I know that in your experience like mine, you remember certain occasions. Do you remember where you were and who you were with when John F. Kennedy was assassinated? If you do, you're dating yourself pretty seriously this morning. What about when the space shuttle Challenger exploded? Do you see that on television? You remember where you were? What was happening? What about the death of Michael Jackson? I don't think I'll be remembering that particularly about where I was and who I was with. In fact, what I will remember is the overwhelming and frankly amazing attention that the entertainment elite and the media has given him. Probably never before ever have I witnessed a greater example of good being called evil and evil good as they have fawned over the passing of this man. But what about that for you? That most embarrassing moment? You remember that? You know, when the zipper that was supposed to be zipped wasn't zipped? When you thought what would be private forever is no longer private? Or you had a really bad slip of the tongue? I'll tell you a secret if you promise not to tell anybody. About two or three weeks ago, I'm talking a lot in conversation in the living room with my wife, and I accidentally added a letter to a word, and as a preacher, I swore. That was really embarrassing. And so I'm telling all of you about that, you know, right now. But I corrected that immediately, and it was unintentional. You remember your embarrassing moments, don't you? Well, sometimes two things you see or things you read just stick. Permanently, nearly, and I have that experience when I had the good fortune of discovering a treasure of a book that's called The Memoirs of Armando Valladares. Not a well-known man, but a Cuban refugee who spent the 70s and the early 80s in one of Castro's many prisons, suffering what can only be described as horrific, tragic, barbaric and how ironic that is because those human rights abuses of all those people over all those years have never really been rectified. They've never been answered for and yet we're warming relations with Cuba even as I speak. But in the midst of this very dark and tragic story there was some surprising light from this author Armando Valladares. And then he tells the story over several pages of a man in the prison that he was in called Gerardo, the brother of the faith. A Protestant preacher with white hair who he said daily would preach the gospel right in the prison. Who would call the prisoners up and down the prison hall corridor out of his cell to prayer. who would feed those that were needing to be fed, who would bind up the wounds of those that had been beaten, who would show kindness even to the brutal guards, and who on the day when he was led into the prison yard to the execution wall, lifted his eyes and hands to heaven and cried out, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do, as the machine gun bullets ripped across his chest in execution. And this was the 1970's, not a martyrdom of the first or second or third century. From that moment when I read that scene, it was etched forever in my mind. Gerardo was memorializing a vital, central truth in the Word of God about The greatest commandment. The greatest fundamental. The first thing of all things. The main thing. And that is love for God. But love for God that is lived out in life, that is demonstrated concretely, objectively, that can be observed, that can be seen. Not simply a passion. Not simply warm-hearted worship. Not just delight or preoccupation with God. But real, tangible demonstration of love for God. That man showed it. we can and should show it as believers. In disposition and behavior, the pages of the Gospels shine brightly with how to live out our love for God in life. And in the epistles, it's beautifully unfolded in passages like 1 Corinthians 13, where we won't turn right now, where there's a 15-verb description of what love is like. But perhaps nowhere in the Bible is they're found more clearly specific directives about how we may demonstrate our love for God beyond just being somewhere or saying something or having certain emotions or certain feelings. We can actually show it. And in this epistle, which normally is taken as comfort in giving evidences that we really are regenerate, born-again people, and it does that beautifully, there are also here these amazing direct statements about demonstrating love for God. And I direct your attention first to the first of several passages we'll walk through as you look at chapter 2 with me in verse 5. The Bible says in chapter 2, verse 5, after introductory comments in chapter 1 and some discussion of confession of sin, we have this remarkable statement, But whoso keepeth his word in him, verily, is the love of God perfected. Hereby know we that we are in him. Again, let me repeat. In him, verily, is the love of God, the love for God perfected. That's what that means. By keeping his word and then turning to chapter five, sort of serving as bookends here on this letter. As you look at verse three in chapter five, the Bible says, for this is the love of God. Here is love for God. That we keep his commandments and his commandments are not grievous disobedience. that is spoken of by John is an obedience that wonderfully demonstrates a full and mature love for God. That's what verse five of chapter two tells us and what it means when it says that in him verily who keeps the word of God, the love of God, love for God is perfected. fully demonstrated, fully developed, complete, with ongoing effects in our life. This is a love for God that is beyond just knowing the desire of the one loved to fulfilling that