Forrest: Hey, I'm Pastor Forrest, and welcome to the Multiply Church Podcast.
Forrest: Each week we open God's word together to help you meet God and multiply good in your everyday life.
Forrest: We're so glad that you've taken time to join us for this week's sermon.
Forrest: And if you haven't already, be sure to subscribe and follow us on social media so you never miss a message.
Forrest: Now, let's dive into this week's sermon.
Forrest: As we kick off this summer of love series, as we take a look at what it looks like to receive and experience the love of God.
Forrest: Depending on the guys, it might be said something like that said weekly, or it wouldn't be said until his best friend was on his deathbed and he finally said, Love you, bro.
Forrest: It's funny how guys can say, I love this song, I love these boots, I love this dog, I love my team, love the game, but to show love to a brother seems some kind of impossibility.
Forrest: As we jump in today, the title of my message is Loved First.
Forrest: And this message today is gonna feel very elementary, but it really is missed by so many people.
Forrest: And so while it may feel elementary, actually, today what we're gonna talk about is foundational because a person can be around church for years and become more informed about God without being transformed by the love of God.
Forrest: Because for some of us, it's more comfortable to be right than to be loving, it's more comfortable to identify all the problems in somebody else's life versus carrying love for them.
Forrest: Or it's more comfortable to critique the church than actually love the church, the bride of Christ.
Forrest: And it's easy for us to confuse spiritual maturity with actually becoming, have a having a harder heart, being more difficult, being more hard to pastor, slower to forgive, quicker to judge and to correct.
Forrest: And foundationally, you have to look at this verse with me in Jude chapter 2.
Forrest: May mercy, peace, and love be multiplied to you.
Forrest: Now that's an important verse around here for a reason or two.
Forrest: The scripture gives us examples of what should be multiplied in our lives and through the gospel.
Forrest: We see from the gospels and for Acts that disciples should be multiplied, churches should be multiplied, God's word should be multiplied, Jesus' teaching and the parable of talents that financial stewardship should be multiplied.
Forrest: And then grace, peace, mercy, and love should be multiplied.
Forrest: And Jude 2, in this verse, may mercy, peace, and love be multiplied to you.
Forrest: It mirrors 1 Peter and 2 Peter in a similar greeting where he says, Grace and peace be multiplied to you.
Forrest: And in 2 Peter, he says, Grace and peace be multiplied to you through the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Forrest: This idea that what should be flowing out of us and multiplied out of us should be this growing, expanding, beautiful move of the kingdom of God and disciples and his word, and then foundationally these things that are in our character and the fruit of the Spirit and in peace and love and grace that should flow out from us.
Forrest: And so here at Multiply, we can multiply all the good we want, but if we aren't multiplying love, then what are we doing?
Forrest: What are we doing?
Forrest: And I can feel this for myself too because I can spend an entire week studying a passage about love and reading about love and preparing to preach about love and still be impatient with the people who are closest to me.
Forrest: That's why this passage and this message today, it's not elementary, it's foundational because it's not about whether we can explain what love is, it's whether the love of God is actually flowing through me and flowing through you.
Forrest: And so my burden for today, where we're going and we're jumping into this series, my burden for today is if you think that you have graduated beyond love for others, it shows how much more you have to learn in this Christian walk.
Forrest: God is love.
Forrest: What I mean by graduating beyond love for others is because it's easy for us to get into this trap of thinking that spiritual maturity somehow means how good we can debate with people.
Forrest: Spiritual maturity is about how discerning we are of spirits and what's going on and people's giftings.
Forrest: Or maybe that spiritual maturity is about how well we can correct and judge other people, or uncovering some deeper knowledge from the scripture, and all of those things pale in comparison to the test of love for our brothers and sisters in Christ.
Forrest: Or maybe for you, maybe you're one who says, you know, I love God, but all of a sudden you've grown comfortable with bitterness towards somebody, or contempt for them, or feeling apathetic or indifferent about the people of God and the body of Christ.
Forrest: As we look at 1 John, this book in the Testament, it talks about the very nature of God and that God is love, and that God originates from God.
Forrest: We see the evidence of love that's born out from God and our knowing of God.
Forrest: We're gonna see that we need to be a person who has the love of God flowing out with us in faith and our language and how we love other people in the family of God.
