Well. Good morning. Like Jonah said, Happy Mother's Day to you moms in the room. We are really, really thankful for you wouldn't be here without you. Um, so yeah, really grateful for you. Um, if I haven't met you before. My name is Michael. I get to be one of the pastors here. And so if you got a Bible, go ahead and open it to First John chapter four. We're going to continue in our series. Um, like Jonah said, I know Mother's Day, we want to celebrate mothers. Uh, but we also know that Mother's Day can be hard for many of you. And we acknowledge that today, but we also don't want to downplay the good of moms and all the all the hard work that you guys do and, uh, to sacrifice so much for your children. And so, uh, today we don't have a sermon specifically crafted for mothers. We're going to continue in our series. But I think the, the question that arises out of our text in first, John, today is a question that I think all moms would appreciate. And the question is, how are we to love one another? Moms, would you appreciate that? Okay. All right, so, moms, help me out here. You can raise your hand if you've ever uttered one of these phrases. Can you two just be nice and love each other? Okay? Okay. How much can I pay you right now just to love each other, right? Okay, now, I know you would never use that tone. You would be much more gentle in using your tone. But this is a question that we often wrestle with. And it's not just moms, right? It's siblings and friends and parents and in-laws and coworkers and countries, right? Can we all just get along? Can we all just love each other? And the same is true inside the church. Nobody walked into this room. I don't think today going, man, I hope I find a church today that just hates each other, right? Nobody did that, right? Because we all have this deep desire to love one another well, and we want others to love one another well. And that's no different here at Veritas. Like it's not just your desire to love people well in this church. It's our desire as leaders of this church to be a church that loves one another well. But what does that mean? What does it mean to love other people well? Does it love mean simply like getting along and just being nice and kind? Does love mean giving generously or serving regularly? Does love mean affirming everyone's feelings? Like there's a there's a lot of opinions in our world today about what love should be about. But my hope today is not to just give you another opinion, because it's really my opinion doesn't matter at all. Okay? My hope is that we would go to God's Word and answer the question of like, well, how? How are we to love one another? But even deeper than that, like, how are we to love one another like God loves because everybody in the world asks this question like, well, how are we supposed to love one another? But for the Christian, like, how are we supposed to love one another? Like in this body, other Christians among us, how are we supposed to love each other like God loves? So my hope this morning is to show you biblically from God's Word, the kind of loving church we want to be. And the hope is to show you that by showing you the ultimate example of love, which you guys already can say Jesus, right? Like, but go into more detail, right? What ultimate example of love. But even more than just the ultimate example, the last half of this text is really going to point us to the ultimate reason to love. So the ultimate example of love and the ultimate reason to love. So we're going to be our just two verses today, first John four chapter, verses nine and ten. But before we jump to verses nine and ten. I want to go get a running start from what Ian looked at last week and verses seven and eight, because this is going to help us understand our text. So first John chapter four, seven and eight says this, 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. Now you're going to hear a lot about love last week, this week, and three more weeks, because we're going to spend, I think, five weeks between verses seven and twenty one. Okay. And you're going to hear at some point, probably some of the same things. And that's a good thing because love is a huge thing and we want to make sure that we're getting it right. Ian talked a lot about that last week, but you're so you're going to hear some repetitive things over these weeks. And we're unapologetic in that. Okay. So, um, in verses seven and eight here, what we have is the command and what's the command of this section? Love one another. We want to love one another well. And last week we found out. Why should we love one another? Well, love is from God and God is love. Like that's that's the why behind this whole thing. But now what John's going to do is turn his attention to, well, how do we know that? How do we know what love is like? What does it look like to love each other? So here's how God loves. And now how should we love as a result of how God loves? So let's look at verses nine through ten. