July 22, 2018 Sermon - What Love is - 1 John 3:11-24
There’s a dual purpose to today’s service, and also to my message today.
Today we’re continuing in our study of the Letter of 1st John, and it has a lot to say about relationships and about love.
And of course the main reason we gather each Sunday and often during the week is to worship and glorify the living God.
The other purpose to today’s message and service is to celebrate, and also to bless and to, sort of, say goodbye to a person who has been a part of our congregation of 13 odd years,
who has grown up among us, found his confidence in Jesus, found his feet in ministry, and stretched himself to connect with another part of the body of Jesus.
James Cheyne has been a bright light among us for many years. He has led us to the throneroom of God as one of our key worship leaders.
You have enjoyed his angelic voice as he’s taught new music and sung over this congregation the blessings of God.
James learned about the love of God here first. He learned about Jesus and how Jesus gave His life for us out of love.
He learned that we love because God first loved us. (We love because he first loved us. 1 John 4:9) James received Jesus Christ as his Lord and Saviour here at Church at the Mission, and like many of us, the course of his life was beautifully altered when he became a follower of The Way, of Jesus the Messiah.
Let’s get into our passage today.
For this is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another. Do not be like Cain, who belonged to the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own actions were evil and his brother’s were righteous. Do not be surprised, my brothers and sisters, if the world hates you.
This passage starts out with a jolting contrast. It’s intended to startle. It’s intended to get our attention.
We should love, like we’ve heard from the beginning. This is the core of the message and this is the heart of the gospel.
And this is the way we should live. We should love. We need to love. We need to love because if we don’t love, we drift. And where do we drift?
We can too quickly become like the first brother who murdered his own kin. Cain, the murderer of innocent Abel. Jealous Cain, generous Abel. Vain Cain, worshipping Abel. Obsessed Cain, available Abel.
We are compelled by the love of God to continue to return to the love of God as the basis for our lives.
We are compelled by the Word of God to make behaving in loving ways toward others a part of our character, part of our conduct.
The 4th anchor of the Way of Jesus that many of us are part of reflects this: I am learning to Love God and Others.
The phrase ‘We should love one another’ is found in this passage because it can be missing in our lives.
It’s found in our lives when we walk closely with God, when we submit to his will, when we are attuned to the Spirit of God as He speaks to us.
It can be MIA, missing in action, when, like Cain the first murderer, we walk away from God in practice;
when we allow envy of another to overwhelm us. When we become self-absorbed and self-obsessed.
The call is to love. The call is to live a life of loving God and loving others.
How do we do that? If it’s new information for us, how do we get rolling with that way of living.
If we’re stalled out and feel like we’re moving backward in our faith, how do we get back on track.
The way Jesus loves us is by giving of Himself. The way Jesus wants us to love others is by giving of ourselves.
As a pastor I’m always of looking for potential new leaders.
Leadership is important. Leaders who follow the leadership style of Jesus are critical in the life of the church.
So when I’m looking for new leaders, what do you think I do? I don’t look for flashy extroverts.
I don’t look for people who one way or another draw attention to themselves. I don’t even look for people who necessarily appear to be highly gifted.
I look first for servants. I look at the ones who stick around after the service and help clean up.
The one who comes in early and offers to help serve refreshments, to help set up for the service.
The one who sits with a new person and is welcoming and engaging to our visitors.
The one who spends time with someone who is hurting. The one who I see volunteering around the mission.
Or helping out somewhere else. The person who lives their life responsibly, but also with one eye out to the well-being of others.
From very early on in his time with us, James began to serve. At the time he came, we had no sound person on most Sundays, and we were meeting in the gym of the CCC.
I was trying to run sound from the piano and doing a poor job because I couldn’t play and lead worship and direct the band and pay attention to how clear the sound was for the congregation.
James saw that and offered to step in and help out, coming early on Sundays. He learned the sound board.
He learned how to listen and sort out sound, how to blend the instruments.
That was likely the start of his developing as a musician, which has ended up being a huge part of his ministry, as it was and is for me.
James connected with new people who came into the service even when he was a new person. And he continued in this way of being.
Some of you here have told me that it was James who first welcomed you into this place and really made you feel comfortable.
So it’s no stretch to say that James has been an example among us of one who loves.
We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love each other. Anyone who does not love remains in death. Anyone who hates a brother or sister is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life residing in him. This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person? Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.
So John is saying that the sign of our salvation, the indicator that we have passed from death to life, is found in our love for one another.
He’s not talking generally now about living a life of love toward all. Right here he’s talking about loving each other.
And what’s the standard of truly loving each other? It’s more than being nice to each other on Sundays and other days that we gather together.
It’s much more. It’s fullest expression is found in following Jesus by the willing laying down of our lives for our brothers and sisters. That’s heavy.
So loving each other potentially extends to laying down our lives for one another. That’s a lot to get our minds around.
But it does help us to understand at least that everything stretching up to laying down our lives for each other is possible for us as followers of Jesus, and its actually encouraged.
The practical example given in this passage is a lot less than laying down our lives for each other. But laying down our lives for each other is the picture we are intended to struggle with.
Short of laying down our lives for each other, we are called to share generously with each other.
