God So Loved Us
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Opening Illustration
Opening Illustration
A good way to gauge how much you love God is to consider how much you are willing to give for the cause of Christ.
A man named Andy proved his love in a very real way.
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Years ago, Andy, a graduate school student from the mid-west, was moved by the need of another brother.
The new semester had come and one of his friends was $150.00 short of what he needed to stay in school.
Andy didn’t have to think twice about what to do. He gave his friend the money.
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Andy made a tremendous sacrifice.
Like most students, he did not have a large reserve of cash to share.
In fact, a year later, Andy had to drop out of school for a year to earn more money to finish his own education.
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Did he ever regret giving that money to his friend?
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Not in any way.
He later said,
“To have done anything else would have been sin.
My brother had a need and I had the privilege of helping meet that need.
Don’t worry about me.
God will take care of me too.”
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And God did.
Andy finished his degree a year later—just in time...
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In God’s time...
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In God’s way...
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With God’s provision.
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The believer never loses when his motive for action is love.
Love is always worth the risk.
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So, please turn your Bibles to 1 John.
We will be conducting our study in Chapter 4 and focusing on verses 11 through 12.
Our message this morning is called, “God So Loved Us.”
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As you are finding your place in God’s Word, I want to share that today we will be focusing on love.
We will be exploring how God loves us...
And we will see how it is out of that love that we are able to love others...
Just like Andy loved his fellow school mate...
When he sacrificially gave what he himself needed.
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Opening Prayer
Opening Prayer
Before we consider our text, please join me in prayer...
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Let’s turn to our text for today:
Reading of the Text
Reading of the Text
11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
12 No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.
So, let’s look at our first point...
1) God Loves His Children
1) God Loves His Children
Verse 11a: Beloved, if God so loved us,
So, the first item that John mentions in this passage is the love of God.
That love is the foundation of John’s point that he is making in these two verses...
And that love is the foundation for all true love.
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Simple put...
True love has no other origin than in our mighty and awesome God...
And He has chosen to shower us, His followers, with His immeasurable love.
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To comprehend God’s love is impossible for our human minds...
The finite cannot properly and fully understand the infinite.
But we are able to get at lest a partial understanding.
Though this illustration falls short...
It helps us to get an idea of God’s love.
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Church, I want you to imagine that God’s love is all the water that is contained on the earth.
Keep in mind too that about 71% of the Earth's surface is water-covered.
That is estimated to be about 326 million trillion gallons!
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Do you think anyone can drain all that water?
An average human’s body contains about 11 gallons of water.
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So, When God loves His children...
It is like taking that 326 million trillion gallons of water and pouring it into an 11 gallon shell.
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The reality is that we are completely flooded by God’s love.
Our needs are filled a myriad of times over and we have nothing else to do but sharer that abundance of love with others.
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You see Church, God is completely rich in His mercy.
And in the mercy department...
We were malnutritioned..
In fact we were dead...
Dead inn our sin and wickedness.
But as Ephesians 2:4–5 He made what was once dead into something that was alive.
4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us,
5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—
God’s love was so powerful...
He made zombies turn into living men and women.
He made dead dry bones have life again.
And He did that by crucifying our old self.
In fact...
We are no longer the ones who live.
As Paul says it is “Christ who lives in me.”
We no longer live by sight...
We now live by faith!
Or as Galatians 2:20 puts it:
20 I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
God’s love is poured out into our hearts...
Dissolving the our wicked and cold stone heart...
And creating a heart of flesh...
And the means in which God does this is through the Holy Spirit that now lives in every born-again man and woman.
Romans 5:5 is clear on those truths when it says:
5 and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.
That amazing part about this all...
Is that although we are slaves to Christ...
We are not treated as a typical slave...
We are adopted as God’s children...
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His former enemies that blasphemed Him and sin against Him daily...
We who are responsible for the need of the crucifixion...
We who disobey Him and commit treason against Him every time we sin...
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He now calls us sons and daughters...
He allows us to be part of the royal family of God...
Co-Heirs with Christ...
This is so mind blowing!
As John said earlier in this letter in 1 John 3:1:
1 See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him.
As His children we are obligated to love one another...
And this takes us to our second point.
2) We Must Love One Another
2) We Must Love One Another
Verse 11b: We also ought to love one another.
The note from the Faithlife Study Bible is helpful here:
“John links together the two main issues that the false teachers have misconstrued:
Love of God and love of neighbor.
For John, the two expressions of love are inextricably tied together.”
The false teachers that John is responding to in his letter...
And any false teacher for that matter...
Never understand this biblical principle...
The love of God can never be separated from the love of one another.
Malachi 2:10 has this to say about this connection of these two loves:
10 Have we not all one Father? Has not one God created us? Why then are we faithless to one another, profaning the covenant of our fathers?
We as children of God can’t forget the fact that we all have the same Father.
So, as believers we can’t go around and mistreat other followers of Christ.
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Jesus explicitly made this command clear in the Gospels.
