Love is... For Everyone

Recap

We’ve spent a lot of time on love so far this week. Let’s just quickly recap what we have been talking about.

God’s Love - Free, not earned, abundant, offers life change.

Man’s Love - Worked for, not great, offers death.

Our Love needs to be - Like God’s love. We can do that through the power of Jesus Christ and the support of our church family.

Tonight, we are going to hone in on the most important part of what we have been discussing. Jesus love, specifically for us.

Let’s Read:

1 John 3:23 ESV

And this is his commandment, that we believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us.

Pray:

If you look at this passage it’s broken up into 2 parts.

John starts this verse by saying: “Now this his is command”, then he gives us two things that God would like us to do.

Believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ and

Love one another as he commanded us.

The second one, love one another, its something that we talked about last night at length and the night before a little bit too.

Tonight, I want to specifically talk about the fact that Jesus’ love, God’s love is for everyone here in the room.

First, I want to explain what the Gospel is. I know that a lot of you have already had it explained to you plainly, but I want to just do my due diligence here.

First there was Harmony

God created the Heavens and the Earth and everything in it and around it was perfect.

Then Came Sin

Sin Literally ruined everything. When eve took the apple from the tree sin entered the world. I’m honestly not sure why, but, people have been putting a really small weight on sin. Like “I’m just human”. But the thing that we have to understand is that sin is a ruiner, destroyer. Because of sin, relationships were destroyed forever. Us, God and Us, the earth and us. Literally everything was ruined.

Then Came Jesus

Jesus was born of the Virgin Mary. He came to the earth to live as a human. The bible is quite clear. Jesus was fully God and fully man. At the same time. Is that a bit confusing? Yes. But that doesn’t make it less real.

So Jesus came to minister to us as humans as well as to ultimately die for us. God is a Holy God so there has to be payment of some kind for sin and Romans is clear that the wages of sin is death. So then Jesus comes, he is perfect and wonderful and he handles sin by dying for us. Jesus was perfect and blameless and he died to cover that sin debt that we are all in. The Jewish people would kill animals and offer sacrifices with them, and food and other things to pay God for their sin but that sacrifice was never lasting because we would sin again!

The wages of sin is death. But the gift of God is eternal life.

The Gift is for us!

Jesus died for all of us. He rose again too! The bible says that he is in heaven with God even right now. He gave this gift to everyone. John 3:16 says “for God so loved the WORLD - EVERYONE”

We need Jesus’ Gift, to love well.

I think that there are 3 groups in this room tonight.

I think some of us have heard about Jesus’ gift of salvation, but haven’t done anything about it, or maybe it wasn’t clear enough for us to fully understand.

I think that some of us in the room think that we can just go out and be good people. We can just do all the loving that is found in the bible and be a-okay.

Some of us in this room, have accepted this gift and haven’t done anything about it. We are saved, but we are not doing what God has asked us to do at all.

So Group 1.

You’ve not accepted Christ yet.

You can right now. Right this very minute the bible says:

Romans 10:9–10 ESV

because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.

You can accept the eternal life gift of Jesus by simply saying believeing that Jesus is Lord and confessing that with your mouth.

Make sure you have that conversation with your counsler.

Group 2.

The world has lied to you.

Who here can drive?

Keep your hand up if you can drive stick?

Those of you that can’t drive stick. If I stuck you in an old jeep with a manual transmission, you wouldn’t be able to drive it. Some of you may figure it out, but not without some damage. Most of you wouldn’t get far without burning the thing up.

Life is a lot like that manual jeep. The world promises you that you don’t need a saving knowledge of Jesus you just need to figure out how to do it. So you see people struggle with their identity, who am I, what am I. Struggle with their purpose, struggle with their self worth… and you’re expected to love the way Jesus did with all that baggage?

I promise you, if you don’t have jesus in your heart this evening, you need him.

Not that Christians don’t have baggage. I have heaps. But I was able to surrender that baggage to Jesus and he carries it and helps me off load it because he died for it.

Group 2 - You need him, your life will change if you accept him. Please don’t go to bed without saying yes to him, confessing with your mouth and believing with your heart.

Group 3 - You know you have Jesus. You can drive that Jeep but you’re content to stay in the drive way not doing anything. My question to you is, what is holding you back? What is stopping you from moving on from that driveway?

Is it baggage? Jesus can handle it

Doubt? Give it to Jesus

Anger? Jesus

Sin you’re afraid to do battle with - Jesus

As a group, we are about to business with Jesus at this tree.

We want you all to go home, spiritually ready for a regrowth from Jesus so that you can be the you that God made you to be. Loving others, loving yourself in a healthy way and growing closer to God daily.

For a new leaf to grow, on a branch, the old one has to fall off.

This exercise doesn’t save you just believing in Jesus and confessing that he is Lord. But this exercise will help us put action to emotion. Give us a moment to remember. I am going to pray and you guys are going to be guided through this exercise.