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How are ya? Anybody uh coming off a little bit of a sugar rush and then crash and burn? Anybody too much Halloween candy? No? You guys are like uh healthy people, y'all don't eat candy. I've already eaten way too many Snicker bars. I love it. My kids go out on Halloween, trick-or-treat, and they come back and I eat their candy. It's great. I like the system. I get to pick the best stuff out of it. They're getting old enough now they they can tell stuff's missing, though. Which is so it was nice when they were younger, you know, and we were having this discussion earlier. You you know, we send out like a two-year-old or less, and they go out and get Halloween candy, and we're like, you really think we're gonna let our two-year-old eat all that stuff? But we're gonna eat it. That's the good thing. So I'm glad they still give it, right? I don't say no. But we had a great time, gave away a lot of hot dogs and uh s'mores. If you come to our house, you get s'mores. How about that? They were really good. We enjoyed that and just got to hang out and enjoy some time together with neighbors and friends, and uh just love Halloween and just being with people. So uh glad that you're here this morning and uh glad that we have the opportunity to worship God. It's been a great morning already. Just those songs, wow, just so uh ministering to my own soul, just to sing that out and to say that's what I believe, God. Help me believe that more. Help me believe that you are better, help me believe that you are what I need more than anything else. Uh, I really believe that, and I want to believe that more and more as I as I grow, as I as I get older, until Jesus takes me home. I just want it to be like a crescendo into heaven. Because one day we're gonna just celebrate that and worship that, and there's gonna be nothing holding us back from saying, Jesus, you're everything, because that's what it really is everything. It's just this side of heaven. There's battles and there's struggles to really believe that at our core. Well, as you guys are kind of getting settled here, a couple things. One, um, on the my left, your right side of the end of the row, there's a little black pad. We call it the connection pad. If you guys would just pick that up, if you happen to be on the end, uh fill that out and pass it down. That helps us get the info we need. Uh, one, just to say thanks for coming if you're a guest. And if you are a guest with us, I want to especially say thank you for being here today at Point Community Church. Um, as Harley said, I want to just echo uh that same idea that we are a family. Uh we are a family of Jesus followers. We're following Christ because we believe that he knows how to live life way better than we do. So he is our example, he's the model, he's the one we're shooting for, he's our target, our goal. Um, and if you stay around here very long, you also find that we are not a perfect family, um, that we struggle just like you struggle. We have doubts and fears and worries and stresses and anxieties and all the things that life brings, but we also know we have hope. We have hope in Christ. And so we want people to know that, so we get to point them to life in Christ, not to life in the church, not to life in a worship service, not to life in some Christian leader, life in Jesus. Like that's where life is found. And uh, when we go to his word, we find that it just points us to the person of Christ and how we can have hope in the midst of a world that does seem so much of the time to just be chaotic and struggling. So I want to make sure you've got that. The other thing I want to make sure that you know this morning, if you need a worship guide, we've got some ushers that can snag you on. So if you just lift your hand real fast, it looks kind of like this. And we'd love to make sure and get one of those in your hands. Uh, you can also um get one, uh get a journal at the back table at our connection point. Uh, if you want to kind of write your notes over the next year, if you stay with us and you're kind of tracking with us through the book of 1 John and then the future series we teach. It's a great way to collect uh sort of what God's been teaching you through Sunday mornings and also through your personal Bible readings, which we have a Bible reading plan in the guide for you. If you've never read the Bible personally, let me just make that plug for you. Get into the word yourself. It's important, it's hugely significant to your spiritual growth to spend time with Jesus personally. And if you if you're not getting to do that, it's not a legalistic thing, it's not a have to thing as much as it's a get-to thing. Does that make sense? And so when you start spending time in God's Word, it will change the way you think about life. It'll change the way you think about your marriage, the way you think about parenting, and more importantly, it will change where you find your security and identity and worth. And it and you and you will just revolutionize your world because we believe God's word is living, it's active. Okay? So speaking of your Bibles, if you go ahead and pull those out, we're gonna look at 1 John chapter 4 as we continue in our series. Love one another. And I have so, so, so much that I could say on the topic we're gonna speak to today. And so just ask God that we're not here until 4 o'clock this afternoon. Um, I'm joking. Some of you guys are like nervous, okay? Um, but I get so passionate about this, and so as I've done in the last couple weeks, I just want to pray again and ask God just to really help us hear what He wants us to hear today. So you pray with me. God, would you just speak to us today? We know that as your children and maybe those who are just searching, uh looking at truth, looking for truth, uh, evaluating what this is all about. God, we all need to hear from you. I know that I can say a lot of things, but I pray that I will only say the things you want me to say, and that, God, that it will get through uh not just to