(Week 12)
Notes
Transcript
Anouncments:
Anouncments:
All location young adults is this Thursday; At the Holly location 7 PM
Egg hunt, Good Friday, And Easter gatherings Are coming up; Will we share this with our community?
What are ways that we can step out of our comfort zone and invite people to these events so they may hear the gospel?
And what are ways that we can share the gospel with those in our community?
Summer is coming up; We have a lot planned and I’m excited for it But I’m gonna need your help.
If you would like to run point or start helping out with growth community in a bigger way, please come talk to me after we’re done tonight…
Opening Question:
Opening Question:
What is your first memory of being loved?
When was the first time that you realize that someone cared about you deeply or maybe the most memorable time that you can think of?
Within this room, how would we define love?
Is love and emotion a feeling
Is love an idea or an ideal for a theoretical concept
His love in action, Or gesture or something that we do
How would we define love?
“Love is an act of the will, accompanied by emotion, that leads to action on behalf of its object.” — Voddie Baucham
Today we live in a culture that believes love is for us to affirm, Celebrate, And conform To someone’s beliefs or demands…
But the Bible doesn’t ask us to be conformed… but to be transformed by the renewal of our mind
2 Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind…
As we open up scripture, I want us to allow God to maybe transform how we have seen love up until this point…
Allow God to use his scripture help us to recognize whether we are living in biblical love…
To help us recognize whether the love of Christ dwells in our hearts
17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love,
18 may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth,
19 and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
For us in this room, maybe we struggle to comprehend the fullness of God
Maybe we feel distant from the Lord
Maybe we feel like God has turned his back on us and life has become this mess and we can’t run to the father
If that’s the case, that may mean that we don’t understand the depth of God’s love for us
In Ephesians, Paul wants us to be rooted and grounded in love so that we can comprehend who we serve
We must understand the love of Christ in order to extend the same love to other others
And John sees that and we need to see
Lets look at our text…
Text:
Text:
7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God.
8 Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.
9 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.
10 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.
11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
12 No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.
Prayer:
Prayer:
John is continuing on in his appeal asking us to love…
And want me to look at versus seven through eight what do we see John saying?
1 John 7-12
7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God.
8 Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.
John opens up with this request or command. Let us love one another…
Where else in scripture have you seen that said??
35 By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
What is the significance of this statement???
Why do we love???
We were first loved
So that others may recognize Jesus
So that we may recognize Jesus in us.
We love out of this being rooted in love… And we see this in verse 9-10
9 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.
10 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.
We love because we were first loved
I want you to think about this before the world was created. God prepared the way for our salvation.
19 but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot.
20 He was foreknown before the foundation of the world but was made manifest in the last times for the sake of you
While we were dead in our sins, Christ died for us. It is by Grace we have been saved.
I want us to understand that something I want us to realize this…
You and I are not entitled to the love of God
You and I do not deserve the love of God
There is nothing you and I can do to earn the love of Christ
But God chooses to love us
And God chose to send his son to live the life we could not live
To die the death that we deserved so that he could be raised again and give us his righteousness
That’s what this passage is saying…
He has given us his righteousness. He is our propitiation the payment for the guarantee of our salvation….
23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,
10 as it is written: “None is righteous, no, not one;
11 no one understands; no one seeks for God.
12 All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.”
We need to recognize that this is our natural state
This is who we are apart from Christ
We need to understand this we need to recognize this because until we understand how desperately wicked and how desperately horrible we are
We will not understand how good our God is for what he has done
There’s a reality where, if we don’t understand the severity of our sin, we will never understand the reality and value of Christ sacrifice
turn to Luke 7:40-47
40 And Jesus answering said to him, “Simon, I have something to say to you.” And he answered, “Say it, Teacher.”
41 “A certain moneylender had two debtors. One owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty.
42 When they could not pay, he cancelled the debt of both. Now which of them will love him more?”
43 Simon answered, “The one, I suppose, for whom he cancelled the larger debt.” And he said to him, “You have judged rightly.”
44 Then turning toward the woman he said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? I entered your house; you gave me no water for my feet, but she has wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair.