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only son into the world so that we might live through him. And this is love, not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Now that word propitiation, we're going to get there. All right. Some of you are like, I've never heard that word before. All right. We'll get there in a little bit. So the first thing that I want you to see about God's love is that God's love is shown. God's love is shown. It says that in this the love of God was made manifest. To be made manifest is to make something known, to make something visible. Okay? God's love. What John is saying is God's love was clearly put on display and it was put on display among us. So among the people reading this letter, it was put on display. So it wasn't done in some corner. It wasn't done simply inside of us. But people actually witness the love of God. Now you go, okay, yeah, that makes sense. People witness the love of God. But for a lot of false teachers among this group of people, we've talked about this nearly every week. In First John, there was this group of false teachers called the Gnostics. And this they were promoting this teaching called Gnosticism, where they believed that Jesus was just a spirit, not an actual body so that you couldn't actually feel and touch or see him. But what John is saying is you want to know the love of God. He was actually among you. He you could touch him and you could see him. It was clearly visible, this love of God. Because the love of God isn't simply some abstract like spiritual essence. It's tangible. And it was put on display. Now, how was the love of God put on display? It says, in this the love of God was made manifest among us. Now what is in this pointing to? Is it pointing backward or is it pointing forward? I think it's pointing forward to show us. Okay. Let me tell you how the love of God was made manifest. So what John is doing by saying in this is, hey, get ready, pay attention. I'm about to give special weight to something in particular that you need to know about God's love. So let's go back. I'm going to read first John verses nine and ten again. Okay. As I read this, we're going to read this multiple times throughout the morning, so hopefully you get it by the end. Okay, so back to verse nine and ten. And this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only son into the world so that we might live through him. And this is love, not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. So John is telling us the love of God not only was shown, but the love of God is also number two proactive. The love of God is proactive. Said that God sent His son. He ordered him to go to an appointed place. God ordered His Son to go where? Into the world. To the inhabitants of the world. Now you go. Yeah, that sounds great. Until we find out who these inhabitants were, including us in Scripture, we find out we were dead in our sins and trespasses. We were by nature children of wrath. We were enemies of God. So who is God proactively Sending his son to his enemies. Do you see? How is it a different kind of love? Like God is sending His Son to his enemies. And the proactive nature of this is like God's not waiting around for his enemies to go, oh, I need God, but he's taking initiative and he's moving forward and toward the enemy, toward the offender. And guys, here's the real reality. We didn't even have the ability to move back toward him. He moved toward us before we could even move toward him. And this is the beauty of this theological term we call the incarnation, right? And we celebrate it mostly at Christmas time, right. That God would take on flesh and dwell among us. And we sing songs about Immanuel, God with us, like God is coming to live with us. Guys, this is the exact opposite of how our society works though, when it comes to love. Because we would say the offender seeks forgiveness from the offended. Like, oh, I did something wrong. I need to move toward you and say, I'm sorry, but God moved toward us before we even had the ability to say we were sorry. That's a special type of love. And John's going to explain it further in verse ten. And this is love. Not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son. This is not a reactive type of love. Guys, we don't see the love of God because of what we did. We see the love of God because of what he did and his love was unconditional. This is the same idea as as proactive. He didn't wait for us to meet his conditions and expectations before he came to us. Because God's love isn't based on you cleaning yourself up first. That's really good news because some of you in this room today, you don't feel very lovable. Maybe it's because of your past. Something that's happened to you. You don't feel like you can be loved. And the beautiful news is that God didn't love you because you met some religious or moral moral criteria. First, he loved you because that's who he is. He is love. We know this passage from Romans chapter five verse eight says, But God shows his love for us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Like he loved you when you were still a sinner. He came to you when you were still a sinner. Now, how does this kind of love practically play out in our love for one another though? Guys, don't wait around and react for someone else to love you first. Let's be a church that moves toward others. We take the initiative to move toward others. We move to them first when they're suffering. I know a lot of times when somebody is in pain and having a hard time, you're like, hey, just let me know what I can do for you. Instead of just asking, just go do it. Just go help them. Go serve them. Go take them a meal. Like you take the