Forrest: And first John makes this distinction that love is not about some human emotion, which is what we normally think about when it comes to love, or about our preferences, the things that we love.
Forrest: But instead, he points to God sending his son for us as the picture of what love is, that love comes from God first.
Forrest: And so if you have your Bibles turn with me to 1 John on your screen or on the screen up here, 1 John chapter 4, New Living Translation, starting in verse 7.
Forrest: Dear friends, let us continue to love one another.
Forrest: For love comes from God.
Forrest: Anyone who loves is a child of God and knows God, but anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love.
Forrest: So we get that statement in this passage.
Forrest: God showed how much he loved us by sending his one and only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him.
Forrest: This is real love.
Forrest: Not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son as a sacrifice to take away our sins.
Forrest: And we'll pause there.
Forrest: This is where we get this passage.
Forrest: This is where we get this statement, God is love.
Forrest: From this very passage.
Forrest: And for me, I know sometimes I can get so consumed by all of the scripture and all the Christian practices that we need to hold when it comes to being a follower of Jesus and being around God.
Forrest: It's easy for me to miss that God is love and that love should be my top priority.
Forrest: That everything that's going on in my walk with Christ and walk with God should be flowing out of the love that I have received from Him.
Forrest: And maybe for you, you look back and remember a time in your life when you were more loving to others.
Forrest: Or maybe you've started recently following Jesus, and now you're seeing how love that at one point was cut off, now it's starting to come alive in you because of what God is doing in your life.
Forrest: And what we see here and the fact that God loved us first, is that God's love should lead your love.
Forrest: That's my first point.
Forrest: And this burden of we haven't graduated beyond love, but we have, and we feel like we do, we have a lot more to learn.
Forrest: One of those things is that it's God's love that should lead your love because he first loved us.
Forrest: Don't miss this.
Forrest: Because we grow up in a culture that says, well, you should love God.
Forrest: Well, if you're gonna be a good person, then you should love God, then you should know God, that you should follow God.
Forrest: But why in the world should you love God?
Forrest: Because he first loved you.
Forrest: That he sent his son, Jesus.
Forrest: It's important who loves first.
Forrest: In your relationship, was it the boyfriend or girlfriend that said love first?
Forrest: Use the L word.
Forrest: It's important, right?
Forrest: Who loved first?
Forrest: God is literally telling us, and the scripture is telling us that it's God who loved us first, and it's that motivation of the fact that He loved us, that then the love of God now is flowing out from us, and we have the enemy in our ear all the time that's trying to tell us, well, you know, I'll love them once they apologize.
Forrest: Or I'll I'll love them once they change, or I'll love them when there's not so much drama.
Forrest: I just need to protect my peace.
Forrest: Everybody heard that before?
Forrest: Well, here we have the scripture literally telling us that we should be the ones that are that is more multiplying peace, that we're the ones who are called to be the peacemakers.
Forrest: We're the one that when we show up, peace should be coming with us.
Forrest: Not that we're just uh protecting our peace in some selfish way, it should literally be multiplying from us.
Forrest: See the starting point is the love of God has been revealed to us in his Son, Christ Jesus.
Forrest: When did you receive the love of God?
Forrest: When did you receive Christ as your Savior and salvation?
Forrest: I can I can think right now back to Sundays where I remember some of you, you all accepted Christ on a Sunday.
Forrest: Raise your hand.
Forrest: I can remember your baptisms, baptism of your kids.
Forrest: When they received the love of God, when they understood the love of God, when they received the fact that God first loved them.
Forrest: And to flow out from that, then we see that the love of God, then now it is what for us now becomes visible among the people of God.
Forrest: Look at verse 11.
Forrest: Dear friends, since God loved us that much, we surely ought to love each other.
Forrest: No one has ever seen God, but if we love each other, God lives in us and his love is brought to full expression in us.
Forrest: And God has given us his spirit as proof that we live in him and that he in us.
Forrest: Furthermore, we have seen with our own eyes and now testify, or by say testify.
Forrest: That the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the world.
Forrest: All who declare, say declare.
Forrest: All who declare that Jesus is the Son of God have God living in them, and they live in God.
Forrest: We know how much God loves us, that we have put our trust in his love.
