Subtraction

Do the Math  •  Sermon  •  Submitted   •  Presented   •  31:10
0 ratings
· 26 views

Often, a life of discipleship carries all good intentions, but less-than-desirable outcomes. And just as often, the answer is not found in what we need to add to our life of discipleship, but in what we need to take away.

Files
Notes
Transcript
Sermon Tone Analysis
A
D
F
J
S
Emotion
A
C
T
Language
O
C
E
A
E
Social
View more →
Quick recap: if you were with us last week hopefully you remember what we left with as step one of loving our neighbors. If you were with us, you should be able to tell me what step one loving our neighbors is. If you can’t tell me that, then I’m afraid I didn’t do a very good job last week of explaining it. Who can tell us? […] Learn their names. Last week we said that you cannot convey love for someone if you cannot call them by name. it’s simple, right? No great skill or experience is needed to ask someone what their name is. For some of us it may be a little bit of a skill to remember people’s names; but given that we’re putting so much importance upon this as a critical step in loving our neighbors, I’d say it’s a good skill to learn.
We took just one step toward loving our neighbors last week by talking about the importance of names. But as I said, we’re also going to see over the next two weeks how loving God and loving our neighbors are bound together as one. This week look with me at what the apostle John has to say about this.
1 John 4:7–16 NIV
Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us. This is how we know that we live in him and he in us: He has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God. And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.
Do you notice the theme here? If you had to pick out just one word from this passage to summarize the theme, can you pick one? I hope it’s obvious. It’s not too hard to figure this one out. This passage is about God’s love for us and our love for others.

From Nice to Love

In our culture we have a few wrong ideas about what it means to love someone else. Sure, our culture has problems with pornography that have twisted our understanding of romance and intimacy. But today I am talking about something even much more basic than that. I am talking about the kind of love that we profess to have for one another as Christians, the kind of love that the Apostle John is talking about in this passage today. We have a few wrong ideas about that kind of love too.
Throughout the years I have had to tell my children more times than I can count to play nice with each other. I think it was something that I was told repeatedly as a child as well. In fact, I bet that every single one of us here has had some kind of instruction in our upbringing to be nice to other people. At some point it seems to me that the prevalence of niceness has confused us. Nice is not the same as love. There is a difference. Sometimes—without meaning to—we lose sight of that, and somewhere in the back of our minds we tell ourselves that as long as we are nice to other people then we are showing love to other people. So, we read words like we see here today in the Bible telling us to love one another, and maybe our immediate application of this command is to think that as long as I am nice to other people then I got that one nailed.
Except that nice and love are not the same thing.
Let’s be very specific by what our culture means when we use the word nice. Nice is a behavior that is polite, cordial, agreeable, considerate, non-offensive. But those things by themselves fall short of love. They are not the same thing. It is interesting to me that this country has a president currently who challenges our sense of niceness. He often speaks and tweets words that are rude and insulting and offensive. And I wonder if—in part—his appeal with some voters comes from those who may be getting sick and tired of everyone insisting on niceness all the time. And so, it would be especially helpful for understanding this command to love one another for us to understand the difference between love and nice.
God is love. The apostle John makes this one simple statement. But this one phrase—God is love—carries huge theological importance. We need to stop here for a few minutes and consider together what it means when we say that God is love. We should not move on any further to consider what it means to truly love our neighbors without framing it in the context of God’s love. Let’s think about this.
There are so many things we can say about the connection between God and love. We can say that God is loving—that he demonstrates love as one of his qualities or characteristics. We can say that God helps us to know what love is—that he is a teacher of love from whom we learn what it means to truly love. But neither of these statements fully captures what John is conveying when he says in today’s passage that God is love.
For the apostle John, to say that God is love is to say that perfect love is inseparably tied to absolutely everything that God ever does. In this way it is not enough to simply say that God is loving. Such a statement leaves room for the possibility that there might then be some things that God does that are NOT loving. It’s true for us, right? You and I can be loving people—that is, we can have moments in our lives when we show and demonstrate love. But you and I also have moments in life when we do NOT show and demonstrate love. God, on the other hand, always shows and demonstrates perfect love in everything he does. So, he is more than a loving God; God is perfect love.
This may be somewhat hard for us to always understand, especially when we consider that God is also perfectly just and perfectly righteous. His perfect love and mercy holds in balance with his perfect justice and righteousness. We cannot always understand God’s love that way—a love that demands accountability for sin, for violating his perfect holiness. And so, sometimes it just seems like God is not very nice. But he is always loving. Those are not the same things.
Jesus was not always nice. He was not always polite. He was not always agreeable. He was not always cordial. There were times when he intentionally offended others. Yet, even though Jesus was not always nice, he was always loving. Therefore, you and I cannot simply be nice to other people and continue claiming that our niceness counts as loving others.
Now, please don’t misunderstand me. I am not giving free permission here to say that nice is a bad thing. If go around being impolite, mean, offensive bullies all the time, then it makes things much harder for us to be loving. All we are saying here is that there is MORE to love than nice behavior. Because when you think about it, I can demonstrate nice behavior without being loving. I can put on a show of all the politeness, I can be agreeable and cordial, I can behave in a non-offensive manner, and I can do all of that with people that I really don’t love at all.
Are you seeing the difference now? Love is more than niceness. When I was young and would fight with my sisters, one of my parents would say to me, “apologize to your sister for hitting her.” Fine. I’m sorry. When we are seven it’s pretty where our genuine attitudes are leaning. As we get older we become much better at pretending niceness when we don’t really mean it. Love is more than nice.

