1 John 4:7-16
Notes
Transcript
Beloved, let us love one another, for love 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.
In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
Beloved, 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.
By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world.
Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.
Two weeks ago...
Talked about tree’s and being recongized by what type of fruit they bear.
Apple tree provides apples, thorn bush provides thorns.
One gives the other protects itself.
One of the fruits of the apple tree of the Holy Spirit in us is...
Do we lay down ourselves for the betterment of others?
Do we lay down ourselves for the love of God?
Are we an apple tree or...?
Then Chris talked about false teachers.
Warning us against doctrine that mimiks light but that is actually darkness.
Do’s and don’ts.
Messages that cherry pick scripture to push an agenda that doesn’t align with all of scripture.
Teaching that we use God’s Word to interpret scripture instead of using our wants and desires.
Teaching that we all hold fast to the Word of God.
And encouraging us to read, understand, and practice what we read.
And the culmunation of all this in today’s reading...
Love…
Why do we have teachings of truth?
From being asked what are we, a fruit tree or a thornbush, to warnings against false teachers and the deceit they bring...
Why is all this in here?
Love!
What conquers death? Love! More importantly God’s great love.
We’re going to pause on this great love today as we should everyday but with more study given to us today in scripture.
Love?
1. What is it?
2. Where does it come from.. (God)
3. What happens to us through it. (Forgiveness, rebirth, life)
4. The relationship that came through it. (Abba, Father)
5. What love looks like or defined as. (Jesus)
6. Truth of love in a believers heart. (Love God, love others, repentance & obiedence)
Let’s define love.
Our english language just has one word for love but in greek there are at least 4 different words to describe love.
The first Greek word for “love” is eros, which refers to romantic or sexual love. From it we get the word erotic. This specific word is not used in the New Testament.
The second is (store-gay) storge, which refers to familial love like that of a mother for her baby or of a brother and sister for each other.
The third Greek word for “love,” (Fe-L-aa) philia, refers to friendship and comradery.
The fourth word for love is agape and it refers to a benevolent and charitable love that seeks the best for the loved one.
This is the type that is used to define the love of God in scripture.
It is action of good for others over oneself. Not a just a fickle feeling that is here today and gone tomorrow.
It is selfless and giving.
Who or what you give to, who or what you sacrifice for, who or where you time is spent, shows what or who you love.
This is God’s love. Action of true goodness.
God gives to the Trinity and His creation, sacrifices for the Trinity and His creation, His time is spent with the Trinity and His creation.
This is the type of love we are discussing today. Agape love!
2. Where does love come from? God!
Beloved, let us love one another, for love 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.
Throughout scripture we see God’s very fundamental character as love.
Everything He does is in love. It is who He is.
This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.
Nothing impure, unholy, or bad is in Him.
He is all good, all pure, all holy!
Incapable of sinning, incapable of being unloving.
His very nature is love.
What is from God? Light, creation, life, our being, awareness, goodness, & love.
What isn’t from God? Darkness, nothingness, death, bad.
What is darkness…the absense of light.
What is the opposite of creation? Nothing,
What is death? the absensce of life.
What is bad or evil? the absence of good and righteousness.
God created and it was very good.
And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.
Very good! Nothing bad! All good! No deceit, lies, sickness, death. All good!
In love we were given something else besides just being created.
Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.
We were made in His image and likeness. We can reason, we can think, we can ponder, like no other creation outside of angels .
In this love we were free!
Freedom to chose His words and His ways or not.
We were given the opportunity to live with Him, walk with Him, be with Him. And we choose opposite. We disobeyed.
Adam and Eve story, “did he really say”
Not believing in what He said and disobeyed...
Unpure, unrighteousness, darkness was brought forth...
What did this bring...
Seperation, death, darkness…we were no longer pure and within the light.
In fact we now became enemies of God.
In purity, holiness, and righteousness, sin cannot be tolerated. It is everything that God is not.
God, in love cannot tolerate something so destructive around.
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.
That could be the end of it right there. God is all good, His creation was created very good.
Creation, namely human beings were given freedom to think, see, & choose.