initiative without them having to tell you, right? Move toward them first when they sin. Move toward them first when you've been sinned against. Now, let me just caution you here when it comes to this word unconditional love. I think we can misunderstand that and think that unconditional sometimes means uninvolved. Like, oh, well, I'm just going to love you anyway. I'm not really going to be involved. That's not what I'm talking about. And unconditional love doesn't mean that you're unwilling to speak the truth. And it definitely doesn't mean that you look past someone else's sin. But I know the pushback. The pushback is, well, I might get hurt if I move first. And I wish there was a like, easy way for me to say, yes, you will get hurt at some point. But aren't you glad? That God didn't stop loving you because it might hurt or kill his son? The true love of God was shown to us in the proactive sending of his son into this world. But it's even deeper than just being shown to us and proactive. Look back at verse nine and this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only son into the world so that we might live through him. So God's love is shown. God's love is proactive and God's love is sacrificial. This word only here for only son. The Greek word is mono genus. All right. Mono meaning one and genus genes your DNA, right? There's. There's one son. We get our word monogamy from this one spouse. Okay. This is a one of a kind son. There's no one like this, son that God would send. Which shows the exclusivity of this son, the uniqueness of this son, that God didn't just initiate and send any kind of person to you. He didn't send just Moses or Abraham or an angel or a prophet, but he sent his one and only son. There is no greater gift, no greater gift, than him to send his only son. You guys know John three sixteen, same writer here saying this, For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. What sacrifice God to send your one and only son into the world, to send your one and only son on a search and rescue mission for sinners in enemy territory? That's sacrifice. Sacrificial love. But it's even more than that though, guys. He didn't just send his son and he didn't just send him into enemy territory. Look at verse ten again. And this is love. Not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent His son to be the propitiation for our sins. Now we're going to camp out here for a while because this word propitiation doesn't show up in our normal, everyday language. Right? You like? If it does, I'm impressed. Okay. But it only shows up in the New Testament four times. It's actually shown up one other time in chapter two of First John. It shows up in Hebrews and it shows up in Romans, right? So we're going to camp out here because as we preach through books of the Bible, we're about to cover two of these four times in this book. We covered Hebrews a couple years ago. So there's like one other time, if we're just going to preach through books of the Bible, this is going to show up now. I'm sure it's going to show up in other topical things at times, but we're going to camp out here because if we can understand what this whole propitiation thing means, we're going to have a really good understanding of the love of God and how we should love one another. So let me give you a really simple definition of what propitiation is to appease or turn away someone's wrath by way of an offering to appease or turn away someone's wrath by way of an offering. Now, because this is not language that we use regularly, let me give you a little illustration that hopefully will help. So when I was growing up, I have one brother, and during the fall it seemed like, um, my brother and I ended up like watching football at times. And as we would watch football, my parents would be gone for some reason. I don't know why, but like they maybe they didn't want to watch football with us. I have no idea. But anyway, we would. It felt like every year the Army-Navy football game would come on and as the Army-Navy football game would come on, I don't know, my parents were gone. Okay, that's probably not true all across the board, but it felt that way. Okay. And this felt that way because when the Army-Navy football game would come on, me and my brother would play Army-Navy football in the living room. Okay, now, now you know why Mom and Dad were gone. Okay, so we would turn the couch sideways in our living room, and some days we would line it up perpendicular to the hallway that led to our bedrooms. And the goal was one of us was army, one of us were Navy. and one of us started at the end of the hallway and we would just sprint. And in order to score a touchdown, you had to get over the top of the couch. Okay. You had to get over the top of the couch. If you got tackled, you didn't score. Okay. Needless to say, it was a battle. Okay. Imagine one day I'm sprinting through the living room. A brother who is bigger than me. He just destroys me. Knocks me. I hit an end table. Break a lamp. All right. Thankfully, by God's grace, this is made up at this point. All right. Some of you are like, yeah, right. It is okay. We actually never broke anything, bones or anything. There was probably blood at some point though. Okay. So imagine we knock over this table and the lamp breaks. And I look at my brother, I'm like, oh no, this is