Sermon Transcript
Well, good morning, everybody. I hope that you’re encouraged. If you have a Bible, you might want to take it out now. We’re going to look together at a book that we’ve been studying for several weeks, actually months, I guess. 1 John is the book.
We’re in chapter 4, and we’re going to be looking at verses 7 to 12 this morning. 2 weeks ago, I was in the airport in San Jose with Bernice. We’re walking through the airport. As we were walking around, we walked by a Chick-fil-A. Whenever we walk by Chick-fil-A, we want to stop and eat.
I don’t know how you feel about it, but that’s what we felt at that moment. However, as we thought about stopping and eating, we realized that they were not open because it was Sunday. And Sundays Chick-fil-A is closed. And of course, that’s unheard of as far as business goes, that a business was closed on Sunday. But actually, that, that really fits the culture of Chick-fil-A.
Now, what’s culture? Well, culture is something that’s a reflection of a person’s value. A value that stems from a belief that leads to a practice that creates a culture. So closing on Sundays has been a part of Chick-fil-A culture since it was founded by Truett Cathy when he opened his first store in Georgia in 1946. Truett said at that time that Chick-fil-A would close on Sundays because he wanted to provide space for his employees to rest and to worship if they chose to do that.
On Sundays. And so Chick-fil-A has been closed now on Sundays for almost 75 years, and today that means that 2,363 locations are closed. There’s a lot of talk these days about culture, culture. In fact, on the same trip that Bernice and I were on, we got a ride from a Lyft driver, and he picked us up, and we began to get to know him in the car because we like to do that with the drivers that are taking us wherever we’ve got to go. And so we found out that he’s from New York.
He moved here from New York a few years ago. I asked him how this area compares to New York. He said, well, I found that people in the Bay Area are very team-oriented and they’re collaborative and they work together to achieve things. And he said, but in New York, every man is in it for himself and everyone is trying to beat the other person up, to beat everyone else. Now obviously that’s like a generalization, you know, it’s not exactly like that we would think, but what he was basically saying is that he’s experiencing, living in the Bay Area now, he’s experiencing a different cultural climate than he experienced in New York.
In fact, I would say that there’s a different cultural climate between the East Coast and the West Coast, and not just the East and West Coast, But actually, Northern and Southern California. If you’ve been down in Southern California, there’s a different vibe there than perhaps up here in Northern California in the Bay Area. What we’re talking about is culture. Right now, actually, we’re thinking a lot about culture today, the cultural climate that’s surrounding the 49ers. Can you see it?
You know? Yeah, see, there it is. You just mention them today, it’s like, yes, I can feel it. It’s one— this is a wonderful feeling. But, you know, a year ago our feelings and our attitudes about the 49ers were a lot different than they are right now.
Last year we were pretty much down on the 49ers. People were moaning and complaining and saying things like, why did I spend so much money on my season tickets? This is ridiculous. It’s no fun to go to the games. That was last year when they were 4-12.
That’s 4 wins and 12 losses. But this year they’re 13 wins and 3 losses, and so people are way up on the 49ers. People are happy. They’re fine spending a lot of money on the tickets even today. Everybody’s having fun.
They’re enjoying the winning feeling. You can hear it in the players. They’re experiencing what the Green Bay Packers coach Vince Lombardi used to talk about when he was describing a winning football team. You say, what’s that? He said, if you’re going to play together as a team, you’ve got to care for each other.
You’ve got to love each other. Each player has to be thinking about the next guy and saying to himself, I have to do my job well in order that he can do his. The difference between mediocrity and greatness is the feeling the teammates have for each other, Lombardi said. Most people call it a team spirit. When the players are imbued with that special feeling, you know you’ve got yourself a winning team.
What’s he describing? He’s describing culture. Culture is a reflection of a value that stems from a belief that leads to a practice that creates culture, and maybe, just maybe, a trip to Miami for the Super Bowl in Hard Rock Stadium. Wouldn’t that be wonderful? Now, the reason I’m bringing this up is because this text that we’re in this morning, 1 John, chapter 4, verses 7 to 12, focuses on the culture of the church, the culture that God wants to be true of his church, the climate, the spirit that pervades the church.
And of course, there are a lot of different cultural climates that could pervade a group of people, a church, a team, a company, a family, a school, a neighborhood, a country. We could talk about them as, well, that group’s inviting, that group’s encouraging, that group’s competitive or supportive, that group’s restrictive, that group’s controlling, that group’s open and they’re trusting, they’re creative, they’re innovative, that group’s serving, that group is professional. That group is stiff. That group is judgmental. They’re selfish.
