the
marks of a Christian are, how will
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and comes to be a Christian,
and that's true not just of us as
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individuals, but John is also helping
us to understand who we are as a
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church, as a Christian church is
a community. These marks, like love
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or practicing righteousness, are not just
something that ought to be true of each
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person individually, but us together as
the body of Christ. Right each member
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of that body, working together with
Christ as our head. The body of
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Christ, even as the members of
Christ, are ought to be marked by
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things like love, things like Light, truth, practicing righteousness. To help
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us understand that, John has also
been showing us the opposite of those things.
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The church that he speaks to is
experienced some division. People leaving the
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church who were from the church teaching
things that were not in accord with the
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message that they had first received.
They didn't line up with the doctrines that
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they had been taught, and indeed
it wasn't just a doctrinal problem, it
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was an ethical one as well.
At the beginning of Chapter Four, John
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tells us to not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, and he
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gives a theological test. How can
we know who is speaking from God and
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who is not, he says of
verse two. By this you know the
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spirit of God, every spirit that
confesses Jesus Christ has come in the flesh,
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that spirit is from God. Well, this theological criteria to know what
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is from God and what is from
not a continues in our verses here,
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in verses seven, eight, nine
and ten. Here, though, it
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is a moral criteria and ethical criteria
within other words, the things that we
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say matter, but of course also
the things that we do, and John
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has said this. Remember, back
in chapter three, little children, let
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us not in let us not love
in word or talk. But indeed,
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and in truth, it doesn't mean
we should not confess, that we should
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not say the things that are true
about our savior, but it does mean
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that our lives and our words need
to match up. They should match up.
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They would make sense for them to
match up, and that's what John
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is talking about today. Now,
whenever I sit down or stand up or
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walk around the neighborhood to write a
sermon, whatever I'm doing, I will
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ask myself this question. I will
try to think about what objections might come
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up. How my the sinful heart, want to doubt the text, twist
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it up or refuse it. And
I did that, as I always do
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with this sermon as well. But
when I read these words, when I
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read these these first words that we
have beloved, let us love one another,
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my first thought was, how could
anyone oppose that? Let us love
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one another right? Love is something
that we all want. Love is something
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that we all demand and seek and
we talk about it constantly. Right love
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one another. It doesn't sound very
objectionable, right. Our movies, are
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songs, are poetry, it's all
about love. Every month magazines come out
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and tell us how to get love, how to give love, how to
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maintain love. If you go to
the library, you will find a building
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full of songs and novels and and
movies and all kinds of other things that
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really are all about love. Getting
along, being patient, stories about Love,
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challenges to love, examples of love
gone wrong, and so on and
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more and more and more. And
even when we're not thinking about love directly,
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it's always just one turn away,
right, it's just around the corner.
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Because, as Paul writes and famously
and First Corinthians, love is manifested
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in a host of other ways.
Then then maybe the simple ways we sometimes
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think about it. So he says. As in First Corinthians Thirteen, verse
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six, love is patient and kind. Love does not envy your boast.
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It is not arrogant or rude,
it does not insist on its own way,
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it is not irritable or resentful.
It does not rejoice at wrong doing,
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but rejoices with the truth. Love
bears all things, believes, all
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things, hopes, all things,
endures, all things beloved, you ought
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to love one another. Well,
yeah, it sounds great, they're what
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objection could possibly be had to that? And then there's Jesus Right, who
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speaks in the gospels. When he's
asked teacher what is the greatest commandment?
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In Matthew Twenty two, he says
you shall love the Lord, your God
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with all your heart, with all
your soul, with all your mind,
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with all your strength, and the
second is like it, you shall love
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your neighbor as yourself. On these
two commandments, both which are about love,
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depend all the law and the prophets, in other words, everything that
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you could do, say, think, it all is grounded on this command
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to love in every action, everything
that we think or do, our emotions
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are thoughts. They are either loving
or they're not loving. You could think
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about it through the Ten Commandments,
whether we are talking about our worship of
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God, sexual purity, telling the
truth, being content, not stealing,
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any one of these. Ultimately,
isn't it grounded in this command to love?
