You may not know this, but I was an excellent father. Now I derived what I thought, what I'm pretty sure was the best plan ever for raising four boys. You see, you know, boys, children, humans like to fight. And I advised the plan so that my boys would never fight. And the plan was very simple. I told them from the time they were this big. Whenever I get called into a fight, I'm punishing everybody. I don't care who started it. I don't care why you started it. It takes two people to fight, and so I'm going to punish you both. And they would argue with me about that. And a lot of people would say, now why don't you do that? And I said, look, if you took my hat, I wouldn't get in a fight with you over it, right? I would say, why don't you take my hat? May I please have my hat back? But I'm not going to punch you. And so why should my boys get to do that? And it was perfect. I want you to understand this plan worked perfectly. I never got called into a fight. And my kids never fought. I fought. When Will turned 20, he informed me that I was wrong. That my plan had only accomplished one thing that was that my boys fought in silence. And the punches that they gave each other had to be into the stomach or the chest. That was the rule. The rule in our house was you could only hit chest or stomach and you could not cry over it. And you know, that's not what I was going for. I mean, it accomplished the quiet. I got quiet. I didn't get peace. And I didn't get called in. But that's not what I was hoping for. I was not hoping for boys who learned how to fight without getting called. I was hoping that they would love each other. And I learned, I learned, an important lesson that I would like for you to learn through my failure. And that is this. The law cannot change a heart. The law can't change a heart. And what I wanted for my boys was that they would love each other. But the law can't make you love somebody. Telling you, go love each other. Hug your brother like you love him. Doesn't make it happen. The law can only inspire fear. And the Bible tells us that as long as we live in fear, he who lives in fear of the Lord, of punishment, has not yet been perfected in love for perfect love, cast out fear. I was trying to do from the outside, but only God can do from the inside. We, you see, humans, we are natural born crybabies. We are natural born me monsters. Me, me, me, me, me. My rights, my privileges, my freedom, my comfort, my appearance, my feelings. Me, me, me. That's what we wake up in the morning thinking. Our first thought in the morning is, how do I feel? What kind of day am I going to have? Why didn't I get more sleep? Why did you keep me awake? It's always your fault. Those are the two kind of core beliefs of being a human being. A, I'm not getting what I deserve and B, it's your fault. I, I, I, I, I tripped over a drawer. I had a drawer that was open. I didn't close it. I tripped over it on the other day, hit my chin right here, boy. You see the most painful spot and the very first words out of my mouth were, dang it, Bianca! She wasn't even in the house. But if she had not been moving my stuff, that drawer would not have been open and I would not have kicked it. All right, I mean, it's her fault. And that's not, that's just not what the Lord calls us to. And what I've learned and what I've hoped to encourage you to believe today is that loving is giving. Love is the opposite of what we're born to do. Love is, it's not thinking me, me, me. Love is seeing you, meeting your needs. Love is giving. Love is to give, literally, to give yourself away. When the Bible says, this is love. This is what love is. By this we know what love is. That's 1 John chapter 4, verse 10. By this we know what love is. Not that we love God, but that He loved us and gave His Son for us. It would be a sacrifice for our sins. That is love. Love is giving. And you can only be enabled to love. You can only be transformed into a loving person by being transformed by God, by receiving the love of God, and being enabled to love each other. Please stand as we read about love from John 3, verses 13 through 21. If you don't have a copy of the way to the manger yet, this is the second week of Advent. First week was hope, second week is love. And this is the text that we're reading together to church. Here are the word of the Lord. No one has ascended into heaven except He who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up. That whoever believes in Him may have eternal life. For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through Him. Whoever believes in Him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because He has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgment. The light has come into the world, and people love the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For every one who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, unless his works should be exposed. But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God, as far as the reading of God's Word. All men are like grass and all of our glories like the flowers of the field and the grass withers and the flowers fall, but not God's Word. God's Word stands forever. You may be seated. Love is giving. To love is to give. And I think we need to be reminded of that, because love is the most confusing word of the mall, isn't it? You can do anything for love, love justifies anything. I mean, it's a trap. It's very dangerous. Love is dangerous. You know, I'm afraid from a wife sometimes to go out, she goes to Target, she might fall in love at any moment. And if she falls into this trap called love, I guess she's just going to abandon me, she would have to, right? It would be a failure to love if she falls into love and doesn't follow this human whoever it is that she fell in love with. That's kind of the world's view, right? You know, I obeyed the law of love. You know, poor Woody Allen fell in love with his 15-year-old adopted daughter. He says the heart wants with the heart