They’re entitled. They’re proud. That group’s humble. They’re demanding. They’re developing.
They’re stressful. They’re critical. They’re picky. They’re winning. They’re fun.
They’re friendly. Those people are just ornery. They’re optimistic. They’re pessimistic. There are a lot of different ways that you could describe culture.
Here’s what I want you to begin to think about. When you think about the church, what do you think? What comes to mind when you think of the church? What are the words that you would use to describe the church? If you were to ask somebody outside of the church, when you think of the church, what’s the prevailing culture that they would speak about when they talk about the church?
Now, don’t say it out loud, okay? Just think about it and reflect on whatever is in your mind. Just reflect on it in light of these words then from 1 John, chapter 4, verses 7 to 12. Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.
Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: he sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love— not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God, but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.
Now that describes a prevailing culture that God wants to be true of his family. It’s pretty obvious, isn’t it?
It’s actually mentioned 13 times, 6 verses. What is it?
Love. What kind of love? Agape love. Sacrificial love. Divine love.
And John, as he’s writing to these churches that were no doubt loving churches, like we’re a loving church, wanted to see these churches even go farther in their love. We can always go farther in our love so that the church becomes known as a place of love. The culture there is love. God’s love pervades that family, that group of people. So as I was looking at this, I saw a 3-point logical sequence that kind of helps me understand it.
Maybe it’ll help you. First of all, he says we’re loved by God. Do you believe that? Do you believe that we’re loved by God, that our founder, our creator, our maker, he absolutely loves us? He loves each and every one of us, and he doesn’t love us just, you know, like a little, little bit.
He loves us a lot. God loves each and every one of us a lot. How do we know that? Well, 1 John says because it’s God’s nature to love. Notice verse 8, the last few words in verse 8.
God is what? He’s love. So, like God— the Bible talks about God in a variety of ways. You have in 1 John 1:5, God is light. You have John 4:24, God is Spirit.
But here we have God is love. It’s just who God is. It’s his nature. It’s what God is. He is love.
So, like you are who you are and somebody would describe you for who you are, you have certain characteristics. Would they say you are mean? You are critical? You are sad? You are deliberate?
You’re a bully? You’re organized? Or would they say you’re happy and you’re loving? Would they say you’re talkative? Would they say you’re quiet?
This is who you are. I did a wedding yesterday here in the worship center, and this couple— everybody knows that one member of this couple is talkative and the other is quiet. So, we had a little fun with that. It’s just who they are. You say, I’m organized.
Okay. Others that aren’t organized say, I’m flexible. All right, we understand that. So, God is love. He’s the perfection of love.
He’s a perfect 10 when it comes to love. He’s filled up and he’s overflowing with love, and that’s not hard to see because even if you go all the way back to the beginning, where in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth and man and woman, we from the beginning see indicators of God’s love. In fact, creation is a testimony of his love. You talk about somebody doing something really well to the nth degree, that’s God. He didn’t do it just to, you know, get by, to kind of get it done, to get it off the checklist or something like that.
He didn’t just say, huh, You know, it’s good enough. He created this world with abounding love. And we can see it in his creation of man and woman and the place that he gave them to live in, and then the resources that he gave them, personal and otherwise, and the food that he gave them, and even the hunger that he created in them to enjoy and delight in eating. That’s all a reflection of his love. Think of that.
He gave them the enjoyment of eating. That’s a love gift that gives us love handles.
He gave them voices to talk and sing and eyes to see and ears to hear and brains to think. And he gave them tasks to do and emotions and pleasure. And in those times he gave them perfect weather conditions. And you can go on and on and on. It was all an expression of God’s love that was poured out.
On Adam and Eve. And it didn’t stop there. Even after they fell into sin, God continued to demonstrate his love to them when he didn’t discipline them harshly. Instead, he provided for them clothes and food, and he provided limits for them so that they wouldn’t eat from the tree of life and live eternally in sin and be forever estranged from God. The fact— listen— the fact that God at that moment did not wipe all mankind off of planet Earth is a demonstration of his love.
He could have wiped them out. He could have just said, well, this was a mistake. You know, I’m done with you. It was a nice experiment, but it didn’t work out. I’m never going to repeat it again.