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So, as I say, when
I first read let us love one
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another, my first thought, it
didn't last very long of course, was
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who could object to that? But
you all know that we do object to
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it and we object to it constantly. It's rarely denied as a maxim right
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or as a banner that you might
hold up as a rally. Nobody's going
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to point to a sign that says
you ought to love and say now that's
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not true, right. No one
will say that in this sort of Broadway.
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But in all the particulars of our
lives, aren't we constantly denying or
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at least sinning against this basic truth
that we ought to love one another?
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Beloved, let us love one another. That sounds all nice and good until
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someone's mean to you kids. It's
hard to love someone who's being mean,
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isn't it? The same is true
for US adults. We have a hard
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time with it too. John tells
us here that we ought to love one
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another, but this is hard when
people at Church are weird. You're weird,
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I'm weird and we all know it, and we all know the experience
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of trying to talk to someone who's
a little bit awkward, or maybe a
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lot awkward, or maybe rude or
maybe it's hard to love people when they've
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heard us in the past and we
think they might do it again. It's
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hard to love people when we think
badly about them, or even when we
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know about their good things, it's
hard to love them because of jealousy and
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bitterness. We say things in our
minds like their families so perfect, she's
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so beautiful, he makes so much
money. How can they have so much
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time? If we can't even love
our brothers and sisters for the good things
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that they have and do, at
least along the surface, how much harder
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it is to love them for the
difficult things they are and the challenges they
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present to us? Brothers and sisters, you ought to love one another.
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Easy to say, hard to do, and I will even dare to remind
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us all of the fact that in
other places, our savior goes even further
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and tells us we ought to love
our enemies, people who do not deserve
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our love. Rotten people, cruel
people, stealing, people murdering people,
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people who themselves are not loving,
people who are angry and impatient, people
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who destroy relationships and communities, people
who are fools and wasters of time and
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talent and money. Love your enemies. That's a hard one. So who's
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going to argue with let us love
one another. I guess all of us,
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me included, despite our knowledge of
its importance, of its centrality,
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of its goodness, despite our wantful
of it for ourselves, despite the ways
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that we demanded of others, something
inside of us makes it very, very
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difficult to love one another. Why? Why is it so hard to do
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something good, to do something that
we all know we want to do,
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and when we experience it right,
it's a wonderful thing, it's a lovely
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thing, a beautiful thing. Well, there's lots of ways to answer this
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question, but I'm going to give
you the simplest one. We're broken.
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If, this morning, your alarm
clock didn't go off and you woke up
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somehow and you looked over at the
clock and you see the hands, you're
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frozen. It ten, ten or
something. What would you say? What
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would you do? Well, you
would know that it's not working. It's
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a clock, all right. It
was designed to be a clock. It
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was designed to wake you up.
You set it properly. Let's say.
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Everything's there, has a dial and
hands and but it's not working. It
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was designed to do a certain purpose, but it's broken. Maybe the switch
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is turned off, maybe the battery
is dead, the gears are grinding,
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who knows? Something is wrong,
something internal is not working, that has
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now manifested itself in this external way. It has not loved you by waking
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you up. Okay, the same
thing is happening with us. Why don't
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I love? Why don't I do
the things I know I ought to do?