For example in John 13:34 our Lord and Savior said:
34 A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.
The love of God was never more perfectly displayed on earth than by Jesus when He came in the flesh.
He perfectly modeled love for us...
And expects all His followers to follow in His footsteps.
As Matthew 10:8 records:
Matthew 10:8 (ESV)
8 You received without paying; give without pay.
God freely blessed us so we should freely bless others...
God freely gave us love so we should freely give love to others...
And God freely forgave us so we should freely forgive others.
As it says in Matthew 6:12 when Jesus presents the templeted prayer; the Lord’s prayer to His followers.
12 and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.
This is one of the clearest wasy that we show love to one another...
By forgiving other what they did to us.
Remember, what God forgave you of is a far greater debt than what anyone can ever do to you.
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Let’s look at the parable of the unforgiving servant for a clear picture of what this looks like.
We will parking here for a bit so turn to Matthew 18:21–35 and look with me at what it says:
21 Then Peter came up and said to him, “Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?”
Beloved, do you know why Peter says “seven time?”
It almost feels like a random number but it is not.
During Jesus’ time the rabbi’s of the day taught a lot of man-made traditions not found in the Bible.
One of these was that you should forgive a person 3 times but after that you are free of the obligation to forgive them.
The idea was that by making this rule in was less burden some as forgiveness had a limit.
But the reality is these man-made traditions mislead people from true biblical teaching.
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So, when Peter says seven times he thinks he is being more than generous as this is more the twice as much as the rabbis called for.
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But look what Jesus says in the next verse:
22 Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy-seven times.
The “phrase seventy-seven times” was not ment to be an actual number.
During the 1st century the hearers of this parable would have understood it to mean an infinite amount of times.
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Let’s continue at verse 23.
23 “Therefore the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his servants.
24 When he began to settle, one was brought to him who owed him ten thousand talents.
The “ten thousand talents” was the equivalent to more than just a whole lifetime of income. It was the equivalent of multiple life times of income.
So, the amount the person owed would be impossible to ever pay back.
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Let’s continue:
25 And since he could not pay, his master ordered him to be sold, with his wife and children and all that he had, and payment to be made.
26 So the servant fell on his knees, imploring him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.’
27 And out of pity for him, the master of that servant released him and forgave him the debt.
That is the king forgave the servant of his whole debt.
He owed nothing.
his debt was not just reduces it was paid in full!
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But look what happens next in the parable:
28 But when that same servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii, and seizing him, he began to choke him, saying, ‘Pay what you owe.’
This debt owed to the servant was a small debt and most definitely no where close to the debt he was forgiven.
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Let’s pick it the parable back up again at verse 29:
29 So his fellow servant fell down and pleaded with him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you.’
30 He refused and went and put him in prison until he should pay the debt.
31 When his fellow servants saw what had taken place, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their master all that had taken place.
32 Then his master summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me.
33 And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?’
34 And in anger his master delivered him to the jailers, until he should pay all his debt.
35 So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.”
Pay attention to Jesus warning in verse 35.
If you do not forgive your brother or sister in Christ in your heart...
That is a indication that you are not really His and your sins will not be forgiven.
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Not a single person in this whole world can ever pay back the debt they accumulated against God.
If in your whole life all you did was commit a single white lie you would still never be able to pay your own debt.
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Only a sinless Man can pay someone else’s debt for they would have no debt of their own...
And only God himself can survive the penalty of sin which is death...
And that is why it was essential that we needed the God-Man Jesus Christ to save us...
For only He is 100% man and 100% God.
And it was His sacrifice that taught us love first hand as it says in 1 John 3:16:
16 By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.
So, as Jesus laid down his life for us...
We are to do the same for our brothers and sister in Christ...
And we are to be a source of encouragement for one another...
Leading people to follow in a behavior of love and the practice of good works.
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This truth is echoed by the author of Hebrews 10:24 when it says:
24 And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works,
so, take the prayer found in Philippians 1:9 and meditate on it and keep it always on your tongue which says:
9 And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment,
It is vital that we as believer practice and display love for all to see.
In the following verse of the passage we are studying...
John will explain the urgency of his plea to his audience.
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So let’s move on the our third point and see where John is going with this.
3) The Invisible God
3) The Invisible God
Verse 12a: No one has ever seen God;
This next line...
The first part of verse 12 seems random by John...
But as we know...
The Word of God is inspired by the Holy Spirit and nothing is random.
And John very much has a reason for this statement.
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Let’s continue with this point by first understanding this statement and then it will reveal what is being said in this passage.
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Again, this week I found the Faithlife Study Bible to be helpful in it’s note on the phrase “No one has seen God”:
“That is, in His full, manifest form.
John argues that although no one has seen God,
His character can be seen in believers who love as He does.
In the Old Testament, figures like Abraham, Moses, and Isaiah had encounters with God,
Yet none involved witnessing God in His full glory—as He really is.
John doesn’t consider Old Testament characters to have seen the fullness of God.”
