Amen. You can be seated. Let's ask God's blessing on scripture reading for our sermon tonight, if we can, together. Oh, our Father, we We do cry out to you that we would not have to wait any longer, but that you would come quickly. And Father, as we wait, we know that you have given us means to encourage our faith and build us up and strengthen us in our delight in you, our love for one another, and in our waiting and witness in this world. Father, we thank you for the bread and the cup that we shared in this morning, and we thank you this evening for this word that you set before us. Oh Father, enlighten our hearts and our minds that we could receive from you that which you intend for us to receive, even life and strength and hope and faith from these life-giving words. Lord, bless the preaching of your word. Let the words of my mouth and the meditations of every heart here be found acceptable in your sight, oh Lord. For we pray and bring these things, requests to you in Jesus' name, amen. 1 John chapter 4, verses 7 through 11. I don't have the page number of the Pew Bibles, but it's towards the back. 10-23, 10-23. If you've gone to Revelation, you've gone too far. You've got to flip back further again. If you get to Hebrews again, you've passed it on the other side. 10-23, 10-23. Verses 7 to 11. This is what God's Word says to us there. Beloved, loved ones, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this, the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only son into the world so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, We also ought to love one another. Amen. Well, recently I've been reading in a number of books is the nature of the job as you prepare for sermons and such, and I was reading for something else, I don't remember what it was, and I came across a man who's a commentator on the Song of Songs in the scriptures, and he was talking about what is supposed to happen while we read the Song of Songs, so that when we come to the words there that speak of a lover and his beloved, We should see in that love something that transforms our loves, that we, as we read about the love there, our loves themselves would be molded and shaped and directed, channeled, as it were, so that we would live and love in that way. And I think that's a principle that all of us here, or most of us, if not all of us, would affirm readily, that the scriptures are the means that God would use to so shape our desires and our loves, the very things that move and guide the feet and the hands and the things that we do in our lives. And I don't think it's any different in this passage. I think that John, by the Holy Spirit, in this portion of his epistle, is seeking to turn our gaze toward a love that would shape and guide us in our love for one another. He calls us, as it were, to set our eyes upon that love, to look at it, to consider it, and in our consideration of it, find there the means, the power to love one another. Yes, he commands us, beloved, love one another, but he also empowers us, providing us the very means by which that love is accomplished. It's not any different than the famous prayer of St. Augustine who says, oh God, grant what you command and command what you desire. Oh Lord, won't you just fill me with the things that you love and follow after so that you can command me whatever you want and that whatever you ask, I will want to do it with you. That's his prayer. And I think John is accomplishing something exactly like that here. We are called then, by what is written, to consider love, to examine it, both positively on one side and negatively on the other, both to see what it is and to see what it is not, And in so doing, we will find the ability there to love one another, to fulfill the command. So as we look at the describe, as the love here described positively, we'll see three positive things. And then as we look at it negatively, we'll see one negative thing. The three positive things are first, it is from God. Love is from God. And two, it is God, or as John says it here, God is love. And three, it is, the love that is, is in us. It's in us. And then, negatively, we are reminded by John that the love that he speaks of and that we should behold is not from us. And by implication, we are not love. So notice then, as we follow that line of thinking, as we read across this passage of scripture, that God, that John, turns our eyes first and foremost up to heavenly things, to God himself, where he sits in heavenly places, to the nature of the most high. And then from that high place, he shifts our gaze down, as it were, to the place where we dwell among each other in humanity, beginning on high and moving down toward us. John, interestingly, commanding us to this very earthly task, first and foremost, doesn't turn us to earth, but turns our gaze and our heart and our eyes towards heaven first, and away from earth, so that we might find there our direction. And we would do well to follow him, setting our minds on things above, where God is. That would be a little to get ahead of myself. First, come with me to the passage where we find this section of John's letter, and let me give you something of an idea of its context. He commands us, beloved, let us love one another in the context of just completing a reminder, a warning to us that we live in a world that is antagonistic to the confession of our Lord Jesus, that we live in the midst of false teachers and antichrists who would preach a Jesus that is other than