No Spectators - 05.02.2021

Scripture: 1 John 4:7-21

1 John 4:7–21 NLT

Dear friends, let us continue to love one another, for love comes from God. Anyone who loves is a child of God and knows God. But anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love. God showed how much he loved us by sending his one and only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him. This is real love—not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins. Dear friends, since God loved us that much, we surely ought to love each other. No one has ever seen God. But if we love each other, God lives in us, and his love is brought to full expression in us. And God has given us his Spirit as proof that we live in him and he in us. Furthermore, we have seen with our own eyes and now testify that the Father sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. All who declare that Jesus is the Son of God have God living in them, and they live in God. We know how much God loves us, and we have put our trust in his love. God is love, and all who live in love live in God, and God lives in them. And as we live in God, our love grows more perfect. So we will not be afraid on the day of judgment, but we can face him with confidence because we live like Jesus here in this world. Such love has no fear, because perfect love expels all fear. If we are afraid, it is for fear of punishment, and this shows that we have not fully experienced his perfect love. We love each other* because he loved us first. If someone says, “I love God,” but hates a fellow believer,* that person is a liar; for if we don’t love people we can see, how can we love God, whom we cannot see? And he has given us this command: Those who love God must also love their fellow believers.*

Hook

The Doldrums from the Phantom Tollbooth

Moving beyond expectations, through the doldrums.

Thinking and doing more than the status quo.

God’s love calls us out of the ordinary into abundant life.

Thesis: There are no spectators among God’s people. All who are touched by His love are transformed by His love.

Perfect Love Alive in Us

Nicodemus was curious about the teachings of Jesus, but his common sense and personal experience were a stumbling block to faith. Jesus could not answer the kinds of questions he was asking, because he was unwilling to accept some of the basic principles that Jesus was trying to teach.

John 3:10–12 NLT

Jesus replied, “You are a respected Jewish teacher, and yet you don’t understand these things? I assure you, we tell you what we know and have seen, and yet you won’t believe our testimony. But if you don’t believe me when I tell you about earthly things, how can you possibly believe if I tell you about heavenly things?

Centuries have passed and much has been written and preached since Jesus spoke with Nicodemus one fateful evening. Yet we still struggle just as Nicodemus struggled. We are curious about these teachings of Jesus, but when we try to put his teachings into practice, we find ourselves summarizing them in was that leave large pieces of those teachings out, or simply scratching our heads and not knowing where to start.

These teachings carry on in the New Testament letters, where we often face the same struggles. Our passage today is one of the most used and abused examples. We take fourteen verses and summarize it into three words: “God is love”. Then we call anything we want love, and ascribe God’s presence and will to anything that we have named “love”. It does not take long before God becomes anything and everything. When God is anything and everything, any and every act becomes excusable, and even applaudable, if you can justify it as connected to God through some form of love.

At that point we have long left letting God speak for Himself and have begun building a theology around what we want rather than Who God is.

So let’s name one of those stumbling blocks in our theology today: It doesn’t make sense that God’s perfect love could live in us.

God is good, all the time, and all the time, God is good. We say that like a creed, a statement of faith.

Yet when God gets inside us, we sometimes think His power is diminished, or broken, or our human nature dilutes some of His goodness.

However, perfect love is not absolute or unchanging

It grows continually.

In fact, like wind, if it doesn’t move, it ceases to exist at all.

That’s why John tells us that God is love. If we know God, we know love. If God lives in us, than His love comes out of us, reaching everyone around us.

When we are in the right relationship with God, he transforms us from jars of grace into fountains of grace. As we bow in surrender to God’s will, following our Good Shepherd where He leads us, we become co-laborers with Christ in His mission to conquer the world in God’s love and grace.

No Room for Fear

In John 15, Jesus compares us to branches living in a vine. These branches can do nothing on their own, but when they are connected into the vine, the life of the vine grows out of them in unstoppable love. That is a beautiful picture of Who God is and Who we are meant to be, living in closer relationship with Him. However, the real-life experience of that sometimes feels like someone put rocket fuel in our car. Our normal life driving 45 mph down the road is disrupted when we suddenly find that we have the potential to go 1000 mph.

That power of God’s Holy Spirit living in us comes with the responsibility of using it for God. It also brings the temptation to doubt God’s power working in us, or to be afraid of where it might carry us.

Fear does not fit in a heart full of God’s love

Because love of God comes with trust

Fear pulls our focus in on ourselves, away from God and others

We cannot follow two things going different directions.

John tells us that God’s love does not live with fear. We choose one or the others. You may have heard that the more you follow God, the more you paint a target on your back for the devil. That is not the voice of truth, that is the voice of fear that tells us that. We may feel tempted to pull away from God so that we have less to fear, that is just a way of letting fear lead us instead of God.

If we love God we trust Him. When He says he is the Lord of all Creation, that He has the Whole World in His hands, and that He was willing to come and die just to show us that He loved us, there is no more room for fear. We have either experienced God’s love and trust Him or we do not yet believe Him. There is no room for fear in our lives.

Does that mean we never feel afraid?

No. It means that we follow our faith and what we know is true, rather than following our temporary feelings.

True faith and true courage are both most noticeable in the face of fear, not in the lack of it.

John says we are afraid to follow God because we are afraid of punishment. Either we are afraid of what we have done, that we do not want anyone to know about, or we are afraid of what we might do: mess up! We think God doesn’t know us or He would not have chosen us to carry His grace and love into the world.

But God’s love finds its perfection in transforming us. He is not better off without us. He is revealed as the Great Redeemer as He works through us.

No Room for Hate Either

If we deceive ourselves into thinking God’s grace is just for us to receive and that we have no role in sharing it beyond us, we can allow ourselves to despise others. We cut ourselves off from God when we refuse to give others the same grace God gives us. Just as you cannot be led by fear and God’s love at the same time, it is also true that you cannot love God and hate others.

John points out both in this letter and his gospel that this love for one another starts in the family of God. If brothers and sisters in the church and among churches refuse to love one another, they show that they either don’t believe everything they preach and teach, or it doesn’t work.

That is what is at stake here. When we agree to follow Jesus, the world judges Jesus based on what it sees in you and I.

You are not a spectator, sitting back, watching what God is doing around you. You are His masterpiece.

What do you need to live a life as a masterpiece of God?

Communion Explanation