All right. How are we doing this morning? All right. Isn't it awesome to see college kids giving up a summer to go share the gospel? Isn't that sweet? Yeah. I mean, you could cheer for that if you wanted to, but if you don't want to, that's fine. I get it, man. It is. It is awesome being a part of a church that loves the next generation, that supports the next generation. And it's sweet seeing the next generation not only reach with the gospel, but being equipped and sent out to go share the gospel with other people. And so it's what a sweet ministry. We're excited to see the work that God is doing in the salt company here. Uh, just a shout out. You'll hear it at the end of the service as well. But we're having a night tonight where whole church is invited to just hear more about what God is doing in salt company. And so, uh, that is at four p m this evening back here, we invite everyone to come back and hear what God is doing there. So excited to see what God's doing in the salt company. Uh, this morning we're jumping back into first John. You guys ready? All right, first John, chapter four. You can go ahead and open up there if you want. Uh, as you flip there, we are starting a section of First John that is all about this idea of love. And so as we hear about love over the next few weeks, we're going to hear it a lot and we're going to hear it, I think five times in the two verses we're looking at today. And over the next fourteen verses, we're going to hear it twenty seven times. I don't know if you're good at quick math. That's about two times a verse that we're going to hear. It loves a big deal. And because love is a big deal and we're starting a section about love, they decided to bring the most lovable pastor up to start off this section. So, um, I know, I know, I know, it's just kidding, but love is a big deal. We see it in this passage, we see it in the passages we're going to keep looking at, and we see it in our culture too. We see love being a big deal and it's celebrated all over the place. I just did a wedding on Friday and at this wedding, like most other weddings, you have hundreds of people coming together and they're celebrating the love between two individuals and they're watching them get married, exchange vows, exchange rings, and thousands of dollars, sometimes tens of thousands of dollars, which might be too much, but that's a conversation for another time. Goes into planning these weddings a bunch of time. Goes into planning these weddings because love is a big deal. Marriage is a big deal, and love is a big deal. But far too often we get love wrong. And that's not hard to see. Like different people have different ideas of what love means. It's an emotion. It's a feeling. It's a passion that you have. We use love to talk about our kids and our favorite sports teams talk about. We use love to talk about our spouse and brisket. Like you, we use love to talk about a lot of different things and there can be some confusion. And oftentimes we just get love wrong and not just the idea of love, but we get love for one another wrong. And you hear things sometimes like, man, you just need to love yourself. If you really love yourself, then you'll be able to love other people. Then you can worry about loving others as long as you love yourself first. I'm like, really? Is that love? Is that the love that the Bible talks about with all of these wrong ways of love? We need to know how do we get love, right? How do we get love right? And what's at stake if we don't? How do we get love right. And what's at stake if we don't get love right? And that's where John is going. As we jump into these first two verses in this section, verses seven and eight of John chapter four. Let's read it together. It says, beloved, let us love one another. Remember when John says, beloved, he's talking like, my dear children, this is a word of affection. So even as John is starting to write to these people or is writing to them, he's displaying love for them. And he says, let us love one another. And this one another is primarily the idea of loving one another within the church. Love all people. Yes, absolutely. We see that in Scripture, but specifically those in the household of God. And so John is starting to give some instruction of what does this love for one another in the body of Christ look like? So he says, beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God. And whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God because God is love. So John wants us to get love, right? And he shows us how to get love right. And he's really been kind of doing this throughout a lot of the letter we saw a few weeks back, I believe at in chapter three, we see what it means to love one another. He talks a lot about that in chapter three. And so this idea of loving one another isn't a new message from John, even in this letter. But this time, John isn't just telling us to love one another or to have love for one another. He's giving us a theological reason why he's giving us information we need to know in order to love one another the way that we ought to love one another. And so he's giving us a theological framework for our love. And as John does this, he's going to approach it very logically, which I appreciate. And he starts by helping us understand what love is and where love comes from. And so we're going to start looking at John's argument by actually looking at the last few words of verse eight. And