God Is Love - Terrance Williams | Midtown Church Elk Grove

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:14

My name is Terrence. I have the privilege of being with you all this morning. As we are sending off kids to camp this morning, we just continue to pray for them. We we truly do invest. You know, that every kid that wanted to go to camp this year is getting to go to camp. And that's because of you and because of your faithfulness. So uh thank you for what you know for what you do. Y'all, I'm getting old. You see a stool right here. It's sad. It's sad. I uh got this little like tendon thing going on in my foot, you know, and I don't know if any of y'all got foot problems, but it's no joke. Like you wake up in the morning and you go to make that first step, and you're like, words start coming out your mouth that you didn't even know existed. So uh so I have to sit a little bit today, so please forgive me for that. Um, but we're in a sermon series uh going through the attributes of God and who God is and what makes God God. And and you know, this has just been a phenomenal series that we've been going through this summer, and we're gonna journey through it all throughout the summer. And if you've missed some weeks, you definitely can go online and listen uh to past sermons. But I I feel like I I feel like I got the the I had the jackpot this morning because I get to preach on God is love. Um and really when you think about God is love, it really is. It's really what defines God. And you know, but when you think about the word love, you know, the word love is kind of crazy. You know, people people put the word love to a lot of a lot of things. You know, people talk about the ice cream that they love. You know, people will debate about the ice cream that they love. You know, they'll, you know, is it, are you a cookies and cream person or a mint chocolate chip person? Or I mean, how many of y'all remember the thrifty days, you know, with with the rainbow sherbet? Like, man, like one of those days. Or, but I mean, I mean, that's that shows you how complicated life has gotten. You know, we used to go, you know, thrifty get that, you know, rainbow sherbet or whatever. Now you go to these ice cream places like, oh, do you want the turkey dinner ice cream? You know, or do you want the the butter roll ice cream? I'm like, no, I want vanilla, please. Thank you. How many of y'all been to that salt and straw restaurant, like uh ice cream place? Like, they just, I'm like, y'all are doing too much. Y'all are team too much in this place. But I'd be in there tasting them all, you know. So, you know, we have our we have our love for our favorite restaurants, you know, that are our sports teams. You know, sports teams, we fall in and out of love with our sports teams. Um, you know, but it's interesting if you've ever have any of you asked a uh a kid to define love for you? If you have, I'm gonna give you what they say. So a group of kids were asked, like, what they were asked, what is love? These are some of their answers. Love is when a girl puts on perfume and a boy puts on cologne and they go out and smell each other. Love is like an avalanche where you have to run for your life. This person, this kid said, love is the most important thing in the world, but baseball is pretty good too. This kid said, once I'm done with kindergarten, I'm gonna go find my wife. They said, I gotta learn how to read first. This kid said, I'm not rushing into being in love. I'm finding fourth grade hard enough. This kid said, it gives me a headache to think about that stuff. I'm just a kid. I don't need that kind of trouble. This kid said, love will find you even if you're trying to hide from it. I've been trying to hide from it since I was five, but the girls keep finding me. Parents need to watch that kid on both sides of the aisle. And this kid said, You really shouldn't say I love you unless you mean it. But if you mean it, you should say it a lot. People forget, and it's good for them to be reminded. Yeah, that's precious. That kid was taught well. But love, love is a love is a big thing. You know, it is a big thing, and it is, but really what we're gonna look at today is really what really is love. You know, there are certain things that define a person. We might say someone is kind, someone else is generous, another person is patient. Those are qualities they possess, but when the apostle John, because we're gonna be in 1 John, uh, begins writing in 1 John chapter 4, he doesn't tell us something that God does. He tells us who God is. He doesn't say God has love, he doesn't even say that God gives love. In this passage that we're gonna look at this morning, he says, God is love. And that really changes everything because love is God's very nature. Every act of God flows from this reality. If you think about everything that God does, everything that God is, it flows out of God being love. So we're gonna be in 1 John chapter 4, starting in verse 7. It says, This, dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us. He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love. Not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God, but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us. Let's pray. Father, I just thank you just for giving us an opportunity to gather here this morning. Father, I'm thankful for