our heads, but into our hearts, and it would change the way we feel about you. It would change our hearts' affections uh more towards you so that we would love the things that you love and hate the things that you hate. God, just speak to us during this time. We ask for your Holy Spirit to work and move in this place. I pray it's all in your strong name, Jesus. Amen. Alright, so 1 John chapter 4, and we're gonna start in verse 7 today, and as you're turning there, let me ask a question. What is love? What is love? So this is participatory. If you're brave enough, you want to speak out around the room. What is love? Sacrifice, that's a great way to word to start with. What else? Intentional, yeah. Intentional sacrifice. Put those two together, that's good. What else? Respect. What else? Forgiving. Yeah, respecting your parents. Yeah, that's how you love your parents by respecting them. That's great. What do you honesty? Okay. Forgiving? Yeah, these are all great things that feed into love, right? This morning I want to talk about that because you know, when you think about our culture, uh, we do sling this word love around a lot. Uh, it gets used in all different types of contexts, like I love the longhorns, or I love my dog, or I love my house, or I live in my car, I love my job, uh, I love my girlfriend, I love this or that. And it gets used in a lot of different ways, and sometimes because we hear that word so much, it kind of dulls down its meaning. And the truth is that we use the word differently when we're talking about different things. So we don't, hopefully we don't love our spouse the same way we love our cat, okay? And if you love cats, there's a problem anyway, and we'll talk about that later. But but I want you to know that we all have ways we use the word love that just kind of flow off of our lips because it's a word that's common, it's easy to use, and probably a lot of times what we mean is we we like things. There's certain things that we like, okay? But in the passage we're gonna read this morning from 1 John chapter 4, John is gonna use the word love 22 times. He's gonna use the word 22 times in just this short little section. If you added two more verses to it, it'd be 27 times in approximately 15 verses. That's a lot of times he's using the word love. So anytime you're reading the Bible, just a tip, and you see a repetition, you see a phrase or a word repeated, the author is trying to get something through to us. Are you with me? Uh it's kind of like with my kids when I use the word obey, obey, obey, obey, obey, obey, obey, obey. You know, if I'm using that, that's like, hey, I think dad's saying we should obey. Okay? When God's using the word through his word teaching us, and you see a consistency in that, you need to go, hey, wait, wait, God's trying to say something. Let's stop here. Let's let's camp out on that. And so this this week, as I've wrestled with this text, I really felt like God said, hey, look, I'm trying to say something about my love. I want you to make sure you get my love. But there's three words that are used for love, and maybe if you've been around church, you've heard these words before, but I want to make sure you understand in the Greek language, which is what the New Testament of our Bible, the second half of our Bible, was written in, 27 books in the last half of the Bible, which really makes up about a third if you kind of hold it up. This there's three words that were used for love. The first one, and I put them all up on the screen for you this morning, Eros. Eros. If you've ever uh thought about the word erotic, that's where we get the word erotic from. But the idea behind eros love is more of a sensual, sexual, romantic, all those kind of ooey-gooey words, kind of Valentine's Day love, all right? So there is a sense that there's a love that we would say, I love my spouse, I love uh this person in a sexual kind of way, okay? And so that's one way that we use the word love. The second word is the word phileo. And if you've ever been to Philadelphia, anybody been to Philadelphia? It's the city of brotherly love. Now, if you've been to Philadelphia, it doesn't feel like the city of brotherly love. Um but uh for those of you that, uh, and if you're a Cowboys fan, it's not the city of brotherly love. But um but but Philadelphia, that Phileo, this idea of a deep friendship kind of love. Now, we see this that this is not just a man and woman love, this is a human being-to-human being love. In fact, in the Bible, the story of Jonathan and David in the Old Testament. Maybe you know King David was one of the greatest, was the greatest king uh in Scripture and in uh the people among the people of Israel. And David had a friendship with Jonathan, and he they had this kind of love, a phileo love, a deep sacrificial love for one another, that they would die for one another, that they would go to the mat for one another each other, they would uh have each other's back no matter what. That kind of love, okay? But then there was a third kind of love that we see in the scripture, and it's this word agape. Agape love. And the the best way that I can really convey this is this self-sacrificing, self-giving, selfless love. You kind of get in a trend here? It's not about me, it's about the object of my love. It's about giving and being generous and serving and caring and investing, regardless of what I get in return. I don't know about you guys, but when I hear that and I think about that, I'm like, man, that's a little foreign to me. My humanity doesn't work that way. I tend to think about even with my wife on my best days, my very best days to love my wife, I still hope to get something out of this. Right? I mean, even on my best days of trying to love and serve my wife, I'm hoping that it makes her mood better, or I'm hoping that she'll say, You're a great husband, or I'm hoping that like somehow there's gonna be something in it for me. Because that's the way human love works. It's about self, it's about serving self. Now, thankfully, over the course of time in