Forrest: God is love.
Forrest: And all who live in love live in God, and God lives in them.
Forrest: We see the truth that when we love one another, that it's a sign of, it's the display of the full expression.
Forrest: Verse 12.
Forrest: A full expression of God's love through us.
Forrest: And not only that, it doesn't just stay there, but then as we have seen with our eyes what Jesus has done for us, that He's the Savior of the world, then we begin to testify, we begin to declare, we begin to confess the truth about who Jesus is and who God is and what he's done for us.
Forrest: Now, I I've been preaching for a long time now.
Forrest: I've been preaching, my first sermon was 18 years ago.
Forrest: It was a terrible sermon.
Forrest: It was awful.
Forrest: And and the truth is that every other sermon I preach could be terrible too if I don't love the people and who I'm preaching with, preaching to.
Forrest: The scripture is so easily weaponized for political gain and for profit and social media to prove that you're a good person.
Forrest: But the real measure of your Christian walk is both your language around the declaration and your testimony of who God is and the love of God flowing out of your life.
Forrest: And so the second thing we need to do, we need to carry the language and the love of God simultaneously.
Forrest: We can believe the right things, we can know what the Bible says, we can know how to defend the truth, we can tell people like it is, we can know doctrine, but if we are missing love, we have all the language of Christianity, but if you're missing the love, you've totally lost the plot.
Forrest: Anybody know uh what Christianese is?
Forrest: Christianese is using all the church words, somebody starts going to church, all of a sudden they sound like King James saying these and thou's and all their prayers and saying things like, you know, well, bless their heart.
Forrest: Which sounds really Christian, but we all know that doesn't mean bless their heart.
Forrest: That means that person's an idiot and has done something dumb.
Forrest: Bless your heart.
Forrest: It sounds so nice, sounds so Christian.
Forrest: Or somebody's saying, oh, you know, how you do it?
Forrest: I'm blessed and highly favored.
Forrest: You say that, you say that, but then nobody feels blessed being around you.
Forrest: You're if you're so blessed and highly favored, why aren't people feeling blessed that are around you?
Forrest: See, we have to have the love of God that goes beyond the vocabulary to the love of our brother and sister.
Forrest: And it's put to the test.
Forrest: Our love for God is tested by our love for our brothers and our sisters, is what we're gonna see in verse 17.
Forrest: Look at verse 17.
Forrest: And now, as we live in God, our love grows more perfect.
Forrest: So we will not be afraid on the day of judgment, but we can face him with confidence because we live like Jesus in this world.
Forrest: Such love has no fear because perfect love expels all fear.
Forrest: If we are afraid, it's for fear of punishment.
Forrest: This shows that we're not fully ex we've not fully experienced his perfect love.
Forrest: We love each other because he first loved us.
Forrest: Now look at 20.
Forrest: If someone says, I love God, but hates a fellow believer, that person is a liar.
Forrest: For if we don't love people, we can see how can we love God who we cannot see?
Forrest: And he has given us this command.
Forrest: Those who love God must also love their fellow believers.
Forrest: Is there a brother or sister in Christ that you've stopped loving?
Forrest: Maybe you've gotten a point where you come you become really good about talking about them on their back.
Forrest: Maybe you've gotten really good at critiquing them, maybe even avoiding them, feeling very justified why you're right and they're wrong.
Forrest: See your love for others proves your first love.
Forrest: My third point.
Forrest: Your love for others.
Forrest: It proves your first love.
Forrest: Who is your first love?
Forrest: Is your first love God?
Forrest: Is your first love Jesus?
Forrest: Because the way that you love others, the way that you love your brothers, the way that you love your sisters in Christ are gonna prove that.
Forrest: Jesus gives this to us so explicitly and so it couldn't be more plain as he's talking to his disciples.
Forrest: We see it recorded in the Gospel of John 13.
Forrest: Jesus looks at the disciples and he says, Now I'm giving you a new commandment.
Forrest: Love each other just as I have loved you.
Forrest: You should love each other.
Forrest: Your love for one another will prove to the world you are my disciples.
Forrest: Jesus says, Hey, hey, hey guys, the way that you love one another is gonna be the evidence, it's gonna be the proof, it's gonna be the proof and the pudding.