I’m done with mankind forever and ever. Amen. He didn’t do that. Instead of that, he showed his lovingkindness and his mercy and his grace and his patience and his forbearance, and he continued to do that not only in those years, but in the years that followed all through the ages, even as people were turning their back on God and wanted nothing to do with him. And, of course, the ultimate expression of God’s love is what John’s talking about here, seen in Jesus Christ, the promised Messiah.
Now think about this. John brings to mind, into focus, what he is experiencing. He’s experiencing the love of God as he’s following Jesus Christ. And so he writes, verse 9, this is how God showed his love among us, and he’s included in the us. He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him.
Verse 10, this is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. So John is saying Jesus incarnated He incarnated God’s love. He came and he dwelt among us and we saw God’s love. We saw agape divine love lived out. And agape divine love lived out is an action.
It’s an action. You might notice the verbs here, the action verbs: show, sent, and sacrifice. Love does something. It was a sacrificial action. The one and only Son, Jesus, came and he— notice the word sacrifice.
He was a sacrifice. He was a He atoned, which is to pay. He made payment for our sins. And this love is not only an action, a sacrificial action, but it’s a love that meets needs. Our greatest need was for forgiveness for our sins that have separated us from God.
And he came to meet that need that we might have life now and forever so that we, as you see it says here, so that we might live through him. So, agape love is a sacrificial action that meets others’ needs. And Jesus was the display of that love, that one-of-a-kind love. Now, can you imagine this? Just imagine what it must have been like for John.
He’d read about, he studied, he’d prayed for, he’d hoped for the coming Messiah, God’s love gift to the world. And then all of a sudden, he comes in John’s time. And John saw him. And he came to know him firsthand. This is Jesus, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.
He saw and he experienced God’s love on display in a relationship. The Apostle Paul summarized this thought in Romans chapter 5, verse 8, where he says, but God demonstrates— God demonstrates his own love. And the word love there, again, the same word we’re using here, agape. His own love for us in this: while we were still sinners— there’s the need— While we were still sinners, Christ died— there’s the sacrifice— Christ died for us. Undeserved sacrificial action that met others’ needs, in our case, the greatest need.
You know, the first time I remember hearing somebody explain this verse this way, when I was a counselor at Camp Sugar Pine— Camp Sugar Pine’s just above Oakhurst on the way to Yosemite. We were up there for a weekend. We had taken some students up there for a camp, weekend winter camp, and Stu Weber was speaking. Stu talked about this passage. He gave a definition similar to the one I just mentioned there.
I would have probably forgotten the talk if it weren’t for Darrell Delhoussey. Some of you recognize that name. Darrell was there too. They had 2 speakers, Stu Weber and Darrell Delhoussey. And after we finished this one session where he defined love for us in the ways that we’re talking about it right now, we went off to lunch.
Darrell got out of the meeting room quickly, and he got off to lunch in front of everybody else. And when we got over there, we found out that he wasn’t trying to get to the head of the line, you know, just heard a session on love and got over there as quick as he could to, you know, get through the line. That wasn’t it. He got there as quick as he could so he could go inside, put on an apron, and he joined the team that was going to serve the lunch. As we came through the line, I said to him, Darryl, what are you doing?
Because it’s kind of unusual, you know, for the speaker to go over and put an apron on and start serving everybody lunch. I said, what are you doing? He said, as he’s putting potatoes on my plate, he said, self-sacrificing action to meet people’s deepest needs. I said, well, good. We really appreciate that.
He was practicing this action that’s described here. In how it played out at that moment in time in his life. Now, I would have probably forgot that had he not taken the thought and applied it. Several years after that, I experienced in a session with Chip Ingram his definition of love, and I got to thinking about that. But Chip said, love is giving someone what they need the most when they deserve it the least.
A great personal cost. There it is. It’s a perfect summary of what John’s trying to get across. Agape love, God’s love, is something that’s gonna cost you something. And oftentimes it costs you in situations where you just don’t think the other person deserves to be loved.
I’ve come back in my own life, and I hope we all do, to that definition again and again and again. But sometimes we just absolutely don’t feel like loving people, even people that are part of the body of Christ.
But it’s not about your feelings. It’s not about my feelings. It’s about action. It’s about sacrificial action to meet others’ needs. Agape love.
Agape love, divine love, gives someone— God so loved the world that he gave. What they need the most, an atoning sacrifice for our sins, life through him, action that meets someone’s needs. When they deserve it the least, while we were still sinners, at great personal cost, God sent his only, only Son into the world to save us. And all of that testifies to the fact that we’re loved by God. Now do you believe it?