every person in this room. I'm thankful for the lives and the households that they represent. And Father, I pray, Lord, that you would continue just to do what you do best, and that is to be the God that orchestrates change. Father, as we uh just dive into your word, which is living and active, and as I give your word this morning, I pray, Lord, that you will go before me and that I will stay behind you, and that the words that I speak will be orchestrated and ordained by you. Father, we're just thankful that we have this opportunity. And I pray, Lord, just with this little bit of time that we have this morning, that that because your word is living and active, there will be something that is said, there is something that is felt today that will allow us to walk out of here a little bit different. Father, we're so thankful for who you are, and we continue to give you all the praise and glory in Jesus' name. Amen. So in 1 John chapter 4, right here, John is writing about God, and God is love. And there's two, there's two kinds of love that is presented in here. The the first love that's presented here is one that if you've been around church at all, and you know, a few years or whatever, you you, or you've grown up in church, or even you might have heard it just in other places, that the first love is is agape love. So so this love is an uncondition it's the unconditional love of God. This is this is love that there is nothing that you can do that you can earn it. It's given. And if you can't, the thing about agape love is that if you if you can't earn it, then also you can't have it taken away either. So Romans chapter 8, verse 35 to 39, it says this Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written, for for your sake we fuss face death all day long. We are considered as sheep to be slaughtered. Paul continues to write this: No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor death, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. So here you have a passage right here that tells us that there is nothing that can separate us from the love of God, that God's love is given, and when it's given, it's settled. That's it. But then another form of love in this, you have agape love, and then you have agapeo love, which is agape with an O in it, but it's said completely different. You gotta love Greek, right? But this is the love of God flowing through us. So if God's love is so big for us and it's just so great, and we receive it, then the next part of the equation is that love should flow out of us. And so if we receive the agape love, then that agape love flowing out of us is the agapeo love. So if God is love, which is agape love, then therefore God loves, which is agapeo, so it's the it's the it's the verb of love, therefore we love. And so this morning we're gonna dive into, you know, what kind of love comes from God? How do we, you know, the the aspect of God being love, it is such a huge thing that, you know, this morning we're kind of gonna take something so big and make it a little bit more digestible. So we're gonna take the we're gonna take the hometown buffet and we're just gonna make it to a to a Weight Watcher's meal, you know, so we can all digest it. So our first point is God's love, it's a greater love. God's love is a greater love, meaning that God's love doesn't simply forgive us, it adopts us. God's love is so big. 1 John 3, 1 through 3 says this. See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God, and that it is what we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Dear friends, now we are children of God, and and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is, and who have his who have this hope in him purify themselves just as he is pure. The thing about this love, God's love, is when God's love is lavished on us, when when we accept Christ into our life, and the thing about when we accept Christ into our life, there's something uh astonishing and transforming that happens. God's word tells us that we become a new creation. Or when we're baptized, when we're baptized, when it's they say when you go down, the the the old life is going down and the new life is rising again. And so when we accept this great love, we become something new. But the problem is that there's a lot of times for us as believers that when we accept Christ, we don't take on the new identity. And the reason I feel that a lot of people don't take on the new identity is because they don't see the worth in it. That they're they're they're trying to be a Christian with their own, that with the old worth. And you can't be a new Christian with your old worth because your old worth does not exist anymore. Because when we become Christians, it it really is like our worth, our stock, our value goes through the roof. And we have a new identity, and it really should change how we think of ourselves and how we think of others. You know, with our new identity, is there's so many people that they spend their lives searching for their worth in the love of someone else. That they spend so much time searching that here they are, they've got a they've got the love of God, but they're trying to find that love in other people and other things. And the biggest way that we do that is we really try to find it in other people. And the thing is, it's like, you know, for those of us in this room