our marriage, I've grown, and thankfully there's some progress towards an agape type love, but the only place we really see agape love fully lived out is in God and specifically in the person of Jesus. And so in this text, when I say that John uses the word 22 times love, he's using the word agape love. Selfless, self-giving, generous, benevolent love. That's what he's using. And he's trying to convey this idea that this is what love really is, it's what it's really all about. And so this morning, as we unpack this passage, I want you to remember that because there are there's gonna be some spots where you might feel a little bit of confusion, and we'll try to touch base on those along the way. So, love is a choice. I think somebody said something similar to that effect a while ago. It's a choice, and it's a choice to commit yourself to something, to someone. Regardless, again, of how you feel about it. Now, in our world today, uh love really is driven more by feelings and emotions than it is a choice. This is why a lot of people don't stay married. It's why the divorce rate is so rampant, is because you know what? We fall into love and then we fall out of love, or at least that's what we tell ourselves. Oh, I I loved them when I saw them and thought they were really pretty, or they were really handsome, or they had some stuff that I'd really like to get to know them better, or we were good friends and I fell in love with them, but I just don't feel love anymore, so there's no need for me to stay married to that person anymore. I can decommit myself from something because the feelings aren't there anymore. Well, let me just give you this kind of overview as we get ready to jump into this passage and say it this way: Love, the choice of love, the choice is the truck that pulls the trailer of emotions. It's not that the emotions is the truck that pulls the trailer of the choice. Does that help you this morning? It helps me to think about it this way that if a truck, an 18-wheeler, you see it driving down the road, that that that 18-wheeler cab that's pulling that trailer, it's like that's the choice, the commitment that I've made, and here's where we're going, and I'm gonna pull my emotions behind, okay? Not the reverse, because when you get it reversed, it is a chaotic, messy world. It is you're headed for disaster, and that's not the kind of love that God wants for us to experience. It's not the kind of love that God wants for us to have for one another. It's one that is ebbing and flowing based on my emotions and my feelings. Do we do that perfectly? Absolutely not. But when we look at God, he does it perfectly, and we can learn from him how to love regardless of how we feel. To make a choice. As I tell young marriage all the time, before they get married, we do the pre-counsel, and and uh one of the things that that has stuck out to me through the years is I've looked at God's type of love and even thinking about marriage. And this sermon's not even about marriage today, but the kind of love that God has for us is you know, we choose to love each other even on days we don't like each other. Because we don't always like each other, but we choose love because it's a commitment, regardless of what we feel. So let's read. We're gonna read a verse, we're gonna talk about it, we're gonna read a verse to talk about it, kind of work our way through this passage today. So hang with me. Verse 7 Dear friends, let us love one another because love is from God, and everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. So the first thing that John tells us is he says, you know, we should love one another, and that's the title of the series, because the second half of John, it's not that he didn't say it in the first half, but in the second half of John, he really focuses in on this idea of horizontal love. Vertical being our love for God, horizontal being our love for people, humanity, uh the flesh around us, right? And so he's saying to us, we should love one another. And why? Because God, or because love is from God. Where does love come from? It doesn't come from humans, it comes from God. In fact, the Bible tells us that before we were even in existence, before this world was in existence, before God said, Let there be light, and there was light, there was love. Why? Because God is the author of love, he's the creator of love. In fact, I won't try to blow your minds too much this morning, but if you understand scripture about what it teaches about God, God lives as Trinity, meaning He is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and all three persons make up one collective God in unison, and they're not three separate gods, they're one God in three persons, and they live in community with one another. Anybody's mind blown yet? A few weeks back, or I guess probably months now, we talked about the Trinity and why it's important we believe in the Trinity and how the Bible teaches us explicitly that there's a Trinity. Maybe it doesn't use the word, but the idea that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are all equally God, though distinct in their persons, they live in community, mutually benefiting one another, serving one another, caring for one another, encouraging one another, uh, submitting to one another, all these things that is just a beautiful community of love that shows us that when we were created in God's image, we are to live out that kind of love, to live out that kind of community with one another. That's the kind of love that God has, and that's the kind of love that is from Him. Love is from God. We didn't dream this thing up, we didn't create this thing. It didn't start when humans came on the scene. God was the one who created love. In fact, the next verse says that the one who does not love does not know God because God is love. Love isn't just from God, God actually is love. Now notice what he doesn't say. He doesn't say love is God. That's important, right? Word order is important because we're not saying this morning that we should worship love. In fact, if