Episode Transcript
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I'm going to read one verse from
First John Chapter Three, will be the
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text for sermon this morning. First
John Three, verse eleven, for this
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is the message that you have heard
from the beginning, that we should love
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one another. Amen. Please be
seated. Well. Here in First John
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Eleven, we of course have a
very simple, easy to understand verse.
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We have received a message, a
message that is old, that we should
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love one another, and it's something
that we, I think, instinctually know.
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Love as a requirement in our lives, as something that we ourselves desire,
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is built into us. It's the
way we were made. We come
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into this world longing and wanting love
and feeling the desire, in the need
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and the expectation to give it to
others. We were made by God to
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love, to love him and to
love one another. There's, of course,
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more to the message that these Christians
had heard from the beginning. Paul
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Taught, or John, writes in
verse five of Chapter One. This is
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the message we have heard from him
and proclaimed to you, that God is
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light and in him there is no
darkness at all. This is, of
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course, related to what we just
read and First John Three Eleven. WHO,
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Jesus, is the light that shines
in the darkness and the love that
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we ought to give one another.
These things are connected. I mentioned that
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to make two points. One,
they're connected and second, this message that
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they've heard from the beginning, that
we should love one another, isn't everything,
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it doesn't say everything that could be
possibly said about Christianity, but it
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certainly as at the very core of
it. It's why John is able to
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express it so clearly. We ought
to love one another. You know this.
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This is simple, this is true, and in the following verses he's
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going to give various reasons for that. He's going to help us understand why
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it is we, as Christians,
ought to me marked by that. Before
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we talk about that command in particular, I want to spend some time thinking
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about the way he's making this point
though, this message that you have heard
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from the beginning, that first half
of the verse. It's important because John
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writes to a church whose faith is
being tried. He's making this point,
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this thesis statement, because it's something
he needs to argue, it's something he
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needs to defend. People are doubting
this thing that we ought to love one
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another, and it's something that we
always experience in the church. There's always
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a testing and a trying that's going
on. Our faith is being questioned.
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How do we answer those questions?
How do we make decisions about what is
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true and what is not? John
writes in a context in which there were
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people who formally belong to the church
who have now left and are casting doubt
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on what the church is, what
the church ought to believe, how she
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ought to act. The question then
is, how will those things be decided?
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Who's right, WHO's wrong? John's
answers that these questions must be decided
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on the basis of what has already
been taught. What was the word that
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was received from the beginning? That's
his question. That's his way of creating
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a foundation for this truth that we
ought to love one another, and this
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teaches us something very important about what
Christianity is. Christianity isn't a set of
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beliefs that's construct did in a social
moment. It's not a set of beliefs
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that are created for a particular time
and then are made new in another time.
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Some people like to think of Christianity
like a liquid. A liquid has
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no shape of its own, it
has no boundaries or borders. It can
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be contained but it always takes the
shape of whatever you pour it into.
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Imagine a glass of water, right. You pour water into a glass and
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that water takes on a cylindrical shape. But pour it into a ring and
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it takes on the shape of a
ring. With liquids, there is no
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pounding or twisting to get it to
fit. It simply fits. And this
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is a great way to think about
water, but it's a terrible way to
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think about Christianity, about the revelation
of God. We have to go back
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to the beginning. What is the
thing we heard from the beginning? What
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was the message that we received?
It may sound sometimes momentarily attractive to say
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that Christianity is whatever you make it
to be, but ultimately it fails this
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this claim fails in several ways,
but I want to mention a two,
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I think for one reason, the
claim that Christianity he can can simply be
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shaped in folden and then it doesn't
matter on what was in the beginning tends
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to make nonsense out of what used
to be sense. It makes unusable what
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was once usable. It takes a
blessing away. Let me give you a
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human example. Let's say your father
says to you if you get an a
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on your test, I'll take you
out for ice cream. So you get
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an a on your test, you
go to dad and you say let's go
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for ice cream, and he says, I think you misunderstood. My promises
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are fluid and flexible. You may
have hoped that we were going to be
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done eating ice cream, but what
I intended was for you to take this
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new shovel and pick off at pick
up after the dog. As any child
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will tell you, this is not
an enlightened way of listening and speaking.