wants? Love. It's a trap by the world's definition, that's silly. But we kind of feel that way, right? We can get people walking around, just hoping they're going to fall in love, they're looking for that pit, right? I want to just fall into it any day. Haven't done it yet. Love. What is it? When we ask people what it is, it's confusing. It's a feeling of warmth. Love feels good. Love feels good. Except for when your baby cries at two in the morning. Again. You don't feel warm anymore. But you get up and you do what you have to do because you love the baby. Love. It's confusing. One author writes in the book, a 10-second kiss, which is actually a good book, just by the title. Love is how you make me feel about me. Once again, the second. You don't maybe feel good about you? I don't believe because I don't love you anymore. We know that's not true, but what isn't? What is love? I think Clint Black, that great philosopher of the 20th century, got it best when he said, love isn't something we're in, it's something that we do. Love is something you do. Love, the Bible says, is this. God giving himself for us. That can be confusing because not all giving is love, right? Last night I googled the phrases I googled. I wanted the perfect Christmas Saturday Night movie, so I googled romantic mystery Christmas. And I got the perfect movie, the Murdock Mysteries. And in it, of course, there's some killing. You have to have killing down the mystery. And the killing was all generated by this guy who hated Christmas, because Christmas gives rich people an opportunity to whitewash the reputation and make everyone love them, even though they rob their employees. And there's a lot of that that goes on, right? There's a lot of giving not generated by the love that someone has for what they're giving to, but driven by this desire to look good, or to have you in there, to have you owe them? I went... I've been to Graceland twice, yes. I've done the full tour. And, you know, Graceland, right? Elvis's house. Y'all've done the tour. I'm assuming. Your Christians, my friends, eggs. But Elvis, it's fascinating. The first thing you see today is a big whitewash. It's fine. What the heck? It's his house. You know, the first thing you see when you walk in is a huge plaque with the names of all the charities that he had given to during his life. And then... And he'd given $10,000 to his charity, which was a lot back in the 70s. And then you walk around a corner and you see an enormous, enormous, terrible, just awful portrait of Elvis that he paid somebody $80,000 to pay. And I'm like, man, that picture made you look good. You were getting better value out of the gifts to charity. They made you look good, too. It's all the same. You won't look good. And you know that. You know what it's like to receive gifts that are given out of selfishness. A friend of mine talked about being taken to Vegas. And he was, you know, put up in the nicest rooms and given money to gamble with. And he said that the whole trip was kind of miserable because the guy who took him just kept looking at him throughout the trip saying, you really enjoy this, don't you? You're enjoying this, aren't you? It's like this. Make me feel good about me. And that's not the kind of giving we're talking about. We're talking about giving of yourself out of a desire to see the other person blast. That's what Jesus talks about here, right? God so loved the world that he gave his son that whoever believes in him wouldn't perish but have eternal life. God's son did not come into the world to condemn the world, but that through him the world might receive life. Out of a desire to see someone else blast, giving of yourself out of a desire to see them flourish and thrive. If you like me and you grew up hearing people read from the King James version, then you've heard many times over the first Corinthians 13. And what I love about the way the King James translating first Corinthians 13 is it doesn't have the word love in it. It has the word charity. Charity is kind. Charity is patient. Charity is not puffed up. Charity does not seek its own. Now, they do that because that was the translation of the word love, the deepest, most sacrificial word to describe love was translated from the French caritas to the English charity. And only in the 1900s did word charity start to mean an organization that gave to the poor. But it's obvious why it would be that way, right? Charity. Giving with nothing, no host for myself, giving with no selfish desire, just giving to bless you. That is what love is. And you know what you love about what you give to. You love your family and you know that by the time and the energy you put into it. You love your hobbies. And I know that. By the time and the energy that you put into it, you love your football teams. And I know that. By the time and the money, the enormous resources of money. You put behind them. And the patience you show them. And the kindness you show them. You know, it's always the referees fault. Now, a friend of mine said, show me your checkbook and I can tell you what you love. Love is giving. Love is giving. And what then is God's love for us. God's love for us is him giving himself to lift us out of this pit of selfishness. And to save us, to rescue us from the just punishment of selfishness. Now, use the word selfishness because it's a lot cleaner and clearer, I think, than sin. Sin's vague. Sin means a lot. You know, sin's city is a good thing, I guess. Selfishness really, I think, paints the picture of it. Sin is thinking of self. Love is thinking of others. Sin is grabbing and taking and using things for yourself. Love is giving your things for the good of others. And what does selfishness ultimately get you? If you're never rescued from it, it gets you alive of being by yourself. That's what hell is. Ultimate isolation. Cut off from God and everyone else. In a place of darkness and silence with nothing but yourself, forever. And that's where we were all heading, heading