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Because you're broken. We're all broken. Something's wrong inside, something inter
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internal is not right, like the
alarm clock. When God made humanity,
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he designed it for a particular purpose. He made us humans good, even
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very good, it says in Genesis, intricately, wonderfully Beau, beautifully,
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perfectly designed for this task of loving
him and loving others. He put US
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humanity that is, in this beautiful
garden, a husband and a wife,
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meant to be together even as one
flesh, this unity of love, and
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not only with themselves, but shining
forth, bearing forth the image of God
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himself, a Union of love between
the persons of the Trinity. You,
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having and now, having made this
creature and these creatures in his image,
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he abides with them, he lives
and dwells with them in this beautiful temple
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garden filled with love. But when
our first parents fell into sin, when
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eve looked longingly and lovingly at the
fruit that she was forbidden. She turned
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her love away from the thing where
it ought, on the one on whom
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it ought had to have been placed, on God, to the thing that
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he had forbidden, and she failed
to love in that way. When she
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turned her ear away from Theo,
her lord and turned it towards the S
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Rpent, she failed to love as
she ought and she loved in a sense,
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but loved sinfully, loved an evil
thing. And when Adam failed to
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protect the garden, to protect his
wife from this evil one, when he
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failed to warn her, when he
failed to listen to the promise of the
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Lord, when he failed to obey
the command of the Lord, He fell
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to he likewise did not love her, did not love the Lord. And
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both of them took the love that
had been intended for one another and for
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their relationship with God and instead they
destroyed it all. They took this love
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that had been given to them and
they redirected it toward evil and the evil
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one and evil things and the lusts
and desires of sin. The thing was
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is that this action that they took
was not there as a lone. God
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made them, he made humanity in
this way and that in which they were
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representatives for us, human beings,
as one of God's creatures. They were
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put under a test. Humanity as
a whole was put under a test and
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we failed. You could think about
it this way. Our Great King and
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Queen, Adam and Eve, our
mother and our father, lost the war
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with sin. And what happens when
the king and Queen Lose The war?
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The whole country goes with them.
It's similar. And the consequences that we
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all came under the slavery, in
the bondage of sin. What broke in
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our mother and father has extended down
the line and we are all born in
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this brokenness. In them we ascend. In them we fell, and now
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we have this brokenness, this perversion
to love things that we ought not to
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love, to not love the things
that we ought to love. On top
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of that, we have guilt love
concerning all of this consequences the wrath of
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God. As sinners, undeserving of
his love as people, as a people,
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as a part of his creation,
we are broken. That's why we
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don't love, that's why it's hard. John here in our passage, however,
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tells us how it is that we
are fixed. If we use a
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mechanical term, or healed and made
whole, to use a more organic or
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biological term. We are restored,
redeemed, forgiven. If we talk about
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it in terms of justice, John
tells us how we can be fixed,
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how guilt can be removed, how
judgment can be removed, how are broken
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human natures can be changed. And
it happens this way when we are reborn,
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not from broken humanity, but from
God. Notice what he says.
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He says, let us love one
another, for love is from God.
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Whoever loves has been born of God
and knows God. You see, he's
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talking to Christians and he says the
love that you have, this divine love
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that you are experiencing now, is
has happened because of something prior to it,
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because you have been born of God. God doesn't cause us to be
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born again because we finally act in
a loving way. And then he sort
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of says, okay, now I'll
do this thing. No at is,
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it says we are first born of
him. He does this work of grace,
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this miraculous thing in us, and
then we are changed like the alarm
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clock. Now we work right because
something internal has happened. Or if you
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continue down, this is confirmed yet
again. When it says, when it
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says in this is love, not
that we have loved God, but that
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he loved us. This is both
the reason why we now love and the
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and the chief example of love.
Here's how you know it, here's how
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it's defined, by God sacrificing himself
to be the propitiation of our sins.
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To turn away his wrath, he
gave up his own life. You want
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to know what love looks like?
That's what love is. You want to
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know how you can love? That's
how. You must be born of God,
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because to be born of the brokenness, to be sent to to to
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be a broken thing. Coming out
of a broken thing will only result and
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more broken things. Something has to
change at the beginning, something has to
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be different, and that's what he
does. He causes us to be born
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of God. It's not that we
love and God says, okay, good
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job, but he loves us.
Now, before I move to wrap things
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up, I want to make sure
that we understand these three words. God
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is love. God is love.
What does this mean? You find it
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in verse eight. Anyone who does
not know God, or sorry, anyone
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who does not love, does not
know God, because God is love.
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These three little words are some of
the most famous words and all the Bible
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and also some of the most famously
misunderstood words in the Bible, and it's
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very important that you understand them because
this is the reason that he's giving.
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He's grounding this exhortation to love and
these doctrines about love and his loving actions
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in these words. God is love. So what do they mean? The
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first thing they we need to know
is that it's it has to do with
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who God is in his Authority as
God. This would be a better way
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to put it. We don't define
what love is and then impute that to
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God. God defines what loves is, love is and then spreads that to
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us. Even the imputes it to
us. Or think of it this way.
