All right. Let's grab the Word of God and turn to 1 John 3. If you will, please stand in honor of the reading of God's Word, 1 John 3. We're gonna begin at verse 11. 1 John 3, verse 11, and we're going to read down through 18. For this is the message that you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. We should not be like Cain, who was of the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own deeds were evil and his brother's righteous. Do not be surprised, brothers, that the world hates you. We know that we have passed out of death into life because we love the brothers. Whoever does not love abides in death. Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him. By this we know that we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. But if anyone hates the world's goods, has the world's goods, and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or talk, but in deed and in truth. If we had to give a title to our sermon tonight, it would be do the work of love. Do the work of love. Let's pray together. Dear Heavenly Father, we ask, I ask, that the Holy Spirit will take your words, those that you have given to holy men of God and moved and recorded in this book, and I pray that you will make them come to life tonight and that they will bring to us, as John so desperately wanted, eternal life. and that they will move us from darkness into light if we are not already there. And if we are in the light, that these words will continue to encourage us to think about what it means to live in the light, to walk in the light, to have eternal life, to love the brothers, to stay away from the practice of sin, to look out for the false teachers. And we ask all these things in your name, amen. Thank you, you may be seated. So as I said, we're going to just entitle this section that we're going to look at tonight. as doing the work of love or do the work of love. And I've got the word work up there, the large font. This is the four letter type of work, the kind that you might not look forward to. And we'll see just what that means in just a bit. Now, let's look first at verse 11. It says, for this is the message that you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. We have seen this opening statement before. It was slightly different, chapter one, verse five, but still has a familiar ring to it. He uses these conditional statements. Now it has been left out of some translations, but here in the Greek, there are some connective tissues. The words this and that actually point us in the direction of the message. And so what we see is that it says, for this is the message, and conditionally, we should do something that we should love one another. So if you just take out the middle section and just make it real basic, it says, for this is the message that we should love one another. The Christian life is this and that. The book of John, the first book of John, the second book of John, the third book of John, really all of them, is all about this conditional look at your Christian life. He says things like, if you hate your brother, you don't have eternal life, it's not in you. There are things that are just run in if-then statements. If this is true, then this is true. If this is not true, then this is not true. And so we see that this, this and that, the connective tissue that moves through this book is so very important because the idea is that if we have this message, it will change our life. Okay? It's this connective tissue, this cause and effect, and it's this this and that, this message that you have heard, is going to do something in us. It's going to cause us to think a certain way. It's going to cause us to make certain decisions and to ultimately behave in a certain way. This should change our course. When you hear the message, the Word of God, you should change directions. We should alter our behavior. We should change the way we think. We all know from the book of James, I believe it is, that we're not supposed to look into the wondrous book and the law of God and then just say, okay, I see what I need there, but, and then walk away. So what we're encouraged to do is we're to take this message and do something. And today, tonight, it's doing the work of love. Then we have this little phrase, from the beginning. So can we figure out when the beginning was? Because I don't know if you're like me, but when I see something like, from the beginning, I wanna know when the beginning was. Was this the beginning of creation? Was this the beginning when Jesus was incarnated? Was this when he called his people Israel? What is this beginning? And I think we have a few clues here in the texts. So we notice this reference to the beginning, and we say to ourselves, when is the beginning? Now, we could say that maybe the beginning is a fundamental learning point, you know, step one, and now we're getting to step two, and we're gonna add step three, or we've got some other choices. So what does John seem to mean here? Well, I think that we can definitely say at least two things about this idea of the beginning. John spent time with Christ. And all throughout the book of John, all throughout the three, one, two, and third John, first, second, and third John, you're going to basically see the commands and the teachings of Christ rewarded. Sometimes they're taken up a notch. Sometimes they're taken to the extreme. But basically what we're going to see is we're going to see great evidence that