awful. Like, mom and dad are going to be so angry with us. They're going to kill us. All right now. They wouldn't have killed us. But that's what we felt like in the moment. They were good parents. Okay. But it felt like they were going to kill us. And what if my brother looked at me and you're like, you're right. They are so angry. They're going to kill us. We need to make propitiation, Michael. Right. I would think like, we would have never used that language. We were in public school kids. But, um. Sorry, but you like you see what we're talking about here? Somebody is angry, justifiably angry. And so an offering needed to be made. Well, Michael, we need to bake some cookies. We need to go rake the leaves. We need to do something to make an offering to appease the wrath of our parents. This is this idea of propitiation that we would need to make an offering to satisfy the wrath of God. We don't have that ability. No, this is how it shows up the other three times in Scripture, in Romans chapter three, verses twenty three through twenty five, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood to be received by faith. So Jesus Christ is going to be a propitiation by his blood, because in the Old Testament it's, hey, you need to sacrifice animals, blood, the blood of animals, goats, lambs, whatever it is, you need to make this sacrifice to satisfy the wrath of God. Okay. Now in Hebrews chapter two says, for surely it's not angels that he helps, but he helps the offspring of Abraham. Therefore he, Jesus had to be made like his brothers. That's that incarnation thing. He came to be with us in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful High Priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. So the priest, the high priest, especially in the Old Testament, would go. They would have to make satisfactory offerings for the people's sin. But it's saying, oh, no. High Priest doesn't have to keep doing this anymore. Why? Because Jesus is the propitiation for the wrath of God. Now, earlier in First John chapter two, this is the third time it appears he is the propitiation for our sins and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the world. What I'm trying to say is that sin must be punished. So God loved us enough to send Jesus, his one and only son, to be the propitiation to appease God's wrath for our sins. And he was the only satisfactory offering, that sacrificial love that is sacrificial love, that he would send his only son into enemy territory to die. Now, if the command of this section of Scripture is. We want to love one another. I think that anybody in the world, even if you're not a believer on some day, could probably love somebody proactively and sacrificially. There have been a lot of unbelieving husbands in history that have proactively pursued their wives at times. There have been a lot of unbelieving single moms who have sacrificed tremendously for her kids. So to be sacrificial and proactive like that seems like, yeah, anybody could do that. So what is it about the love of God? That should make our love for each other different from the love of the world? This is where we got to dive even more deeply into this propitiation thing. Okay? So go back to verse ten. And this is love. Not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent His son to be the propitiation for our sins. Wait, I thought propitiation was to satisfy the wrath of God. Now you're saying it's for our sins, so is it for God or is it for us? That word for our sins? I think a better translation could be on account of our sins. So it's for our benefit. But ultimately, God makes propitiation for his glory, because the love of God is not just shown in proactive and sacrificial, but the love of God is God centered. This is the thing that separates the love of the world. And the love of the church is that there's a God centered love. Now, what do I mean? I'm going to give you a quote here from somebody named John Stott, who wrote a book called The Cross of Christ. And in this book, this guy is way smarter than I am. All right. So what I need you to do is pay really close attention because these words are weighty. It says this. John Stott says this. It is God himself who in holy wrath needs to be propitiated. God himself, who in holy love undertook to do the propitiation, and God himself, who in the person of his son died for the propitiation of our sins. Thus God took his own loving initiative to appease his own righteous anger by bearing it his own self and his own son. When he took our place and died for us. Now some of you are going like, yeah, he is smarter than you, Michael. Okay, that's a weighty quote though, right? So let me try to explain it this way. If we're going to understand propitiation, we can't just focus in on the love of God part. We gotta understand, oh, there's something bigger going on here because we gotta understand the holiness of God, and we've gotta understand the wrath of God, and we gotta understand the justice of God, and we got to understand the mercy of God. And we've gotta understand the grace of God, because if we just try to wrap up propitiation into, well, God just loves me and died for my sins, then we're going to miss a bigger picture of how God's love is actually centered upon himself. So let me explain it this way. God is holy. Amen. That means he is utterly distinct