Sermon Tone Analysis

The Love of the Father

1john2.15-

A group of First graders were getting a tour of a hospital when one had noticed something unusual.

After a while he couldn’t resist but had to ask the nurse who guided the tour, “Why does everybody here wash their hands every time they go in and out of a room?”

The Nurse replied, “For 2 reasons, they love health and hate germs.”

In more than one area of life love and hate go together.

There is the right kind of love for Christians to have and a wrong kind of love - a Love that God hates.

This love that God hates is a love of this worlds system and it is SIN...

What is Sin???

I like How John Piper said it...

“The Glory of God not Honored, The Holiness of God not reverenced, the greatness of God no admired, the power of God not praised, the truth of God not sought, the wisdom of God not esteemed, the beauty of God not treasured, the goodness of God not savored, the faithfulness of God not trusted, the commandments of God not obeyed, the justice of God not respected, the wrath of God not feared, the grace of God not cherished, the presence of God not prized, the person of God not loved… That is sin!!!”

John is warning Christians here to not have the wrong kind of love, and if you do, it will become clear who you belong to.

He gives us an imperative… “Do not love the world or the things in this world...”

These are explicit instructions, not implied advice for those who want a little more Jesus in their life.

There is a true test for believers here and litmus test for the church to see who amongst them is In Christ and who isn’t.

John is helping the early church reject false teaching coming from the Gnostics, who were confusing people with mixing Christs teachings with other spiritual teachings.

They were not marked by the Fathers love because of their rejection of Christ.

We, however, are to be marked by the Love of the Father.

So we need to know what the love of the Father is.

Let’s look to our text.

Now the only way we can really understand what John is saying here is to know what is meant by the words LOVE and WORLD.

If we have the wrong understand here, it would be easy to convince people that the Bible says we can Hate our planet, because we do not love the world or the things in the world… Yet john is not saying that.

He is also not saying Christians should abandon this world or live in seclusion.

John doesn’t stress that a Christians should separate himself from the world, rather that a believer would keep himself from a greater love for this world and the things in it.

So what is Love?

The world likes to say things like Love Wins… And what they mean by that is this… the emotion we feel for others is greater than any moral compass that religion would impose on us.

Therefore the rules of Love are not as we have been told in ages past, they have changed to being of higher value in making life decision, so do what you love, because Love wins and we can’t deny what someone desire on the inside… The world says LOVE is GOD, and so with it ordered that way, however you define Love, that is God in your life.

This stands diametrically opposed to God and his word.

And that is what is meant by the “world”, which is a system that stands diametrically opposed to God, his word and his people.

But What God’s Word declare about love?

GOD is LOVE!!! God’s word is the exact inverse of what the world would say about love.

How can we expect to have the right understanding of Love if we have only just come to know the Gospel?

How can we have the right perspective if we are only newly removed from this world and brought into God’s family?

What will guide our understanding?

The same thing that has guided God’s people for thousands of years… His word.

So what do we need to know about Love according to the Bible?

If God is Love, then how does he show that to us so we can understand Love?

So Love is God’s sacrifice for us before we were right.

Love goes first.

1john4.

So love is personified in Jesus who lived among us in the physical world, and now we live in him, who is Love!

Love sacrifices for those around them, by putting others before themselves.

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So Love being in the nature of God is steadfast and faithful, meaning it does not diminish over time.

We could go on and on about the nature of love but one more thing I would point you to.

One of the attributes of God is his self sufficiency.

Which means that God is not dependent on some other source, but rather he is the source of all things himself.

Think of the story of the burning bush that Moses saw… The bush was burning and yet the bush itself was not consumed, because it was not a fire that required a fuel source, rather it was a pure fire that was its own source.

Now think about the fact that God IS Love.

He being self sufficient and being Love means that he is the source of Love and needs no other fuel source for Love.

So now that we have been reoriented to what Love is, how does it inform our view of it.

Well, simply put, before knowing God we did not know Love.

We did not know a sacrifice that went first and considered others, a love that was personified in Christ, a love that could not be exhausted.

We only knew what emotions we feel when we take pleasure in something that feels good to us.

So the problem is we need to first experience the Love of God to know Love and understand love.

And so again scripture tells us this...

This is where we get love from.

Love is different than liking something or having strong emotions about someone.

Love is true affections, loyal devotion and intimate fellowship.

So our true affections and loyal devotion and our intimate fellowship is not awakened until we first receive it from God who is the source himself.

And John tells us to not aim our true affections, our loyal devotion and our intimate fellowship at the world.

Because it belongs to God first and foremost.

Yet what does he mean by World?

John is not saying “world” in reference to the physical place or material world around us.

Rather he is referring to the spiritual system… An ideology opposed to God.

Here is what the scriptures say about this concept.

The whole world lies in the power of the evil one.

So we are talking about a spiritual system that Satan dominates.

Satan blinds people who belong to that system in an effort to keep them from knowing the Gospel.

So the world is a system referred to as the sphere in which people are standing against God’s Gospel.

The world is diametrically opposed to God and is at odds with God as his enemy.

Rather he is referring to the spiritual system that Satan dominates, and holds opposition to God, his word and his people.

So when John is talking about the WORLD he is referring to the spiritual system that Satan dominates, and holds opposition to God, his word and his people.

Satan wants to blind people and replace God.

Rather he is referring to the spiritual system that Satan dominates, and holds opposition to God, his word and his people.

The “World” is a system of rebellion that seeks to replace God

As rightly put by the blind bard of Scotland, the gifted preacher George Matheson -

“Lord, let me not think the world is a PLACE!

That would lead me to under-rate my difficulties.

If the world were any particular place, I could easily get rid of it.

The world is within me.

I can carry it about to any place, and the place to which I carry it immediately becomes worldly.”

George Matheson

So when John says we are not to Love this world or the things in this world he is saying that we are not to have true affection, loyal devotion and intimate fellowship with the system of rebellion that seeks to replace God.

John is not talking about a single incident but about a lifestyle.

Not loving the World is a lifestyle that shows we have the Love of the Father in us.

John is not talking about a single incident but about a lifestyle.

Not loving the World is a lifestyle that shows we have the Love of the Father in us.

We could go more and more into the depth of what the implications of this is, but at the end of the day if we are better tacticians of the language than we are experts in experiencing this Love in the midst of this world, then it will be nothing more than cold orthodoxy that lacks any true Doxology, which is a theology in philosophy rather than practice...

What did I just say?

It is one thing to study this but it is another thing to live this.

If our study doesn’t bring us to a place where we live this, then it is dead religion and passionless principles about a God you know OF rather than the God you KNOW!

BAck to the text he finished this verse by saying that if we love this world

To round it our look at what he says to anyone who does love the world...

The Love of the Father is NOT IN HIM!

These things cannot co-exist in a true believer...

Some things just don’t go together; they are not compatible.

You can’t take a shower and play baseball at the same time.

You cannot whistle and keep your lips closed at the same time.

These things are simply incompatible.