Friday, Bianca and I did something we haven't been able to do and why we went visit the babies and held a couple of them and I was looking at these babies. I got jealous. I'm gonna be honest. I mean I was just looking at this sweet little Joy-black newly Adopted into the household and and she's just everything she does is so perfect and the parents are so excited and oh Did you see her yawn? Oh she just yawn wasn't that so cute? I was like honey all you had to do to get the praise of your parents is yawn You have no idea how good you've got it. It's never going to be better for you It is right now. It's gonna have a felt and I say all that to say this. I Want you to know that as a pastor. I know specifically as your pastor. I know how good I've got it I know that none of my friends have it this good. I Love telling people I'm your pastor. I love the job that it entails. I love Introducing myself and saying on the pastor of River Road's Presbyterian. Have you heard of it? And when they say their answer I say well, that's a church. It loves me very well and they love each other extraordinarily. I Love telling people of how you've loved for each other. I went to the deacons this week and was sharing with them A large part of their job is administering the benevolence fund and I started just crying like a baby I was like I was embarrassed, but y'all seen that a million times by now But I was just talking about time and again when when this church is stepped into the gap When someone's life was falling apart whether it be through sickness or divorce or Just unexpected medical emergencies or moving or plumbing emergencies no matter what they were just just being willing to go toward the fight and Communicate in a very concrete way whether it's through food or through Baby sitting or adult sitting or one couple talked about getting back from the hot along It's just exhausting hospital trip to find that their house was filled with groceries and everything was put away and everything It'd been cleaned by their friends when they went by their community group when they got back and that's all just these beautiful Example after example of caring of loving people and I want you to understand that when I'm really telling people when I say that the people in the Church loves me well and love each other well What I'm really telling them is Jesus lives here Jesus lives here and That's how you know that Jesus lives here John's message today Is that Christians are identified by how they love each other Christians can be identified by how they love each other that they got himself is love But the world doesn't know that and the world can't see that he's invisible and The way that the world learns what God is like is By watching Christians love each other The way that the world learns what God is like is by watching Christians learn love each other Please stand as we read from First John I took three different passages. I could have taken a couple more John is not a hymn hymns, you know kind of move from beginning to end and they they always start with like being lost in sin verse two He's always about being lost in sin and then verse three is about kind of growing and grace and verse four is always about heaven Notice that that's most of more John is not a hymn. It doesn't move from point A to point B John is a script a phrase song it's a worship song there repeats itself over and over Some of you hate those songs and some of you love those songs John repeats himself over and over and I'm going to let you hear the repetition because I really want these words to Put themselves in your heart So we're gonna read from John two John three and John four first John Hear the word of the Lord Whoever loves his brother abides in the light And in him there is no cause for stumbling But whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness and does not know where he is going because the darkness has blinded his eyes And then from chapter three verse 11 This is the message that you have heard from the beginning that we should love one another We should not be like Cain who was of the evil one and murdered his brother. Why did he murder him? Because his own deeds were evil and his brothers were righteous Do not be surprised brother when the brothers when the world hates you We know that we have passed out of death and into life because we love the brothers Whoever does not love abides in death Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer And you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him By this we know love That he laid down his life for us and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers If anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need yet closes his heart against him How does God's love abide in him Little children let us not love in word or in talk but indeed and in truth And then from chapter four verse seven the love it Let us love one another for love is from God and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God and Anyone who does not love does not know God because God is love In this the love of God was made manifest among us They got sent his only son into the world that we might live through him In this is love not that we have loved God but that God has loved us And sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins The love it if God so loved us We also ought to love one another No one has ever seen God If we love one another God abides in us and his love is perfected in us This Father reading of God's word all men like grass and all of our glories like the flowers in the field The grass withers and the flowers fall but not God's word God's word stands forever you may be seated