these last few words of verse eight are probably the most well known verses or most well-known words and phrases in all of First John. And this is what it says at the end of verse eight. God is love. This phrase is known not just by Christians, but by non-Christians as well. It's a theologically rich phrase, but we also see this phrase taken and twisted and turned around by so many people. People take the phrase God is love, and instead of seeing it as a great theological truth that it is, they take God is love and they turn it into love is God. And they make that subtle change that has significant impact. They take this truth of God as love and turn it into love. Is God that your feeling of love, as if love was purely an emotion or your happiness, as if love and happiness are the same thing. Is God the ruling thing of your life, and this is how it ends up being treated by people all over the place. Maybe even some of you in this room where instead of God is love, you're focused on love is God. And when you take this and you turn it around and you make and you make the phrase love is God, at least to all kinds of sinfulness leads to all kinds of issues. We see people turn it around in the LGBTQ community, people using it to justify living with their boyfriends and girlfriends, people cheating on spouses, people seeking divorce instead of reconciliation, or just pursuing their own pet sins all in the name of love because it makes me feel good. It's what I like. It's what I want to pursue. It's what I think is best for me. And they take this concept and they let the they start letting sin enter their life because they have Misplaced what love really is. When you start putting love before the God who is love, you lead yourself into a life of sin and rebellion. And when love is God, you make your idea of love or the world's idea of love the most important thing in your life. And the world's idea of love is self love. It's what makes you satisfied, what fulfills you, what makes you happy. What are you going to pursue for your own benefit? What fills your bucket? And when love is God, you're saying there's nothing more important than me feeling loved by myself, others, and the world. And this world has taken the great truth of God is love and turned it around and said, Love is God. And when that happens, it leads to a life of addiction, debt, divorce, and a life of unfulfillment that's always chasing, being fulfilled. Guys. So don't get this backwards. Love is not God, but God is love. And John wants us to know that. He wants us to define love by who God is, not define God by what the world thinks love is. And his claim is that God is love. And here's what that means. God isn't just loving though he is, and he doesn't just have loving acts, which he does. But God is love. The essence of who he is. Very part of his nature is love. And that means that everything God does is rooted in love. And it means that God gets to be the one who defines the love. In fact, there's two things I want you to get from this part of God is love. The first is that if God is love, that means God gets to define love. If he is love, then he defines it. And we live in a world that wants to hijack what love actually is and what love means. But what does the God who is love say? Love means what happens when we let God define love? What do we see about love then? You might be familiar with this passage. Maybe you've heard it read at weddings before, but first Corinthians thirteen talks about God's definition of love. Says love is patient and kind. Love does not envy or boast. It is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way. It is not irritable or resentful. It does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. That's how the God who is love defines love. That's what. That's how the God who is love defines what love looks like lived out among his people. So don't buy into the worldly lies and deceptions of love. Don't get this backward. Don't let the world, or even your own emotions and your own feelings dictate what love is. Because God gets to. And we need to submit to what he says love is because he is love. So that's the first thing. God is love. So he defines love. Here's the second. Because God is love, there is nothing that God does that is unloving. There is nothing that God does that is unloving. If God's nature is that of love. Then that means there's nothing he can do that would be considered unloving. Otherwise he'd be lying against himself. And God can't do that. This is a hard but necessary reality for us to understand that there is nothing that God does, whether it looks like it or not, that is unloving. We looked at this a little bit last year when we looked at Second Corinthians. I want to read it again for you. Second Corinthians chapter twelve, starting in verse seven. It says so to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited. Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this that it should leave me. But he said to me, my grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong. God giving a messenger of Satan to Paul was not unloving. God giving a thorn in the flesh wasn't unloving. It sounds unloving, but it wasn't. Why? Because of the purpose. It was to make Paul humble, to keep him from becoming conceited so that he would understand the power of God at work in weakness, so he would see the grace of God in even greater detail. It wasn't unloving for God to give him those things, but it was actually an act of love itself. Maybe a more practical example for you. If you heard that I threw my kid onto the ground so hard he broke his arm, what would you think? You'd think that's not very loving. That sounds pretty abusive, right? But what if you kind of back up and you see the whole picture and you saw that my child, probably probably my youngest daughter would probably be her. She ran out into the middle of the street to chase something. She didn't see the car coming and she was about to get hit. But I take her and I throw her to get her out of the way of the car. Is it still unloving? No, she was still thrown. She still has a broken arm. But it was done for the purpose of saving her life. In a similar way. Even things that appear that they are unloving from God are not unloving, but they are done in love because of the purpose in which they are done. No matter how it looks from our vantage point, there is nothing unloving that God does because God is love and cannot lie against himself. No pain that God gives and no loss that comes is an unloving act of God. Even hell isn't unloving because perfect love. What perfect love means is that it perfectly gives justice to what is evil. And so there was nothing unloving that God does, but all things that God does is done in love and out of love. And so John is making this claim right off the bat. The very beginning part of his argument is that God is love. He gets to define what love is. And nothing he does is unloving. And then we start to see the next part of this argument. Go back to the beginning of verse seven of first John four says, beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God. Love is from God. That's the next building block of John's argument. God is love, and love is from God. And that makes a lot of sense, right? Like if God is love, then it makes sense that all love comes from him. That is a logical conclusion to come to. That love has its starting point with God, and if it has its starting point with God, then that means all love comes from God. But here's what I really want you to listen to. The love that comes from God is primarily a love that is for God. A love that comes from God is primarily a love that is for God. And we don't have enough time to get into a whole conversation about the Trinity. Maybe we'll get into it a little bit on the Beyond the Message podcast tomorrow, but here's what I want you to know. The love that is from God, ultimately is a love that God has for himself among himself as a trinity. That the love that is from God is primarily a love for God, displayed in the love of the father, the son, and the Holy Spirit amongst one another. And so when we talk about love being from God, the love that is from God is ultimately a love that is for himself. And so that means that his love for you isn't primarily about you. Like you're not the primary object of his love. He is. And he loves himself so much that his love for himself flows out of who he is, into the world he has made, and into his creation to us. And so the love that comes from God is primarily a love that is about God primarily is primarily a love for God. And that's the kind of love that John is pleading with his people to show a love that starts with love for God that is so great that it overflows into love for one another, which means the love that you show for one another in the household of God isn't primarily about the person that you're showing love to. It means your love for one another starts with your love for God, and your love for God spills over into the way that you love one another. That's the kind of love that John is calling people to show. This is the kind of love that comes from God. So we've seen that God is love, and love is from God. You guys tracking with me so far all on the same page. Good. All right. One. Amen. That's great. Love it. He's setting a theological framework for where he's going. This is the base of the argument. This is the theological framework for what John is about to say next, and he's about to go from theology to practical theology. He's about to apply it. What are the implications of God being love and love, being from God? This is what he says, beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God. And whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. We back. All right. Cool. A love that. And so this is the description he's getting at is that if you understand that God is love and love comes from God, then that means if you love one another, if you love one another, that means that you have known God and you have been born of God. You'll notice there at the end of verse seven that God. That John gives two descriptions for people who love one another, that they've been born of God and they know God. And so I want I want to look at both of those because they're both really important for us to understand. The first is that a person is born of God. Essentially, the child is like its father. That if you have love for one another, it is because you have been born of God. You're his child and a child resembles his father. We have four kids, one due at the end of this month. And here is how I know my boys are my boys. Okay. It's because they're like me. They act like me. They talk like me. They're good looking, smart, funny like me. Like. That's how I know that my boys are my boys. But even just beyond those things, the more that I spend time with them. I know