From Obligation to Invitation

Let’s move on and talk then about what it means for us to love our neighbors, in light of God’s love for us. Today’s passage makes it very clear that these things are connected. We want to see and understand this connection because our love for neighbors depends on God’s love for us. In other words, we can learn something about the way God wants us to love one another by considering the ways that God loves us.
Perhaps the most important thing we can understand about God’s love that will help us to better love others is to see that God’s love is freely given. Yes, God is love. But there is nothing that obligates God to show his love to us. We have done absolutely nothing to earn or deserve God’s love.
Every year at Christmas it seems that many people go through the routine of sending out Christmas cards. I don’t know about you, but it seems like my routine for Christmas cards involves making a list of everyone who sent me a card last year. I got a card from so-and-so last year, now I have to add them to my list to send a card this year. Now I’m obligated to return a card. It becomes an obligation. I have to do it because of what they have done for me. God’s love is not an obligation. God does not look over a list he keeps on his phone of everyone who goes to church, and everyone who tithes, and everyone who volunteers for ministry, and then give out selective amounts of love based on some kind of obligation for all that we’ve done for him.
Rather than an obligation, love ought to be freely given. It is not an obligated response to something that is owed or earned. Instead, love is an invitation. When we see the way that God shows his love to us, then we understand that love moves from an obligation to an invitation. First of all, it is an invitation we receive from God. God invites us into his grace. It is an invitation because—as we’ve already said—we did not earn it or deserve it. God’s love is not an obligation he owed to us. Instead, God freely offers his love as an invitation to receive his grace.
You and I begin to understand better how it is we should love one another when we rid ourselves of all the obligations we attach along the way. We begin to better understand how to love others when we move ourselves more-and-more to giving our love freely and simply invite others to receive that love as a gift. Our love for others should not be predicated on any standards of recognition or returned favor. We should not keep scorecards that tally up the balance and dole out different portions of love based upon some set of rules we’ve made up. When we do that, then love isn’t free. When we do that, then love turns into an obligation.
God calls us to take the love he has given to us and move it from an obligation into an invitation. An invitation to what? What should genuine love as it comes from God invite us into? What should our love for neighbors be inviting others into? The answer there is simple: relationship. Love that is given freely without any obligation is love that extends an invitation to enter relationship. This is the outcome of how God’s love shows up for us. We read today that God extends his love to us through Jesus. Jesus gave himself in love for us in order that we could be united in love with God. The focus of God’s love is a focus that invites us to be in relationship with him, and with one another.

