Thank you for listening to this audio production of Willow Creek Presbyterian Church in Winter Springs, Florida. We exist to glorify God by declaring and demonstrating the power of the gospel, inviting people to discover and deepen their relationship with Jesus. And he said, it's not only that you would love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. And carefully, it's that you would love your neighbor as yourself. Jesus fused these two commandments together to answer the question, what is the greatest commandment? And the question is why? Why would Jesus, when positioned to answer what is the greatest commandment, give two? And the answer is something that brings us to a gopeh, that in order to love God, we need to love what God loves. This is the point the Apostle John is going to make in this morning's message that every true love of God, listen, reflects itself in a consequent love for what God loves. That if we do not love what God loves, to whatever degree we do not yet love God, to love God means to love what God loves. In a gopeh is the active, unconditional love. It is the love against all reason that God has shown us in Jesus Christ. Its ultimate expression, an ultimate standard, is the love of God for undeserving and even offensive sinners, his enemies. Those, store gay, eeros, they all have the reasons. But a gopeh chooses to love, listen, even when there is every reason to ignore or to hate. That's the call of a gopeh that we would love based on mercy, not merit, because that's the way in which we've been loved by God. So the love God is to love what God loves and that brings us to this morning's passage in 1st John chapter 4, verses 7-8. The apostle John said this, he said, beloved, let us love one another for love is from God. A gopeh is from God and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God, anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love, the two go together, inextricably tied. Now the one thing that's so beautiful about this is this teaching could have had several human authors and in many ways you find echoes of this teaching in the other apostles. You'll find Peter saying similar things, you'll find Paul saying similar things. But why did God's Holy Spirit in his sovereignty choose to speak these words through the apostle John? I think there's a wondrous reason, it's because the apostle John was not earlier in his life a loving guy at all. The apostle John is the one apostle with whom I feel the closest kinship. Maybe you feel close to Peter because Peter, no sooner did he succeed in something that he fumble and falter and you love the reassurance of knowing that you don't always need to get it right. Peter didn't and God yet loved him still. Maybe your example among the apostles is Thomas who had some doubts, but Jesus met him in his doubts and gave him some degree of certitude about the reality of the resurrection in that minister's to you. Maybe it's Paul because Paul had a former life of self-righteousness but then found his life captivated by grace. Maybe you feel an affinity with him. If you've ever struggled with being really tribal, very judgmental, harsh toward those outside your circles, look down on others because they were not part of your group. If you've ever looked at suspicion to those who are outside of your circle, if you've ever felt ambition in a drive to be the greatest than the apostle John might be something of your patron saint. Jesus knew all about John. Together with James, John's brother, do you know what Jesus called John? Called him a son of thunder, and a son of thunder meaning that he had a fiery judgmental and ambitious personality. His life was not characterized by love, let alone agape. He was territorial and tribal, as I mentioned, John once forbade a man from casting out demons in Jesus' name because he wasn't part of Jesus' inner group and Jesus rebuked him. He said, if they're not against us, they're for us. Let him be. Mark 9. Likewise, when a Samaritan village did not receive Jesus, do you remember what the apostle John wanted to do to that village? He asked Jesus if they could call down fire from heaven and incinerate the village because they did not receive Jesus. Men, women, children incinerate them. This guy was hardcore. Jesus rebuked him for that too. At another time, James and John sought to leverage their mother's influence. They actually conspired with their mom to go to Jesus and get Jesus to promise that in the fullness of the kingdom of heaven, John and his brother James would have the right hand and the left hand seats right next to Jesus in the fullness of the kingdom. How do you think that went over with the other disciples as they were working behind their back to get a better position that didn't go over well at all? Jesus rebuked him for that too. For all these reasons and no doubt more, and I'm just going to speak very frankly with these this morning, please forgive me if this violates your sensibilities. John was a jerk. Only a few people would have liked this guy. And the people that would have liked him would have liked him largely because they were probably leveraging him in the same way that he was trying to leverage them. But notice this and don't let the awe of this escape you. Jesus knew this about him and he picked him anyway. Jesus loved him even still. When you think about the 12 disciples that Jesus put together, it's an odd assemblage. And many people have commented upon that. He didn't pick religious scholars. He picked working class, blue collar fishermen. That's usually what gets