we put love over God, we will start to worship God. We'll start to worship love, and in fact, we'll redefine love by what we what makes sense to us. But when we know that God is love, then we say we understand what love is based on looking at God. And he just said in the previous verse that if we know God, we love. If we've been born of God, we love. But in this verse, he gives us the converse, which is the one who does not love does not know God. Now, this is where I say it gets a little sticky, and some of you in the room may be going, wait, wait, wait. So if someone does not believe in God, or we specifically say according to scripture, does not believe in Jesus, who is God, does that mean that they cannot love? Well, let me let me just talk through this a little bit in a different way. Can a person who does not know Jesus, does not believe in Jesus as the Son of God, can they have Eros love for someone? Absolutely they can. Absolutely they can. You can have romantic love for someone. In fact, you can actually stay married to someone and have this marriage relationship that is has has an Eros love component to it. Can uh someone who is not a follower of Jesus, not a believer in Jesus, actually experience Phileo love, brotherly love, deep friendship type love? Yes, right? You can do that. You can actually be a really good friend, you can really care deeply about people in that way, you can be sacrificial, all those things. I am not saying this morning that you cannot do that. Here's what I am saying, according to scripture, not what I feel, not what I think is popular, but what the scripture teaches us. Can you, as a non-believer in Jesus, agape, love other people? No, you can't. You know why? Because the love of God is a fruit of the Spirit. In Ephesians and in Galatians, we are we learn about this idea that there's this spirit working inside of us and compelling us to love, and it's compelling us to do things that are sacr that are sacrificial and not self-serving, but serving, but selfless. And that there's fruit of the spirit that are produced in us. So can people look like they are loving others selflessly? Yeah, they can appear that way, but guess what? Only, catch this, only God knows our hearts. So you could be a famous person on the planet who has a lot of money, and you could take it and you could adopt a bunch of children. You could go feed the starving in Africa, you could minister to prostitutes and take them out of their prostitution and get them educated and set them free, like it's happening in many countries around the world where there's lots of poverty. You could do all those great things, and it would not necessarily mean that you understand agape love. Now, I'm not here today to tell you who loves and who doesn't love. That's not me because I don't know the heart of every person. I don't know who believes in Jesus and who doesn't believe in Jesus fully, even though I can look at fruit, I can look around the room and say, okay, you know, yeah, they show signs that they love God. At the end of the day, that's not my role, that's not my responsibility. But I can tell you this that if you don't know the love of God, if you've never received the Spirit of God in you, you cannot agape people. You cannot selflessly, completely devoid of any desire for something back to you, love people like God loves people. Are you still with me? Confused? Okay. Just want to make sure this is crystal clear. You can experience love in a lot of ways, but you cannot experience the kind of love you were created and wired for apart from the Spirit of God in us. We can't. And that's what John says. The one who does not love does not know God because God is love. Not love is God, but God is love. And we need to be aware of that this morning. So let's jump on. Verse 9. What does this actually look like? This is awesome. I'm glad you asked, because this is really cool. Verse 9 tells us, starts to unpack what this love actually means. Not just a high, like, hey, this is God's love and it's selfless. He's going to show us tangibly what his love looks like. Verse 9 says this God's love was revealed. Praise God. We don't have to uh question, was God's love revealed? No, it was revealed. How was it revealed? It was revealed in this way. God sent his one and only Son into the world so that we might live through him. Sound familiar to another verse in the Bible you might be familiar with? John 3 16, for God so loved that he gave his one and only Son, right? That is love. That God would give his best for our worst. That God would give his best. Hey, this is the you know, think about this for a second. We we have rejected God time and time and time again. We have ignored him. We have said, God, we don't want you to tell us what to do. We've said, God, leave us alone. We want to we want to marry who we want to marry, we want to work where we want to work, we want to live where we want to live. We want to do life how we want to do life. We want to be angry when we want to be angry. We want to hurt people when we want to hurt people. We want to say whatever we want to say. We want to do all those things. And you know what God says to all that? God says, I still love you. God still says that. That's crazy. That is crazy to me. But he says in Scripture that while we were still sinners, not when we cleaned ourselves up, but while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. That's love. That's agape love. God doesn't grumble about that. He doesn't complain about that. He doesn't get ticked off about that. He doesn't sit there and go, man, I can't believe these humans, they're horrible. He loves because God is love. Even in his justice, even in his wrath, even in his holiness, he is still love. Because he can't stop loving us. That's unbelievable. Maybe this will help you catch this a little bit different. When I was in Indonesia, we had a great time there, got to talk to a number of missionaries, and one of the men we talked with is a guy named Paul Richardson. He wrote a book called A Certain Risk and