Perfect Love - Week 5: “Perfect Love Runs in God’s Family”

See what kind of love the father has given to us that we should be called his children. In other words, an expression of God's love to us isn't an individualized privatized expression of his love to you. It's the invitation for you to come and join his family to be one of his own children. So here's a question. How does God get his love to us? Answer, through his family. It's through life in God's family that we share this love with one another, that we grow in this perfect love. Our text calls us children of God. [00:47:51] (41 seconds)  #LoveThroughFamily

So I want you to picture with me. Turn on the movie screen of your mind. I want you to picture this real quick. Picture a child playing in the backyard right after it rains. Go ahead and picture it. This child's been doing what children do. He's flashing all over the places, doing whatever. Now picture that child getting up and heading toward the back door of the house. This child has got mud all over the place. Grabs the door, goes to step in, and the father stops. Son, you can't come in here like that. So picture the father walking around the side of the house, grab a garden hose, [01:00:32] (28 seconds)  #FatherCleansesChild

and hose that kid off. Question. What is the father rejecting? The child or the mud? I'll be honest with you. There are many of you here today. You have a religious background, and everything in you says the child. You did bad. You are bad. According to the scriptures, my friend, God loves every single child he made. Though something's wrong in us, there's nothing wrong in God. His love is a perfect love, and he does not reject the child. He rejects the mud. And he sends Jesus to deal with our sins so that we could be made clean in him, and we could enter into the freedom of the experience of the sons and daughters of God. [01:01:01] (54 seconds)  #RejectSinNotChild

Like, what is sin? How would you define it? Well, the passage has its own definition right there. Do you notice in verse four? It's a word lawlessness. Shows up there two different times. Lawlessness. It's referring to God's law. So sin would be the posture of the heart that basically says, you know what, God? Your laws, they don't apply to me. I have my own law. You got your standards? Nah. I got my own. You got your rules? Nah. No. Thanks. I've got my own rule. That's lawlessness. It's with reference to God's laws. [00:57:20] (30 seconds)  #SinIsLawlessness

That in our experience, we don't fall away from God. We walk away one step at a time. And for us, every step away from God's family was a step away from God's will. And as you look through the scriptures, it's you could see that same thing. So I just wanna say this to you today. Listen. God's greatest resource for you to experience his perfect love and to grow in that perfect love, the the greatest resource for that is God's family. Turn to your neighbor and say, that's you. Go ahead. Turn to your other neighbor and say, that's me. This is us. [00:32:37] (40 seconds)  #FamilyForPerfectLove

Now, again, first John is full of family terms. Let me list them very quickly. The phrase little children, seven different times. In first John, the phrase brothers and sisters, 15 times. It's only a 105 verses. That's a lot of language there. How about this one? The phrase born of him or born of God, nine different times. So the question is, is this how you relate? Is this how you understand and relate with the church, with God's family? Is it your family? Because to be honest with you, there are many Christ followers who've never gotten beyond church as a place that you go or an event that you attend when you can. [00:50:24] (41 seconds)  #MakeChurchYourFamily

Alright, everybody. Good to see you all today at Vaughan Forest Church. My name is Jim Bott. I wanna welcome you in. If you're joining us online or you're here in person, thank you for being on the journey with us today. We're continuing through the book of first John in this series called perfect love. Now, show of hands, how many of you when it comes to love, you're good, you're all full up, you don't need no more, you're all good for you? No. Yeah. Exactly. All of us are out looking for love. You see it in the songs that we sing, the movies. It's like love, love, love. We love love. The question is, where can we find a love that will never let you down, that lasts? Well, turns out, God and God alone. Throughout first John, we find out that God is love. Not just love, but he is perfect love. [00:28:40] (45 seconds)  #GodIsPerfectLove

Here's an oxymoron. Christian religion. These don't go together. Christian implies a person who's committed themselves to Jesus and by faith in him has been adopted into a family. It's a relationship word. Religion is not a relationship word at all. It's an institutional system of rituals and rules and regulations that people would follow in an effort to appease their sense of being right before God. These do not go together. So according to scripture, Jesus did not come into the world to start a new religion so that people could feel religious and safe and good by being religious. [00:55:11] (49 seconds)  #RelationshipNotReligion

Fast forward just a handful of years. Just a few years later, we moved. We moved from Illinois where we'd spent our whole lives to a small town in rural Iowa. As part of my manufacturing career, we we made this this move, and, we went from church that was our family for years to can't find a church family. And friends, just to be honest with you, in the space of just a few short months, we became very different people. A lot changed. There was smoking in our lives again. There was cussing in our lives again. I mean, not me. That's what Rose was doing. It wasn't me. I was being a good boy. [00:31:10] (52 seconds)  #ChurchCommunityMatters