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It's called lying. So if God
says, for example, if you repent
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and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, you will be saved, it matters
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very much whether we can believe that
or not, because our deaths are not
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fluid and flexible. We die,
and the fact that we die in the
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fact that God is promising life after
death, after eternal life, these things
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really matter. And if we take
these truths and say, well, they're
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flexible and they can mean what you
like them to mean, that God doesn't
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really say what he means, well
then it takes a blessing away. It
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makes something usable and makes it unusable. It makes nonsense out of sense.
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And that brings us to a second
reason that our faith is not a liquid.
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It's because God is not like a
liquid. When God says something,
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he means it. Of course he
has to be interpreted correctly, and that
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doesn't always happen. We must hear
him right we don't take the word to
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mean what we want. We are
supposed to want what it means. God
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is not a liar. His promises
are real promises, his commands are real
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commands. The word is stable because
God is stable. You want people to
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depend on your word, and you
and I don't always speak the truth.
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We don't always understand the truth.
We're often confused and trying to figure out
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the truth. And if we expect
people to believe US and understand us when
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as confused as we are, how
much more so ought we to always believe
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God, who is always truthful,
always right, always stable? Let me
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mention just one more thing. Those
who want to say that God's Word is
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fluid and changeable and morphing often do
so for the sake of some good ideal.
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They want to preserve freedom, for
example, or love, or maybe
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peace between people who understand that word
differently. Now, those things, freedom
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and love and peace are, of
course, noble virtues which ought to be
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strived for. But how can they
be possible if the faith that is believed
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is contradictorily, if that's the word
believed or differently believed, if I believe
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that it's okay to hate you and
you believe that I must love you,
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how are we going to have peace
by simply saying we're free to, or
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not just free to believe differently,
but that they are equal truths, that
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they equally mean and are equally truthful? How can true love be obtained or
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had in a situation like that?
And even freedom disappear, as I think.
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There might be freedom, and there
is freedom and being allowed to think
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different things, but if one person
hates another and feels justified, he's not
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giving that person freedom. He's taken
away what is rightfully another's, namely love,
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but other things too, when we
hurt out of a lack of love,
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another's good name, or we take
away their possessions or we harm their
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bodies. What do these things have
to do with freedom? To say that
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love is true, to say that
there is a stable requirement that we must
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love one another, is important for
freedom, important for love. It's important
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for peace. Now I say these
things to underline this point. Christianity,
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in terms of the message that was
given to the world through the Holy Spirit,
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is a fixed thing, it's a
solid thing, it has boundaries,
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it is something and it is not
something else. Of course our interpretations will
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differ, but God's message is the
same as much as a chair as a
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chair, or a bird is a
bird. It may be a generous thing
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to allow a person to call a
chair a bird, but it's not helpful
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to you or anyone else to think
and act as if they really are the
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same thing. With all that said, then notice what John says in the
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middle of this controversy. He says
that the command they have been given has
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not changed. It's stable. God's
message is stable and he says that the
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command it was from the beginning.
Just because other people are acting as though
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the message has changed or can be
changed doesn't mean that it has or that
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we think it should. Know in
a the sake of controversies, we must
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go back to the beginning, to
the message, to the word. For
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John, that means all the revelation
of God that he had received in the
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person and work of Jesus Christ while
he was here on the earth and after
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he had ascended into heaven. For
us, it's only the latter, because
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Jesus is not here. Jesus is
not teaching us now in an earthly ministry.
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He teaches us in a heavenly one, as he speaks to us through
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the Holy Spirit, as we have
the many, many inspired words in our
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bibles. So we go back to
the beginning, in controversies of old and
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in controversies today, we go back
to the word of God and we hear
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it speak with this kind of clarity. For this is the message that you
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have heard from the beginning, that
we should love one another. Well,
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I hope you're not too tired to
come to the main point. Love.
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We ought to love one another.
Right, we ought to love one another.
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This perfect simplicity which this has been
said. Let me ask a question.
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Let's test John for a moment with
with humility, for the sake of
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understanding. Is this the message that
we have heard from the beginning? Right?
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Is John Speaking truthfully here? Well, sure is. Jesus spoke it
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explicitly when he spoke about the Kingdom
of God. He said, when he
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talked about the Greatest Commandments. When
he was directly asked what the greatest commandments
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are, and of all the world
said it. It was to love the
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Lord, your God, and love
your neighbor as yourself. We gave various
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examples and parables and indeed it was
taught about it in his whole life,
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did every moment and in every action
that he he did and everything that he
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did. It was an act of
love for us, even for the world.