If we see one among us struggling, as will happen because you know - life is brutal and sucks a lot of the time for a lot of people -
If we see a brother or sister in need and we don’t have pity, compassion empathy for them - as John asked rhetorically - how can God’s love be in us? We’re called to love not with our words but with our actions (and in truth – that means believing the truth about Jesus and His sacrifice for us.
The early church took this very seriously.
So seriously that they not only dwelled together sharing all their possessions as we find in Acts 2 and 4, but also in that they cared for those around them who were not yet of the household of God, not yet followers of Jesus.
They were so committed that they cared up close in the ancient world, in the early centuries of the church, for those dying of flu epidemics and all kinds of illnesses, even when they put their own lives at risk.
And you know what? A lot of them died. And you know what?
That self-giving love spoke volumes to the people around them and attracted them to become followers of the Way, followers of Jesus.
No one else did that. No one else in the ancient world had a reason to live with that kind of generosity.
No one but this odd, rag tag band of Jesus followers who lived lives of kindness and love out of gratitude for the great things God had done in their lives by giving them Jesus.
I don’t want to embarrass James, but I’m going to. James and his mom, Marlene, have for years taken people in off the streets.
They’ve helped addicts and homeless people, folks that were trying to reboot their lives. And it wasn’t always rosy.
Was it ever rosy? It was hard slugging. Lots of being taken advantage of, having their good will and kindness just kind of totally taken for granted.
They didn’t do it for any reward. They did it out of love. Because the love of God is in them.
Not unlike the first followers of Jesus, they have lived lives of self-giving love out of gratitude for all that Jesus has done for them.
Not to further embarrass James, but I’m going to...around a year ago a church in the west end, His Glory House, was desperate for a worship leader because they lost some of their people.
James was known to the leaders there because of his involvement with Eagle Worldwide Ministries.
They connected with James, and to make a long story short, James for the last year, on his day off, has gone to His Glory House at around 9:30 in the morning on Sundays to lead or support the worship ministry there.
He has then booted it across the city to be here for our worship band’s practice at 1:30 pm. He’s often led worship, led the band, sometimes preached as you know. (Pause)
Love is self-giving. Love steps in to help others. Love expresses itself in action.
When love does that, love gets noticed. Whether it’s the early Roman world shaking their heads at the loving, self-giving generosity of the early church, and being drawn to Jesus as a result,
or it’s us who recognized James’ character and willingness to serve and have benefitted from his leadership for so many years as a result;
or if it’s His Glory House and Eaglewide who have also recognized James’ anointing and have called upon him to serve among them on the pastoral team.
When love is enacted, incarnated through us, good things happen. God brings blessing, and God brings glory to Himself through His church.
This is how we know that we belong to the truth and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence: If our hearts condemn us, we know that God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God and receive from him anything we ask, because we keep his commands and do what pleases him. And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us. The one who keeps God’s commands lives in him, and he in them. And this is how we know that he lives in us: We know it by the Spirit he gave us.
1 John 3:11-24
My brother Craig became a Christian about 4 years after me, in part because he wanted to unconvert me, and he did a ton of research on the Christian faith and its detractors.
In the end he, like me, recognized that God is real, and so he gave his life to Christ, and then served Jesus in joy for many years before being called home to be with the Lord.
For a while he struggled with a bit of legalism. He thought we HAD to effectively earn good standing with God through our actions.
He thought that while Jesus dying on the cross saved us, we had to add to that by making sure we were always doing good works.
Then one day in a Bible study he read this passage. And where it says: “And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us”, he paused. And the lights went on big time for him.
He realized that God wants us not to work for our salvation, or to work to maintain our salvation, as though that could ever be possible, as though anyone could ever add the tiniest bit to what Jesus did for us in dying on the cross.
He realized that God’s command is twofold and only twofold. God wants us to believe in Jesus, and to love one another. Period. That’s it.
If you’ve been around much you’ve heard me and others preach on the Shema - He answered, "'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind'; and, 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'" Luke 10:27
Everything else, all the other laws and commands in the whole Bible, hang on those few passages.
That means if you got stuck on a desert island in the middle of nowhere and had a terrible memory like me, and could only remember a few things
- if you can remember and act on the Shema, which is rephrased in 1 John 3 (believe in Jesus and love each other), you would be good to go.
As our passage wraps up, its final word to us, its final affirmation, is that it is the Spirit of God that assures us of our relationship with God.
The Holy Spirit enables us, makes it possible for us to live lives of love toward God and toward others, toward our neighbours.
The Holy Spirit inspires us to follow after Jesus, understanding that all the piety in the world, all the prayer in the world, makes no difference if we do not become more and more like Jesus in the way that we love God and love others.
The Holy Spirit is a deposit, as it says in Ephesians, guaranteeing our inheritance in Christ.
“…The promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession—to the praise of his glory”. Ephesians 1:13b-14
So let us keep God’s command to believe in Jesus - to love God with our everything, and to love one another, which extends very importantly to all those around us.
The Holy Spirit of God reveals the Messiah Jesus to us. The Holy Spirit leads us in the way God wants us to go.
The Holy Spirit led James to us many years ago, intending that this be the community in which James was to be established in order to grow into the man of God that he is today.
And the Holy Spirit has called James to another corner of the Kingdom, where through him God will care for and disciple and evangelize and heal and encourage many, through him.
I’m going to ask James to come up now to share a few words.
Then we as a congregation will pray for him and send him with our blessings to his next ministry assignment, all for the glory of God.