by our own volition. This is the judgment that man did not believe in God because it works for evil. We didn't want God. We weren't seeking Him out. We were seeking out self. And that's where we were headed, to a place where we would only get self. And God loved us too much. He loved us too much to let us get what we wanted so badly which would be our own deaths. And so he interceded. And the beautiful thing about the message of the Bible is this, God rescued us back into a relationship with His love. We were born to be loved by Him and to love Him back. That's how He created us. But our sin had gotten in a way. The selfishness had gotten in the way. And He wanted us to be in this place where we would enjoy His love or we would bask in it. And so He reconciled us back to His love through a gift of His love. God, this is love. Not that we love God, but that God loved us and gave His son for us. If you don't, if this still hasn't penetrated, I'll never do this. But I'd really do what encouraged you to go back and listen to the sermon I preached and the first sermon I preached in September, where I really tried to unfold this for you. It's the beauty, the richness, that God saved us by His love. Romans 5, what does it say? Occasionally, someone would die for righteous man. But God unveils, He demonstrates His love for us and this, that while we were still sinners, He Christ died for us. He reconciled us to His love by this gift of His love and the only thing we have left to ask is, why did you do that? Because of His love. Because of His love. Ephesians 2, we were dead in our trespasses and sins and because of the love with which He loved us, He made us alive together in Christ. Isn't that a beautiful picture? Because God loved us, He gave His Son out of His love so that we would be restored to a loving relationship with Him. And I've been trying to think of an illustration of that, my entire, all week, well, my entire life is what I do. I get paid for it, so it's okay. But I haven't been thinking about it all week. And I saw a picture I was looking for some artwork this week, and I saw a picture of Google Grace. I Google a lot. So I Googled Grace, and it's all this picture of a man hanging down into a pit and grabbing hold of another man's arm and as a picture of Grace. And I thought, that's good. It's not accurate, but it's good. And then I started thinking, well, what would be accurate? If sin is the pit that we're in, if selfishness is the pit that we're in, what would be an accurate description of how Jesus got us out? I know for sure He didn't climb out and say follow my example. That's how I got out. I'd be like Michael Jordan throwing me a basketball scene. Just do what I did. Just jump from the free throw line and dunk it. That's all. Yeah, that's not going to happen. Okay, so it's not an example, and it's not Him giving us a bunch of rules and saying, well, if you would just follow these rules, you wouldn't have gotten in that pit to begin with. But now that you've followed them, just now that you're broken them, just climb out and it's not Him reaching down and pulling us out. That wasn't enough for Him, and it wasn't enough for us. And I think the best description I can give you is that He jumped down into the pit and He got low. We're incredibly low. The two regards will tell you that the place where Jesus was baptized in the Jordan River right before it goes into the Dead Sea is topographically the lowest dry land spot on Earth. I don't know if it's true or not, it's a great illustration. He went low. And he got under the water. And this illustration, he gets under our feet. He puts our feet on his shoulders and it lifts us up. And he holds on to our feet until we're just almost out of the pit. But then he starts sinking. And he sinks, and he sinks, and he sinks. And we start. All right, so that sound is the crow's that I've been feeding and I apologize. I've been trying to make pets out of the crow's and yeah, maybe that wasn't wise. John the told me not to do it. Okay, so he puts us on his shoulders and he sinks. And he sinks and we start trying for him. Let go of me. Don't sink into the mud. Don't let my weight sink you down. And he won't let go. And he sinks. And he sinks until his head is under the mud and he drowns in it. And we're sitting there looking at him going, how did that help? And then the Bible tells us three days later he starts climbing. And he climbs all the way out of the pit with us on his shoulders. There was no limit to the depth he would go to. He gave himself for us as completely and as fully as any one could give himself. He did not stop it. Life he did not stop it poverty. He did not stop it homelessness. He did not stop it betrayal. He went through torture and death and the darkness, the incredible darkness of God abandoning him to himself so that he was utterly alone and darkness trying out, why have you left me? Spiritual and physical death. That is the length that his love went to, to lift us out of this pit of selfishness. That is what he did for us. That is God's love for us. So what is God's love from us? What does he expect from us? This has always been a criticism of my preaching that I don't do this enough. I remember when I was a young pastor, a young campus minister, and I went and did this conference, a little camp, it went into big deals, about 50 kids, just 50 kids, they don't count. And after the fourth day, the camp owner, two-man director took me out and he goes, you need to tell them what you want them to do. That is okay. I did not. What do you do in response to God's love? How do we love each other? And the first thing you do is you receive it. You believe it. You receive it. You don't wait until you earn it. You don't try to clean yourself up and make yourself better. You don't try to give him something in exchange. You don't try to twist his arm by your sacrifices, making him appreciate you. You just receive it. You just receive it. That's what brings joy to his heart. You know