Living Your Life on the Edge of Faith. And great, great book, really challenging me personally about what it looks like to follow Jesus even when it's hard. And we got to talk to him a little bit about the school he started there in Indonesia, which was helping these Indonesians learn math and science and reading and English and all those things, but at the same time pointing them to the person of Jesus and really getting to disciple these young Indonesian children and show them how to follow God. Incredible ministry. But I didn't realize this until I got there that his story was one that he was actually raised doing mission work in Papua New Guinea. Anybody know where Papua New Guinea is? It's actually really close to Indonesia. In fact, half of the island is Indonesia and half of the island is Papua New Guinea. Okay. And Arianjaya, which is also what they call it, this area, was an area that was very unchristian, in fact, very really zero Christians in this particular island, a very primitive area. And when Paul was growing up, he grew up with his dad, his name was Don, and they went into these areas and they would paddle, literally fly in in these uh planes that have to land on water, and then they would paddle back into these primitive areas and they'd start to work with these tribes that had never seen a white person and never seen anybody from you know America or a developed country, they'd never heard about Jesus before. Can you imagine being the first person to land there and say, hey, we're here, we want to love you, we want to serve you, hope they don't kill you because they were cannibals. Uh they did all these crazy stuff, they were intensely uh warrior-driven, so they would like, that was their main thing, is like we kill, we destroy. In fact, even the tribes that paddled them into there brought their weapons and said, You guys are crazy, and we're gonna like paddle and like just kick you out, and then we're gonna go paddle back as fast as we can. And they took them in there and they began to work and serve and love this tribe called the Sawis. And as Paul began to tell the story, this Saui tribe, they built their lives there, they built a home there amidst these Saui people, and they started noticing that these Sawis men are constantly in war with one another, constantly battling each other, constantly killing one another. And all these little villages of Sawwis, they had different leaders and different witch doctors, and they would just like get up in arms against each other, and they'd come out in the field, even in front of the Richardson's house that they'd cleared out this area, and they would have these battles and just kill people out there in mass numbers. And the Richardson said, Listen, God, we're not breaking through. The gospel's not breaking through. We don't know what to do. We need to go home or something's gotta happen. And he told the chiefs, he told these different leaders of these tribes, he said, We've gotta, we've got to see a breakthrough, we've got to leave. And they said, No, please don't leave, please don't leave. We want you to stay, which tells you a lot about the Richardsons and how much they had loved these people, that they literally was saying, Please don't leave us, don't leave us. And they said, We've got an answer. We know what we can do. And so these villages gathered out in this field, and they began to take baby boys. One village after another would take a baby boy, and one of the key witch doctors, you could tell by that nice thing he has in his nose there, would take a baby boy from a mom, pry it from her arms as she screamed, and he would hold it over his head and he would carry it to the neighboring tribe, the neighboring village, and he would hand it to the leader of that tribe, and he would say, We don't want to be at war anymore. This is our peace offering. This is our peace, child. And the Richardsons watched this, and as they had tears streaming down their faces, they watched as these villages all exchanged these babies, and these moms sat there with the loss of their baby, and it hit them. That's Jesus. Jesus is the peace child. Jesus is the one who was innocent, did nothing wrong, and yet was exchanged for peace with God. That He came and He took our place, and the war ceased because Jesus came. And they began to proclaim the gospel, and that tribe of the Sawis, almost every single one of them in the tribe came to faith and were baptized in the river in a very short time. In fact, that whole area went from like 0% Christian to like 85% Christian in like 10 years. Unbelievable. And most of them came to faith through hearing the gospel message about this peace child baby. Listen this morning. God gave his best, even in spite of our worst. He gave it for us. He gave it for every one of you. I wish I could say every one of your names because you could substitute your name in that spot that God gave his son for you. He gave his son for you. He gave his son for me so that we could be made at peace with God. I don't know if you believe that message this morning. I don't know if you understand how profound that is, but you are loved by God, and it's not just words, it's action, it's sacrifice, it's Jesus in your place for your sin and for mine. Love consists in this, verse 10. Not that we love God, but that he loved us, and he sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins, which is just a big word to say, God, that put it poured out his wrath on Jesus instead of us. Poured out his anger for our sin, because it would be foolish of God. It would be unloving of God to ignore our sin, right? Just like I say to my son who gets ready to dart across the road, and I get ready on Halloween, my two-year-old boy, he's like ready to jump out across the road. And if I just ignored him, that would be unloving, right? But I walk over there as he's getting ready to dart out in the road and I pick him up and I pull him back and give him a little swat on the bottom and I say, Listen, I love you. May that help you remember, do not cross that road. You