the Jesus that we know and love and follow and confess. And the particular Jesus that they would preach is one that does not, specifically does not, come in the flesh. Somehow, he, this false Christ, is not fully man like us. Verse 3 says, Chapter 4, verse 3, every spirit that does not confess this Jesus, the one coming in the flesh, is not from God. This is the spirit of the Antichrist. The context is therefore important. The importance of the humanity of Christ is before us as John lifts up his, or sets down his pen, lifts up his voice and says to us, beloved, that is you, beloved, loved ones, who have confessed Jesus Christ, come in the flesh, who are not listening to the words of the false prophets and the false apostles. Beloved, you, those, let us, He concludes himself. The apostle joins us with this command and says, beloved, let us, you and I, love one another. You and I who have a common confession. You and I who have a hope in Jesus, the Jesus who we put the faith in that we just confess together using the Heidelberg Catechism. We who live in a world antagonistic to that very confession. We, John, the apostles of the Lord, and you and I, let us. John says, love one another. It may not sound like it with the let us, but it is an imperative. It is a command, and one that he issues not only to you, but to himself. And I think there's a worthy point to stop and notice there, that it's important when you and I command or give the commandments of God to someone, that we don't simply just command them and forget about ourselves, but that our commandment should be a commandment that we're willing to lay on our own shoulders along with the one whom we are talking to. We should not fall into the the error of the scribes and pharisees who were willing to lay heavy burdens on people's shoulders but not willing to take it up with the very smallest of their fingers, their pinky fingers, but instead we should Well, I should preach to you as though I was preaching to me. And John, just like John, who commands us even as he commands himself, so we should do the same. For the judgment that we measure out, as our Lord reminds us, will be measured back to us. And John commands us then, let us love one another. And having commanded us, he then turns us to the very shape of the thing that he's commanding us to. He gives us the means and the empowerment to fulfill the command, like a good parent who says to his son or daughter, hey, I need a loaf of bread. Go get the loaf of bread. And right as he says, go get the loaf of bread, what does he give to the child? Keys and a credit card or cash. Keys and a credit card. He tells him to do the thing and he gives him the means to do it. And so it is with our Lord. He tells us to do the thing, and then he gives us the means to do it. Love one another. Well, how are we supposed to accomplish such love? What is our motivation? Where are our keys and credit cards, so to speak? Why should we even want to do this? And he tells us plainly, beginning in verse 7. Because love is from God. Love is from God. And the NIV adds an extra word and said that the love comes from God. The love comes from God. And also, it is a definite love in the original Greek. There is a the there. The love is from God. And so the very first thing we ought to notice about love is that God is the very beginning of it. It is from him. He is the fountain from which all love flows. He is the root of the leaves and the branches and the shade and the fruit of this tree, this love. The very leaves and shade and branches and fruit that you and I and so much of our life find goodness and joy and health in. Do you experience love in your life? I'm more than willing to bet that every one of you do, in your families, with your loved ones, with your friends, with your colleagues, wherever it is, every place that that love touches your life, it has its root in God. It is from Him, and without Him, all of those loves, all of that joy, all of that goodness would wither up and die. He is the root. Even our bad relationships, like a branch broken off from the tree, all of the good life that was in that thing that you sometimes remember and think, oh, there was some good there. Yes, it was good. And it was broken off from God, so it was bad. But all the life that remained in it before it shriveled up and died was from the tree, from the root, from God. God gives this love to you. and all of its manifestations, like He gives you the sun, like He gives you the rain, like He gives you the breath in your lungs right now, and the heart beating in your chest, all of it is from God, because love is from God. The King James adds a little nuance to this word from, and instead of translating it from, the King James has of. Love is of God. Love is of God. So not only then is he the source, but love is like the very stuff of God. It's the currency that he's always trading in. It's the atmosphere of his very presence. You cannot interact with God apart from interacting with love. You want to get to know God? You want to be part of his life? Then the only way in is to participate in this, the love. And isn't it like that in so many of our relationships? When we want to get to know somebody, we look at them and we observe them and we see the things that make up what is the essence of their lived out life and we join them in that very thing. Do we not? We enter into their world. You watch football with him because he watches football. You take a walk with her because she likes