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But when Jesus says that the command
to love is the Supreme Command you
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might remember that he says all of
the law and the prophets and the Old
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Testament is summed up in this commandment, which reminds us that the command to
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love, this message of love,
goes back even before Jesus is earthly ministry.
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It's throughout all the Old Testament.
You go to Deuteronomy, for example,
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and the many laws that you have
hit there, the ten commandments included,
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and many others, every single one
of them you can trace back to
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a requirement to love, whether that's
how you ought to treat the boundaries between
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Your House and a neighbor's house,
the ways in which you ought to raise
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your children, the kind of gifts
you ought to give, how taxes ought
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to work or loans are all the
rest. Every single law can be traced
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back to love. On the flip
side of that, every single sin can
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be traced back to a lack of
love, a moment, a time and
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attitude in which some bud he said
to someone else, I hate you,
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I don't love you. From beginning
to the end of the Bible, the
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command to love is central. In
fact, we can go back to the
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days, even before the fall,
to highlight the necessity of love. We
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see it in the way in which
Adam and Eve came together in the garden,
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the way in which they clung to
one another. We're made one in
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love. We also see it in
the consequences when sin entered into the world
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and disrupted love. What was what
are some of the first things we see
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happening? Kane and able hating Kane, hating his brother, murdering his brother.
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In fact, this is a point
John will go on to make verse
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twelve. Immediately the next verse,
he says we should not be like Kane,
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who was the evil one and murdered
his brother. This is the opposite
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of love. We see, then, that this command to love goes back
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to the be very beginning, to
Jesus as ministry and message, to the
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entire Old Testament, and you know, we can even go back further than
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that, for the command to love
is not only a command that's given in
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a particular moment of time, but
it flows from the very nature of God
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himself. While the command here applies
to us in our relationships to one another,
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it flows from this love of God
that is in his own being,
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in his essence, in his very
being, in a way we have preached
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to us the way in which we
ought to love one another. This is
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a remarkable fact, but I'm trying
to say is the very existence of God
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commands us to love one another.
Listen to what Jesus says in John Seventeen,
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twenty six. He says, in
a prayer to the father, I
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made known to them your name,
and I will continue to make it known,
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that the love which which that that
the love with which you have loved
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me, may be in them and
I in them. Here the FAUGHT,
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the son, speaks to the father
about the love that they have for one
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another, a love that they have
shared in their essence from all time,
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from before all time and he asks
that that love would be in us.
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That's an amazing thing. You see
how essential this command to love is,
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then why Paul says love binds all
things together. Love, you see,
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is fundamental to everything. It's the
glue that holds together the Commandments, our
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society, our families. Love is
the thing that demands that we seek the
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higher things in each other and in
God. To Act Against Love is to
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act against nature, as much as
standing on a street corner and jumping up
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again, up again, up again, trying to defy the laws of gravity.
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Right, if I just keep doing
this, I'll somehow push against God's
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law. As foolish as that would
look, as crazy as that would look.
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How much more so is the person
who lies and cheats and steels,
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thinking it will gain him some good, pushing against this Eternal Law of love?
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But this is, of course,
exactly what we do. We hear
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John's words. It says this is
the message that you've heard from the beginning,
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that we should love one another,
and we all go thumbs up.
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John. Right, we agree with
that, but do we? Is that
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what we actually do? Despite the
fundamental soul law of love, it's essential
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importance in all our lives beloved.
We don't love as we ought. We
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don't love one another as we ought, isn't that true? We despise others,
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we hate others, we grow in
bitter, impatient, in kind.
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We want to hurt other people.
Were angry at them. The sweetness that
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we ought to have for one another's
turned in deceiving. The honesty that we
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are supposed to display to one another
and give to one another's used for to
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lie and be deceptive. We Make
Sacrifices, Oh yes, but only in
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so far as it brings US pleasure
or benefit. And this is exactly why
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the commandment had to be made new. New, that's a very important word.
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It's an old commandment. I've titled
This sermon Old Love, because love
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is old. It goes back and
back and back and back. But it
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had to be made new in a
way, we who do not do love
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had to be made lovely in order
to love. And God did this for
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us, as we read in Ephesians, as we've considered in John's letter here,
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that light that came into the world, that light that shined into darkness.