could die. God can ignore our sin and our foolishness and our rebellion, okay? He's trying to bring us back to him to keep us safe, to draw, because he loves us. He loves us. But here's the thing: he says, not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and he sent his son. Notice this: God didn't wait for us to fix ourselves. God did not wait for us to love him. He initiated. God initiated with us. And some of us need that to hit us in our hearts fresh again this morning because some of us have been around church so long that we've forgotten. We think we actually deserve God's love now. We think we're entitled to it. We think that we've earned it somehow. Listen, we didn't earn squat. God initiated with us because he is love, because he is good, because he is gracious, because he is merciful, because he is generous beyond measure. Jesus loves. God loves. And it cost him everything. Jesus, it cost him because of that great love. He made the first move. He stepped towards us when we didn't deserve it. So maybe now you're thinking, well, he loves us now what? Well, John's gonna help us out. Dear friends, is what he says. He's really going now. He says, Dear friends, if God loved us in this way, we must also love one another. You know what our response ought to be to the greatness of the love of God? To love him, but to love each other. To love each other. To understand how great his love is for us will impact our love for one another. Just like God gave his only and his best for our worst and our ugliest, he wants us to do the same for others. I said last week something that I still believe is true, which is the reason we don't tell other people the gospel is because we care a lot of times too much about what people think about us rather than what God has already said about us. Okay? But I want to take that a step further. The reason we don't tell people about Jesus is because we don't love them the way that God loves them. The reason that Nick Shock does not tell my neighbors about Jesus is because I don't love them. The reason I don't pray for them consistently, the reason I don't pray for the ones that are on my street, that are at the store, that are in the restaurants that serve me, and I just see them as just someone who gives me what I want. The reason I don't tell them about Jesus and serve them and show them the love of Jesus is because I don't love them. That's the truth. You know why? Because I've lost sight in that moment of how much God loves me. But when I start to grab a hold again of God's love for me, it overflows out of my life towards those around me. Have you seen that in your life? No one has ever seen God. But if we love one another, God remains in us and his love is perfected in us. It doesn't mean that we're going to be perfect, but it does mean this. That as we love others, as the church, Point Community Church and the Big C church, which is all over the world, as we love others, we make the invisible God visible to the world. We make a God who we say we believe in God, and they're like, yeah, right, we've never seen him. Uh we believe in God, yeah, but you can't talk to him. I mean, he's never talked to us. How do you know God's real? Listen, we as the church, we get to demonstrate the love of God in tangible ways to people all over the world. Because as we receive the love of God, we need to love others and we get to show them just how great and awesome the love of God is. We make the invisible God and the invisible love of God visible by the way we live our lives, by the things that come out of our mouths, by the way we use our hands and our feet and our bank accounts and our time and our energy and our just to love people. Is this crazy? Yes, it's crazy because in the face of the culture, it makes no sense whatsoever. In fact, it's completely counterculture. But in the face of a gracious, loving God, it's completely normal. Because it's a response to the goodness of God, not something that we say, let's go love more, let's go try harder. So he says we get to do that. So, how do you guys know? How do we know as a people, how do we know that we are in God's love? Well, verse 13 through 16 kind of unpacks this a little bit for us. Subjectively, John's gonna say, first, in verse 13, this is how we know that we remain in him and he in us. He has given us assurance from his spirit. Subjective. Listen, if you know the love of God in here this morning, if you if you've ever experienced the love of God, you know because the Spirit of God is with you and is present in your life. Now you may have been ignoring him, rejecting him, denying him. Um maybe you haven't talked to God in a long time and really gotten honest with him. Maybe you've just said, God, kind of get away from me for a season. I want to do my own thing. And God respects, I mean, he's God is God is does not force his love on us. He does not force himself on us. But here's the thing: some of you this morning, I know that you've struggled to feel the presence of God. But if you have ever put your trust in God, you know that the Holy Spirit is in you. You've felt him, you've sensed him, you've seen how the Bible went from something that you opened up in your life, I don't understand anything here until you open it up and you realize it's a love letter. That's the Spirit of God revealing that to you. That it's not just words on a page, that it's a story of redemption, that it's God saying, I love you, and I'm gonna do whatever I can to let you know that and to give you an opportunity to receive that love. That's what he's done for us. And that's the Spirit of God in us. But the second thing he says is not just that the Spirit of God is in us, but in verse 14, and we have seen and we testify that the Father has sent his son as the world's savior. So, what's the second thing that we know? That God's love is with us, and we never have to question it again? He says, because God sent his son. We've already said this a while ago. You want to know what how you can know that you know, that you know, that you know that