to take walks. You eat that strange thing that he always likes to eat because he likes to eat it. You read that book that they read over and over all the time because it's so important. It is like it's of them. this book that they read. Why? Why do you do it? Because it's part of their world and you want to enter into their world and be part of what is part of them so that you can get to know them. See, my kids have this funny game that they like to play, your kids probably play something similar to it, where they suddenly enter into our living room and that carpet that covers our floor is no longer carpet But it is lava, hot and bubbling and threatening our very existence. And the pillows thrown all over the place are little rocks that are floating about in that lava. And the couch that you have to jump on the pillows to get to is a rocky outcrop, a mountain, a shore, a safe place from the lava. And it's bubbling and threatening and devouring fire. And that scary lava monster, a.k.a. Job, that's running around that could get you at any moment. You see, it's a game that comes from their imagination. It bears the marks of their personalities and their creativity. It has rules that they make up. And if I want to know them fully as they are in their lives today, then I, too, have to enter into that world with them. I have to go and look at those pillows and see not pillows, but rocks. I have to avoid that carpet as though it were flaming fire. And I have to flee to the couch and away from Job with all my energy and all of my strength. Because to play, to play is the very essence of my kids. They love to play. And for me to be part of their lives, I have to play with them. It's no different with love in relationship to God. It is from Him. It is of him and more. So that's the first point, it is from him, it is of him. And second, God is it. God is love. The emphasis then is upon God. Love then is defined, ordered, governed by God. God is subject. In the truest sense then, love is divine. Love is divine. All of us, I think, experience this as well in some point in our lives, this sense that the deeper, more important things can be found in those loving relationships, in those experiences of love, that there is where the deepness and the depth is in our lives. It is why we enter into those experiences and things that are of others' lives, because we want to experience the love that we know is there. And in experiencing that love, we touch on something that is more meaningful than the everyday stuff, something that is more lasting than the continual changing stuff. We go there because we know that there's something there that's bigger and better and more important. And I think that's the very root of so much of our popular spirituality, is it not? Love. Love. The sense of love. It is the answer. Wouldn't we say it? It is all we need. It creates peace, love, heals division. It overcomes great injustice. You can hear it everywhere from the mouths of men and women throughout the whole spectrum of humanity. Can you not? From the black-eyed peas, to the preaching of Pope Francis, to the smile of the Dalai Lama, all of them proclaim something of this love. And I think that all of them, if they read just verses 7 and 8, Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God, and anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. If they were to hear that, I think they would all affirm it apart from its context. Everyone who experiences the deepness of the love in the world says something like this, that they need to know it more deeply. They need to know love. They want to know that this love is somehow, they know it somehow is connected to something bigger and more important, something like God, a God, a divine. And so they know that love is associated with this one. And so often in the world, what do we do? We content ourselves with our various experiences of this love in our lives. Much like my walk through the living room is so often experienced when the girls are playing. I see them smiling and I hear them giggling and I have a warm feeling and I am glad to have them be joyful, and I hop over or sometimes trip over pillows, and sometimes with and sometimes without frustration, I dodge leaping children as I walk through, and I ignore the solemn warnings, Daddy, it's hot lava! And I continue on my way, blissfully unaware that I'm treading through the very means by which I may be burnt up alive and devoured by the monster. You see, I'm part of their game. I'm in it, and I derive a spiritual benefit from it as much as I enjoy their joy in it. But even while I'm in it, notice that I'm really not in it. I'm outside of it, even while I'm in it. And so often I think that we do this, that in our world. We walk through our world smiling and sensing and enjoying this something deeper, this good thing. our sense of spirituality that we derive from that. And even while that all happens, we find ourselves tripping and dodging and avoiding things that would interrupt this serene sense of our own spirituality and connection to the deeper things. We gave no particular attention to them and often close our ears to the voice of wisdom that cries out in the streets to us. Yes, we would all agree love is divine. It is of God. Yes, God is love. And out of the context here, it all can be swallowed up and eaten as the world's own. But But there is a context, and the context, like the pillows, trip us up. And it demands that we allow this God who has revealed himself