The reality is we just we were not following Jesus very well at all. We just weren't. Now here's the weird thing. We were reading our bibles. We were still reading the bible, but we had no one to read us. And so we learned a lesson, and I just thought I'd write it down. Here's the lesson that we learned. We learned that you cannot do the will of God apart from being responsible to and invested in the family of God. That's what we learned. We learned this the hard way. We learned the hard way, my friends. [00:32:02] (35 seconds)  #YouCantDoItAlone

God has children and wants you to be his children. Now contrary to popular belief, every human being is made in the image of God, is a creation of God, but every human being is not a child of God. Galatians three twenty six says, become children of God through faith in Christ. John chapter three verse three, Jesus said, you must be born again. And then again, John three verse seven, goes, don't marvel that I said you must be born again. Turns out the word that the bible uses for children of God, how do we become that? It's a word adoption. [00:46:10] (36 seconds)  #AdoptionIntoGodsFamily

We're not born children of God. We're born creations of God. It is through the work of Jesus on the cross to deal with our sins that through him, we become adopted into the family of God. In other words, the moment you give yourself to Jesus, he gives his spirit to you. That's what it means to be born again, adopted into God's very own family. In fact, you can write this Bible verse down. Look it up later. John one twelve. It says, as many as received him, Jesus, into your life, as many as received him, to them he gave the right to be called children of God. [00:46:46] (40 seconds)  #BornAgainAdopted

God's love also compels us into freedom. What is this Christian life supposed to produce? If we're doing it right, how do we know? Freedom. We're entering into the freedom of of the experience of the sons and daughters of God. Now I wanna ask you, by a show of hands, how many of have heard of the concept of an oxymoron? You ever heard of an oxymoron? Many of you. Right? It's a figure of speech that combines contradictory terms. It's like two things that don't belong together go together. [00:53:46] (28 seconds)  #LoveLeadsToFreedom

in the nineteenth century, a theory began to be widely spread and it is still a dominant theory today. And many of you that it's part of your worldview. Here's the theory. That people are basically good. That all the problems in society are are strictly due and the result to, like, poor education or economic disadvantage or lack of opportunity. It's where all the problems come from. Solve that, you solve the problems. But after several welfare states have been created, after untold trillions of dollars have been poured into education, after a vast increase in information, technology, and knowledge, [00:57:52] (50 seconds)  #HumanNatureIsFlawed

Fast forward just a handful of years. Just a few years later, we moved. We moved from Illinois where we'd spent our whole lives to a small town in rural Iowa. As part of my manufacturing career, we we made this this move, and, we went from church that was our family for years to can't find a church family. And friends, just to be honest with you, in the space of just a few short months, we became very different people. A lot changed. There was smoking in our lives again. There was cussing in our lives again. I mean, not me. That's what Rose was doing. It wasn't me. I was being a good boy. [00:31:10] (52 seconds)

The reality is we just we were not following Jesus very well at all. We just weren't. Now here's the weird thing. We were reading our bibles. We were still reading the bible, but we had no one to read us. And so we learned a lesson, and I just thought I'd write it down. Here's the lesson that we learned. We learned that you cannot do the will of God apart from being responsible to and invested in the family of God. That's what we learned. We learned this the hard way. We learned the hard way, my friends. [00:32:02] (35 seconds)

God has children and wants you to be his children. Now contrary to popular belief, every human being is made in the image of God, is a creation of God, but every human being is not a child of God. Galatians three twenty six says, become children of God through faith in Christ. John chapter three verse three, Jesus said, you must be born again. And then again, John three verse seven, goes, don't marvel that I said you must be born again. Turns out the word that the bible uses for children of God, how do we become that? It's a word adoption. [00:46:10] (36 seconds)

We're not born children of God. We're born creations of God. It is through the work of Jesus on the cross to deal with our sins that through him, we become adopted into the family of God. In other words, the moment you give yourself to Jesus, he gives his spirit to you. That's what it means to be born again, adopted into God's very own family. In fact, you can write this Bible verse down. Look it up later. John one twelve. It says, as many as received him, Jesus, into your life, as many as received him, to them he gave the right to be called children of God. [00:46:46] (40 seconds)

God's love also compels us into freedom. What is this Christian life supposed to produce? If we're doing it right, how do we know? Freedom. We're entering into the freedom of of the experience of the sons and daughters of God. Now I wanna ask you, by a show of hands, how many of have heard of the concept of an oxymoron? You ever heard of an oxymoron? Many of you. Right? It's a figure of speech that combines contradictory terms. It's like two things that don't belong together go together. [00:53:46] (28 seconds)

in the nineteenth century, a theory began to be widely spread and it is still a dominant theory today. And many of you that it's part of your worldview. Here's the theory. That people are basically good. That all the problems in society are are strictly due and the result to, like, poor education or economic disadvantage or lack of opportunity. It's where all the problems come from. Solve that, you solve the problems. But after several welfare states have been created, after untold trillions of dollars have been poured into education, after a vast increase in information, technology, and knowledge, [00:57:52] (50 seconds)