commented on. But there's another thing that Jesus did that's quite surprising in the disciples that Jesus chose. There were two individuals that represented the polarity of political realities at the time. And so on the one hand Jesus chooses a tax collector to join his disciples. This is a Roman collaborating tax collector viewed as a traitor against his own people and probably a thief because tax collectors as you probably know would skim a little off the top to put in their own pocket. On the other end of the spectrum, Jesus chose a zealot, Simon the zealot to be in the group. And a zealot was the exact opposite. A zealot was known for sometimes even murderous violence and insurrection. Think of Barabbas against people that collaborated with Rome. They wanted the Romans gone. What did Jesus do? He invited two ends of the spectrum into his inner circle. He loved them both. Now I'm going to hit a little close to home when I say this and please don't let it hurt too much. But this is even wilder than picking the staunchest Democrat and the staunchest Republican and putting them together in the same church. Jesus intentionally from the very beginning intended to show in the constitution of his church, the New Testament church, that he was inviting all kinds of people and that his love knew no bounce, that there was no one who could not be the recipient of his agape love because it wasn't conditioned on any form of merit but entirely on his mercy. God's love for sinners has nothing to do with the loveliness of the sinner. It has everything to do with the loveliness of our God who loves us despite us. Jesus doesn't just love the lovely. He loves the otherwise unlovable. He loves according to his abundant mercy, not our merit. And that vertical love of God comes to us entirely by grace. It's entirely one directional at its start. We did not love God. God first loved us. If you read down in our chapter this morning in 1 John chapter 4 verse 19 you'll actually read that very verse. John is bringing this argument to a closer fruition where he says, we love because he first loved us. God took the first move toward any of us and in agape had every reason not to make that move yet did it anyway. In Romans chapter 5 verse 8 Paul stands shoulder to shoulder with John and says something of the same thing in Romans 5.8 he says, but God demonstrates his own love agape for us in this while we were still sinners Christ died for us. The Bible says greater love has nothingness than a man lay down his life for his friend. So God did not show us just some lesser form of love. God showed us the greatest form of love when we were the least deserving of it. Paul echoes this a bit later or a bit earlier rather in the letter in Romans. In Romans chapter 2 verse 4 when he says that that kindness of God actually has a transforming power in the heart and mind of the one who receives it. That the person who really has received God's love had an experience of this love that God's design is to change them with that love. And so the mark of true repentance is a consequential love for God and for what God loves. That love from heaven to earth, from God our Savior to us as sinners changes us. It produces repentance, the Greek word from repentance you may know, metanoia, a change in the way we think, a change in our attitudes, even our affections. And then our consequent actions, it reorient us. We turn toward God where once we were moving away from him and that's why John continues in our text. You know what he says? Look back at our verses this way. He says whoever loves has been born of God and knows God because I'm to say the one who does not love does not know God. This love produces love, love first for God and consequently what God loves. The degree to which you think that you are lovely and worthy of God's affections is the degree to which you think God owes you some measure of affection and consequently the degree that you will think others owe you something for your affection and love. But when we understand ourselves for who we truly are, that we are all sinners, beggars before the throne of God, all ground level before the cross, all of us in uniform need of mercy, the Scriptures say in true faith and humility that produces a tenderness of heart toward the mercies of God and then consequently toward those in need of those same mercies. And so a vertical love produces a horizontal love toward others as we grow to love God. We said we grow to love what God loves. What does God love? In John 3 verse 16 you know this, God says he loves the world. He loves the world, all people, all kinds of people, every aspect of creation. He also loved the world that he sent his one and only son to redeem that world in its breath and in its depth. Every aspect of creation reconciled to him through his son Jesus, Paul says in Colossians 1, that God in Jesus is reconciling all things to himself in love. God's not given up on this world, Christian should not give up on this world. Sadly I think something that tempts me is to look at the way certain aspects of culture are going, to look at the way some things in the world are going and to receive from that the message that somehow God has done here. But what Scripture tells us time and time again is that God is never done here. He will never give up on this creation. He is his purpose to redeem it and to restore it and that we who are in him loving what he loves, loving him for his great love for us in response, loving what he loves. We are partnering with him in that great work of redemption and if God