that, you know, are still looking for the love of our lives, the problem is that a lot of us are dating, hoping another person is going to tell us we're enough. We're dating, hoping that we're gonna be with someone that is gonna tell us that we're enough, and and they settle because they're afraid of being alone. But the thing is, the problem is you'll never find your identity in someone who's searching for theirs. And that is that that is that is in a romantic relationship, that could even be in a friendship. That you are not going to find your identity. If you're searching for your identity and you end up with someone that's trying to search for their identity too, y'all are just on a big old scavenger hunt. Who's got the map to the gold? But but the but the thing is, it's this John says this. He says, See what great love the Father has lavished on us that we should be called children of God. In other words, stop trying to find your value in people who can't determine your value. Because your value has already been established by the Father. But when you accept, when you accept God's love, your value is given to you. The value of you are a child of the king. You are an heir to his kingdom. And so I wrote this down. I'm gonna read this because I'm like, I this is so I feel that us as believers, when we should look, when we look in the mirror, man, we should see something special. When we look in the mirror, we should see something so valuable. Because if you think about it, when you look in the mirror, the same God that created you is the same God that created the seven wonders of the world. The same God that created you is the same God that thousands upon thousands of people flock to Yosemite to take pictures of. That is the same God that created you, that values you, that loves you. And so, if we are truly an heir to the kingdom of God, then why would an heir to the throne spend their life accepting clearance rack love when they're already been given royal love? You know, Pastor Ephraim said this, Pastor Ephraim said this a few weeks ago with this message, and I called him, I said, Oh, this is good, I gotta use this. Is that when we accept God's great love, we start realizing that we are expensive. That we're expensive, that that people in your life, if you are, if you're dating, that the people that you are dating should have to save up for you. The people in your life that they they should have to be saving up for you because of your value. But but the problem is that when you do not value yourself, you start giving yourself away for 50% off. When we as believers are not meant to be on clearance, we as believers are heirs to the kingdom of God. And so this great love that God has lavished on us, it really should put some pep in our step. It really should make us think that that, man, God, you have made something spectacular. So if we have this great love, that that you know that God is just this great love, then then God also has a sacrificial love. 1 John 3, 16 through 18, it says this. This is how we know what love is. Jesus Christ laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay it down, we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person? Dear children, let us not love with words or speech, but with actions and in truth. So here we have the the first one is that you are loved, and now this is what love looks like. Love is sacrificial. You have the privilege of over uh several years ago, I got to take students to a camp called Camp Barnabas. If you've been around at all, you've probably heard me talk about this camp. It is a it's a magical place. It's a it's a place where kids with disabilities they come and and their parents send them for a week, and these kids get to do whatever, like whatever they want to do that week, they get to do it. If if you are blind and you want to go play paintball, you get to go play paintball, or you get to shoot arrows, or you get to do whatever you want to do, you get to be a kid for a week. And so the week that we were, one of the weeks that we're there, it was blind and deaf week. And you get paired up with a camper, and that is your camper for the entire week. And so we're in our orientation, and the camp directors come in, and that's kind of where they give us like the lay down of the campers that are, you know, gonna be there this week. And and so they're like, hey, we we gotta make an announcement, and like we need everyone to listen. Oh shoot, what's going on at camp this week? And they said, we're having problems with bears. I didn't know Missouri had bears, so I that was that was fooly on me. I didn't know, I was like, bears. I was like, I know y'all got problems with mosquitoes, but I didn't know y'all have problems with bears too. And also, my mind, uh for some reason, I don't I don't think bears in the summertime, but they do. They they sleep in the wintertime, not in the summertime. But so, anyways, they're saying, hey, we're having issues with these bears, and it is blind and deaf week. And the bears are coming to camp and they're rummaging through trash and things of that nature. And there's a lot of times that we have evening stuff, and when you're walking back to your cabin, it is it is pitch black. And this is before the times that you know everyone kind of had a cell phone with a flashlight in their pocket. Like, you just gotta