Forrest: If you're my disciples or not, if you're truly following me, if you're truly loving me, and the enemy can get into our mind, even people who are within our your church family, and think, well, I just can't stand them.
Forrest: I don't want anything to do with that person.
Forrest: Talking about all the things that are wrong with them, not truly caring about them.
Forrest: Church, love for God cannot stay separate from love for God's family.
Forrest: I was thinking about this message and thinking about this scripture.
Forrest: I was thinking about our church multiplied.
Forrest: I was thinking about this room, and I was thinking about, man, do you love the people who are in this room?
Forrest: Do we love one another?
Forrest: Do you love those who are in who you're friends with, who come to church, who are in your small group, people on the team, people who are showing up?
Forrest: Do is their love just bouncing back and forth in this body of Christ?
Forrest: And believers in Jesus that are in other churches and other places, and our mentality around them.
Forrest: And Jesus says, Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples.
Forrest: There's a test, it's an active test of our love for God.
Forrest: In 1968, two social psychologists published their experiments on what's called the bystander effect.
Forrest: You may have heard of this before, and you see some tragedy is happening and people don't step in, or somebody's being attacked, and everybody just watches and nobody intervenes.
Forrest: It's the illusion of responsibility saying, Well, somebody else will handle it.
Forrest: They ran this experiment, the researchers they set people in a room to fill out questionnaires, and then smoke quickly began to enter into the room through the vent.
Forrest: And when people were alone doing this, they quickly got up and reported it.
Forrest: But when they were sitting with others, they stayed in their seat.
Forrest: Calm.
Forrest: Even as the room was filling with smoke, everyone just kept looking at each other.
Forrest: And if nobody's reacting, well, then it must not be that serious.
Forrest: It's it's called the pluralistic ignorance.
Forrest: So everybody privately thinking that something is wrong, but acting like nothing is wrong, and then everybody is taking cues from everyone else.
Forrest: And John doesn't give us this theoretical you should love God with no substance behind it.
Forrest: He literally gives it a face and says, love your brother, love your sister, something that's active.
Forrest: Not just this, like, oh, somebody else will do it.
Forrest: Well, somebody else will love them, somebody else will love them, somebody else will do this or that.
Forrest: But for us to have the responsibility and the test of, okay, do we love our brothers and sisters in Christ beyond our own families, beyond our own friends?
Forrest: And this is important about what people experience when it comes to the church.
Forrest: Because growing up, I experienced a few different types of Christians growing up.
Forrest: One of them being the crotchety Christian.
Forrest: Some of the angriest looking folks I knew growing up were in the church that I went to.
Forrest: Even when I when I was, don't even get me started about when I was uh taking theology classes with people in college.
Forrest: All they wanted to do was just debate the theology of 400-year-old Presbyterians.
Forrest: And you know, you can imagine how much time I have for that.
Forrest: You have crotchety Christians, you got crusty Christians.
Forrest: They're just annoyed by everything and everybody.
Forrest: Growing up, there was this old man River in our church.
Forrest: He used to go to our youth leader, and he'd say, The youth are throwing each other through the tables in the fellowship, Paul doing WWF.
Forrest: It was WWF back then.
Forrest: I don't think that ever happened one time.
Forrest: But the amount of times that that God came and said that to our youth leader, right?
Forrest: Just crusty, just annoying everybody.
Forrest: And then a cursing Christian, not a cussing Christian, a cursing Christian.
Forrest: Well, you know, the world's just going to hell in a handbasket.
Forrest: This next generation.
Forrest: Do you know that physical Bible sales doubled in Gen Z in Great Britain this last year?
Forrest: That's what's going on.
Forrest: That's the kind of thing that's happening right now, and having this mentality, this chicken little, oh well, the world's going to hell in a handbasket.
Forrest: And we're not going to be Christians like this.
Forrest: We're gonna be people.
Forrest: Who are defined by the love and marked by the love of God that we receive from Him and that flows out from us to others.
Forrest: Imagine with me for a second.
Forrest: Imagine with me for a second that multiply was a place where people both experienced the word, the language of God, but also the love of God.
Forrest: That just imagine with me that it's if people came, as people come through the door, maybe for the first time, maybe back to church in a long time, and maybe they're confused.