One of the main reasons we are able to come to this same conclusion is by what it says in verses like Exodus 33:20:
20 But,” he said, “you cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live.”
As humans...
If we looked at the face of God we would intently die.
Just consider the sun for example.
Permanent retinal damage can occur when someone looks at the sun for 100 seconds or less...
This is under two minutes.
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The sun...
As amazing as it is...
Is only spec in the whole of God’s creation.
So, it should not be surprising that to look on the face of God is to fall dead.
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However, Jesus, who is God the Son has seen God the Father as it says in John 6:46:
46 not that anyone has seen the Father except he who is from God; he has seen the Father.
So, although no human has ever seen the Father’s face...
Jesus acts as the image of God that we can see.
As Jesus Himself said in John 14:9:
9 Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?
So, the reason John is mentioning that God the Father is unseen...
And for us, invisible...
Is to say that what we can see is God’s love.
And God’s love is first seem in the person of Jesus Christ.
But remember Church, Jesus ascended.
So, it now falls on the followers of Christ to reflect God’s love.
And this takes us to our next and final point.
4) Perfected Love
4) Perfected Love
Verse 12b: If we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.
The word “perfected” in our verse in the Koine Greek is “tel-ei-oo.”
This word can alternatively be be translated “made complete,” “brought to full expression or full measure,” “bring to an end or goal,” “accomplished,” or “fulfilled.”
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So, what John is saying is that when we love one another...
God’s love comes into full measure.
God may be invisible but His love is very viable.
First, we saw God the Father’s love in Jesus...
And now the saints are the ones that people see God’s love through.
This is how love is perfected.
Consider what pastor John MacArthur has this to say about this verse:
“Love is the heart of Christian witness.
Nobody can see God loving since His love is invisible.
Jesus no longer is in the world to manifest the love of God.
The only demonstration of God’s love in this age is the church.
That testimony is critical.
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John’s argument in verses 7–12 can be summed up as:
Love originated in God,
Was manifested in His Son,
And demonstrated in His people.”
This is a vital point that John is making.
He will later repeat himself again as well as reveal other significant truths about this face as we see in 1 John 4:16-18:
16 So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.
17 By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world.
18 There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.
So, that love that we share with others...
That love that originates from God the Father...
It is the kind of love that shatters fear.
For if the love of God in in you...
Then you will not be condemned...
You will not be punished.
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So, brothers and sisters in Christ obey the command in 1 Corinthians 16:14 and:
14 Let all that you do be done in love.
And let what you do be done in godly love.
A love that is sacrificial...
A love that is biblical...
A love that is pure...
And a love that is sincere as it says in 1 Timothy 1:5:
5 The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.
And don’t just stop at loving your fellow saints.
Jesus commanded that although they are the priority...
We are also to love the ones who hate us...
The ones who laugh and mock us...
The ones who name call us and assassinate our public character...
The ones who harm our friends and family...
The ones who are seduced by our enemy.
As Jesus said in Matthew 5:44–45:
44 But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,
45 so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.
Keeping these commands in an indicator if God truly abides in you.
so, don’t brush off these commands.
Instead, live by them for the sake of the one who saved you.
Live by these commands if you truly Love God.
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Remember, John 15:9–10 says:
9 As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love.
10 If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love.
Closing Illustration
Closing Illustration
As this message comes to a close, I want to share this:
The capacity to love those who are impossible to love is one of the great distinguishing marks of Christianity.
Here is the story of a man who put this principle into action.
Louis Zamperini...
A former Olympic runner, who ditched his plane off the coast of Hawaii, during World War II and drifted 2,000 miles in 47 days on a life raft, was picked up by a Japanese vessel.
He was a prisoner for the two remaining years of the war.
He was starved and tortured by his captors...
The level of abuse was so horrific that it was the subject of the 2014 film Unbroken and its 2018 sequel Unbroken: Path to Redemption.
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At home he was given up for dead.
Zamperini was even in the possession of his own death certificate signed by President Roosevelt.
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Louis said he left Japan in 1945 with hatred in his heart against his captors.
But in 1949 he was saved at one of Billy Graham’s meetings in Los Angeles.
“There is such a change in my life that I feel I have a duty to perform.”
Zamperini told his friends.
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“That duty is to return to Japan and tell them of the saving power of the Lord Jesus Christ.”
And that’s exactly what he did.
Love covers a multitude of sins—even those of your enemies.
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So, Beloved...
Go out this week and love.
And whatever you are currently doing to show others love...
I am going to ask you to do more and more...
And I will leave you with what Paul said the the saints in Thessalonica in 1 Thessalonians 4:9–12:
9 Now concerning brotherly love you have no need for anyone to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love one another,
10 for that indeed is what you are doing to all the brothers throughout Macedonia. But we urge you, brothers, to do this more and more,
11 and to aspire to live quietly, and to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, as we instructed you,
12 so that you may walk properly before outsiders and be dependent on no one.
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To God be all the glory.
Amen.
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Please join us for one more song from the Praise Band.
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