Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

God is love.

I think there are times in our lives when that statement feels more true than at other times.

There are times when we would easily agree with that statement, and there are times when our mouth may state the words but our minds and hearts have a difficult time justifying the statement with the events we see and experience around us.

Statement comes from

Underline every time you see a word relating to love:

God’s Love is the Evidence of the Believer.

(7-8)

(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,

We show we belong to God when we love like God. (7-8a)

‘love’ =

15 times love used in this passage

common love vs. uncommon love

Common love (kind we see in the world) is love that gains you something.

What does this uncommon love look like?

Loving others when you gain nothing.

Agape = selfless love

no greater love than this -

Loving others at great expense.

Acts 2

Loving people who don’t love you back.

Luke 6:

Let’s face it - our Christian walk is really not expressed through the extreme cases (dying for our faith, loving enemies)

It is harder to live out the daily of our faith.

But that is where our faith makes all the difference.

It is hard to hug a porcupine

Instead of loving your enemy:

**love the one who irritates you

**love the one who cannot love you back

Uncommon love is the defining mark of a disciple of Jesus:

- Jesus washes his disciples’ feet

John 13:35

Whoever loves like this ‘has been born of God’

Nicodemus

This love is uncommon because it is not from us it is FROM GOD:

Carson:

Love, as Christians understand it, is not a human achievement; it is divine in origin, a gift from God.

If this love is a fruit of the Spirit then the production of this love in our lives has less to do with how hard we work to produce it and more to do with how hard we pray to receive it.

Gal

Is there an obvious display of an uncommon love that gives evidence to God in your life?

Francis Chan in his book, Crazy Love: Overwhelmed By a Relentless God, states:

“Do you know that nothing you do in this life will ever matter, unless it is about loving God and loving the people he has made?”

Is there an obvious display of an uncommon love that gives evidence to God in your life?

When ot

(8b) because God is love.

God loves because he IS love.

(8b)

The statement is not “God does love” - it is God IS love

It is not a statement of doing - it is a statement of being

You do flows from what you are.

i.e., I’m a pastor - at some time we going to talk about Jesus!

Why is that significant?

because it means that God cannot do anything that is NOT loving.

Theologian A.W. Tozer once stated,

“Nothing God ever does, or ever did, or ever will do, is separate from the love of God.”

That may be a hard statement to swallow for you right now, but it is the truth.

‘God is love’ is not to the exclusion of his other attributes:

God is spirit:

God is light:

*Notice: Because God’s nature is light, there is no darkness in him at all.

*God (and his people) love because it is in their nature.

God, because it is who he is as God, and his people because the Holy Spirit lives and works through them.

God’s Love is the Gift of the Believer.

(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.

God showed the world his love by sending Jesus.

(9)

3 ways sending Jesus showed God’s love:

God SENT Jesus

it is easy to love from a picture - it is something completely different to enter into their mess.

2. God sent Jesus to the WORLD

While in our rebellion against him, God sent his Son.

3. God sent Jesus to DISPLAY love

Jesus showed by example what God’s love really looks like.

healing the sick

touching the leper

feeding the hungry

honoring women

loving those called unlovable

eating with sinners

Jesus shared God’s love by satisfying God’s wrath.

(10)

(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.

Propitiation = atone = kippur

Atoning for what?

our sin.

Atoning from what? God’s wrath.

While God is indeed love we must never forget that he is also a God of wrath.

J.I. Packer summarizes: “God’s wrath in the Bible is never the capricious, self-indulgent, irritable, morally ignoble thing that human anger so often is.

It is, instead, a right and necessary reaction to objective moral evil” (Knowing God, 151).

Four truths about God’s wrath:

1) God’s Wrath Is Serious (fearful)

God’s wrath is not popular, but it is biblical

God is not a warm sugar cookie or a big plush teddy bear - He is a consuming fire.

Jesus is the Lion of Judah - not the Cowardly Lion of the Wizard of Oz

God is love, spirit, light, and also a consuming fire:

Heb 12:31

Jesus is the Lion of Judah - not the Cowardly Lion of the Wizard of Oz

2) God’s Wrath Is Just

The wrath of God is not in contradiction to the love of God.

In fact, it is because God is by nature love, that God’s wrath exists.

They are two sides of the same coin.

A willful rebellion against an eternal God deserves and eternal punishment.