God is Love
1 John, The Fathers heart • Sermon • Submitted
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What is Love?
What is Love?
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There is more to this Christian life than resisting error & testing Spirits, the positive side is shown in the love Christians have for each other. john here says lets do it, lets live together in the love of God, can we do it?
Do you realise that the word love appears 25 times in these 15 verses.
Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.
So what is love?
How is the word used here? Love one another, Love is from God, it’s more than a feeling or emotion, because feelings & emotions change & if love is that then that means that Gods love towards us can change. What else.
Whoever loves knows God, whoever doesn’t, doesn’t know God because God is love, He never changes never, He loves mankind.
Now people who don’t know God will argue that & say that they love, but real love can only be found in God, listen so often people fall out of love, i’m not feeling it anymore & that is based on a feeling of whether you are making someone happy are you in line as what they want.
If your in a relationship & you are being knocked from pillar to post, that’s not love, that’s abuse. get out of there. You know we upset God all the time with the decisions we make but he still loves us.
Gods love being made manifest in Jesus, dwelling amongst us, sacrificing himself for us, to have a chance of life like it was intended to by God.
Let Jesus enter in fully & all that the world holds will not be able to hold you any longer. There is only one source of pure divine love & wherever that love is present you will know that the possessor has found it’s source in God, Gods love is absolutely selfless, He loves the unloving to make them love, putting away their Sin & perfecting their union with Him.
That’s not about us & our love or how we love, it’s all about Him, His love, that He loves us & sent His Son to die the most horrible of deaths for us, to pay the price, the ransom, do the time for our crime, however you want to put it. To take all the Sin that had ever been & will ever be committed on himself because of this love for us, So John says beloved: If God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
I talked the other week about being children of God & how we need to abide in Him & He will abide in us, here it is again in verse 12. No one has ever seen God, if we love one another god abides in us & this love is perfected in us.
God loves us beyond compare, there is no comparison that’s why what a friend iv’e found is so true & i know some people struggle with some of the lyrics like closer than a brother & more faithful than a mother, but he should be. He saved us from an eternity of death & has given us the opportunity for an eternity of life with God. In His sacrifice he put himself in harms way for you & me.
Some questions: Have you experienced Gods love? How have you experienced Gods love? How has God specifically made his love known to you?
So we are to love, i feel that i am constantly speaking about this & maybe i am but we need to be people that love if every Christian loved how Jesus loved there would be no empty or half full churches in fact we would probably have to have 3 or services every Sunday morning.
But do we do what we should be?
Imagine seeing a group of firefighters polishing their engine outside a burning building with people trapped at a top floor window. Obviously, there is nothing wrong with cleaning a fire-engine, but not while people are trapped in a burning building! Instead of ignoring their cries, the firefighters should have an overwhelming sense of urgency to rescue them. That’s the spirit that should be behind the task of evangelism. Only 2 percent of believers regularly share their faith with others. That means that 98 percent of the professing Body of Christ are lukewarm when it comes to obeying the Great Commission ().
A) Imagine seeing a group of firefighters polishing their engine outside a burning building with people trapped at a top floor window. Obviously, there is nothing wrong with cleaning a fire-engine, but not while people are trapped in a burning building! Instead of ignoring their cries, the firefighters should have an overwhelming sense of urgency to rescue them. That’s the spirit that should be behind the task of evangelism. Only 2 percent of believers regularly share their faith with others. That means that 98 percent of the professing Body of Christ are lukewarm when it comes to obeying the Great Commission ().
Imagine seeing a group of firefighters polishing their engine outside a burning building with people trapped at a top floor window. Obviously, there is nothing wrong with cleaning a fire-engine, but not while people are trapped in a burning building! Instead of ignoring their cries, the firefighters should have an overwhelming sense of urgency to rescue them. That’s the spirit that should be behind the task of evangelism. But according to Dr. Bill Bright of Campus Crusade for Christ, Only 2 percent of believers in America regularly share their faith with others. That means that 98 percent of the professing Body of Christ are lukewarm when it comes to obeying the Great Commission ().