John spent time with Jesus. So our first thing to consider is that perhaps from the beginning is when John in his own heart began to sit and listen to the words of Christ. And we've all been there, we've been in a meeting and we're listening to the word of God and suddenly the word of God, the Holy Spirit says something and it brings it right to where we're sitting in the pew and says, this is for you. And John, sitting, listening to Jesus, Now writing his letter is telling us from the beginning when Jesus said this. So let's take a look. We've got the words of Christ in Matthew 5, 21 and 22. And then we've got the example in our own text here of Cain and Abel. So we've seen over and over that John is simply retelling these commands of Christ. and then he heard from the Lord himself. This is a first hand, eyewitness account of something. First person. This is, when you're talking about a historical record, this is exactly the type of person you want to go to. You want to go to the person that was there and say, what did so and so say? So here we're going to see what this could be. So let's look in the book of Matthew at chapter 5, 22. I'll put it on the screen for you so you do not have to turn to this one. And Jesus addresses this idea of hatred and anger. Matthew 5, 21 and 22 says this, you have heard that it was said to those of old, you should not murder and whoever murders will be liable to the judgment. And you'll see why in a minute this matters. But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment. Whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council. And whoever says you fool will be liable to the hell of fire. So maybe that's the beginning. Maybe that's the beginning. Or maybe it's all the way back in the beginning when we see the example of Cain who murdered his brother. And in just a few moments, we're gonna take a deeper look at the story of Cain, so we will not dwell there now, but we'll get to there in just a minute. And then I just wanted to point out to you, for all the nerds in the room who really love this stuff, this word message, This word message right here is the same word that we get the word angel from, okay? Because really, in reality, the word angel is a transliteration, just ripped right out of Greek and put into English, of the angelos, a word for messenger that an angel was. They just delivered the message. But here's just a little bit different form on the word there. And so this message is the same word as angel that they delivered, they used all throughout the New Testament. And then here is the message. You should love one another. That's the message. Now, I got to tell you, Telling Christians to love is like saying, eat your vegetables, okay? Duh, right? Or as my kids used to say, not anymore because there's something new in hip, hurt it, right? But John doesn't consider this admonition of something of only lip service. Quite the contrary. He's going to give us strong reasons why it should be at the core of every believer. So I want to ask you and I want to challenge you this question. Are you willing to learn something from the Holy Spirit tonight, even if you've heard it many, many times before? And I guess that's just a way of taking your spiritual temperature. Are you going to lean in? You're going to say, you know what? I've heard this message a thousand times. Well, let's see what the Holy Spirit has. Now don't look at me, because I'm just gonna deliver the words that are there, and the Holy Spirit's gonna have to do the work. I don't have any great super nuggets, okay? I'm not rewriting Christianity. This is basic stuff. But it is important, and I think we'll see why in just a moment. So we have two examples in the text. And then we have an admonishment. And then we have a real life rubber meets the road lab experiment. And then he gives us his closing arguments for this statement that he makes, love one another, that we should love one another. So our two examples are Cain and Christ. They're positive and negative to the extreme. So he's gonna give us an eternal life test. As he's so fond of doing in these books, John will finish up his powerful argument for love with some clear and practical on-the-job training. So let's look at it. He says in verse number 12, we should not be like Cain. Why not? who was of the evil one and murdered his brother. So do you remember the story? We'll go back and look in just a minute. And why did he murder him? And this is really interesting. We get some insight from the New Testament on an Old Testament narrative. Why did he murder him? Because his own deeds were evil and his brother's righteous. Do not be surprised, brothers, that the world hates you. He just throws that there at the end. So why does the world hate us? Because they're convicted by righteousness. But there's a greater point here. Lest we fall into the trap of saying, well, I've heard this all before or, or, you know, loving my brother, you know, is it really that important? I want to point out that he goes right to the extreme. He says murder. Can we think of any other human interaction that is more extreme than taking the life of another human being? It's disastrous. It's horrific when we hear about someone's life being snuffed out. And so what he's saying is, wake up, I got something important to tell you. In fact, it's so important, I'm gonna use the example of a murderer to make my point. So I think that we should pay attention. So hate must