You believe it? You really are. Then John says, dear friends, verse 11, dear friends, since— okay, now that we know that God loves us, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. We’re loved by God. Here’s a second thought here in this sequential design, to love like God.
We’re loved by God to love like God. Which means we’re called to sacrificial actions toward God’s family, toward God’s kids. We’re not excused from loving his family. Now, this doesn’t mean that we’re excused from loving people outside of his family. It simply means in this particular focus here that John is focusing on God’s family.
It’s a special focus here because our love family is proof that we’re members of this family. That’s what he’s saying. It’s a testimony of the fact— the fact that we would love each other is proof that we’re members of the family. He says in verse 7, Dear friends, let us love one another. And then the last part of verse 7, Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.
They have a relationship with God. And whoever, verse 8, does not love does not know God, because God is love. Simply said, he’s saying if you’ve experienced the love of God through Jesus Christ, you’re expected to love members of God’s family like God loves them. Did you hear that? Like God loves them.
Well, you say, I can’t do that. Well, actually, that’s not true. Romans, chapter 5, verse 5 says this, God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit whom he has given us.
God has poured out the same love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit? Why would he do that? Well, first of all, because he wants you to know how much he loves you. He wants you to live in his love. He wants you to experience his love.
He wants you to know that he loves you. Where there’s this need that we all have to be loved, we’re loved. God loves us. But that’s not the end of the love story. We’re loved to love.
We’re loved to love God’s family. In fact, we’re equipped, we’re empowered to love God’s family. In fact, there’s a special emphasis placed on loving our siblings in Christ. Galatians, chapter 6, verse 10 says, therefore, as we have opportunity, when the opportunity is there, let us do good to all people, especially— and here comes a focus— especially to those who belong to the family of believers. Yes, we’re to love everybody, but there’s a special focus on loving the family that we’re in.
Is that important to you? Is loving other members of the body of Christ in sacrificial ways and meeting their needs. Is that something important to you? Could we say, is it important to God? Absolutely.
That’s what this text is telling us. It’s important to God. And if it’s not important to us, then this text is saying that’s probably a reason for us to pause and to ask the question, what’s wrong with me?
Because if God’s in me, then that not only gives me the power to love, but it gives me the incentive to love. And if I’m not one who wants to love the members of his family, I’ve got to stop and ask the question, am I even in God’s family? Because if I’m in God’s family, he’s going to create in me not only love, but he’s going to create in me a desire to love his family. You say, what’s the solution to that if I don’t believe God’s in me? The solution to that is to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you’ll be saved.
It’s to be born again. It’s to come into his family. And at the moment that we come to Christ for salvation, we declare our need for Christ, we’re saved, the Holy Spirit comes to live within us, and God is going to build through us a desire to love his family, to love his children. And it’s not something we just talk about, it’s something that we actually need to do. Christians need to turn intentions into actions.
I like the way Jenny Catron says it. She says, your actions speak louder than your intentions. Isn’t that good? We can intend all day to be people who love others, especially love the family, but take your good intentions and while you have an opportunity, turn them into actions. So let me suggest a couple things here.
I think one of the things we can do to make progress, even further progress in this loving each other as family and becoming a culture of love, so that when people think about Bridges Community Church or they just think about the church, the first word that comes to their minds, the first word that they’d probably use to describe God— love.
I think that can happen in greater ways if we just pray and pay attention to the Holy Spirit’s leading. I think the Holy Spirit is much more adequate than me or you to get this thing going. In greater ways. I really do. And just, you know, with a here am I, Lord, use me mindset, God’s going to open doors.
They’ll open all around us if we’re just paying attention. He’ll give us opportunities to serve one another in love, Galatians 5:13, to serve others in love. In fact, those one anothers that you find in the New Testament, that makes a great study, because as you study through the one anothers in the New Testament, your mind becomes more bent toward what it is that God wants to see demonstrated through our lives toward his children. We actually this morning said, you know, this would be a good thing for us to consider further than we have time to today. And so we’ve put some handouts over here on the stage, and we’ve got some more in the lobby for you.
They’re a study on the one anothers of the New Testament, not all of them, because there are probably 50-some, but we’ve got some of them listed on these papers. And before you leave this morning, you might want to pick one up and say, hey, I want to go a little bit farther and allow the Holy Spirit to just work in me in deeper ways what it means to love my brothers and sisters in Christ. So I encourage you to pick up one of those pieces of paper, or tomorrow go to our website and find this message, and you’ll see a link there on— connected to this message, and you’ll be able to download that PDF file, and it’s going to be a fillable file, a writable file. And so you can download it, and if you’d like to do things with your computer, you know, and fill in the blanks that way, that will be available to you. But I’d also suggest if we’re going to be a loving community, then we’ve got to continue to grow and working through our conflicts.