they're my sons because of the things they do that come from me. Like my oldest son and antagonizes his sisters beyond belief right now. Guess who did that when they were a kid? This guy. He also loves music and loves to sing and we get to sing in the car together. My youngest son. Uh, this will tell you a little bit about me, I guess. He. I come downstairs and he's got a stepstool out in the pantry grabbing chips off the pantry shelf just like his dad would. He's like his dad. The reason I know my kids are my kids, my boys are my boys is because they act like me. They talk like me. They get angry. Like I get angry. They get frustrated. Like I get frustrated. They sing like I sing. They carry my characteristics. What's true of the father gets played out and lived out in the sons. We are all like our parents to some extent, just like we carry the traits of our parents. What John is saying is that if you've really been born of God, if you're really his child, you're going to carry his traits. And one of the primary ways we see that is in love for one another. That God has a love for himself that spills over. And so it's only natural that his children have a love for God that spills over into love for other people. Now, I do want to make sure that we understand what this is saying and what it's not saying. This isn't saying that you can love one another enough to be born of God. This isn't saying that you can be born of God by loving others. That would be justification by works, not justification by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. And so you can't love one another enough into being a child of God. But, and this is what John is saying, that if you have been born of God, it will result in you loving one another with the love of God, a love that is first and foremost about him, that flows out into the way that you love others. So John says, if you love one another with the love that is from God, a God focused spilling out into love for others. If you love others like that, it shows that you've been born of God, but it also shows that you know God. And remember, as we've been going through First John, we see that word know God a lot. And this is not just a understanding of who God is, an intellectual knowing of God. This is an experiential knowing of God. This is you've experienced who God is. Or you're currently experiencing who God is. Like. You can know that a car goes fast by knowing the specs of the engine. Or you can know a car goes fast by getting in it and putting the pedal to the floor, right? You can know that ice cream tastes good by reading the ingredients, or you can take a bite, right? There's two different kinds of knowing. John's talking about the take a bite of ice cream type of knowing. Experience it. And so John is saying that if you have really known the God who is love, then the outcome of that is love for one another. One of the key indicators of someone who is truly known and experienced God in a saving way, in a life changing way, is that they have love for one another. John says something similar like this in his gospel account in John chapter thirteen verses thirty four and thirty five say this. It says, A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another. The way people know that you're a follower of God, the way people know that you've actually had a life transformed by God, that you follow Christ is that you have a love for other followers of Christ. That you love them. You take care of them. And all this leads to the logical conclusion of John's argument for what love is and why love is important. Look at verse eight of our passage in First John four says, anyone who does not love does not know God because God is love. If knowing God and being born of God is seen and love for others, then logically that means to not have love for one another, to not have love for one another in the household of God specifically is evidence that you've never known God to begin with. And so why his love a big deal? Why is John making such a big deal out of love here? And for the next set of verses, and all throughout this letter is because your love for one another in the household of God specifically, is evidence that you either know God and have been born of God, or that you don't. That's why John makes such a big deal out of this. And these can be hard words to hear, because people like to think that being a Christian is only a spiritual thing. I've been saved by grace through faith. It's not of my own doing. And so I don't have to do anything. Except that's not what the Bible says. And they make it only a spiritual thing and not anything that actually changes their life. And this is actually the false teaching that John is writing against us in, in this entire letter, he's writing against teachers who's saying that the spirit is good, the flesh is bad. So whatever you do in the flesh doesn't really matter. Just focus on the heart, just focus on the spirit. And what John is saying is that if you don't have evidence of knowing God as seen in love for God and others, then you don't actually know God. To think that you can be justified by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone, and then live no differently because of it. That is a sad way to live in a dangerous way to live. And it shows that you don't really understand what it means to be saved. That's what Martin Luther gets to when he writes this. He says it is therefore faith alone which