From Acquaintance to Relationship

Last week began with one step. If you were here last week, we had a chart printed in the notes that challenged each one of us to name the people who live closest to us. If you want to hear more about that you can find that message online. In the past week, some of you have been honest with me about not knowing the names of all the people who live within an immediate 200-yard radius of your own home. The challenge was to learn names. Because we said that we cannot show real actual love for thers if we do not know their names. Some of you admitted to me that you have some work to do there. And I admitted to you that I have some work to do there as well.
Now then, some others among you talked with me this week and shared with me that you do know all the names of all the people who live right near you. So, for you it is time to move on from step one and think about step two. Step two is moving from acquaintance to relationship. Learning names is step one. Learning names establishes an acquaintance. Once I learn the names then I can say I am acquainted with my neighbors. But what else do I know about my neighbors? Some things I can figure out just by observation. I know one of my neighbors must have a kid who plays soccer by the stickers in the back window of their minivan. I know another neighbor keeps a really sharp looking lawn with careful attention to maintaining the landscaping. I can see another neighbor is a Wolverines fan by the U of M flag that hangs on the porch. These are all things I learn just by looking. And these things are all opportunities for conversation starters.
I know I can kick off a conversation with the guy across the street out by the mailbox just by asking if he is a University of Michigan alum, or just a fan? I can ask the guy who is always out there working on his car how long he’s had his Mustang. I can ask the mom two doors down where her kids play soccer. Here’s what I want us to see: this is all safe stuff. This is level one type conversation. This is conversation that centers on things like hobbies and interests and backgrounds. It’s pretty safe data that does not require people to be vulnerable. It does not take a highly earned level of trust to share a few things with my neighbor about his flower garden.
But all of this is still acquaintance. Names and data are still step one kinds of information. Now the challenge is to move from acquaintance to relationship. God demonstrates love that invites us into relationship with him, and our call is to echo that same love in a way that invites relationship with others. So, how do we make that move? How do I take someone with whom I have an acquaintance and move that to a relationship? Now it’s time to look for opportunities to share about more than level one conversation. It’s time to look for something deeper than hobbies and interests. Level two conversation starts digging into things like hopes and dreams and fears and trust.
These things ask people to show a little vulnerability to open up about thoughts and feelings beyond simple data. And for us that means taking the first step. I need to be willing to start that process of moving beyond an acquaintance and into relationship. But remember, this is also something that we do freely as an invitation to share love, not an obligation. It won’t go very far if you walk over to a neighbor and say, “The pastor says I need to know you name and something about you.” Anything that sends a message to others that we are only doing these things because we feel obligated, or because we simply trying to be nice, and it’s game over…it just sounds like a sales pitch. Our desire to actually move beyond an acquaintance and to relationship must be genuine and authentic. I must interact with my neighbors in a way that communicates I actually value who they are, and I genuinely want to get to know them better.

Subtraction

What is going to make that happen? How can you and I pursue a love for others like that? How do we get past just being nice? Get past obligation? Get past mere acquaintances? What do I need to become or add to my life to become a person who can love others like that? John is not quite done with us in this passage yet. And the answer is not about adding something to your life in order to embrace a love for others. Rather, it is about subtraction. It’s about getting rid of something that is holding us back from loving others the way God loves us and calls for us to love others. Look what John goes on to say right after the verses we read:
1 John 4:18 NIV
There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.
Fear. How many of our world’s problems are rooted in fear? Racism exists because of people who fear those who are different. Wars start because of fear…we better take control and kill them before they take control and dominate us. Fear is what isolates people apart from one another. Fear is the weapon used by Satan to try to restrain God’s love. John makes it pretty simple here. I cannot love others if I am bound by fear. Perfect love drives out fear. But John is also saying in this verse that the opposite is true as well. Fear drives out love.
Why don’t I reach out and love others the way God calls for his followers to do? Maybe the better question to start with is, what am I afraid of? What fear is holding me back from loving other people who are distant from God? Maybe I’ve been hurt by others who have taken advantage of relationships before? Maybe I’m afraid of rejection—what if they want nothing to do with me? Either way, it is a fear that holds me back from truly and genuinely extending God’s love certain other people.
Step one was for us to learn some names. That moves us from stranger to acquaintance. Step two today is to trust God in facing our own fears so that we can share God’s love to others. That moves us from acquaintance to relationship.
Related Media
See more
Related Sermons
See more