from you, completely different from me and you in all his ways, especially in his moral perfection. Completely holy. Now, if you miss this, you're going to miss the love of God. You're going to miss everything about it. You gotta understand that God is holy and vastly, tremendously, completely different from you and I because he is holy. Sin is an affront to his holiness, and God is rightly angry with sin and sinful people. And guys, you want a God that is rightly angry against sin, don't you? You don't want a God that just let sin go, just lets it run rampant. You want a holy God to take care of sin. So as a result. He wants to. He needs to pour his wrath upon sin. So we need to understand his holiness. That helps us understand his wrath, which helps us understand his justice, that our God every single time is going to do the right thing. And the right thing is to punish sin. Amen. Do you want a God who always does the right thing? If that's not your God, he's not actually God. Then that's where we start to understand the piece of this, this love piece. Oh, he's holy. He's angry towards sin, so he's going to punish sin. And he loved us enough to send his own son to be the propitiation for our sins. Oh, this is this is incredible news. But it's not just the love of God. Now, because of that sacrifice, we don't have to experience the punishment that we deserve. That's God's mercy. And not only do we not experience that punishment, but we get so much more. We get a relationship with him that's called grace. See how you can't just take this one piece of the love of God and go the love of God. That's the ultimate characteristic about God. No, the holiness of God is the ultimate characteristic about God. And if we understand a full picture of who God is, then we're going to really understand what love is. So. Let's go back to Romans chapter five, verses eight again. But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. We are saved from the wrath of God because of Jesus Christ. So yes. Does propitiation benefit us? Does it? Yes. But it centers on God and who he is. Tim Keller, the late Tim Keller would say this. The gospel is that Jesus lived the life. You should have lived and died, the death you should have died in your place. So God can receive you, not for your record and sake, but for his record and sake. Because I'm not worried about us being a church that denies the existence of God. I'm not worried about being a church that doesn't think that we need God. I'm not worried about us being a church that doesn't think that God's love is amazing. I'm concerned that we can become a church where the love of God and the life of Christ and the death of Christ turns inward, and we start making it all about us, rather than being about the Lord, because we have this wrong belief in the world that humans are the central entity, that everything revolves around in this world. And guys, we are only here because God created us. We are not the central entity of this world. God himself is. So my concern is that we take the love of God and we make the love of God centered upon man rather than centered upon God. And when God's love becomes man centered, the church starts to love like the world. And while the world can have a love that's proactive and sacrificial. That kind of love is a cheap fraud to true love. Because it's void of the very essence of love. God is love. Now the Beatles would say. All you need is love. And I'm saying that's not even close to the truth. All you need is God, and your love needs God. And the people of this church need you to love them with a love that is centered upon God. We don't want to be a church that's centered on comfort or keeping the peace, or making people feel good or pleasing people. We don't want to be a people who are simply kind. We want to tell people we don't want to tell people what they just want to hear. We don't want to be a church that never addresses sin. So guys, as Christians, we definitely shouldn't love others just for our sake. I mean, that's how the world operates, right? I'm even saying we shouldn't love others simply for their sake. There is a greater purpose that we need to love others, for God's sake. But so often we try to shape God into our own image. And this type of love seems incredibly wrong. Wait, this seems self-seeking. Why would God do this? doesn't seem like really love because that's not how my God operates. He would never do that. That's not my God. And we shape God into our own image. And believe me, we can't do that. We can. And you're going to be incredibly wrong because we were made in his image. We don't get to shape him into our image. But when we recognize who God actually is, that he's holy and just and merciful and gracious and loving, we go, oh, this is, this is the right way to love. Now, am I saying that Jesus wasn't sent to live and die for you? Not at all. Not at all. But I'm saying that the purpose of Jesus life and death is so much greater than you. This is all bigger than you. That God's love is proactive and sacrificial. Pursuit of you is not simply for you, but for something far greater than you. And if that's what God's love is about, then this is going to shape how we love one another. So you could say it this way show God's love by proactively and sacrificially pursuing others, for God's sake. Show God's love by proactively