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God loved us when He gave us
his only begotten Son, Jesus says
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in John Thirteen. A new commandment. I give you that you love one
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another. Right, that is that
interesting. A new commandment. I give
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you that you love one another just
as I have loved you. Jesus says,
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you also are to love one another. New, Jesus. How is
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it new? Well, it's not
new because it hasn't been said before.
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We've seen that very clearly. Jesus
himself had said it before he met says
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it in John Thirteen. He means
something different. It's not new because it's
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not been said before, but because
in him love becomes effective and useful and
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glorifying to God. The old commandment
to love, the old message, in
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our sinfulness and in our darkness,
falls on deaf ears, but in Christ
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we hear it anew. If you
go back to the previous chapter and first
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John, John Explains this, you
might remember. I'll read from first John
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A, chapter two, verse seven. He Says Beloved, I am writing
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to you no new commandment, but
an old commandment that you heard from the
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beginning. The old commandment is the
word that you have heard. At the
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same time, it is a new
commandment that I am writing to you,
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which is true in him and in
you, because the darkness is passing away
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and the true light is already shining. So John is essentially saying we're talking
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about old and new in two different
ways. It's old in one sense,
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it's new in one sense. It's
old and that it's been said for a
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long time. We've had it from
the beginning, but it's new in its
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effectiveness. It's new because the darkness
is passing away and the true light is
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already shining. Okay, now what's
the commandment we read on? Whoever says
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he is in the light and hates
his brother is still in darkness. Whoever
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loves his brother abides in the light
and in him. There is no cause
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for stumbling. Well, where is
this light coming from then? Where is
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this newness coming from? How is
the darkness of hatred and evil being overpowered
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in a way that love becomes new? I told you already the message that
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we heard from the beginning and proclaim
to you chap chapter one, Verse Five,
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that God is light and any him
there is no darkness at all and
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that light, as John says in
the beginning of the gospel of John,
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has come into the world and the
darkness has not overcome it. The light
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of God has shined into the world, Paul says. It's shown in our
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hearts, in the grace and in
the face of Jesus Christ. John was
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going to build on this point to
show how love is necessary in the Christian
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life. But love doesn't make us
Christians. It marks us as Christians and
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without that mark, he says,
we have no right to think that we
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belong to him. How can we
walk in the darkness and say we are
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of the light? But in Christ
when a light shines into darkness and the
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darkness is immediately gone, because that's
the nature of lights, right. Darkness
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does not overcome light. When you
shine light, when the darkness is overcome
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and we become children of the light, love becomes new. A new commandment
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I give you Jesus says that as
I have loved you, you also love
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one another. In Jesus Christ,
love is new because it's connected to him.
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We Love, as John will later
say in this letter, because he
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first loved us. Each one of
us here have people in our lives that
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we need to love better. You
know their names and I know the names
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of the people in my life.
They may be at work or here,
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in the Church or in your families? Who is it for you? Who
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is the person that you are trying
desperately to love and yet not loving,
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or maybe not even trying anymore?
You feel like love is slipping away.
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You wonder if it was really ever
there. You wonder what you can do.
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What can you do? Two things. First, remind yourself of the
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necessity of love. Don't trick yourself
into thinking that love is optional, that
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love is partial. Hear the word
of the Lord and believe what he says.
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If you love the Lord, you
will want to obey him, you
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will want to love one another as
he is loved. You remember it's necessity.
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And Second, here the command to
come, or the command to love,
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as coming from the one who is
the King of love, who is
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in his very being love. God
is love, whose love goes deeper than
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the deepest ocean, higher than the
highest mountain. He gave himself perfectly fully
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as an act of love for you, despite all of your impurity and your
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sins and your unloveliness. He has
made you lovely, even as a husband
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ought to love his wife. Jesus
Christ has loved the Church and made her
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belong to him. So that he
might present himself or herself to him pure,
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spotless and lovely. I do I
say this to remind you of this,
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that when you are struggling to love
others, remember the strength of his
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love which is given for you.
In other words, you can depend on
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him when you can't depend on yourself. I know it's hard, but it's
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true. It's the message that we've
received from the beginning. It's solid,
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it's stable, it's from the very
mouth of God. You must rely on
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him. There's no other place to
go. In prayer, in patience and
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in perseverance. Trust him. Trust
him for what you need. Trust him
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to help you love beyond how you
have ever loved before. Ask Him to
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put his spirit in you and teach
you, perhaps, as he has already
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begun to do. This is his
love toward us. You can depend on
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it, you can trust it.
Let's pray.