Forrest: I don't know.
Forrest: I don't know what all I don't know everything that these people believe, but I can tell these people love one another.
Forrest: Imagine kids, teenagers, college students getting to see grown men and women have a burden for each other and a love for one another and be willing to apologize or forgive, to love and serve with one another, to reconcile, have a burden that multiply, be a place where people would encounter the church.
Forrest: They would encounter Jesus by the visible display of love flowing out from us.
Forrest: Imagine, imagine mercy and peace and love being multiplied among us.
Forrest: And the love of God started in this house and this place.
Forrest: Even before we take a step out of here like we did last week with the one more cards, who we're praying for, the love of God outside of these walls, but also the love of God within these walls.
Forrest: This is a heart check for me.
Forrest: Because we got some good things that are coming up here.
Forrest: Summer, summer, it's heading back into the fall.
Forrest: Frankfurt Forward.
Forrest: We uh have the opportunity a couple weeks to donate shoes for students that are here in Franklin County so they can have a fresh pair of shoes as they kick off the school year.
Forrest: This is with the school system that it asked us to help.
Forrest: Also, one of the other local schools, the elementary school, Collins Lane, has asked us to provide some school supplies and cleaning supplies, going back to school.
Forrest: And you know what we said?
Forrest: We said yes.
Forrest: But but we're not just doing it so that we feel good or look good.
Forrest: The heart check is this is flowing out of love, flowing out of love for our city, for the schools and for kids and for people, and that makes sure that I keep my heart in the right place because all of the busyness and the planning, the preparation, all the things, and it's so easy for love to go back onto the back burner, but for us to have love, and for me to have love as a primary motivation.
Forrest: What does it look like for you?
Forrest: What does it look like for you today for the love of God to flow through you to fellow believers on these walls, this church, to people that are in your life?
Forrest: Maybe maybe there's some out there that you've just been white and knuckling being anonymous here at Multiply.
Forrest: You just want to just come in and out.
Forrest: Would you would you let the love of God flow through you so you could get to know some others?
Forrest: So you could jump in, take steps, and be involved in the love of God flow through you.
Forrest: I want y'all to stand to your feet now as I pray over you right now.
Forrest: Father, I thank you, God, for your goodness towards us.
Forrest: God, I thank you, Lord, for your power that's made perfect and your love that is perfect to us.
Forrest: God, I pray right now, Father, all across this room, for homes that are represented and people who claim to know you.
Forrest: If you're in the house today and you claim to be a follower of Jesus and you want God to grow and multiply the love in your life flowing out from you, would you just throw your hand up right now so I can pray for you?
Forrest: Yep, hands all over the place.
Forrest: Father, right now, every home that is represented, uh, hands right now to heaven to see love be multiplied through them, Father.
Forrest: I pray, God, that that prayer right now, Lord, that you would hear it, and God, you would help them right now.
Forrest: God, give them a picture in their mind right now and in their heart, Father, of the thing that they need to do this week, today, this week to show your love.
Forrest: And God, we know that you're going to be faithful, and we thank you that you first loved us.
Forrest: You can put your hands down.
Forrest: If you're in the room today, and you've not received the first love, the head bowed, if you've not received the first love by receiving Jesus as your Savior.
Forrest: Today is the day for you to receive Christ as your Savior, for you to be saved, for you to be set free and healed, for you to be forgiven of your sin.
Forrest: And that today would be the day of your salvation, and that today would be the day that you experience the love of God.
Forrest: And if that's you today, I ask you to pray before God in heaven and pray, Jesus, save me in your mind and heart.
Forrest: Jesus, save me.
Forrest: I believe that you died on the cross for my sin, that you walked out of the grave, and that you're alive.
Forrest: Believe that you're the Son of God, sent in my place.
Forrest: Forgive me, cleanse me.
Forrest: I repent and turn my life to you.
Forrest: I give you my life as you gave yours for mine.
Forrest: Thank you for being my first love.
Sallie: We're so grateful you joined us for this week's message.
Sallie: At Multiply, we believe life was never meant to be lived alone.
Sallie: If today you made the decision to follow Jesus, we'd be honored to walk with you on this journey.
Sallie: Visit multiplyky.com to let us know.
Sallie: We love you and we'll see you again soon.