Isn’t that true? That in a good family, in a good family, they work out their conflicts. They don’t divorce each other and say, you know, I’m done with you. They work through their conflict. They get through it.
They find ways to let go, forgive, to find reconciliation and restitution. They worked through their conflicts. And I want to suggest to you that the best way to do this, if it is at all possible, is face-to-face. It’s not in a letter. It’s not in an email.
In fact, sometimes when we send an email to one another when we’re in some kind of a conflict situation, it just makes things worse. And so we got to learn how to, you know, work through our conflicts. And boy, let’s build each other up. Let’s be the place where we’re not tearing each other down. Oftentimes you find in the world where there’s this mean-spirited, critical, judgmental spirit, the church needs to be a place where people are being built up.
And all of that is to say we want to be known as a loving family that makes sacrifices and meets each other’s needs. We want to love like God has loved us, and God still loves us, not because we deserve it, it’s because it’s in his nature. Are you getting this? Are you on board with this? We’re loved by God to love like God.
And then there’s one more thought, verse 12. No one has ever seen God, but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us. Now this makes sense, doesn’t it? Nobody’s ever seen God. Why haven’t they seen God?
Well, God’s a spirit. And God as a Spirit is not limited by a physical body. He’s everywhere present. He’s omnipresent. He’s right here, right now, even though we don’t see him.
God is with us. He is an ever-present help in times of trouble. Isn’t that great to know? Psalm 46:1, God is an ever-present help in times of trouble. He can be because he can be everywhere at the same time.
We can’t see him, But we can see the results of his work. Just like we can’t see the wind or we can’t see the air, we can see the results or experience the results. We’re going to experience, hopefully, the results of God’s work in us through love, through people, people who’ve experienced God’s love, people who’ve been filled with God’s love, people who are overflowing with God’s love. And who are those people? Well, that would be Christians.
That would be the redeemed. That would be the born again. That would be God’s children. That would be God’s family. That would be the saved.
Hopefully that is us. We’re loved by God to love like God. And what is John saying? That the world might see God’s love. That’s the point, that the world might see God’s love.
Verse 12, If we love one another like God loves us, God’s love will be seen in us, and God’s love will be seen through us, and his love will grow to be— what’s the word that’s used there? Completed. It’s the word perfected, so that there’s nothing lacking in our love for each other. And what will be the outcome? The love of God then will be manifest in and through us, and people will come to see it.
Now let me ask you a question. Do you think that might matter? Is there anyone in our world that can benefit from seeing the love of God? Anyone? Is it possible that if we as a family love in greater ways, that others will come to see God for who he truly is and maybe even fall in love with this God that is helping us love each other?
Could that really happen?
When I was in my doctrinal studies, I took an advanced hermeneutics course. Hermeneutics is the science and interpretation of the Scriptures, of the Bible. And I took this course from Dr. Earl Rodmacher up at Western Seminary in Portland, Oregon. He’s an amazing man, a great theologian. He was president of the college or the seminary at that time.
He has a tremendous understanding of God’s Word. And one of our classes, he was talking about evangelism. Evangelism is speaking the gospel to others. It’s sharing the gospel, the good news, with other people. And so Dr. Rodmacher in this class said something that I’ve never forgotten.
He said, you know, I don’t think we put enough focus and attention on the final apologetic, on the final apologetic. Now, if you’ve never heard the final apologetic before, it was a term that was actually coined by Francis Schaeffer. He wrote about it in a book called The Mark of a Christian. And Reimacher said, let me show you what I mean. He took us to John 13:34-35, and he read this, a new command I give you, love one another as, as, I have loved you.
We’ve been talking about that. So you must love one another. By this all men will know, or see, you are my disciples if— circle if— all men will know that you are my disciples if you love one another. If we love agape one another as believers, the impact on the world is greater. Our love for one another will reveal who we are and whose we are, and it will testify to what God is, who he is.
And so, Ron Macher’s focusing on this in the first part of this Upper Room Discourse in John chapter 13. Well, if you go to the end of the Upper Room Discourse, John chapter 17, and you continue with Jesus’ thought, you come to his— what’s called his High Priestly Prayer. And in part in that prayer, he prayed this in John 17:20-21, my prayer is not for them alone, speaking about the disciples who are there hearing him pray. My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message.