desire. Whenever there is a relationship between people in which there is a real respect, reverence, admiration, love of that person for the other, you see this kind of response. The true follower who really loves the leader responds to what the leader asks them to do. You certainly see that in a devoted wife to her husband. as the Bible does command, of submitted children to parents, even of employees to employers, there is a fulfilling of the desire of the one loved by responding specifically to the encouragements, the directives, the desires of the one that is loved. That's why it is so critical as we look at these passages to understand as Christian people, as believers, we move beyond the simple explanation of the meaning of the Bible to the application of it in life. Now, in this doctrine that we do call bibliology, the doctrine of what the Bible says about the Bible, you quickly find as you look at the passages that this is a central idea to what we are to do and be as Christians. We don't just know, we must do. Think, for example, of Matthew chapter 7 in the closing parable in the Sermon on the Mount when the Lord Jesus presents the man who built his house on the rock in contrast to the man who built his house upon the sand. The man who built his house on the rock is described in verse 24. And the Scriptures say, Therefore, whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and do with them, I will liken him unto a wise man which built his house upon a rock." In contrast to the man who built his house on the sand, who the Scriptures say in that same parable built his house on the sand. He was the man who heard the word, just like the man who built his house on the rock, but did not do it. When Christ's mother and brothers came at one time during this public ministry to speak to him, a man announced the fact that they were there. And Jesus responded in a rather surprising way in Luke 8, 21. He said, And he answered and said unto them, My mother and my brethren are these which hear the word of God and do it. And that passage, which is probably most familiar to us and most oft quoted in this regard, is James 1.22. Be ye doers of the word and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves. The fully mature love for God, the perfected love for God is a careful obedience. But it's an obedience. These passages, these verses we've looked at shows us is that is saturated with a certain spirit, a certain attitude. In fact, one of restful, contented joy, as 5.3 says in the Scriptures, that we, those of us who keep His commandments, do not find those commandments grievous, burdensome. His yoke is easy and His burden is light. There is peace and joy filling the obedience because there is a trusting in the intent of the one who gives the commandments as that which is only for our good and our growth and our betterment. In fact, the one who really understands What these commands of God are about, understand that the commands of God are pure and good and in fact are the very things that provide the pathway by which we acquire in our lives the nature of God. See, the Bible says the essence of the nature of God is holiness. That is a separation from the mundane, the material, the non-spiritual, the evil, the wicked. A separation unto the spiritual and eternal and righteous and pure. God is holy. Here's an amazing statement in 1 Peter 1, 16 and 17. Quoting from the book of Leviticus, Peter writes, in the words of God, Be ye holy as I am holy. We are to be holy like God is holy. And God wonderfully were taught by the Lord Jesus in the great high priestly prayer in the very last week of his life, not long before he was arrested and crucified, prayed for his disciples in John 1717 and said, sanctify them through thy truth. Thy word is truth. Make them holy by thy truth. Thy word is truth. That's what that word sanctify means. Bring them to a place of holiness. You see, for the believer who really wants to show love for God, a meticulous obedience, is what he desires and pursues to see holiness evidenced in his life to please the one who he loves because he first loved us. You perhaps have been troubled at some time or another reading your New Testament by James 2.10. An unusual statement of Scripture will read, I'll read for you in just a moment. But think with me first about this. If I have a fine, expensive china vase right here in my hand and I have a small jeweler's hammer in the other hand and I go to the thin lip of that porcelain vase and simply tap it with the jeweler's hammer and chip out a moon-shaped size chip about the size of my thumbnail. I've done great damage to that expensive vase, haven't I? The whole thing isn't shattered, but I certainly have devalued it, haven't I, by violating the integrity and, at least from the perspective of the potter who made the vase, the perfection of the vase. When James 2.10 makes this remarkable statement in the New Testament, for whosoever shall keep the whole law and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all. He is teaching what that example is demonstrating. When you commit a sin, you don't become guilty of every single commandment having violated it. If I lied to someone, I didn't murder someone. I lied. But what it does teach is this. If I violate a command of God, I have done a devaluation of the whole of God's law in the eyes of others who know or observe me. I have damaged the whole in a very real sense. And there certainly is less holiness in my life as a result of that. The person who loves God, who wants to show that love for God, doesn't want any damage done to the integrity and the reputation of the God of heaven, who