The way that the world learns what God is like Is about seeing how Christians love each other John First John I'm sorry I keep constantly in John I want to confuse you the book of John is a fourth book of the New Testament the gospel of John 27 chapters very long very beautiful First John is a very short book at the end of the New Testament Five chapters very short And repetitive John has one message on his heart He's writing this as an older man. He's getting ready to leave He knows he's not going to live forever and he's kind of concerned for the churches in the area He's concerned for all the churches that he's helped plant and his concern is too full He's concerned that some of the people in his church are worried that they're not going to be they're not Christians That they're not going to go to heaven that maybe they're going to fall away Maybe they're going to abandon the faith one day in it and it's causing all this anxiety in their hearts And the other thing he's worried about is that there's false teachers everywhere and he wants His people in his churches to be able to Define you know to discern between false teachers and true teachers And so he says look it's really simple. There's three things. They're really all one thing. But the three things true believers are holy The righteous they look like God they've been changed. They've been renovated the Holy Spirit lives in them. They're different Secondly true believers love. They love each other Anybody who claims otherwise is a liar and thirdly true believers know the truth It could profess the truth that Jesus Christ is the Son of God who came in the flesh the love of God was manifested among us Those are the three things you look for in yourself Those are the three things you look for in anyone who out there teaching last week. We looked at the holiness test Of course of course believers in Christ of course those who have the Holy Spirit living among them Of course their characters are being renovated. That's not questionable Today we're looking at the love test and God said and John says Anybody who claims to be a believer But is not loving toward other believers is a liar and the truth is not in them It is impossible. He says it is impossible to love God and hate other believers Can't do it And so first thing I want you to see is this absolute necessity of love that that Our love reveals what God is like You'll never seen my father most of you two of you have In my family four of you have The rest of you haven't but you would know him if you walk in the room You would you they would wouldn't they you would know him because he looks Or just like me if you had 20-foot five years to my life take off 25% of my hair That's it. He looks not only does he look like me. He talks like me. I talk like him. I know He walks like me. He stands like me. It's it's spooky He looks like me. So you know him Even though you haven't seen him in person you've seen me which is pretty much seeing him John is saying He says very clearly in here God's invisible He says it twice you can't see him Now in the book of John He says this is very interesting John the gospel of John chapter one. He says no one's ever seen God But Jesus his son the logos the word it became flesh He revealed to us what God is like he says he says if you want to know what God is like look at Jesus Now in this letter he's saying When we love each other God is being manifested among us if you want to know what God is like Look at how believers love each other That's how you know That's who we are that we are the the the manifestation of God himself And we love each other because we are being made like God. He's basically saying He's basically saying we should make up a new Christian t-shirt You know remember Christian t-shirts from the 90s. They were well intentioned if you were t-shirt makers I don't I'm not trying to throw stones at you I never wore them. I thought they were cheesy and I have a very low-cheese tolerance But I and I saw one one time it was like air Jesus, you know It's kind of a rip on air than Ikey and on the back it said do amazing fleet feats in air Jesus cleats And that a picture of a long haired white guy Snagging a fly ball and I was like that's it I that's it. I can't go any further down this road But John's basically saying we need to wear a Christian t-shirt and that t-shirt says Not in reality if you buy more these I will not wear it, but that t-shirt would say If you want to know what God is like Watch how I treat people If you want to know what God is like listen to how I talk about other Christians If you want to know what God is like watch how I serve other Christians That's what he's saying When we love each other God himself is manifested and we can't pretend that it's not God himself is love and therefore if we are being remade into his image, we are loving we have to be And then in chapter 4 verse 20 He says if anyone claims to love God, it hates his neighbor He's a liar because if you can't love Another person if you can't love your brother He really is talking about other Christians, which is hard enough. Let's just focus on that If you can't love another Christian whom you can see it is impossible for you to love God that you can't see This it's really a whole lot easier. I mean It's easy to say that you love God. Everybody says that Does mean anything right Charlie Brown you should say I love the world I have no problem loving the world, but I hate Lucy You know, it's easy to love God. He's up there He's all fuzzy and warm and what he he gives us warm sunshine and cool rains and the loving each other We don't annoy me I'm making sure I like you much less. Love you. It's difficult And John says we're lying to ourselves. He says the way we treat each other is what we reveals what we think of God If I were to walk into your house and see you ripping up a picture and you grab another picture off the wall You take it out of frame and you rip it up. I wouldn't think to myself man that person hates paper Wonder what their deal is with paper? I would assume that you hated the person in the picture, right That's what what you would do you wouldn't rip up a picture somebody you don't hate But what