Fully Devoted-4: Love Extended

Reading: 1John 4:7-21
 Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.  1John 4:7 (NIV)

I.   Love comes from God

     A.  When we go to God, we find Love

           1.  When we go sorry for our wrongdoing and with a deep desire to change, we find love.

                 a.  Not harsh judgement.

                 b.  Not stern warnings.

                 c.  Love with warnings mixed in as an expression of love.

           2.  When we go, not sure of what we’re looking for, we find love.

                 a.  Humans are born with a need for love.

                 b.  We need God’s love too, even if we don’t know it.

           3.  God loves us with a deeper love than we are capable of imagining.

                 a.  The love we experience from people is as imperfect and limited as people are.

                 b.  God’s love is a perfect love and an unlimited love.

     B.  God Creates love in us

           1.  When God gets a hold of us he creates love in us.

                 a.  Love begets love.

                 b.  God’s perfect love begets greater and greater love in us.

                 c.  God’s sends His Spirit to produce love in us.

           2.  Our love has it’s source in God’s love for us (v.10, 19)

                 a.  Look how God loves! Look! (vv.10-11)

                 b.  Because God loves us, we love the ones God loves. (v.19)

     C.  We love with God’s love (v. 12)

           1.  When we, as people who love God, love others, it’s God’s love that goes through us.

                 a.  God’s love is completed in us when that love is turned outward toward others.

                 b.  We can’t contain all of God’s love for us, so some spills out on the people around us!

           2.  People are captivated by God’s love in us.

                 a.  Many people have come to God because of the love the received from/through God’s people.

                 b.  Will McGinnis, bassist for Audio Adrenaline told us he found God through the love of God’s people.

II.  Living in love is living in God

     A.  God is Love (v.8, 16)

           1.  Not: Love is God

                 a.  Not everything that is called love comes from God.

                 b.  Not that God is no more than love.

           2.  God is so full of love you can’t meet Him and not be overwhelmed by it.

                 a.  Love pervades everything about God.

                 b.  We can’t experience God and not feel love any more that we could touch the sun and not feel heat.

     B.  Loving each other is Christ-likeness (v.17)

           1.  In as much as we love God’s people after the pattern of Jesus, we are Christ-like.

                 a.  Jesus loved people by serving their ultimate good.

                 b.  He was only harsh with the self-righteous, else he was patient and kind

           2.  We were never meant to hoard God’s love and keep it all to ourselves.

                 a.  God’s love is not suppose to be merely a private, personal thing.

                 b.  It’s suppose to spill out all over people!

           3.  As we who are forgiven are obligated to forgive, so we are obligated to love.

                 a.  We are forgiven and loved completely.

     C.  Love is evidence of God’s Hand on us

           1.  We wonder if God really has gotten a hold of us.

                 a.  You do and I do. Are we saved?

                 b.  Here’s part of the answer: do you feel God’s love spilling out toward His people?

           2.  When we love God’s people, we see evidence of His love working through us.

                 a.  Have you ever felt the impulse to care for someone in some way, not knowing why, for sure?

III. To Know God is to love His people

     A.  We Cannot meet God and be unloving (v.8, 20)

           1.  An encounter with God himself always fills us to overflowing with love.

                 a.  Many have claimed spiritual gain.

                 b.  Those who go about the business of loving people have had spiritual gain.

           2.  It’s impossible to love God but not people.

                 a.  We live in God’s presence when love is in the air (v.12)

                 b.  Those who claim say they are spiritual but who don’t express love are liars.

     B.  God Overflows with love for His people

           1.  In this Lenten season we reflect on God’s great love for us.

                 a.  Greater love has no one than this: that he lay down his life for his friends.

                 b.  For what did Jesus give up the glories of heaven to embrace the pain of the cross, except love itself

           2.  This is love. . . (v.10)

                 a.  This is love. This is love. This is love.

     C.  We are Reborn to love

           1.  Everyone who loves is born of God (v.7)

                 a.  We are reborn into the family of God

                 b.  There is love in that family.

                 c.  Are you a “chip off the old block”

           2.  To be reborn means our relationship with God is restored — and therefore our relationship with His people.

                 a.  I love God. God loves my sister. So I love my sister. And brother.

                 b.  Jesus died to fix this relationship between God and all of us.

           3.  You don’t have to make love inside of you. It’s there. you only have to let it out. Set it free!

The Bottom Line:

Song: More Like the Master (Red #325)