is holy, who represents that holiness through his commandments and through his law. No wonder we have Paul saying what he said in Acts 24-16 when he was defending himself before the Roman ruler. And I mean, this was really an imprisonment or freedom issue, even potentially a life or death issue. And he said concerning his own lifestyle, herein do I exercise myself that I may have a conscience void of offense toward God and toward men. Void of offense. That's amazing. That's an amazing standard. But it really shouldn't surprise us because 1 John 1 5 says God is light. He's purity. He's holiness. And we're told in 1 John 4, God is love. So God, who is all holiness and light, communicates Himself in love to us in order that we may then love Him by what? Having light in our life. Holiness. What a beautiful cycle we have there in Scripture. He who is light, shows it through love. We respond in love and have light come into our life and purity and holiness in order to bring light into the lives of other people. If we love God, we keep His commandments in a restful and contented joy. We want our love to be fully perfected and mature toward the one that we love by responding to what he asks. But there's another way that 1 John teaches us. We show our love for God objectively, very clearly. Back in 1987, I had an opportunity with another faculty member at the university to travel to the Eastern Bloc Communist Nation at that time of Poland. I was traveling on an educator's visa. We amazingly were given the opportunity to travel to pastoral training institutions all over that country. And yes, visit churches where the Bible was being preached and taught. That was allowed because Poland, like no other Eastern Bloc nation at that time, had freedoms that no one else had. This was before the Iron Curtain fell, before the Berlin Wall came down. But for a variety of reasons, there was tremendous freedom there. There wasn't other places. And so we crisscrossed that country, teaching and preaching the Word of God. Great, really unparalleled opportunity. An amazing thing that God did there in opening that door for us to minister. But as I traveled, even though there was a surprising amount of freedom, it quickly became apparent that I was in a communist country. The pastors warned me quietly before I'd preach. Now, Brother Hankins, please don't say anything negative about communism or anything negative as an American about our government. We will have a world of trouble if you do. They send people into our churches to listen to us, to spy on us. And if you do that, it will just go on and on and on, the difficulty that we'll have. And as we went from north to south and east to west, it became apparent that I was in a different world than what I knew in America. In a very restricted, very dark place. Having to register with the police stations and the government whenever I stayed in a motel in any community. Whenever I moved from one community to the other. And as I traveled, I got sadder and sadder for my brothers and sisters in Christ in Poland. Men and women. We, all of us, are in another world. We are in a dark place. This world is not our home. We are just passing through. And the Word of God tells us in 1 John 2, another vital evidence about how to show our love for God. In verses 15 and 16 of chapter 2, love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man loved the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life is not of the Father, but is of the world. This is shocking. The one is exclusive of the other. He that loves the world does not have the love of the Father in him. Love not the world. There, first of all, is this amazing sweeping and all-inclusive commandment that's presented in the Word of God. And this sweeping commandment tells us that we are to reject the values of our culture and embrace God's values. This is how we show our love for God. Love, not the world. What does James 4 say? It echoes this concept. Pure religion and undefiled is to visit the fatherless and the widows and to be unspotted by the world. That means the material, temporal world versus the spiritual and the eternal realm. It means to reject the human culture with the unseen hand of Satan behind it and governing it, instead of, or versus the kingdom of God with the unseen hand of God governing it. It means rejecting all that leaves God out and minimizes Him and accepting and embracing what exalts and magnifies and glorifies God. It means having nothing to do and rejecting the constantly changing morals and ethics and principles and politics of this time and embracing the timeless, absolute truths of the revelation of God as believing people. This world is no friend of grace to lead us home to God. We must embrace God's values and reject the culture's values as they reflect a God that they have minimized and denigrated. The degree to which any of us, accommodates what is called the world in the New Testament, is the degree to which we're going to experience disappointment, dissatisfaction, dysfunction as Christian people. The Spirit of the New Testament tells us that we're to love the world, turn from it, reach out to it in compassion with the light of the Gospel, but not be like it. Much less, in any way, enjoy it. This very morning, right now, there are churches in our community, as there are churches all across America, that preach the Bible and claim that they know God, really the true God of the Bible. And they advance a Christianity, tragically, that darkens the truth on this very point. And it's created a generation and is creating a generation that looks like, talks like, acts like, and is