That could be people like us who the gospel has come through all through these ages. So even us. And then he says, Here’s his hope in this prayer, his desire: That all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I in you. May they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. Verse 23, I in them and you in me— may they be brought to complete unity, to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.
Now, this is the final apologetic.
It’s God’s love demonstrated specifically here in unity, unity of the church. And when this love is demonstrated in ways that people take note of, it can change people’s hearts. It can change people’s lives. Even people who have no place in their life for God. Have you ever had somebody say to you, well, church isn’t for me, and Jesus isn’t for me.
In fact, I don’t want anything to do with those judgmental, mean-spirited, narrow-minded people. You ever had anybody say something like that, something along those lines? What can we do about it? Well, John’s telling us, you know what we can do about it is we can love each other. We can live a life of love so that our culture is predominantly a culture of love, so that when unbelievers think about the church or they think about God, they think about love.
And that love could be the final apologetic. It could be the most convincing apologetic or the most convincing proof or strongest argument of all when they see the love of God in and through God’s family. And that’s what Dr. Rodmacher was talking about. About. If we love one another, the world might actually come to see God and his love and actually come to love him too.
Wouldn’t that be awesome?
A little over a week ago, I read the obituary that Ken Fusion wrote— listen— about himself. Before he died. Ken died January 3rd, this month, 2020. He was 63 years old. He died from a liver disease, but before he died, he decided he was going to write his obituary.
He grew up— some of what he wrote— he grew up in Granger. He decided when he was in high school as a sophomore at Woodward-Granger High School that he wanted to be a newspaper reporter. He wrote about that. He said, Ken spent a good portion of his life as a reporter at the Des Moines Register and then the Sun in Baltimore. And then after that he worked 2 jobs in the marketing department at Simpson College where he remained until 2018.
He wrote, as far as his spiritual life, Ken was a skeptic. In fact, he said this, skepticism may be cool, and for too many years Ken embraced it, but it was faith in Jesus Christ that transformed his life. That was the one thing that he never regretted. It changed everything. He went on and he said, you know, for many years Ken was a member of the First United Methodist Church in Indianola and sang in the choir, which is a neat trick considering he never could read a note of music.
The choir members will never know, he wrote, how much they helped him. He then joined the Lutheran Church of Hope, which had a big impact on Ken’s life. And then he said this, he said, and if you want to know what God’s love feels like, just walk in those doors.
That’s when I stopped reading and I said, there it is.
And Ken meant what he said at this point in his obituary, his self-obituary, because then he added these words, seriously, right now, we’ll wait. Ken’s not going anywhere. So go ahead, go walk in the doors and feel what God’s love feels like. See, what he was saying is the same thing John’s saying here. You should be able to see it in the church.
And you can see it in that church.
So I, as I look at this, this really excites me. I think about culture and people talking about climate and people talking about the spirit and the vibe and the feeling and all the rest of that. John is painting a picture here of a beautiful, loving church that people are attracted to. And we want to be that church, don’t we? That’s the family God wants.
He wants us to be known as a family of love where love prevails. We love each other in sacrificial ways and we meet each other’s needs. That God’s love might impact the world. People might experience God’s love. And that they might come to love God like God loves them.
Amen. Amen.
Let’s pray. Father, thanks for this opportunity to study your Word together. We hope that what we’ve talked about isn’t going to be something that’s just going to sit on the pew here and that’s the end of it, but the self-sacrificing action that meets needs. Would go with us, Lord, and your church would be known even more by its love, its love for one another, its love for you.
Lord, we pray that if we don’t have the capacity to love like that, we might come back to square one and ask you to save us from our sins.
Lord, if there’s any who is here that is trying to do this in their own strength, You know that’s not going to work. You want to give them the greatest gift that you, you’ve given, and that is the gift of life through your Son Jesus Christ. So we pray today might be the day of salvation for them. In fact, if that’s the desire of your heart, tell God that right now. Lord, save me.
I want to receive Jesus Christ as my Savior. I want to confess with my mouth Jesus is Lord and believe in my heart that you raised Jesus from the dead. Please save me, Lord. God will save you. You’ll begin a new life with him.
He’ll begin to fill you up with his love, give you a capacity to love in new and greater ways. Lord, may that be so for all of us. Help us become every day the church you want us to be. And may it be not for our sake, but may it be for your sake to bring honor and glory to your name. And may it be for the sake of seeing others come to love you as well.
We pray that would happen in greater ways. In Jesus’ name, amen.