either have a flashlight or fend for yourself. So they said, so this is what we need our our counselors to do this week is that if you encounter a bear, which I already was like, dang, it's time to go home. Like, if we encounter a bear, they're like, if you encounter a bear, we need you really kind of to do kind of make the noises and like make yourself bigger, but we need you to stand in between the bear and the camper. I'm thinking to myself, little Johnny about to get eaten by a bear because T's about to run. And they're like, you know, and we need you guys to be very vigilant about this because obviously you have campers that can't see, and then also you have campers that can't hear. And so when I'm thinking, I already have my camper for the week, and my camper cannot see. So I'm thinking to myself, well, I'm just gonna have to, I'm just gonna have to pull him by his arm and we're gonna run. I'm about to have a little pep talk with them. Like, hey, look, if I start running and I grab you, you just try to keep up with me. I mean, you guys know, I mean, for some of y'all that grew up in households like with, you know, people's skin like this color, a little bit darker, there's something that we collectively know. If you see someone start running, I don't care, I'm not gonna ask no questions. I'm running too. So but I don't know how you do that with a bunch of blind kids, you know? So I was like, man, this is gonna be, this is gonna be an interesting week. But the the the the director really kept saying, uh, you have to step, you're gonna have to like put the student behind you, and you're gonna have to be between the bear and the camper. And like I said, many times I thought to myself, oh, this kid's probably gonna die. But but if you really think about that, man, he's telling me, okay, my camper's blind, there's destruction ahead, I've got to step in front of between the destruction and my camper. Really, that's what Jesus did for all of us. When we talk about sacrificial love, that is what Jesus did for every single person. Is that he saw destruction, he saw death, he saw danger, and because of sin, we're blind, we're deaf, we're bumping into walls, we can't see, we don't know which way we're going. And he stepped in and he not only told us to run, he stood in front of us and took on death for us. So if I mean when we talk about a sacrificial, a sacrificial love, I mean, if you think about it, he does it every single day that we walk this earth. And there's so many things that we don't even see because of how God operates. That God is standing in between you and death every single day. Every day that you wake up, every day that you leave your house, God's shield is around you. And as we as we pray for our students that are going to camp, it is by his sacrificial love that we are praying that God, that you stand in between us and our students and death and our students, we pray that of your protection. He does that. So here you have the king of the universe, the creator of all things, stepped out of heaven, clothed himself in human flesh, yet he did not come demanding that others sacrifice for him. He came to sacrifice himself for us. If you think of every earthly king, every earthly ruler, if you think about all this, how they ruled, they sent and send others into battle. If you just look at all past kings, all just they send, as they sit on their throne, they send others into battle. They send others to be slaughtered. But if you look at what Jesus did, Jesus stepped into the battlefield onto the battlefield himself. That is sacrificial love. He demonstrated his love not by requiring the shedding of someone else's blood, by the willing and pouring of his own. When we think about the sacrificial blood, the sacrificial love of God, that should stir something in us. It should stir something in our hearts, knowing that, man, God, you came to us. You came to be in community with us. And if you look at the life of Jesus, Jesus just didn't come and say, you know what, I'm gonna, God, go ahead and set me up a castle, make it make it nice, and then I can, you know, I can do my work from there. You know, bring the disciples to me. I'll vet them from my throne. You know what? If someone needs to be healed, you know what? Like go ahead and bring them to me. If you look at what Jesus did, Jesus was with the people. Jesus journeyed, Jesus was on the level of people. And so the thing is, we have, when you talk about sacrificial God, when when Jesus ultimately sacrificed himself, he sacrificed himself for a group of people that he had spent 33 years with. That he felt their pain, he felt their despair, he felt their disappointment. And I can only imagine when he was on the cross, like he was just he was going through just all of humanity, but like, man, like I am doing this. So people can be in community with me. So then we have a greater love, we have a sacrificial love, and then we have a communal love. 1 John 4 19 says this we love because he first loved us. Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. But whoever does not love their brother and sister whom they have seen cannot love God whom they have not seen. And he has given us this command anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister. I really wish every person that confesses being a Christian would read just this verse passage right here. Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. And anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister. Because this is because of how this is written and what this is meaning, a brother and sister is not saying, Oh, I just gotta love my siblings. What this passage is saying is that we need to love everyone. And loving everyone, if we're if the love that's coming from us that is that is from God, there really needs to be an unconditional element of it. And so our love, the way that we're loving other people, their their race, their age, their social economic status, their political party should not deem if I can love you or not. And we've gotten to this place that we feel that I can now only love people that look, talk, act, and vote the same way that I do. And these are believers that are saying this. These are believers, and they may not be saying it, but just look at what they do. What our world needs is believers to say, I am going to love you even in our differences. I'm going to love you, even though we don't agree on everything, though. One thing that we can agree on is that we are supposed to love each other. And we and loving each other means that I can be in community with you. But there's just been this line that's been drawn in the sand. That if you don't think or feel or all the things that I do, then we can't we can't be in community anymore. And I I just I just can only imagine just how that grieves God's heart. Because the thing is about all of this is that when when we are not communal with each other, when we're not loving each other, as a family, if we're not loving each other, what's happened is for us, we know what God's word says. But because of our dysfunction, we are now pushing people farther and farther and farther and farther away from Jesus. Because they're looking at our dysfunction, they're saying, I ain't going to that family reunion. I don't want to be a part of something that in one moment they're saying that God is love and that we should love each other, but they can't love each other. And so if they can't love each other, then that means they can't love me. So if they can't love me, then there's no way that their God can love me. And so that's why we have to get to a place of saying that, man, we're going to love each other, we're going to do this together, and and really part of us loving each other is really just walking out God's word. But the thing is, for all this to work, for us to realize that, man, to accept God's greater love and then to realize God's sacrificial love and then to move into just a communal love. For all of those things to come into place and to fall into place, we have to get to a place that we as individuals have fully embraced that God is love and that we are loved by God. I really feel that there's many believers that come to church every Sunday. They sing all the songs. They might even read their Bible here and there. They might, when they're in traffic, might be like, oh Lord, get me through this. But they've never really accepted the love of God. They really don't believe that God truly loves them. And it could be that there's someone maybe even in here that you feel that because of what's happened in life, what happened in your past or what's going on right now, or whatever that might be, you may be even sitting in here right now saying, There is no way that God can love me. That you come in here with a smile, you might even serve, but uh that but in the quietness when it's just you and nobody else. And if someone was to ask you, does God love you? you probably say, There's no way. There's no way that he loves me. And so my my my prayer is for all of us this morning is that we do not leave this place without knowing that God truly loves us. That God truly loves you in a way that nobody else can love you. That God sees you in a way that nobody else sees you. Because the thing is, when you wholeheartedly know that God loves you, you start navigating life a whole lot differently. When you know and you embrace that God, when you can wake up in the morning and you can say, God loves me, you start walking a whole lot differently. You start praying differently. When you know that God loves you, when you start praying, heaven comes down. When you when you are living out and you know that God loves you, when you pray, you pray with confidence. You pray knowing that when I ask for God to do something, he's gonna do it. When I ask for God to show up, he's gonna show up. When I ask God to to protect my family, to love my family, he is going to do that. When you when you know that God loves you, you worship differently. Worship is not just uh, oh, I do this just to feel good, which we can, yes. But also when you know that God truly loves you, you can worship God in the pain. You can worship God in the sorrow because you know when you know that God loves you, you know that his word is true. And so his word says that when we endure for a night, that joy comes in the morning. So when you when you know that God loves you, when you can worship in the pain, you can worship in the sorrow, you can say, I hurt right now, but I still have a hallelujah in my spirit. I don't know what tomorrow looks like, but I still can praise God for who he is. I can praise God because he's good, because he's faithful, because he's a healer, he's