hasn't given up on the world far be it from us. What else is God love? He loves justice and he loves righteousness and we oftentimes think of justice solely as a concept in the courts punishment. But justice in the Scriptures is much more rich than simple court punitive justice. Justice in the Scriptures also means righteousness, taking what is crooked and making it straight, taking what is broken and making it whole. This morning the pregnancy centers of Orvido and Sanford are with us and I hope you will go out and see the great work that they are doing. What they are doing is an expression of God's great love for this world. It is an expression of love for justice and righteousness, taking what is broken and bringing healing, taking what is crooked and setting it straight, taking those who are hurting and offering healing. Psalm 11 verse 7 says, for the Lord is righteous, he loves righteousness. His countenance behold the upright. For the Lord loves justice Psalm 37 verse 28 and does not forsake his saints, they are preserved forever. Psalm 33 verse 5, he loves righteousness and justice. The earth is full of the goodness of the Lord. It is so easy to see the bad in the world and forget that God is working good in the world and that we who love God, growing to love what God loves, need to embrace that good and pursue it. Not only for ourselves and for relationships that come easily and naturally, but as God has loved us, loving with intentionality, those who may be from a worldly perspective, even quite unlovable. God loves his people, the church. In John chapter 15 verse 12, he said, this is my commandment that you love one another as I have loved you. In other words, he is saying to the church, to those who follow him, that we are to love one another as he loved us and how did he love us? Well number one, he wasn't one of us, but he became like us, that he might redeem us. The apostle Paul says in Philippians chapter 2 that Jesus did not consider equality with God something to be grasped. In other words, he didn't consider his position as something to hold on to as an end in and of itself, but willingly in humility, he let go of his position, his status, his seat and glory, and became a servant for our sakes in love. How are we to love our brothers and sisters in the church if not the same? There are those in the church with whom we have natural affinities. There are those in the church with whom we might have little to nothing in common. We might even, let's be honest, have some reason to avoid them. He might even be counted in our hearts, if not in our words, our enemies. But as Jesus loved us and bridged that divide so he empowers us to do the same. God loves his enemies while we were yet sinners Christ died for us. So there are several problems that stand in the way of our friendships. There are realities that would bridge or would divide us in our culture. As we watch the news, as we engage in another political season, there are so many deep-seated suspicions about different groups and others and oftentimes it's attempting to put our neighbors under these categories and then treat them accordingly as we think that category of person might deserve, but let us remember as God's people that we're no longer to regard anyone according to a worldly perspective the Bible says. But to regard them as we were first regarded by God. So as we close, let me just give you a bit of a challenge. That God makes provisions wherever there are problems. This past week I had an interesting conversation with a gentleman in Orlando who's a leader in the LGBTQ community. He wanted to ask me some questions as a pastor in a conservative faith tradition about beliefs and perceptions regarding that community and the church's approach to members of that community. And I'll admit that I went into that meeting a little fearful. But when I went down and met with him and found him to be wonderfully hospitable, kind to an exemplary degree, my fears receded and what came into view was a closer kinship that we are all created in the image of God. And that though we might disagree on several things and though we might be in different circles and communities, that God has called us to love without distinction because that's the way he's loved. It doesn't mean that we agree. It doesn't mean that we share the same convictions on moral issues or the same values, but it does mean that even in our disagreements, we are called to love, to speak truth with gentleness and respect, but always in love. And so let me encourage you as we close, to find someone in your circle, whether it's at school, if you're a high school student or middle school, or whether it's a work or in your neighborhood, somebody that you have yet to establish a relationship with, but someone to whom God might be calling you. Reach out this coming week in some expression of love, find some way to naturally extend God's love to that person. Maybe you would pray for them in ways that you haven't before. Maybe it would be as simple as just encouraging them with a smile and conversation. Maybe it would be meeting a need in their life that you know they have, but you've long ignored whatever it be, may be born of God's spirit. And as you offer that love to others, maybe God would reveal to you a little bit deeper how much He loved you. Thank you for listening to this audio production of Willow Creek Presbyterian Church in Winter Springs, Florida. For worship times, directions or just to learn more about the Ministry of Willow Creek, please visit us online at willowcreekchurch.org.