The Love of God

God be praised how your voice is. Just fill this space.

We've come this morning to worship God, and to hear God's word to us to hear what God has to save, to us to hear what we shall do, and go forth and live and how we shall be. The missed. This morning's preparation to hear God's word. We are also with the backdrop that it's Mother's Day. What a great and wonderful day and Gene I'm going to remember that comment.

Mother's Day. It's a day that we remember. Has many women who have done so much. Whoever helped raise has helped us to become who we are with sacrifice greatly. And as we remember them, we also remember together with the biblical witness those many who have suffered much like Sarah and Hannah and Elizabeth. Those who have because of this poured, their love into others who have an Essence adopted others and sacrificed for them. Is rhinology for mothers, and those who have given all that they can. That's the backdrop in which we come this morning to God's word. As we do. So we have to acknowledge that part of in Mother's Day. We we we tend to remember all that our mothers have done for us. Their stories, we're account. And then somehow we go to the store and we find a card that is supposed to encapsulate all those many feelings. How much luck do you have with that?

Was wonderful sentiments that are in there, we shipped through the cards. We try to find the right card to the right sentiment and there are good sentiments such as you've always been there. Which is wonderful, but all the more meaningful when we can recount. In our mind, the many times in which that is true. Nava little Pastor secret to share with you this morning when we preach, it's far easier to preach from a narrative, a story, or even a parable. Because usually there's some kind of plot that everyone can follow along with and even if you kind of lose your way and the ongoing talking of the preacher, you can usually find your way back.

But when it's a letter, It's a little more difficult. This morning, we have a letter. And so in order to stay attached, I'm going to ask you to view it in the same way that we look at a card and I'm going to ask you to pay attention to a few sentiments. I want to give you those sentiments before. I even read the passage so that you have a way to listen and perhaps, take in, what is being said. So you ready before? Setting it sentiments. Born of God.

Love. Commandment. Concur. Born of God. Love commandment conqueror. Or for those of you are already hungry, instead of a BLT at the blcc.

Now that's all good but just like Mother's Day gives us a reason for getting the card and expressing our feelings. It's probably helping helpful for us to know why these sentiments are important. There's an underlying question in our passage today and it's simply this. Who is it that overcomes the world. Who is it? That overcomes the world and other words. How do we live in this world? And how do we survive and get along and even thrive? Who is it? That overcomes the world? Born of God. Love commandment conqueror. Let's listen. Now for the word of the Lord, let's prank on Mighty. God, may you direct our time together, may your spirit Truly move our hearts. Move us a step closer to you guide us to follow more willingly into your ways. Move it every bit of us to be more fully committed to you.

We pray all this Jesus. Trusting, you to open your word to us. And it's in your name, we pray. Amen.

reading for the letter first, John The fifth chapter, the first five verses listen out for the word of the Lord. Everyone. Everyone who believes that, Jesus is the Christ. Has been born of God.

And everyone who loves the father loves, Whoever has been born of him.

By this, we know that we love the children of God. When we love God and obey his Commandments.

For this is the love of God, that we keep his Commandments and his Commandments are not burdensome. For everyone who has been born of God, overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world. Our faith.

Who is it? That overcomes the world except the one. Who believes that. Jesus is the son of God.

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Who is it? That overcomes the world? That's the question being posed to us. That's the question. We're being asked to answer and more importantly, how is it that we do that? How do we actually overcome and Conquer? How do we live in this world? In this Strife? In this struggle,

We need to turn on the news, only for a few moments to hear all manner of difficulties.

We can pull out our smartphone for just a moment and see everything that we don't want to see. So, how is it that we overcome?

Would you sell through the love of God? The love of God. The love of God fashion and frames and gives purpose to the for sentiments that we're going to look at together this morning those sentiments that we're going to just like the sentiments on a card that we're going to Envision, what's behind those sentiments? And what keeps those? Four altogether, what drives them? What brings them about is the love of God, For sentiments born of God. Love commandment conqueror.

Born of God.

Born of God. What is John saying? Born of God, he is really talking about that sense of belonging. A being part of the family of God. Belonging.

How is it that we belong? How is it that we become born of God? John makes it very simple. You are born of God, if you believe that Jesus is the Christ.