In this great gift of freedom, we choose not to believe in God, but instead believed in the created over the creator. And darkness, death, and the wrath of God was revealed.
The end.
But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us,
Did what?
Did He just say it’ll be ok, a little darkness never hurt no one?
Did He say oh I just forgive you from the goodness of my heart?
No, what did He do?
In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
He brought forth His Love in act and deed.
How? Let’s talk about justice for a moment.
What is justice? the condition of being morally correct or fair.
We like justice right?
We like being treated fairly.
Nothing worse than to go before a judge who is corrupt and unfair. Basing judgment on anything but the truth is wrong and unjust.
God is a just God in the most perfect way.
“The Rock, his work is perfect,
for all his ways are justice.
A God of faithfulness and without iniquity,
just and upright is he.
The Rock, capitalized! God unchanging, secure, not a sandbar!
“Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.”
He’s our Rock!
“his ways are perfect”
God knows everything, nothing is hidden from Him. In knows truth.
Another thing with a just God.
So Peter opened his mouth and said: “Truly I understand that God shows no partiality,
He doesn’t show partiality, you can’t butter him up.
He doesn’t play favorites. He is pure, holy, honest, and just in all things including sin...
The just, correct, and fair treatment to sin is death. Sin is selfish, destructive, and disobiedent to righteousness. It has no part in God’s kingdom.
And therefore to have justice served, requires death. A erradication of sin.
That is the sentence to sin…death.
For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
BUT…this word is such a great pause to our destruction but more importantly a great introduction to the great love of God!
But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us,
In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
God the Son was made manifest, was made Human, and walked among us, as one of us, but without sin.
For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.
He felt…pain, lose, fleshly temtation, tiredness, weariness,
He truly lived as human. READ Hebrews again!
“Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son,
and they shall call his name Immanuel”
(which means, God with us).
God with us!!!
This is the manifestion of God’s love! Immanuel, God with us!
God’s Son came so we might live through Him. How?
Propitiation, the act of making things right with someone or to satisfy a wrong done.
But how do we satisfy death? How do we satisy God’s righteous wrath? How do we give something we don’t have?
This word to some has pagan or false religion teaching associated with it.
You know, the type that we have to bring gifts of gold and jewelery to appease a God, to possibly earn favor with that God.
This is not that teaching! It is 100% opposite!
We have nothing to give!
We have all become like one who is unclean,
and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment.
We all fade like a leaf,
and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.
It is pointing to the pure and righteous acts of love that our God gives. Not what we can give to Him!
The word propitiation in this context is pointing to the only fix that there is…Jesus!
The payment for sin is death. The only one that can pay that type of payment for us is Jesus!
All other faiths talk about what you have to do first, what you have to give, what you have to do! Christianity is differrent! It’s not what you need to do, its about whats already been done and do you belief in that!
Jesus, righteous, holy, perfect, without sin or defect, came and gave the only thing that could be given…His life!
This life He lived did not require death from Him, for He knew no sin.
For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
His righteous act of living, not ours, was deemed righteous and good before God.
What did he do with this righteousness? Gave it to us! “so that in him we might become the righteousness of God”
How did he give it to us? By taking our place, dieing a death we deserved.
This is the Gospel folks. Gospel literally means good news!
This is the gospel of Christ, the good news of Christ!
Not done because we’re good.
Not done because we have something to offer.
But because of love!
But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—
For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
This is the love that scripture shows us, that God gives us! No other love comes close!
Lets finish with the rest of todays verses..
Beloved, 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.
By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.
I know it’s short and not an in depth look at thses verses but.
This is the result of such love! That we love!
Beloved, let us love one another, for love 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.
Such a great gift brings real repentance, brings real change, brings real love for God, and for others.
Love...
1. What is it? True goodness to others by act and deed.
2. Where does it come from.. (God)
3. What happens to us through it. (Forgiveness, rebirth, life)
4. The relationship that came through it. (Abba, Father)
5. What love looks like or defined as. (Jesus)
6. Truth of love in a believers heart. (Love God, love others, repentance & obiedence)