a redeemer, he's merciful, he's the beginning, he's the end, he's the alpha, he's in the omega. My world might be falling apart, but I know that God is good. That is what happens when you know that when you are loved. Because the thing is that that when we think that, though, there's nothing that you know, God can't love me. I just always go back to the story. There was a woman in in the Bible that she had messed up, she had done some things, she might have had some relationships with people she shouldn't have relationships with. And she was living with so much shame that that she would go when everyone would go to get water in the start of the day, she would wait for the heat of the day to go get water. So she didn't have to see anybody. And so this one day she goes and she's expecting to be completely by herself and let me get water, let me get home. And there was someone sitting there waiting for her. And he asked her, Hey, can I get some water? And she has this interaction with Jesus, and Jesus begins to start telling her all the things that she's done. And he says, Have you put your faith in me? You'll have everything that you need. And I love this story because here you have this woman where people like she was doing everything she could to hide from people. There's probably some of you in this room that you've done everything to hide your past from people, but the Savior already knows. And the thing about this story is that it just didn't end with when she had this encounter with Jesus, and I believe freedom took place, that she then took what she had, that her new sense of freedom, and she began to go and tell everybody about it. So if anyone says, you know, as kind of our world has been talking about female pastors and female preachers, I don't think that they've really read through the word of God because some of the first evangelists, some of the first people that told the world about Jesus were women. And so here you have this woman who goes and runs and tells everyone that she encountered the Savior and healing happened not just for her, but for other people. But that is what happens when we accept the love of God. When we accept the love of God, it transforms everything about us. It transforms how we view ourselves, it transforms how we look at life. When you fully accept the love of God, guess what? The enemy can throw whatever he wants at you. But because you've accepted the love of God, you can say to yourself that there is no weapon out there that will ever form against me that can prosper. And so when you fully accept the love of God, when you walk into that doctor's office and the doctor gives you news that you weren't expecting, you say, Hold on a second, I know someone that loves me more than I could ever imagine. So let me go ahead and call the real doctor and see what the diagnosis really is. When you really accept the love of God, it is life-changing. It's life-changing and it's life-giving. So, Midtown, today I just really want to challenge you. Because what happens is if this room right here collectively knows, man, God loves me, then what happens is that that that love then flows outside of this room and it goes into neighborhood after neighborhood after neighborhood after neighborhood. Because if we are the church, that means you're the church when you leave here. And so if you know that God loves you, then then all of a sudden you start making sure that others that they know that God loves them too. And that is really where we as believers need to be. So just in this moment, just have everyone just kind of close their eyes. Just a moment between you and God as we close. I love for you just to ask yourself Do I really believe that God loves me? Do I wholeheartedly believe that God truly does love me? There's nothing, as we read in in Romans 8, there is nothing that can separate you from the love of God. The only thing that can make you feel like you're separated from God is yourself. So Father, we're just so thankful that you have given us an opportunity just to gather today and praise and worship you for the God that you are. Father, I'm so thankful for every person in this room. And Father, I pray that even for the person right now that is just really wrestling with, I don't even know if God loves me. I pray, Lord, that they this morning would feel your love like they've never felt it before. That you would, that you would come and intercede in their lives, you would intercede in their situations. That they would know that they are loved, that when they lay their head down tonight to sleep, Lord, I pray, Lord, that they will have the best sleep that they've ever had because they're going to sleep in the comfort of you. And Father, I pray, Lord, that out of the love that you have lathered and shown and given and showered on us, that that love would flow out of us. And there are people in this community that will come to know you out of the outpouring of love in our lives. Father, I pray, Lord, that you continue to bless this church. I pray, Lord, this that this church will continue just to be a light in this community. And that we will continue to be lights wherever we go. Father, I pray for protection over every person in this room as they they travel to wherever they travel after service. And until we meet again, I pray, Lord, that you will keep us close in your arms.