in the flesh to define love for us by himself. I do not walk into my living room and see the pillows and think, there's rock in my floor. Oh, there's fire all over the place in my floor. That couch, that would be a good place for me to go and hide from the death that could await me if I don't use the pillows to avoid this fire. See, I don't have that in me when I go into the living room, but my girls do. And so if I want to know what's going on, where do I need to go? Them first. I need to go to them. And if it is that way with my children and their play, how much more is it with God and the love that he commands for us to walk in and the love that we experience from him? How much more is it with God who is love? And so I think that that confronts us with the question in these verses, and the question is, of course, if God is love, who is he? Who is God? And left to ourselves, that is the most difficult question in all the world. On our own, we would be at a loss. On our own, we have trouble defining love. How can we define the God who is love, who is behind all that love, apart from some idea or force or impersonal being? You see, we can't do it on our own. He must come to us. God must do the initiating work, and that's exactly what he does. In verse 9, in this the love of God was made manifest. Among us, it says. And the NASB is a little closer to the Greek and it says in us. In this, the love of God was made manifest in us. This will be our third point. First, love is from God. Second, God is love. And third, love is the love that is God and from God is in us. It's a strange statement if you think about it. The love of God has manifested in us. It would make a lot more sense to say the love of God has manifested to us or before us, but isn't that exactly how we experience all our other experiences of love? It's always manifest. It's always in the face of someone that we love. It's always in the experience of being with them in the flesh so that they're there in front of us. But here, I think, is something categorically different. This is not like those other things. This is a once for all time event. It is the very incarnation of God, the Son, the Holy Spirit, uniting the second person of the Trinity to our, yours and mine, humanity in the womb of the Virgin. Love that is from God, the God who is love, actually dwelling in our humanity. Love manifest in us. First, John, the gospel of John says in chapter one in the 14th verse, the word was made, the word that was of God and from God and was God, the word was made flesh and dwelt among us. And in him we beheld the glory of the only begotten son, full of grace and truth. the only begotten one sent, God sending his only son. You see, it confronts us in the midst of all of our experience of love in the world. It confronts us who have been reading along and thinking that we are born of God because we are loving and somehow experiencing love in the world. For here, love is manifested by the one who is the only begotten. If we think that somehow we are born just merely by experiencing love, We are most of all people most mistaken, are we not? If you want to be born of God, it must be through this one. If God is the source of all love, the spring from which all love comes, then all begottenness flows from this one who is the only begotten, the firstborn among many brethren. And it continues, the end of verse 9 it says, he was sent into the world that we might live through him. And again we're confronted because that implies something else, doesn't it? If we need to live through him, then what are we before he came? Dead, are we not? Dead. We are confronted with the reality that we are not alive apart from this one. We are not born yet apart from this one. We need him to be born again. As John's gospel says in another place, love then does not come warm and cuddly and feeling nice to us, but instead it confronts us and reproves us. It would be like, and this is very imaginative, so stick with me if you will, my girls becoming me in front of me, like taking, like indwelling me and entering into that lava room. And they, I would see me indwelt by them, entering into their world with such great energy and joy and fear of the lava and a desire with all their heart to get to that couch that I would leap from one place to another and dive and laugh that I escaped imminent death and that I was not devoured. I would have this experience of watching me do those things. And to do that would confront me with something, wouldn't it? Just like Jesus coming into our world and showing us what love is, it would confront me with my half-hearted engagement with their reality. And I would see it for what it truly was. This indwelt me would show me, by his honesty, my falsehood. He would show me, by his selflessness, my selfishness. I see his life, and I know mine for what it truly is. Death. Death. And that's not a good place to be, is it? But God is merciful to us, and it's a wonderful thing that God doesn't only take on our flesh and blood living. He takes on, brothers and sisters, your flesh and blood dying. Dying as one of us. Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5, chapter 5, verse 14, the love of Christ, notice the reference to God's love in Christ, controls us because we have concluded this. See, when we know the love of God in Christ as it's revealed in him, it so controls our understanding that we can look out on the world and make judgments appropriately according to it. It has shaped us and guided us. And what do we see but that this one has died for all? And if he died for all, then all of us are dead. All of us have died. The coming of Christ, the God-man, both living and dying, demonstrates a love that controls our understanding of everything, including what it means to love. And in his light, all our participation in the love that is God's is shown for what it is. We have handled love, yes. We have used it to receive spiritual benefit and delight in ourselves. We have misused it, abused it, and treated it as though it was something that we owned and made ourselves and could use and do with as we see fit in our own light. We see that as we have treated love, so we have treated him. Hammer, nails, scornful speech, and all. False definitions and all. wrong discernment and all. Seeing Jesus, I realize I've really, truly never really known love. I've only known a casual, self-centered, self-gratified acquaintance with it. Instead of showing myself a member of the family and known of God by my loves, I've only proved myself a stranger and more an adversary. And so we are confronted with the reality that we cannot obey the command to love each other apart from him. apart from Him, for God or our part in Him. We must confess, I think, in the midst of that, that we, in all of our attempts to love, have been thieves and robbers, and that we do not love God or anyone else without His help and apart from His moving in us. And I think that brings us to the final truth, the negative part. I've already said it in the most part, but verse 10, And this is love, not that we love God, but He loved us. That is, He loved you, and me, and John, and all of us who have defined love wrongly and followed after a God that we thought was defined by our experiences of love, we who have followed our own experiences and wisdom and trampled on the truth of the reality of God in those loves to our own peril, like me walking through that lava carpet, except here. The fires are true, and here the threat is real. If not for the great mercy of God, those fires would have devoured you and I long ago. We would have perished if he had not first loved us and provided his son to be the quench quenching element of those very fires, the quenching of the flames of God's wrath, the blood that pacifies the justice that should be ours for ignoring at every turn the reality of his truth in the loves that we've experienced, a true and lasting atonement must be provided or all would be lost. And that's what he's done. He has sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins. Propitiation, the great theme of Leviticus, which we've been working through in Sunday school, is the great theme of all the Old Testament. Sinners need a way to draw near to God. Sinners need a way to draw near to God. Us faulty and false lovers need a way to draw near to Him who is true love itself. And for this purpose, he gave Israel animals and blood and a tabernacle and a priesthood. And to us, he's given Jesus, who's all those things, in one, a true temple, our great high priest, the very Lamb of God. Here in him is love. love for us. And as it is true that God does not accept our invitations to worship in any old way, so it is true that he does not accept our loving in any old way. We must love by the means and in the way that he provides. Otherwise, our love is no love at all. Love, brothers and sisters, is from God. God is love. And he has manifested that very love in us. And it is not and it never was from you. Whatever love we show to one another is but a demonstration of that reality as we have beheld it and ingested it and made it our own. And it shines through us and reflects through us to others. God who sent his only begotten son that we might live through him as sinners atoned for. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. One last thing and I'll be done. If you hear that call to love and you think, I don't really have the ability to do it, I think John would say to you, don't go off and try to do it better, first and foremost. Don't go and pretend that you're loving one another and expect that somehow that pretending will eventually become reality. But instead, first and foremost, turn your eyes upon Jesus. Look full in his beautiful face and find in him the very strength for you who are dead apart from him to be made alive. Find in him the acceptance of the God who is love and who can shower it upon you and fill you with it, shed his love abroad in your hearts by his Holy Spirit, who he gives when you trust and believe in that one, our Lord Jesus Christ. For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever. Amen. Let's pray. Our Father in heaven, we are thankful that there is a way for us who have no way to draw near to you. There's a way for us who have not loved as we ought to love to find the strength and the power and the means to love as we ought to love, to shimmer with the love that you first gave to us in your son. Father, we give you thanks. We worship you and pray that you would empower us and strengthen us by the love that we see in your son. the love that is everlasting and true and full of glory, the love that is from you, that is you, and has been made true even in us, in your Son and by your Spirit. In Jesus' name, amen. Let us turn and worship once again using the 382nd hymn in the Trinity Hymnal. God himself is with us. And notice in verse 3 that it speaks of him being the fount from which all these things come. So let's sing to him.