the Bible teaches us from from Genesis chapter one and then teaches us even more Minerally in the New Testament is that anyone who's created and especially anyone who's recreated in the image of God Anyone who's a believer Is an image of God. He is a picture of what God is like If you hate the picture If you hate the image It's because you hate The person that image is based on you hate believers is because you hate God We need to root that out It's impossible to love one and not love the other Why what where where would this love come from how am I able to love Believers like that John tells us in chapter 19 and verse 19 chapter 4 and then verse 10 of chapter 4 which I didn't put on the bulletin Says this this is love not that we have loved God but that God loved us and sent his sons to be the sacrifice for our sins God loved us first why are we able to love because God is love and he loved us first now You've heard me do this before and you're going to hear me do it again because it's important and because I Fires me up and that is this the core truth of the universe the reason why any of this is here The reason why everything exists instead of non-existing is because God is love God is love It's the reason why he's a Trinity instead of an individual Love can't be selfish. Love can't be self-centered. It can't be love can't be self-referential Love always demands that someone to love and so there has always been father and son loving each other Pouring their love out upon each other love flowing back and forth between the two Since God can't be separated and his emotions can't be separated from him that love to have his own personality It's called the Holy Spirit And there's just perfectly flowing continually joyful dancing of love and you know what love always wants to do Love always wants to reproduce Love always wants to multiply And if you if you love your church are going to want other people to come to if you love your spouse You're probably going to want to have kids if you if not always but Love wants to multiply it does And so they created They created somebody else that they could love love doesn't run out The more people you have to love the more love you have and if you enjoy loving then you want more people to love And so they created and and that's where it gets weird. That's where the story gets weird Because he created us You're if y'all watched the rest of the development You know there's this teenage boy in there George Mike ony sweet and clumsy and goofy And he falls in love with his first girlfriend and every time she comes up in conversation or dad his dad just goes her
I kind of think that's what the conversation went like when the eternal son of God began to talk about This person that he wanted for his wife Maybe again talking about us. I think the father went her Isn't she beautiful dad? Her she's going to commit adultery on you Isn't she wonderful her She's going to disobey every rule wake ever Isn't wouldn't it be just wonderful to be with her for all eternity? her Do you know what you're going to have to do to spend eternity with her?
You're going to have to become one of them You're going to have to die for them for them
That's a perfect way for us to show her how much I love her Can we do it And see as Lewis describes it like this God who needs nothing Loves into existence holy surface creatures So that he may love and perfect them. Isn't that genius? He loved us into existence so that he could love us He creates the universe already seeing the buzzing cloud of flies about the cross The flayed back pressed against the uneven steak the nails driven through his nerves The repeated suffocation as his body droops the repeated torture of his back and his arms after as time and after time and for breath sake He has to hitch up if I may dare the biological image God is a host who deliberately creates his own parasites Causes us to be so that we make exploit and take advantage of him Karen is love The diagram of love himself the inventor of all loves That's who God is He loved him. He loved us into existence so that he could love us He loved us into existence so that we could exploit him He loved us into existence so that he could give himself to us That's what love is love is giving God is not that we love God, but it's that God loved us and gave his son You got to let that sink in on you God loved us before we knew him while we were disobedient to him while we still hated him He loved us and gave his son for us The best picture I know of this thing of that is The escape scene and Shawshank redemption It's a pretty good movie. He's got some bad scenes in it But the guy escapes prison by banging a hole into the sewer and crawling out through the sewer Just think of that crawling out through a quarter mile sewage pipe Of a prison Violence everywhere You see him Vomiting as he walks through there but he goes through it why because on the other end is freedom And that's a that's a ministerial picture of what it was like for Jesus to come and be made in the likeness of sinful flesh To have all of our sin put upon him. You see you and I we don't mind our sin We kind of live and it's got natural for us, but for him it was vile sewage And he hated it and he was surrounded with it But he crawled through it because on the other end he got to spend eternity with us