be very serious if John is going to point us back to the murderer, Cain. And then I find this so fascinating. He says Cain was of the evil one. So we're connecting three things. We're connecting hate, we're connecting murder, and we're connecting Satan, the evil one. It's going to come very, very important later on. A heart filled with hate preceded murder. All evil actions begin in the heart and mind. All evil actions begin in the heart and mind, and the soul is destroyed. And then he just, oh, by the way, the world's going to hate you just like And we have to turn back in the story to look at it and we will, but just like Cain hated Abel. So let's do that. Take your Bibles and do turn in your Bibles back to Genesis chapter four with me. I want you to see it in your own Bible. I got a cup holder. That's awesome. Verse number one of chapter four says, And again she bore his brother Abel. In the course of time, Cain brought to the Lord an offering of the fruit of the ground, and Abel also brought of the firstborn of his flock and of their fat portions. And the Lord had regard for Abel and his offering, but for Cain and his offering he had no regard. So Cain was very angry and his face fell. King James says, his countenance fell. And the Lord said to Cain, I love this, as if he didn't know, hey, what's wrong with your face? Why the long face, Cain? Why are you angry? And why has your face fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must rule over it. Cain spoke to Abel, his brother. And when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother, Abel, and killed him. Then the Lord said to Cain, where is Abel, your brother? He said, I don't know. Am I my brother's keeper? And the Lord said, what have you done? The voice of your brother's blood is crying to me from the ground. And now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood from your hand. When you work the ground, it shall no longer yield to you its strength. You shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth. This is really, really interesting. Look what Cain says to the Lord. Cain said to the Lord, my punishment is greater than I can bear. Behold, you have driven me today away from the ground, and from your face I shall be hidden. What Cain was saying was, my livelihood The thing I do, my identity is in this farming thing. And God, you've made it hard on me. And in fact, you made me a nomad. And nomads don't farm. I mean, you've got to kind of stick around to see if the stuff is going to come up. And you do the planting and all of that stuff. So he's radically changing his life. In fact, what he's really doing is he's ripping the source of Cain's rebellion out of his life. Because what we're going to find in just a minute is that the point of all of this is that the heart when it comes to hatred, when it comes to a lack of love for our brothers and sisters in Christ. The heart is the problem, the rebellious heart of man. And what was going on is God, apparently, it's not in the text, but God apparently told them there was a certain way you bring sacrifices, and Abel brought the proper sacrifice. We know it's a blood sacrifice. And Cain did not. Cain wanted to do it his way. And God, it says, had no regard for Cain's sacrifice. And so John tells us, you shouldn't be like Cain. And I can hear all of them say, well, we're not murderers. You know, we wouldn't go that far. But he said, wait a minute. Wait a minute. The hatred in your heart, the lack of love for your brother is just like the murder of Cain. So then we have the great example of Christ. Verse number 16. Remember, we've had the negative example of Cain, but now we've seen the supreme example in Christ. Verse 16, by this we know love. How? How are we going to know love, John? Please tell us. We want to know. We want to know when we recognize it. That he, Jesus, laid down his life for us. And we, as his followers, ought to lay down our lives for our brothers. So we see that the example of Christ and the measure of His love was His life. The measure of true love was the life of Christ given for us. Oh, Christian, unless you've given that much, please don't say you've given everything you've got. Please don't say, well, I've just done all I can do to get along with that brother. It just isn't going to happen. Unless you've given your life. The example of Christ tells us you have not reached the limit. So let's jump over to Philippians 2, 5 through 11. This is an awesome passage of scripture. I'm going to put it on the screen for you. So we can read it together, Philippians 2, five through 11. Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus, who being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but made himself of no reputation and took upon him the form of a servant and was made in the likeness of men. And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. So not only is the example of Christ the measure of love, His life, we are told that we're to follow this example. John makes it very clear. When we look at our Master, when we look at our Savior, we are to emulate, we are to follow Him into the hard work of love. And so what we see In verses 14 and 15, now, we're gonna jump back to those. We wanted to put the others together, because we wanted to compare the bad example of Cain and the good example of Christ. But now we're gonna go back and we're gonna pick up those first two, those two verses we skipped just a moment ago. Verses 14 and 15, I'm back in 1 John. Back in 1 John 14 and 15. Now we see some hard things in the text. because John just gives us some of those things sometimes. Okay? So let's read it together. We know that we have passed out of death into life because we love the brothers. Whoever does not love abides in death. I'm gonna read that again. That is a hard saying. Whoever does not love abides in death. Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer. Okay. Now we see why he went to the example of Cain. So what you're telling me is, John, Holy Spirit, really, Jesus, the words of Jesus, if I'm angry at my brother, if I have hatred in my heart, it's just like murder. And you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him. Some tough words. Here, without question, the Holy Spirit speaks to one who wants to claim Christ, but not follow His example. John hasn't closed the argument just yet, but he's getting very close. Verses 14 and 15 show us that we have passed out of death into life because we love the brethren. Whoever does not love abides in death. Whoever does love, simply put, abides in life. Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life. Hard, hard saying. But Jesus didn't give any wiggle room either. You remember all those beatitudes. He said, the law says this, but I tell you, we're going to put it on a higher shelf. So Christian, the Christian, us in here, to us in here, the measure of our love is our love for our Christian brethren, our people, God's people. We cannot think that we've given enough if we haven't given like Christ has given. And then in verse 17 and 18, but if anyone hates the world's goods, it has, I keep saying that. But if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him? It's kind of the same question, just put a different way. And it's really kind of like a real life example. So now John's gonna get really practical. He's gonna get up close and personal, in fact, too close. He's gonna start, as they say, stepping on toes. He's gonna tell us, here's the scenario. I've got something myself. I own it, I have resources, and someone else, a brother specifically, needs those things. If I close my heart to that need, if I don't help my brother, look what it says. How does the love of God abide in me? How does the love of God abide in me? And is this just redistribution of wealth? No. This is a measuring stick of where your heart is. This is a measuring, a measurement of your willingness to follow Christ's example to death. Even obedience to really when it says the death on a cross, the criminal way. So the question is, do I have a selfish heart? Because the reality is just like Cain. Cain said, you know what? I've got this stuff that I worked and I labored to bring forth from the ground, and I want to bring it to you, God, because I feel like it's important. But God said, that's not what I want. And then Cain's response was, God, you took everything from me. Now I have to wander around. I can't be a farmer. And so what you see in reality is this little test, this little lab, this little rubber meets the road example, is really just a litmus test for where we are with the stuff that we have in our heart towards God's people. And in reality, it's just a test of where we are in relationship to God himself, and most specifically, Jesus Christ. So now, We see this. This is the closing argument. Little children. It's an interesting change. He's been brothers, brothers, brothers, all of that. Now he says, little children. It sounds a little doting. It sounds a little, maybe, just a little condescending. You're not grown up yet. So here's some instruction. But he says, little children. I'm sure he cares about them. Let us not love in word or talk Let us not love in word or talk, but in deed or truth. Now look at this. This is fascinating. The word for word is logos. We know that. It's like, you know, in the beginning was the word. used throughout the scripture to just talk about the word, spoken word, the living word, just words, words, words. And then the other word, the talk, is glossa. We get our term glossary from this, library, things like that. So the question is, are you someone who's known to be just all talk? Yeah, man, just call me any time, night or day, I'll be there, I'll help you out. And everybody knows you've never helped anybody out ever. It's just all talk. And then we all know somebody, you know, you have a flat tire at three o'clock in the morning. They're coming to get you. They're coming to help you. So let's look at this phrase, deed and truth. It's like belief that you can prove. Because we're wrestling in the book of 1 John all about, am I in the beloved? Am I a Christian? Is there some way that I can really tell? And we say it all the time, and it bears repeating. We can't just run back to a decision card and look, on this day, when I was three or four, I did this, this. No, that's not in the book of John at all. He gives us all kinds of other tests. And this is one of those tests. And this is also one of those this and that moments. He's gonna say, if you do this, then this is probably what's going on. So let's look at this word deed. Because we don't want to be word or talk, we want to be deed and truth. Now this word deed is very, very interesting. This word deed is the word for work. Or we get some words like ergonomics. from this. And what's interesting, it's also the same word used a little bit earlier in the passage for Cain's evil works, okay? But