45 You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in she has not ceased to kiss my feet.
46 You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment.
47 Therefore I tell you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven—for she loved much. But he who is forgiven little, loves little.”
This passage compares a person being forgiven the debt of 50,000 compared to 5,000
And the object lesson in this illustration is meant for us to recognize that those who are forgiven love, and those who are forgiven little love little
And I used to think that this meant that if somebody does a lot of sin and then comes to Christ, they love Jesus more
Or somebody sends a little bit and comes to Christ they love Jesus OK
But that’s not what this text is saying
This text is saying that you and I are dead apart from Christ
1 And you were dead in the trespasses and sins
2 in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—
3 among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.
4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us,
5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—
If you are in this room and you have given your life to Jesus, you have gone from death to life
From a child of wrath to a child of God
Complete transformation, not by our own power, but by his power
I don’t care about your testimony. I don’t care about your story whatever it is you have been forgiven much.
I have been forgiven much…
And because of that forgiveness
Because of his love for me and for you, we ought to love one another
Not out of this desire to be vindicated or this desire to be recognized or this desire to earn our way
But out of true love Because we have forgiven much… And this is what we see in verse 11
11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
12 No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.
So now that we know the source of our love…
Now that we know what we are rooted, and grounded in
How can we practically love one another?
What are things that we can do as a church body to love each each other?
And I don’t kiss me in this room in Sunday gathering how can we love as the church?
We can purposely go out of our way to meet someone new and make them feel welcomed…
We can purposely start conversations with the older generation within our church so that they feel that they are not being left out, but they in and are an Important part of the body
If we are extroverted, we can take the time to listen and hear from others
If we are introverted, we can step out of our comfort zone and share and talk and build relationship
We can sacrifice our time, Our desires and our finances for one another, and for Christ…
At times, love can mean forgiveness…
We look at the servant who is forgiven a great debt
And the servant who had a small debt who that servant wouldn’t forgive
There is a reality where our love isn’t just for Christ, but is for those around us and even those who hurt us…
The Bible says, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you
If you’re in this room and you are unwilling to pray for those who have hurt you
You are unwilling to pray and care for those within the body that you struggle to get along with
According to our passage, the love of Christ may not be in us
Because my love is not rooted in my desire or my emotions or my beliefs
It’s rooted in what Christ has done for me…And because of what he’s done for me, I must show that love to others
Because Christ didn’t only die for Zach he died for everyone who would believe…
So I wanted to take a minute and think who do you need to love?
Who do you need to forgive?
Who do you need to ask for forgiveness from?
What are practical steps that we can take to love one another like Jesus loves us??
Because if we As believers put conditions upon our love, why shouldn’t Christ put conditions upon his? PAUSE
Now I wanna make it clear… As people have physically or emotionally abused us or hurt us does not mean that we have to keep them in our live lives
But it does mean we have to forgive and pray for them…
Corbin was a woman who was kept in concentration camps… Her sister was brutally, abused and killed in front of her eyes
And eventually, after she was set free and was touring across the world, sharing her story and sharing what Christ had done in her life
One day, the man who brutally murdered and abused, her sister, came to her to ask for forgiveness
And she gave him her forgiveness, not by her own strength, but by the strength of Christ because she was rooted in his love… Not in her own emotion or strength, but in Christ
So if we struggle to love, we need to rule ourselves in the reality of what Christ has done for us
But there’s a possibility if we struggle to love that we either don’t understand what Christ has done for us
Or we haven’t been forgiven at all…
4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant
5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;
6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.
7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
8 Love never ends…
The love that we are called to is unconditional
It’s none of this world it is of God
And we are commanded to give this love to each other
But also receive this love for ourselves…
Christ died for you and me… Not just for others, but for you… Not just for you, but for Me also
There is no greater love than this to lay down one’s life for a friend
As we are commanded to love, are we willing to lay down our own pride to love the person we’ve never talked to
Are we willing to lay down our own pride and love people by sharing the gospel and our testimony?
Are we willing to love?