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Some people, when they think of
love, they think that these this
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term God is love is like a
blank check to allow them to do whatever
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they want. So, for example, they they are cruel to you and
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you say that's cruel and they say, hey, why aren't you loving?
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God is love. You're a Christian, you should know that. Right,
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I can do whatever I want.
Why? Because God is love. Now,
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hopefully that sort of on the surface
doesn't make any sense. To you,
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but we hear it a lot and
nothing could be further from the truth.
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Love is not doing whatever you want. The fact that God is love
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does not give us license to do
whatever we want. No, love is
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doing whatever God, whatever God,
wants, and we've already heard some definitions
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of that. Love is patient,
love is kind, and so on and
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so forth. Similarly, some people
think that because it says God is love,
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that that means love is God.
But no, as one commentator put
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it, that would to be quote, to replace a living and personal and
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active God with an intellectual, ethical, volitional or emotional abstraction. And this
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is the last thing the language of
first John gives us, or the graphic
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portrayal of God incarn it in the
Gospel's permits. The other words, love
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isn't God, any more than wisdom
is God or beauty is God, or
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any more than hatred as the devil. Love defe is defined and shines forth
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from a living, personal and active
God. This is very critical. This
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happens, for example, if your
computer, or another mechanical example. Sorry,
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if your computer breaks, you don't
take it to cleverness to have it
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fixed right. You don't take it
to and a sort of abstract concept and
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say I don't know, I won't
start up here. You Go, cleverness
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right. You take it to a
clever repair man or woman. You say,
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are my computers broken? Will you, you active, thinking, knowledgeable
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person, please fix my computer.
You can see why this makes a big
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difference. For the brokenness that's inside
of us. We can't go to love
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as an abstract or emotional concept,
or or even a feeling. We must
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go to God, who is love. God is Love, Love, love
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isn't God. To push love into
an abstraction away from God denies you knowledge
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of God. It takes you away
from being born of God, which John
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says is necessary in order to love
as we ought to. If we push
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love into an abstraction away from God, it doesn't fix the problem. And
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you want to know how concrete this
is, how physical this is, how
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personal this is, how living and
active God is, all you have to
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do is read verse nine. In
this the love of God was made manifest
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among us right we could see it. He showed it to us that God
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sent his only son into the world
so that we might live through him.
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Jesus, hanging there on a cross
with blood coming down his head, from
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a crown of thorns that were there, a spear plunged into his side,
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all of it very very real,
very very physical and very very loving.
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It's there, in taking on sinful
flesh, taking on our sin and on
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and our unrighteousness, that God check. But God changed us. Just as
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we fell in Adam and eve,
so we have been raised in Christ.
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Our King has one and he has
won the battle in love. This is
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why, when Christians talk about love, we're always talking about Jesus. It's
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said that all you need is love, that love is life itself, and
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in a way this is true,
as long as it's connected to him.
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Apart from the forgiveness of his sins, apart from a change that's made in
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us by his spirit, apart from
these things, broken love, disconnected from
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Christ has no benefit to us.
It only comes to us as yet another
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command that we can't fulfill, another
thing that we don't want to do.
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But in Christ, when the change
has happened, when we have been born
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again, born of God, brought
forth in the love of God, something
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new happens, as he says that
we might not just love in him,
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but live in him and through him. Apart from God's will and his loving
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action. In Jesus, love is
a shell into which we sort of jam
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whatever we want, but in him
it has the power to change us,
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to save us. You need to
trust in Jesus if we want to be
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a church that loves one another,
if you want to know God, who
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loves and is Love, if you
want to be a person and the people
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that he has designed us to be. There's only one way, and it
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is through Jesus, who's given himself
in love to make us that, to
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save us from ourselves and to bring
us into, one day, a glorified
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community of love where love will be
the easiest thing in the world. It
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won't be second nature, it will
be your only nature and it will be
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forever. That's what we have in
him, so trust in him. Let's
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pray in his name.