what's great about this word and understanding its Greek implications, and I love this, down here it says, under number three, an act, a deed, a thing done, the idea of working is emphasized in opposition to that which is less work. Okay, so doing the work of love is not a romance of self that you just fall into. You know what I mean. Oh, we just fell in love and everybody just falls in love. But you all who have been married for quite some time know that there is a little bit of work in this thing called marriage. You just don't, every day I just fell in love because, you know, people who just fall in love, they fall out of love, right? Because we know that it's work. It's ongoing cultivation. It's like that idea of farming. You know, the reason Cain couldn't work anymore, the reason it was frustrating to him, and more than he could bear, was he didn't have time to stay anywhere to wait for his work to come up. And so what we see is, if we're gonna love one another, the reality is it's work. But what do we all want? We want it to be easy. Jesus, please tell me to love those people that I like being around. John, please tell me to love those folks that are just always super positive. You know, do I have to go over there to the negative Nancy right now? You know the one that's just, how's it going? Terrible. Every time. Can it be that bad all the time? I don't know. But it's work. And in reality, It's the work of every footstep that Jesus took with our cross, bearing my shame and my sin. It's really the hard work of dying for one another. We're encouraged to die to ourselves. Would you die for someone else? Now, most of the time, we don't have to do this around here, but you know what the way I see it in churches? It's the whole idea of giving up your idea for somebody else's idea. You know, you've been in a group dynamic, and it's obvious that somebody in the group really controlling the thing, nobody else can get an idea in, you know, or you come to some place and you have an agenda, it's family, and where are we gonna eat? 20 people. There's always one person that just wants to get everybody to do exactly what they want to do. Won't give up, won't do anything. And so it's those kind of things that we see in churches. when we really notice that we don't really honestly love one another because we're not willing to die to ourself for that other person. We're not willing to follow the example of Christ for that other person. In reality, if we were really honest with ourself, we're like Cain. We want to have it our way. We want to sacrifice our way. We want to worship our way. We want to limit I'm not going as far as dying. Jesus refused to stay in heaven. He obeyed the Father's will to come to earth and put on flesh. This dirty, nasty, stinky place with sin. Just walking in the sinful world was horrible for Christ. The God of the universe. in whom there was no sin, walking with human beings full of rebellion and sin, his disciples. What a frustrating group of guys. I mean, he told them things and they just didn't get it. Even on the very last day, running off, denying Christ. So what we see is this last word. But if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does the love of God abide him? And look what it says, little children, let us not love in word or talk, but in deed and in truth. Now let's talk about this last word truth. Now we come finally to John's closing argument. What is true in things appertaining to God and the duties of man? Moral and religious truth. The righteousness that so convicted Cain that he murdered his brother. The identifying qualities of those that are in Christ. And as one theme of this blessed book, the assurance or the reality that your identity in Christ is real without falsehood or prestige. But if anyone has this world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or talk, but in deed and in truth. Would you stand? And just let these words minister to your heart of the example of our Savior. ♪ The love my God would bring me down to earth ♪ Yet to this dark and broken place you've come. ♪ Rejected and despised ♪ ♪ That you might know the weakness I contest ♪ ♪ And be my rock of strength and righteousness ♪ ♪ All your love, my God, like the sun ♪ ♪ As heaven opens up, pouring out on us ♪ ♪ Oh praise the King who came to the world ♪ ♪ Could hold you to the tree ♪ ♪ To bear that overwhelming death for me ♪ ♪ The son of heaven leaves the father's side ♪ ♪ The healer bleeds, the life is made to die ♪ I know it's a long song, but it gets better. One love, my God, so gracious and sweet Was strong enough to come and fight for me To go through hell and down into the grave To see You face to face. Joy of love, my God, like a flood Has set an open door. ♪ God like a flood ♪ ♪ As heaven opened up ♪ ♪ Pouring out on us ♪ ♪ Oh praise the King who came to the world ♪ ♪ In His love like a mighty flood ♪ ♪ In His love ♪ Oh, Jesus, we are so thankful that you did not refuse to leave heaven and come to earth and walk among your creation. Let the man you made nail you to the cross. You could have called angels. But Lord, because of your great love, and for our example of love so that you would have a loving church, a unique people, unlike the world, unlike the evil one and murderous. Lord, you did that for us. And Lord, may we refuse to set limits on loving one another. until we have given our life as you have given and given it all. And we ask these things in your name, amen.