And love like that changes you if you'll let that sit on you Love like that will change you It always does you know that being loved is important it makes you different Go back to your psychology class and ask yourself does it? Does it matter if a baby had loving parents? Of course They'll never develop in a healthy way without touch and affection and love And that kind of love the the gospel shows for us that God poured out upon us It makes us humble How can we not be humble God himself had to crawl through sewage for me it It makes us gracious Because God had had grace on me when I hated him. I can be gracious to other people It makes us kind and patient Because God was patient with me He's waited for thousands of years just for me to get hurry up and get born And then for more years until I acknowledge who he was and even more years before I started believing in he Possible way that might be considered consistent If he were anything like me he would have way would have destroyed the world two thousand years ago and just been done with it But he's not He's patient with me and that's where our love comes from And so that we can we do we must we absolutely must if this love is in our hearts if we have received it at all We love each other What does that mean? He says don't love in word only but indeed and in truth Love sees needs and meets it Love sees the similarity that we share with other believers. The love sees how much our father loves others and remembers How much our father loved us so that we can love each other John tells us very clearly what love does not do love does not close its heart to another person I like that first actually You see a brother in need Include your heart to him Then you don't love him in your liar Yeah, but that's why how we translated in English. I told you this is the only book of the New Testament. I'll translate it And word there is not the word for heart. It's the word for guts. It's a great word. It's called it's a Splatina Splatina Then that sound like guts You never want to eat splatina. I was you and And what is he talking about? He's talking about you know this you've actually done this I bet There's been somebody that you know that you're supposed to love because they're in the church Or they're in the family or something and you know they need your help But you don't want to help and you I bet you've done this. I bet you have felt yourself tight in your stomach
I ain't going to help him I'm not going to be nice to him you just feel that stomach tighten before you say those words can't you You're closing off your heart. You're closing off your your your your compassion You're closing off your grace I don't think we've ever lived in a time I don't think I've ever lived in a time When we were more tempted or more guilty of closing off our hearts to each other and that frightens me John says if we walk in the light we'll we'll see where we're going and we don't stumble But when we walk in the darkness the darkness of our suspicion the darkness of our disappointment our eyes get blinded We fall and we cause others to fall And because of your pastor because I want to be clear. I want to talk to you about a few things here Because I want you to Ask yourself a question. Are you loving Your fellow believers So here we go Those of you who voted for Joe Biden Do you remember four years ago How you felt like your entire country had abandoned you And you no longer felt at home here You're just so disappointed and broken and many of you were writing to me and talking about how can this have ever happened You need to know that 50% at least of the Christians around you are feeling that way right now It's not a time to crow It's not a time to get your last shots in It's a time to let your brothers and sisters have their emotional reaction And to be gracious and quiet
Those of you who voted for Donald Trump
You have to confess that you looked over Some Pretty big issues That a lot of Christians just couldn't look over They could not Tell them what what was not a deal breaker for you was a deal breaker for other people Other Christians So can you allow that maybe Definitely Some of your Christian brothers and sisters Overlooked things about Joe Biden that you can't couldn't overlook And they still love Jesus Even though you disagree And it's not true that if you voted for him it doesn't mean that you hate America as I've heard twice this week She's not true Can we be bigger than that Those of you who feel very passionately about Black Lives Matter And you love it And you want to see revolution Can you put yourself in the shoes of a policeman's wife Who every day when he goes to work you're worried Anxiety sits in the back of your mind. Well, he come home safe today
Can you put yourself in in her position or in his position when he turns on the television and here's protesters yelling F the police
Those of you who feel very strongly about blue lives matter Can you put yourself in the position of a Christian African-American believer who We have a member of our church regularly followed home by policemen And the policeman wait to see him Walk into the house because they wonder why an African-American would be in this particular white neighborhood
Freed can you at least admit that that's not okay Can we See that it's okay to be for both sides on most issues Can we admit that our love can we display a love of God that is so big that Towers above these other divisions Can we show the world that God's love is that big And I know what you're thinking you're thinking well when they start being nice to me. I'll start being nice to them Just like God did right It's not how it worked God loved us when we were dead in our sin When we hated him We were dead in our trespasses and sins He didn't wasn't just nice to us. He gave his son for us And if we're going to display a love If we're going to display to the world a love that says if you want to know what God's love is like watch how I treat other Christians Then we're all going to have to go first Can we go first Please pray with me Father heaven when I read this letter I feel a little bit like you cheated like you You swap something in there if I if I don't love my Christian brothers. I don't love you And it sound quite right I thought you were calling home made a love the all the perfect all loving all gracious Jesus. That's easy Father would you Forgive us for not loving each other Would you teach us to love each other better? I pray that the way we treat each other would show the world what you're like In Jesus name amen