If you believe Jesus is the Christ. You are born of God, you be long. It becomes kind of our birth certificate or even more directly, our adoption certificate. That were born into the family of God, if we believe that Jesus is the Christ.

What are we saying? To say that he is the Christ, is to say that he is the anointed one. That he is the one that God promised All Through the Ages. The one that was promised that God would send

to restore us back into God's family. To bring us home. The one that God promised. the early Christians were saying, Was identified in Jesus. That Jesus is the Christ, the anointed one, the one whom God sent. That's why we gather every Sunday to acknowledge that Jesus is the Christ. And when we say that, he's the one who was to restore us, we're talkin particularly about the fact that he has come to take on. Our Brokenness. Namely, our sinfulness. Everything we've done have failed to do. Everything that separates us from God, everything past present, and future. Jesus has come to take our place.

the take our Brokenness, our sinfulness Upon him. That's a good news of Jesus Christ that he is taken and changed exchange places with us. And to believe this. To believe that he's paid the price. and he's taking on the responsibility of who we were and are to believe this. Is to gain entry into the family of God to become one of the children of God to be born of God. John spends all through his letter that emphasis that Jesus is the one who makes us whole and brings us back to God, who makes us born of God.

Now. That leads to the next sentiment love. I'm getting a little bit of feedback here.

It's more than just your eyes. Love. Well, that would seem to be fairly simple. We just talked about the love of God, it seems in some way we've already covered that aspect of love because we just talked about how God loves us so much, that he sent his son to die for us to take on our sins and to die in our place. We've already talked about love. So why don't we move on?

Because the love that John is talking about. Is our love.

John makes a shift from talking about God's love and begins to talk about our love. And put it very, simply, he adds a component to our belief. he says, it's only if we actually love Our brothers are sisters are fellow children of God if we love them.

Just as God loved them. Then we truly believe that Jesus is the Christ. It's kind of a faith without works is dead. It's the idea that hey you can say you believe that Jesus is the Christ, but if you are unwilling to love your fellow brother or sister in the face, your fellow child of God, if you are unwilling to do that. Then you don't really believe that Jesus is the Christ.

Now, that is a challenge. That hits us right here. because quite frankly, we know one another You know how siblings are? I don't know about you, but most siblings that I observed, they sometimes don't have their best moments with one another.

Your siblings really know each other. Bacon, get underneath one another skin. They got each other's buttons, they know exactly how to push the other one as well as they know when the other sibling is being selfish. They can smell it. A mile away long before anyone else. Can observe it, they are infinitely aware of one another's Brokenness. My sister and I got Star Wars glasses from McDonald's when we were children. Back when Star Wars came out originally And we had these Star Wars glasses from McDonald's. Each of us had one, and my parents could not tell them apart. They were identical in every way to my parents, but for my sister, and I, every time they were brought out. No, that's Kaylee's or no. That's Kevin's. And my parents would look an absolute the Wilderness in it. What you want? It was a mediately apparent. You see in the lower left-hand corner. Of Darth, Vader's mask. Near his mouth. There was a small space in which the paint did not exist. On one of the two glasses

No, Darth Vader was not the only image on that class. Every other character was on that class. But we knew whose glass was whose and we knew it instantly. Siblings know, the difficulties and the problems with the other siblings to the infinite detail. We have the record of wrongs down to a tee and we've signed the documents.

John is speaking. To believers. Who are struggling?

and he saying to them, look If we believe that Jesus is the Christ. The one who died for all of our sins.

Then the next step of that action of belief. Is the actually love in the same way that he loved us to love our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ. Knowing full. Well,

In the same way that God can see everything. Knowing full. Well, all the faults, all the wrongs, all the Brokenness. Well, that doesn't mean we don't address those and work on them and work together on them. But To forgive. And to love fully.

Your sentiments are? Being bored of God.

And to love our fellow Believers with the same. Love that Jesus loved us. And that brings us to the third sentiment.

The third sentiment of commandment. Commandant. We've got that. The Ten Commandments are, what? Usually come to mind, right away. If we did a quiz right now, I suspect we could get all 10 and maybe we need to be able to get them in order. We can give each other hints about the first four Commandments are about loving God. And the next six Commandments are about loving one. Another We might even take the stuff to talk about the summary of The Commandments, the summary of the law that you should love the Lord, your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind.