entertained like those who do not know God, who are in the world. In the single verse of Scripture in 1 Corinthians 9.22, which says, I have made all things to all men that I might by all means win some, is a verse that has been terribly twisted to mean all kinds of accommodation to things that are unholy, things that are not of God, that do not please Him in the least. I don't purport to have all the answers by any means for all the subtleties of how the world manifests itself and how we're to protect ourselves or guard ourselves. But I know this for certain. On the basis of James 4, verse 4, the Bible warns, ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? And you know, John goes on even more specifically now after this sweeping, all-inclusive commandment, and he gets very specific about the allurements, the attractions of the world system. He lists them out and he warns us about these things philosophically. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life is not of the Father, but is of the world. And you know, I don't think these three things are exclusive one of the other. They tend to overlap each other. They tend to combine and are even made worse and more dangerous as a result of this combination. The lust of the eyes is an amazing phrase that encompasses many, many solicitations to evil. It certainly has to do with wanting to see what we should not see. observing what ought always only to be private and trying to possess the sight of it. It has to do with even, I think, our imagination as we see with our mind's eye things that God is not pleased with us seeing. Certainly it has to do with the pride that can come from seeing sights, going places, observing interesting phenomenon in life. Or just seeing things that we want and desiring to have them, acquire them and gather them. These are all lusts of the eyes. The lust of the flesh is in some cases, of course, sexual pleasure. Delight or pleasure from food or drink. It may be the delight of an adrenaline rush from physical activity or the comfort and ease of rest. It can take many forms, but it is a driving desire for this, as is the pride of life, which is being proud about your life, about your achievement, about your success. Now, we teach, we preach, and we believe, all of us, don't we, as parents and Christian people. You ought to be all that you can possibly be with the gifts and abilities that God has granted you. You should hone and cultivate every capacity that you possess. That's true. And yet when the motive behind that is that we may be personally better, we may achieve more. We may ascend in our success and our achievement in a way that makes us superior to other people. That is precisely what John and God through John is warning about in this text of Scripture. The pride of life and you know, here's the amazing fact. These things. That are right here, these specific things which are primary desires or motivations, temptations of the world system living in this world. Can actually be true of people. Who sit in an environment just like this. Here's what happens. It's complete compartmentalization. At other times and other places around other people, these things take hold. Here around the people of God, sincerely, genuinely, just as like this morning, You're looking to God. You're thinking about God. You're focused on God and motivated by what you think and say and do by God. But then you step out of this environment and away from the people of God and suddenly are motivated and directed by these very things that are found here. Completely contradictory approaches to life, fluctuating back and forth to some degree or another in the life. And therein is the great challenge of being a Christian, living and walking in the world as a child of God, even though we are physically present in Satan's kingdom. But we show our love for God by facing the culture and saying, I embrace God's values. I do not embrace this world's values. I desire Him, not what this world has to offer. As Psalm 73, 25 says, Whom have I in heaven but Thee? And there is none upon the earth that I desire beside Thee. There is that transcendent, elevated desire for God, for His will, for what is righteous as opposed to these specific alluring elements. Well, we show our love for God by careful obedience. We show our love for God by rejecting the culture's values and embracing God's values as presented in His Word. But there's another way, very tangibly, We can show love for God who is spirit and who is unseen and who is in heaven in a very visible, practicable way. And it's found in one of those famous 1 John 3.16 passages. There are many interesting 3.16 passages in the Bible. This is one of them right in 1 John 3.16 where the Bible says in that passage of Scripture, Hereby perceive we the love of God, because He laid down His life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. This passage of Scripture teaches a profound truth. Certainly, I think that Captain Richard Phillips will go down in maritime history as one of the great heroes. You no doubt read about, saw, pictures even of immediately before, after and during his rescue by Navy SEALs, snipers who in eighty-foot seas simultaneously dropped three Somali pirates who had kidnapped this captain from his ship off the east coast of Africa. And amazingly, this ship's captain, after five torturous days, was rescued by our Navy. After the rescue, one of the crew members made an amazing observation. printed by the Associated Press and disseminated around the world. You see, it was only this rescue after that captain had been in the control of the Somali pirates for five days, once he