what the best Christmas present my mom ever got was? My mom. I'm terrible to give gifts to you. I'll just tell you, if you, in this way, have been my whole life. If you give me the thing I've been wanting, my whole life, I'll probably look at it and go, thanks. That was awesome. I really appreciate it. I just, I don't know why, I'm not good. But the best gift my mom ever got was one year she brought my kids Christmas presents and Harold, who knows how to open Christmas presents, just ripped. Right? And he screamed, this guy high-risk you place it! I've been wanting this! Now, that was the first time I had ever heard the phrase, sky high-risk you place it. I had no idea that that was what he wanted. I did not know it existed. I had never heard of it. Evidently my mom had been watching cartoons with my sons and saw the commercial. I don't know how she knew. But the best gift that she ever received was the joyful hug that she got after giving this guy high-risk you place it. That's how you make a grandparent happy. Sure, draw the give them the cards and tell them you appreciate them. But if you want to make their hearts sing, love what they gave you. And if you want to make God happy, if you want to fill his heart with joy, receive what he has given you and love it. Receive it. That's what you're supposed to do. Receive it. And you're supposed to do it every day. And then you love other people out of the overflow. Don't roll your eyes at me. I know you are in your heart. Every one of you rolling around. We've heard this before. Tell us what you want us to do. I want you to stop at some point every day. And remember that your father in heaven is right there with you. Smiling in you. I went to CVS this week. I don't know why I was feeling poody all week. It was just one of those weeks. The weather. Maybe it was that I was trying to lean myself off of medicine that I need to take. I don't know. But all I know for sure is, Monday Tuesday and Wednesday had a black cloud over me. And I went into CVS on Monday for something. What was I going for? I don't know. And I came out, and I remember sitting in my car going, Ricky. God is right here in you that spoke into him all day. He's right here. Just acknowledged that he's here. Just acknowledge it every day. He's right here. He's smiling at you. He loves you. It changes your heart. It fills you. And then enables you to love others. It enables you to love others because now you're not in need. Now you're not feeling self-pity that nobody in this world appreciates me. Nobody respects me. And why can't I get what I want? Now you are unable to love others because you have everything you need. You ever try to cook for somebody else when you were starving? It's not easy. But when you are full, it's easy. How easy is it to give away Thanksgiving leftovers? Please get this turkey away from me. I've got it coming out of my nose. And the next day there's no turkey now. So I'm mad because I can't make a sandwich. But I gave it away because I didn't want anymore. Receive God's love and pour it out. That is what love is. How do we love others by seeing a need and meeting it? By seeing other people. Not being annoyed by their existence. Not trying the best you can to not make eye contact. Basically not doing any of the things I always do in public. But seeing other people. Seeing what they need. And meeting it. It's giving of yourself. It's giving of yourself. There was a one of the great missionary organizations or movements in our world history. It's been the Moravian brethren. You probably haven't heard much about them because they absolutely do not want you to have heard about them. They are silent missionaries who just give themselves away. They were the ones who first preached the gospel to John Wesley. They were the ones who inspired George Whitfield. And there's tons of stories about them. And one of the stories was that they prayed for years about how to take the gospel to leprechaulonies. Once you go in, you can't come back out. And so they just started going two by two. And making the commitment. Once they got in, they were going to be there until they died. And then when the last one got sticking up that he could see death coming, he would send a letter saying we need two more. And one of the stories that came out of the leprechaulonies. And that leprosy, which basically is this disease that what we call modern day leprosy. We're not sure what it was in the Bible really. But what we call this is disease where you lose feeling in your extremities. Now I think we call it hypertrophy. And those days that they were losing feeling they would do things. They would burn their hands and not knowing they were burning their hands. They would literally leave them in the fire. And they would go to sleep at night, and this is gross. But I'm sorry, it's for the second illustration. They would go to sleep at night and rats would come and chew on them. And they'd wake up and be missing fingers or toes. And one of the stories of the Moravians was how they lasted so long. And the colony was one of them lost use of his feet. The other had lost use of his arms. And so the one with legs that worked every morning, the first thing you would do is walk over to the one without legs. And the one without legs would strap himself to the other's back. And they would go out and work in the fields and do their work. Seeing needs, meeting me, giving themselves away. It was our needs have been met. How can you love each other? Fill yourself up with Jesus and love others with the overflow. Please pray with me. Father in heaven, you loved us before we knew who you were. While we were still your enemies, you gave your son for us to be reconciled to your love. And Father, that truth is overwhelming that we receive it. And I pray, Lord, that we would receive it so fully and so completely that we would love others with the access. Father, enable us to love others as you have loved us. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.