Oswald J. Smith said, “Oh my friends, we are loaded down with countless church activities, while the real work of the Church, that of evangelizing and winning the lost, is almost entirely neglected.” We have polished the engines of worship, prayer, and praise and neglected the sober task given to us by God. A firefighter who ignores his responsibilities and allows people to perish in flames is not a firefighter; he is an impostor. How could we ignore our responsibility and allow the world to walk blindly into the fires of hell? If God’s love dwells in us, we must warn them. The Bible tells us to have compassion … save with fear, pulling them out of the fire; hating even the garment spotted by the flesh
And have mercy on those who doubt; save others by snatching them out of the fire; to others show mercy with fear, hating even the garment stained by the flesh.
If we don’t have love and compassion, then we don’t know God; we are impostors
Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.
Charles Spurgeon said, “Have you no wish for others to be saved? Then you are not saved yourself. Be sure of that.” Please, examine yourself to see if you are in the faith (). Don’t be part of the great multitude who called Jesus Lord, but refused to obey Him. It will be professing believers who will hear those fearful words, I never knew you: depart from me ().
Charles Spurgeon said, “Have you no wish for others to be saved? Then you are not saved yourself. Be sure of that.” Please, examine yourself to see if you are in the faith (). Don’t be part of the great multitude who called Jesus Lord, but refused to obey Him. It will be professing believers who will hear those fearful words.
“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’
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Theres an old Hymm onwards Christian soldiers, maybe we should sing a new one, when we look at our aversion to telling people why we have the hope we have.
Theres an old Hymm onwards Christian soldiers, maybe we should sing a new one, when we look at our aversion to telling people why we have the hope we have.
Found this called backward Christian soldiers.
Backward Christian soldiers, fleeing from the fight
With the cross of Jesus nearly out of sight.
Christ, our rightful master, stands against the foe
But forward into battle, we are loathe to go.
Like a mighty tortoise moves the Church of God
Brothers, we are treading where we’ ve always trod.
We are much divided, many bodies we
Having many doctrines, not much charity.
Crowns and thorns may perish, kingdoms rise and wane,
But the Church of Jesus hidden does remain.
Gates of hell should never’ gainst the Church prevail.
We have Christ’s own promise, but think that it will fail.
Sit here then, ye people, join our useless throng,
Blend with ours your voices in a feeble song.
Blessings, ease and comfort, ask from Christ the King
With our modern thinking, we don’t do a thing.
(Anonymous)
So we are to love, love leads to fellowship, His love leads us to spend more time with Him, spending more time with Him leads us to be more like Him which leads us to love more, love is the attribute that holds all the other attributes together, it’s not love is God, you cannot turn it around or weaken it by saying God is loving as if it was just one of his attribute. God is love is his very essence.
Verse 9 is almost the same as which shows who the author is the main thrust of this verse & is that God was motivated by love for humanity when he sent his son to give the opportunity of eternal life to all who will believe.
So love is a doing word, having recieved this love from God we are directed to love one another.
If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.
When Jesus washed the feet of the disciples & showed such great love & servanthood to them, we might have expected him to conclude by gesturing to his own feet being washed in return, but what he said was iv’e washed yours go wash others.
The proper way to love God in response to his love for us is to go out & love one another. This is what it says in .
This love will lead to practical action. Has anyone ever offended you then seek reconciliation not out of duty or because you have been told to, that’s not love that’s behaving well, but out of love you will do it.
John declares 3 essential truths about God & how he saves us.
That the Father sent the Son
That he Jesus was sent as the saviour of the world
Knowing & understanding Jesus is the foundation for abiding in Him.
It isn’t enough to know the facts about who Jesus is, we must confess the truth, the idea behind confess is “to be in agreement with”
We must agree with God about who Jesus is & we find out what God says about Jesus through his word, Listen you may know something without being in agreement with it. God demands our true agreement.
As we come to an end John has been writing about love but he doesn’t ignore the issue of truth, He doesn’t think it is enough for someone to have some kind of love in their life, if they do not confess that Jesus is the son of God. It’s not a matter of deciding between love or truth, we must have both.
Marshall says “To acknowledge that Jesus is the Son of God is not simply to make a statement about his metaphysical status but to express obedient trust in the one who possesses such a statement”.
Comfort, R. (2003). The Evidence Bible: Irrefutable Evidence for the Thinking Mind, Notes. (K. Cameron, Ed.) (p. 1644). Orlando, FL: Bridge-Logos.