and sacrificially pursuing others, for God's sake. Guys. A greater devotion to God will drive a greater demonstration of love for others. A greater devotion to God will drive a greater demonstration of love for others. Like how many of you would feel loved as someone proactively and sacrificially pursued you for the sake of God. Some of you are like, yeah, that's great. Some of you are like, ah, I don't know about that actually, because it sounds like what you're saying in that is that those people actually love God more than they love me. Yes. And you want that. And Jesus said, actually, that's the most important thing. What's the most important commandment? Jesus, love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. Second is like it love your neighbor as yourself. There's a clear order. There is a clear winner. There are no ties. It's not love God and love people equally. Love God first, love people second. Because if you get love God right, you will get the love of people, right? Guys, if we will be a church that loves God above all else, we will be a church that is exceptional at loving each other. But some people want to please people more than honor God. Some want to affirm others feelings more than affirming biblical truth. Some care more about being comfortable than trusting wholeheartedly in the God of all comfort. And if that's you. Your lack of love for God is going to be demonstrated in a lack of love for people. Now, I know that the situations probably running through your mind. Well, Michael, what about this situation? What about this situation? My family? What about this? Like the nuanced situations are probably endless. And typically at the end of a sermon, I'm standing down here and lots of people come with their specific situations. And you can do that today. Okay. I would just ask before you do that today. Ask God this question. God. what does it look like to love that person with your love for your sake? God, what does it look like to love that person with your love for your sake? Ask that question first. And I'm going to tell you, this is really hard. It's not easy to love this way. So let's go back to verse nine and see the only way that we can pull this off. And this, the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only son into the world so that we might live through him. Now, if the goal of this section is helping us love one another, why wouldn't it say so that we might love through him? Why does it say so that we might live through him? Now, there's absolutely something to be said about the Spirit of Christ living in and through us and helping us love one another. And we can talk about that on the podcast tomorrow. But. I believe what John's saying here is like, hey, I sent my son so that you can have new life because the only way that you're going to love this way is if you have new life. You can't pull off this type of love for each other without new life in Christ. It's impossible to love people this way without new life in Christ. But even if you have new life in Christ, it's still incredibly difficult. In fact, I was doing a study of this text, and probably three weeks ago I was kind of writing out my definition of true love based on this text. And as I wrote it out, I was like, this major conviction came over me and I contacted Eric and my wife really quickly and I said, hey, I need to apologize because if this is the definition of true love, I fall short of this often and I'm really sorry because I don't always proactively pursue you. Well, I don't always want to sacrificially serve you. I really like me sometimes. And there are days that I definitely care more about my desires than her needs. And there are days that I care more about her desires than what God wants. And I said, I'm really sorry. That's not the kind of husband I want to be. That's not the kind of marriage that I want us to have. And guys, that's not the kind of church I want us to be. I want us to be a church that runs after people first. That is quick to sacrifice and serve, that cares more about the truth of God than being liked by others. And most importantly, I want us to be a church that cares more about God than anything in this world. Because when we love God the way he loves us, our church is going to be loved best. Husbands, your wife is going to be loved best. Moms, your kids are going to be loved best when you love God more than even them. But when that happens, this is what I need you to remember that God is more worthy of utmost importance than us being inconvenienced. God is more worthy of being hallowed at the risk of us being hurt. God is more worthy of admiration than other people's approval, and God is more worthy of being loved than us being liked. So guys, let's be the most loving church possible because we're the church most passionate about the glory of God. Amen. Let's pray. Father. This is hard. And we need you desperately. Father, would you help us as a church to love you more than anything? And as that happens, would that just overflow into our relationships with each other, to the relationships with our families, to the relationships with our friends and coworkers? And God, I know that that's going to be confusing on some days to the world. But would you give us the courage to keep being most devoted to you more than anything, we pray all this in Jesus name. Amen.