And the second part, you shall love your neighbor as you love yourself. Those two summarized Commandments. Loving God and loving our neighbor that sums up the Commandments. We've got the Commandments. What more do we need to discuss?

The Commandment that John is referencing. and that he writes about throughout his letter,

Is the commandant of the love of God.

as Jesus said to us, To his disciples in his own. And the Gospel of John, I give you a new commandment. That you love one, another.

It's a Commandment that is old. Old from the very beginning. From the very beginning of creation, when God loved and created the world. It's Commandment that goes back to the beginning of Christ Church as as those early Believers began to realize the relief. I'm no longer having sin held against us and that God has welcomed us into God's family.

And it is a commandment. The John points out. Exists. And is realized. Eunos.

It is a Commandment that extends Beyond just our Brothers and Sisters in Christ, but extends into the world, it is a commandment to love. Hello.

Is the Commandment that we are told to keep, you know, what is to keep. If you keep something, you can hold it tight, you kind of guard it. If you keeping something for someone you, you say, well I'm kind of protecting that I'm holding on to that for someone. God has put in charge us in charge of God's love to keep that commandment.

It's a call upon us. To remember who we are.

That were no longer.

Just our name.

We're no longer just from our particular family set. but we now our children of God,

that we have a family crest. A Signet ring. Symbol. And all of it is love.

that when we Embark out into the world, there is an expectation that we are bearing. We are keeping the Commandment to love that, others can recognize God, the father and his son Jesus the Christ by our actions of love.

We are called to carry this commandment into the world.

We are called to use love. In the face of tremendous difficulties for, we know the world were going into, it is not easy. And yet, John writes that the Commandments are not burdensome. Oh, wait a minute John. You just told me I had to get along with my brother and sister and quite frankly. And now you want me to get along with everyone else to love everyone else? You're telling me this is not burdensome

and the reason John is telling us this, Because we're not doing it on our own.

She we have been released. I'm worrying about our own identity, making our own self. We are now children of God. We are now released to be his children and to love. And leave the rest of it up to God. We've been given the spirit of God to go forth in that love. To go forth into a world that is broken. And in need of healing. We can ask ourselves, can we really do this?

And we are reminded of those who gone into the depths of what it means. That God loves us so deeply.

We think of Cory ten, Boom. Who she together with her sister? We're taking into a Nazi. Prison camp concentration camp. Her sister dies while in that concentration camp.

But together, before her death, and even after Cory continues to minister to the other women and lead them to Christ.

It's when she gets out. Know, she finds one of her most difficult tests. She's speaking to a large room. She has this and Sharon about the love of God and how we need to forgive and, and afterwards people come up to talk to her. And there's one gentleman who Waits quietly. Tom Austin, cleared out, and he comes up to her and he says, I am so thankful for what you said, but I need to know. Do you really believe it?

As he's asking that. Corey is in a position where she is able to immediately identify him as one of the guards. Of that concentration camp. Who had made her life very difficult.

In that moment, she had to search. Do I believe it?

Do I really believe that God's love is so deep? I forgive my sins. The sins of my brothers and sisters. and even those who are seeking to belong, To be born of God.

John and Dustin says, we are released. From all the reasons that we might say enough.

And to trust fully in God.

Which brings us to the last sentiment. To overcome.

The language is Victory overcome, it plays back and forth, but it is to overcome the barriers and the struggles. We encounter in this world.

The church.

The Church of Jesus Christ.

There have been those who lift up all the failings and all the faults of what has happened in the church through the centuries.

But I noticed that they're not quick to lift up all that the church has done in the name of Jesus Christ. In the actions of love.

Hospitals. Schools. Going into places. That no one else will go.

Ministering to people when no one else will.

Why do people do this?

The whole world wants to know. Why do people take such an enormous risks? Why do they put their life in jeopardy?

Because they've overcome.

They've overcome the fear of death.

They have trusted that God has sent them. so that others Might be born of God. So that others might know the love of God.

I'm this Sunday, we spend a lot of time talking about the sacrifices of our mothers. I'll get it again the empty themselves so that we might be filled and grow, and develop.

What a fitting example.

Of God who sent his son? His only son. Die for you to die for me. That we might overcome.

May God be praised. Let us pray.