had locked his crew away safely in a safe room on his ship and given himself over to the pirates to save their lives. One of his crewmen recounted after the captain's rescue, he was the good shepherd. He willingly exchanged his life for that of his crew. That exactly reflects the statement of John 15, verse 13, which says, greater love hath no man than this, than that a man lay down his life for his friends. And the stories are abundant in the history of the church. Ancient, modern, present day of men and women who have done this very thing. In his great and riveting book, Don Richardson wrote entitled, Lords of the Earth, recounts the story of Stanley Dale, missionary who in the late 1950's went to what was then Dutch New Guinea to the isolated tribal peoples within the steep ridges of those mountains in that country that's now called Irian Jaya, and ministered to these cannibalizing headhunters, reached them with the gospel amazingly, until in 1969, in the midst of a dispute between the two tribes that he was trying to settle, he was shot with countless arrows and suffered a martyr's death. But it's not just those who die. I have a friend right now, 20 years laboring on a little coral atoll in the South Pacific reaching people who have a 5th grade American equivalent education in a culture and society that is without morals and essentially without any family structure. This man has translated 5,000 pages of English discipleship information into Marshallese. He's translated the remaining part of the Old Testament from Hebrew into Marshallese. He's built a church. He's winning men and women to Jesus Christ and has lived longer in that missionary context than any missionary in history. And by the way, he's a man that could have taught in any college and any seminary in America. He has those abilities, that capacity, that kind of knowledge. But you know what? This statement is not about those select few who amazingly have gone to the ends of the earth and done astounding things like Stanley Dale and like this man I just described in the Marshall Islands. It's about us. Right here in America. Right here in a Calvary Baptist. laying down our lives for the brethren. In fact, the passage gets even more specific and talks about tangible acts of compassion by us for the people of God. Look at verse 17 and 18. But whoso hath this world's good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love for God of God in him? My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue, but in deed and in truth." You see, we show our love for our God. by loving that young couple that is desperately struggling to meet their mortgage payments to avoid foreclosure. By giving the hours and time to that heartbroken young woman who is struggling and having difficulty with her spouse. in devoting our material means to the dad who's out of work in this economic downturn and desperate and filled with anxiety. It's doing something. And it's not reasoning or rationalizing it away. It's not saying, like we tend to as Americans, well, he just needs to buck up. They just need to get their act together. If they'd get more serious and weren't so lazy, they could certainly find a way to make this happen for themselves somehow. No, folks. As long as we keep doing that, we'll never help anybody. And we will never show our love for God as God tells us to. Every time you face somebody who's in trouble, And there's a sea of faces here this morning. There are hundreds of people sitting around you. And you probably know of some people like this right now as I speak. There's somebody coming to your mind. Every time someone is in trouble that you know, that is a direct invitation from your Father, God of Heaven, saying, show me you love me. Show me. I've put that person before you. They're in desperate material, spiritual, physical necessity. You have the means to do something about it. You can take action. Show me. You love me. The Bible amazingly says in the Word of God that men will know that we are the children of God. They'll know that we love God because we love one another. Pure religion and undefiled before God, our Father, is to assist the fatherless and the widows and those in affliction. Folks, that isn't socialism. This isn't mushy, soft-hearted liberalism. This is Bible Christianity. This is the Word of God. And what greater opportunity do we have in a time when things are difficult for people, are tough for people? And they are. Things are awry in our country. You know it. I know it. Everybody knows it. Bankruptcies are happening right and left. People are out of work. People are in trouble. What a beautiful, beautiful invitation from our God to us. Show me that you love me. You know, thankfully, I'm not left to having this love for God as demonstrated to other people. by just working it up in myself. He always is the initiator and the motivator. 1 John 14, we love Him because He first loved us. And you know, there's a promise of God in the Word that is so encouraging. It is so, so uplifting. When it says in Romans 5.5, and listen to it carefully with me, And hope maketh not ashamed. We don't need to be ashamed of hoping we can be this way. Because the love of God is shed abroad, poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit of God. How will this happen? This love for God? We ask our God by His Spirit to help us love Him as we should. and show that love in a tangible way to other people. What wondrous love is this, O my soul! O my soul! What wondrous love is this! Love so amazing, so divine, demands my life, my soul, my all. May our prayer this morning be more love to Thee, O Christ. More love to Thee.