God loves you? Jesus died on a cross for you. Never have to question it again. You never have to question God's love. And you may say, well, what about when we lose a child or we lose a family member, we go through tragedy? What if happen what happens when my bank account is empty? What happens, God, when I lose everything and I lose my job? What happens when my spouse leaves me? What happens when my children abandon me and rebel against me? What happens in all that? Well, here's what I can tell you. I don't know how you're gonna face all that without God, but with God, you can know, no, no, that no matter what you were loved, that you are valuable and that you have an eternal home with Him forever, and that this life is temporary, and whatever hardships or struggles and whatever great things you go through in this life, those things are temporary, but God is forever and his home is forever, and his love is going to get you there, not you, not me. His love is gonna carry you through a peace that passes understanding, a joy that doesn't make sense, a hope that's there in times of trial and struggle. It's coming from the love of God toward us. So we know that God sent Jesus. And he even says this while it's available to us, not everybody believes in it, and not everybody confesses it. In fact, there may be some of you in the here this morning. You're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I've heard this before. I've heard people talk about God's love, and you know, we say stuff, God's love. Listen, just because you've heard people talk about God's love, and just because we've heard this message taught before doesn't mean we believe it. Doesn't mean that we've actually confessed it with our mouth. Scripture says that the one who confesses with their mouth that Jesus is Lord and they believe in their heart that God raised him from the dead, that that love story that actually happened, they will be saved. They will be saved. And so he says here in verse 15, whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God remains in him, and he in God. And we have come to know and to believe that God, the love that God has for us, God is love, and the one who remains in love remains in God, and God remains in him. Isn't that awesome? You can know today that you're loved, and you can know that God is with you. You can know that. So, what are the the impact? What's the impact of God's love in our lives? Well, there's just a few that John gives us here, and I think they're pretty significant. The first one is this that we can have real confidence on the day of judgment. Real confidence on the day of judgment. Now, I've been uh had the opportunity while we were in Indonesia, you guys are gonna get tired of that phrase, right? You're like, quit talking about Indonesia already, okay? We already heard about that. While we were in Indonesia, we had the opportunity to talk to a lot of Muslims. And the interesting thing is that we had a dialogue, we could kind of work through, and we got the same answer almost verbatim every time. And it went something like this Hey, um, do you believe in God? Yeah, we believe in God. Well, what do you believe about God? Well, we believe that God uh, you know, He made people. We believe that God's given us these prophets to tell us about Him. We believe He's given us some rules to live by to help us be good people and these things that we need to do if we want to get God to love us and to uh ultimately to receive us into eternity, okay, whatever that looks like. Oh, that's cool. Well, do you follow the rules perfectly? No. Well, how do you feel about the day of judgment that's coming? They would sit there and they would say, Well, I'm I'm kind of freaked out, kind of scared about eternity. Well, why? Because I I don't know. I mean, I don't know if I'm gonna make it in or not. And I would look at them and I would say, I want you to know, and I'm not joking, I know I'm gonna be in heaven forever. And I'm confident right now. I'm confident right this minute that I'm gonna be in heaven forever. And I want you to know that I'm confident not because I go to church on Sunday, not because I'm a pastor, not because I I've done all these good things, or because I'm a good dad or a good husband. I'm confident right now, and here's why: because Jesus has forgiven me for my sin. And they would scratch their heads, they would look, what? That's right. Jesus forgave me for my sin through his sacrifice on the cross on my behalf. And that same message is for you today, not just for Muslims in Indonesia or wherever, it's for you today. You would believe that we would believe that Jesus has forgiven us for our sin. So that why? We could have confidence that we are his children, loved and forgiven children of God. We are forgiven. And we will never have to worry about that. But also, not only does he say that in verse 17, he said, it goes on to say in verse 18, there is no fear in love. Anybody afraid of anything? Anybody ever get fearful? Absolutely. We get fearful, we get full of fear. But he says this, there is no fear in love. Instead, perfect love drives out fear because fear involves what? Punishment. That's interesting. So the one who fears has not reached perfection in love. This week, um, in our life groups, we always talk about life groups and how significant they are to help us grow spiritually. In our life groups, a couple weeks ago, Josue preached on loving one another, and one of the things he challenged us to do was to go and to love others, uh to do something practical and tactile, tangible to show someone love. And so, you know, as I'm getting ready for life group this past week, um, I'm thinking to myself, like, I'm gonna be the pastor that shows up and I don't have a story to tell. You know, it's like we're gonna ask, how'd you do this week at loving others? And we'll be like, well, I didn't actually uh love anybody this week. It's like that's terrible, you know. I can't be that guy, right? But I just was, you know, it's not that we don't love people and we're not doing