Justifies. And yet faith which justifies is not alone, just as it is the heat alone of the sun which warms the earth. And yet in the sun it is not alone, because it is constantly conjoined with light. To claim to know God in a saving way, and to be a child of God cannot come without evidence of such a claim. Our lives have to be marked by love for one another. You can't rightly claim to know God and not love others at the same time. In these two verses, John is doing so much. He's giving us a rich theology of who God is, a theology of what love is, where love comes from. And he's giving us a bunch of great theology for us to know. But then he's linking it to practice and he's saying, you can't know the right things about who God is and not live differently because of it. That you're knowing of God and being born of God must lead. You, must lead you to love others. He's making a big deal out of love, because our love for others shows that we truly know God. You could say it like this, that knowing God is proven in love for one another. Knowing God is proven in love for one another. So I want to take this last bit to get practical for a little bit. What does this mean for you? Like, what does it mean for you to love one another like this? Because I don't know about you, but I want to be a church that loves one another with the love of God. Do you guys want that? Yes. Alright, good. We want to love one another with the love that is from God. And so how do we go about doing that? First thing I want to say is it starts by you growing and your knowing of God. If you want to grow in your love for one another, you also need to be growing in your knowledge of who God is. There is a correlation if you're doing it right of your knowing of God and your love for others. So we want to be people who know God more, who know God through His Word, who know God through other people speaking truth and life into us, who know God more through taking classes like. That's why we offer classes. We want you guys to grow in your knowledge of God. We want you to grow and what it means to follow God. And here's why, not just for knowledge sake, but we really believe that as you learn to grow in your knowing of God, you grow in your love for God. And as you grow in your love for God, it spills out into love for others. And so grow in your knowledge of God. Be in the word. Take classes. So that's the first thing grow in your knowing of God. But here's the other thing I think we need to do this morning, that maybe we should all run our love of God and our love for God through the test of love for others. Like that's the test that John is laying out here. Alright, you say you love God, that you know God. You've been born of God. Prove it. Do you love others? So church, how is your love for others? More specifically, how is your love for one another? This family, this church body, these one anothers. How is your love for each other? There's a few ways that I think you can think through your love for one another. First one I would say is how do you approach them when you see them in sin? Shocker. Everyone in here's a sinner, right? So how do you approach people when you see them in sin? How do you approach one another when you see them in sin? There's two ditches I think we can fall into when we attempt to show love for God's people in sin. First is the ditch of passivity out of a desire to not rock the boat and hurt feelings and make things awkward. We choose not to say what needs to be said or address what needs to be addressed. I think that's the first ditch. Can we get really practical for a minute? Are you guys okay with that? Like really pointed. Husbands not addressing your wife's anxiety as sin because you're scared of making her angry or more anxious isn't loving. Wives not calling your husband out on their anger, their lack of leadership in the home. Their laziness that's not loving. Connection groups. Not calling out couples in your group or individuals in your group because you've seen them. Know you've noticed the way they treat one another in marriage. Or maybe you've noticed the lack of discipline they have for their own kids. Not addressing that and confronting that because you're scared of it. Making things awkward for the group. Your group dynamic is too important. That's not loving parents, not disciplining your kids because you're worried that your child won't like you, or because it's easier to just let this one slide. Isn't loving. How do you approach people when you see them in sin? I think far too often we live in the ditch of passivity and we're like, ah, we'll take care of it some other time. or someone else will speak into it. What if God has placed you there to speak into that thing? How do you confront others when they're in sin? One ditch is the ditch of passivity. But I think another ditch is just the ditch of being a jerk. I think that's the correct, like the overcorrection to passivity, where you just say really bluntly, without love or care for the other person, you speak the truth, but you don't do it in love. You don't have their best interests at mind. You're just angry at them or annoyed with them. You're not trying to lead them to repentance. You're just trying to prove a point and make them feel guilt and shame. Don't get me wrong, sometimes you have to give tough love. Sometimes you need to. But remember, there's a difference between tough love and being a jerk and giving the love or giving the