Sermon Tone Analysis

His Love, Our Love

A sermon on 1 John 3:10-4:21 at Christ the King on 3~/26~/06

 

*Prayer:  *Father, we come now to study your Word.

Help us, by your Spirit, to understanding it.

And help us, by your Spirit to apply it rightly to our lives.

We ask this for the glory of Christ and the glory of His church.

Amen.*

*

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*Introduction:  *In his /Autobiography, /Mark Twain wrote, “Repetition is a mighty power in the domain of humor.

If frequently used, nearly any precisely worded and unchanged formula will eventually compel laughter if it be gravely and earnestly repeated, at intervals, five or six times.”

Twain knew, from experience, from trial and success, the truth of this claim.

In his second lecture of his first lecture tour of the United States, he began his talk “with a scheme so daring a nature,” as he put it, that he wondered how he “ever had the courage to carry it through.”

He began his talk by reciting, in a level, colorless, monotonous voice a short story of no interest, and certainly no humor.

His first telling of the story was met with dead silence, as he anticipated.

Fifteen hundred people stared at him with looks of sorrow, insult, resentment, and pity.

Twain tried to look embarrassed.

For a while he said nothing, but stood fumbling his hands, trying to appeal to his audience for sympathy.

Then, he began again.

He told the same story in the same way.

Again, he was met with looks of confusion and indignation.

Twain paused and started up again.

He told the same story in the same way for the third time.

But this time, the reaction was quite different.

“All of a sudden,” Twain recalls, “the front row recognized [the joke of it] and broke into a laugh.

It spread back, and back, and back, to the furthest verge of the place; then swept forward again, and then back again, and at the end of a minute the laughter was as universal and as thunderously noisy as a tempest.”

Forty years after the fact, Twain wrote of that laughter, saying, “It was a heavenly sound to me.”

And one of his colleagues called this whole idea and event, “a triumph of art.”[1]

The art of repetition can be used in a number of ways.

It can, as Twain proved, be used to produce laughter.

But the art of repetition can also be used to produce other results.

And here in this lengthy passage of Scripture that was just read, repetition is used to produce in us not riotous laughter, but sober reflection, sober reflection on the theme of love.

Do you know how many times the word *“love” *is repeated in our text?

It is repeated 39 times!

That is, the words*- */love, loves, loved, and beloved/*- *are used 39 times in this text, averaging more than one occurrence per verse.

Now, to put that into perspective, ‘love’ is address here more than in the first four books of the Bible put together, and more than in Isaiah and Jeremiah (those big books of prophecy), and more than the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Mark and the Gospel of Luke.

In fact, our text (perhaps next to 1 Corinthians 13) is the most highly concentrated section on the theme of love in the whole of Scripture.

So, if you are looking for love this morning (in the Bible, that is), it is here you will find it!

John loves love.

He, of all the New Testament authors, loves to talk about this great theme.

That is why some older Christian writers have called him, “The doctor of love,” or “the theologian of love.”

Well, this morning, let us sit in his class, and see what this professor of passion, this doctor of love has to teach.

Now, John certainly says a lot about love, but he also doesn’t say much.

What I mean is that he says a lot of the same thing over and over and over again (which is typical of how John writes).

He uses many of the same words to express the same ideas.

Which makes it easy to recognize his point, or to find a verse or two or three to summarize his thought.

My favorite summary verse of this whole section of Scripture is 4:11.

Look there with me.

Here’s what today’s message is all about.

*“Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.”

*So, do you see the two-point sermon John has laid before us?

I hardly have to do any work today.

He has done it all for me.

/Point One:/  God has loved us.

/Point Two:/  We ought to love one another.

It is that simple, at least that simple to say.

To do, however I fear, is quite another matter.

!!!! God Has Loved Us

 

But a matter that John (I think) acknowledges himself.

For that is why he builds us up (builds up our call to love) upon the sure foundation of God and His love.

There are only a few *“God is…”* statements in the Bible, and John gives us three of the most memorable.

In his Gospel, in John 4:24, he records Jesus’ words to the Samarian woman, *“God is Spirit.”*

And here in /First John/, we are told, near the beginning (in 1:5) *“God is light,” *and now towards the end (both in 4:8 and in 4:16) *“God is love.”*

/God is love-/* *What a remarkable statement!

What a profound truth!

What a thought to dwell upon and to build upon.

We might say, “So and so is a very loving person.”

But what is said here is different than that.

John is not saying that ‘love’ is a quality God possesses; rather he is saying ‘love’ is the essence of God’s divine being.[2]

The other morning as I was doing my daily devotions, joined (as usual these days) with my two early bird daughters, I opened my Bible to 1 John 4:8 and I had my four-year-old, Lily, sound out and read aloud three words, G-o-d i-s l-o-v-e.

So, with precision phonics she said, *“God is love.”

*“That’s right,” I said, “Very good.

*“God is love.”*

Now, at first that little reading exercise pleased me very much, both academically and spiritually.

Yet, it didn’t take long for a strange sinking feeling to overwhelm my soul.

My conscience, my dear, precious, sensitive conscience (molded I hope by the whole counsel of Scripture) convicted me that I needed to clarify this concept of God as love.

So, convinced that it was necessary to define better both God and His love, I quickly rectified the situation and had my daughter recite that entire Westminster Confession of Faith (in Latin).

No, what I did was I clarified what she read about God by teaching her about God’s holiness and our sinfulness and then the love of God shown in the sending of Jesus Christ, His Son.

Now, you may think I’m a nutcase.

Or you may think I was a bit overbearing or overprotective.

And perhaps I was to a certain extent.

But, you know what, I think that just as it is okay to be overprotective with my daughter’s purity of body, so too is it okay to be overprotective with her purity of mind.

I want my children to know who God is.

I want the picture to be as big and as clear as possible.

It is that same burden of conscience that compels me to clarify for you this same concept.

For I don’t have to tell you that there is a great difference between how people today define God’s love and how the apostle John defines it.

Today’s concept of a loving God or a God whose very essence is love is that He cannot and will not judge anything or anyone.

Love equals tolerance.

So, *“God is love”* means to many in our culture, and to some in the church, God is tolerant, tolerant of most moral choices and lifestyles, and tolerant of all or almost all theological perspectives.

This is the god of the flower children fully blossomed!

Our text, however, defines God and His love quite differently.

God’s essence finds definition in His actions.

Do you see how John fills in this picture?

He teaches us that God’s love is demonstrated in Christ, in Christ’s incarnation and in Christ’s crucifixion.

4:8 is where we find the phrase, *“God is love.”*

But look at its immediate context!

Starting with v.8, we read, *“Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.

*[v.9]

*In this the love of God was made manifest among us, *[how?] *that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him.

*[v.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.”

*So, when we think or speak those great words, *“God is love”* we ought never to do so without the thought of this essence being explained and illustrated in the life and death of Christ.