How to love

Text: I John 4.16-21

Love is kind of important...

I mean consider what you have learned in I John 4 alone...

Your’e going to be judged by it. 17

Your Spiritual Confidence depends on it. 18

You have no excuse since you’ve seen it. 19

CIT: When Love is the distinguishing characteristic we should get this one right.

I. The World has Hijacked the meaning of love.

INDIVIDUALISM

ROMANCE

SELF-EXPRESSION

CONSUMERISM

COMMITMENT PHOBIA

SKEPTICISM

PRAGMATISM

Mark Dever

Ultimately our culture’s definition has boiled down to..

Non-judgemental, Accepting Indifference

Love is spending your time propping up your fragile sense of rights, entitlements, and self to the exclusion of the truth.

I submit to you that God cares very little for whether or not the lost feel loved. Let me remind you that the same book that told us, “love not the world, told us

1 John 4:21 KJV 1900

And this commandment have we from him, That he who loveth God love his brother also.

So our goal is not to learn how the lost want to be loved but to demonstrate love whether they like it or not. But make no mistake you are commanded to love.

II. We don’t want to follow the demands of love.

What did Johns understanding of love look like?

Discerning

Dogmatic

Dangerous

Different

Declaring

Discerning - 1

We are not blindly running around accepting whatever is being thrown our way we are discerning and informed and we will cast out that which is not of the Spirit of God.

Dogmatic - 2

We accept not substitutes. If it is not of Jesus we don’t bite. We are not to be enamored with whatever new shining doctrine might be.

Race agenda

Trans agenda

acceptance agenda’s

We don’t play with LGBT and act as if the church has any responsiblity there. Were watching plenty of denominations do it. We won’t.

Dangerous - 3-4

We are a danger to the spirit of anti-christ. We call it out we keep it from finding a place of comfort.

Different - 5-6

We don’t accept the things of the world and worldliness and we don’t expect that you accept us. We don’t think that we are different. We think that the world is the one that has perverted the design so they are the weird ones.

Declaring - 15

All of this because Jesus stands ready to make right any that will come to him.