truth. And love is not just a way for you to be a jerk in a godly way. So those are some two ditches we can fall into. But how are you doing at confronting people in their sin? Another test you can run through is how do you show up in the lives of each other? Are you showing up for other people in our church? Are you showing up for people in your connection group? Are you loving them well? Caring for them and not just the people you like, but the people that are inconvenient for you to love. Maybe you find them annoying or little overwhelming overbearing. Are you showing up for them? Are you showing up to give comfort? To give financial support, to encourage and to celebrate? Not just to your friends, but even the ones it's inconvenient for? Like, do you know that there's a bunch of scripture that talks about how we ought to treat one another, the one anothers. We see them in Scripture. Here's a few of them. Love one another, honor one another. Welcome show hospitality to one another. Be at peace with one another. Bear one another's burdens. Confess your sins to one another. Pray for one another and many more. Are you showing up in the life of people around you? Because that's what a church does for one another. We care for support and love because we've been born of God, because we know God. We've experienced him in a life changing way that spills out into the way that we love and treat others. So maybe some of you in here this morning, you you need a little prodding. Your love for others is not what it should be. And if that's the case for you, then come on, let's get to it. Let's love one another. Because we've been loved by God. We know God, we've been born of him. And so we love God so much that spills out to those around us. And so if that's you, make diligent work of loving one another. But guys, I'm mainly I just want to encourage you as a church. Because when I look at our church, I see a church who loves really well. I know Jake mentioned this about a month ago, but it's worth repeating. You guys love people well. And I just want to encourage you in the ways that I've been seeing that happen. So here's a few ways that I've seen our church love one another, love each other in this family well. Diapers and wipes. Getting dropped off to expecting mothers. Unprompted. An army of people praying at the request of a mothers text message. Meal trains getting filled up for months. So food isn't a worry. Hospital visits being made to comfort those in pain or those who have lost loved ones. Watching kids so parents can go to doctor's appointments. Pulling money together as a connection group to help pay the bills of someone struggling. Pleading with couples considering divorce to reconsider and repent in groups. Fasting together as they seek the Lord on behalf of the people they know and love that are in sin. Guys. And these are all just things that I've personally experienced or seen firsthand in the last two weeks. Be encouraged. This is a loving church, and we ought to desire to grow in our love for one another. And we love because we've experienced the love of God. We've experienced who the God who is love. The love that comes from God. And so we give that love to other people. Because that's what knowing the God who is love does to people. That people who know God intimately love others radically. And that's the kind of people that we want to continue to be. Amen. So guys, as we get ready to enter into a time of communion together. We always want to remember the only way that we can love like this is because we were first loved in a radical way. That we were first loved in a radical way. Romans five eight says, But God shows his love for us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. We were the ones in sin who had wronged God. And yet God steps into his creation, puts on flesh, lived a perfect life, takes on the sins of all who would be saved, dies on the cross so that his people could be reconciled to him. That's the love of Christ that we've seen, and that's the love of Christ that we experienced. And that's the love of Christ that we remember as we go out and love for other people. And so we're going to take communion together. I lift mine over here. So I'm awkwardly going to walk over here and grab it. And as we take communion together, we're going to remember the love of God, the love of God that is seen in Jesus Christ. And so as you peel it back and you take the bread. We remember that this is the body of Christ. Which is broken for you. Do this in remembrance of him. Likewise, after dinner, Jesus took the cup, saying, this cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you. Every time you do this, do this in remembrance of me. And so as we do this now, we remember the love of God and the blood of Christ that was spilled for us. So do this in remembrance of him. Father. You are a great God and you have loved us with a great love, a love that we are undeserving of. God, thank you for loving us anyway. God, as we reflect on the love that you have for us that is seen in the person and work of Jesus, may it prompt us and encourage us to love one another. May we love you so much that our love for you spills out in the way that we love others God. Now, as we get ready to sing to you, may we display our love for you through song. May we even encourage and love one another through the songs that we sing to you. So God be with us. Help us to do that now. It's in Jesus name. Amen.