things. Sometimes we're just not intentional. And so I'm thinking to myself, okay, God, I just, I don't know what's gonna happen this week, but I just pray that I will be open to love people wherever they are, however I can love them. I just want to love people. And so I began to pray about that. And I'm on the way to meet this guy for lunch up near Dell Children's Hospital. And as I'm driving down the road, I'm just, God, like, help me to be really open and sensitive and God see a need and meet a need. So at least I have a story to share. Right? That's the human heart, right? So I get out of my car and I start walking towards the restaurant where I was gonna meet my friend, and I hear this, Mister, Mister. I was looking around, trying to figure out what's going on, and I look over and I see this car, and there's this lady sitting in there. So I walk over to the car. I was like, Yes, ma'am, how are you doing today? She's like, I'm not doing so good. I'm like, well, what's wrong? She said, Well, I just not feeling real good, and I just got through doing dialysis and I don't have a lot of money right now. I'm really hungry. Could you buy me some lunch? I was like, you know, I was just praying that God would show me a need. It's like, this is not exactly what I expected, but you know, this is awesome. I mean, how about that? You know, it just happened like that. And I said, Well, you know, let's go get you some lunch. What do you want? I want two butter flavored croissants. Okay, all right, let's do it. I don't know where we're gonna get. There's all these restaurants out there. So we start walking, and she goes, I know where they are, and there's the Starbucks on the end, you know. And so it's like we walk the farthest past all these other restaurants to go down to this Starbucks and walk inside and we get in line, and I said, What's your name? And she said, My name's Tina. And I said, Listen, Tina, you know, I can buy you these three butter croissants, and I want you to know God's love through this. And, you know, if I just if I just fed you a meal, like I I would I would not be giving you the most important thing I could give you, which is do you know the good news about Jesus? That he loves you, that he died for you, and that he wants you to have eternal life. And she's like, I do know that. I do know that. I do know Jesus. And I said, that's awesome, Tina. And I I can't wait one day. I may never see you again, but I can't wait one day we'll get to be in heaven together worshiping Jesus. She said, Heaven! Oh, I'm scared to go there. I said, Well, Tina, you know, I want you to know you don't have to be afraid. She said, Are you a pastor? It's like, you got me. I said, Well, I'm a pastor, but I'm a dad and I'm a husband and I'm a child of God more than even a pastor. I said, and I want you to know God's love. I want you to know you don't have to be afraid to go to heaven. She goes, well, you don't, you know, I said, is there a reason why? She's like, well, I can't tell you. I was like, you sound like a lot of people I know that know Jesus, but they're scared of to go to heaven because they think they're going to get punished. I think they're gonna get punished when they get there. Can I just say this to you this morning and make sure that you're not like Tina today? If you are in Jesus Christ, there is no condemnation for you. You will never, ever, ever be punished because Jesus already took that punishment upon himself. You will never be punished for anything that you do in your sin in this life because Christ has forgiven you once and for all, and you're his child. You will be disciplined because a father disciplines those he loves. And there's a difference between punishment and discipline. Discipline is to correct us so that we can walk in the freedom he's already declared about us and the forgiveness that he's already given us, so that we wouldn't cause others to stumble and miss the love of Jesus. But you will never be punished this morning. And that is the hope we have in the gospel in Jesus. And we can celebrate that. It's why we sing these songs of worship, it's why it stirs our hearts, because we're not under God's wrath any longer. We don't have to get to heaven and be afraid. Jesus paid it all. And the last thing that John says to us as we close, he says, we love because he first loved us. He first loved us. You want to know why Christians ought to be the most loving people on the planet? Because God has loved us. That's why we should be. Not because we're good, not because we're great, not because we have it all together, but because God has loved us. That's why we love. So why don't we do that? Why don't we do that? Because we are in a war. We are in a battle. And it even says in scripture that as we get near to the end of life, we get near to the return of Christ, that the love of many will what? Grow cold. Satan wants the love of many to grow cold for one another and for God. And the only antidote to an unloving heart is the peace, child. The beautiful sacrifice of what Christ did in our place. If you're struggling today to love your spouse, receive the love of Jesus. If you're struggling today to love your boss at work, receive the love of Jesus. If you're struggling to love your rebellious kids, receive the love of Jesus. Kids, if you are struggling to love your parents, receive the love of Jesus today. It's not performance-based, it's a free gift. If you are struggling to forgive yourself today, receive the love of Jesus. His love is greater. In fact, Paul writes, may we know how high, how wide, how deep the love of Christ is, that we would know it beyond even knowledge. I don't even know what that means. It's like beyond even the ability just to say, it's like just this idea that's out there. We would know it at our heart's level that we are loved by Almighty God. And that that has been declared once and for all through the person work of Jesus. The great love of God. Receive it today. Receive it. Believe it. Walk in it. And now may we love others as we receive it. Let's pray.