Perfect Love - Week 2: “Perfect Love Restores What's Broken”

``In fact, Paul David Tripp wrote these words in his devotional New Morning Mercies. He said, no amount of guilt or shame can do what grace is able to do. And that is to make us people who delight in the father's will. You will never understand your struggle with sin unless you grasp that at its very bottom, sin is a heart problem. Everybody put your hand over your heart. Put your hand over your heart. This is where the problem is. Something is going on in here that can keep us from experiencing the perfect love of God and Jesus. And that's what we're gonna see in the scriptures today. What in the world can we do with that? [00:37:08] (38 seconds)  #GraceOverGuilt

Now, I might remove myself from the situation, but you know what it doesn't remove? The actual shame that I feel deep inside. So the question becomes, how do we deal with shame? What can you do? Because for that to happen, something deep must occur. Now enter Jesus. The perfect love of God is gifted to us by a gift of grace in the person of Jesus. We learned last week that love has a name. Love has a face. You'll never find perfect love for another person, but you'll find it in the person of Jesus that God graces to us perfect love in Christ. [00:36:31] (37 seconds)  #GraceHealsShame

the perfect love of God in the midst of the fellowship of God's people. In fact, CS Lewis put it wonderfully one time. He put it this way. He said, sunlight is the great disinfectant. There are some of us here today, I'm just gonna be honest with you, you're hiding something. You're keeping something. And that thing you're keeping is keeping you. It's keeping you from experiencing the grace of God in that area. It's keeping you from experiencing the mercy and the forgiveness of God in that area. So long as you fake it and brush it underneath the rug, it cannot be resolved. That's the beauty of the fellowship of God's people. Good news, friends, the perfect love of Jesus. It didn't come to shame us for our sin. It came to remove the shame and the sin. So there are there are some dark truths here, and the first one is that we can fake spirituality. Check out this second one. [00:58:28] (56 seconds)  #BringItIntoTheLight

Tim Keller put it this way, friends. This is what Keller said. He said, in the gospel, the truth of the good news about what God offers to us in his son Jesus, in the gospel, we are both brought lower and raised higher than we can imagine. In the gospel, we find out that we're just not only not perfect, we're unholy. But in the gospel, also find out that we are loved by a God who gave his life for us. That in his redemption, we are raised up to be seated with him, to share in his righteousness. [00:52:05] (43 seconds)  #GospelHumblesAndLifts

Second truth, Jesus, as the text says, if you belong to him, he's your advocate. Advocate. That's a defender. That's someone who comes along beside you and defends you. So you can never you got two choices, accuser, advocate. You have an enemy. His name is the devil. He is called the accuser. He calls you by your sin. But now in Christ, if you trust Jesus to save you, you have now an advocate. And your advocate is not your adversary who calls you by your sin. Your advocate calls you by your name, Christ follower. [01:08:29] (41 seconds)  #JesusIsOurAdvocate

Jesus becomes our advocate. The moment you entrust yourself to Jesus to pay for all your sins, the moment you surrender your life to him, he becomes your advocate. Jeremy Taylor, the sixteenth century theologian put it this way, what better advocate could we have for us than he that is appointed to be our judge? The judge took off the robe and paid the penalty that we owe so that we could belong to his forever family. [01:09:10] (32 seconds)  #TheJudgeBecameOurAdvocate

Because the scripture emphasizes God's holiness as the number one primary attribute of God. In fact, the attribute of God as holy is referred to no less than 544 times in the bible. Around the very throne of God himself, two different times in scripture, it says that the creatures in heaven are saying, holy holy, holy, Isaiah six three. Around God's throne in heaven, the cry is holy, holy, holy, Revelation four eight. Notice it doesn't say that God is love, love, love, though God is love. It doesn't say God is good good good, though God is good. The primary attribute of God, his essential nature is holy holy holy. All of God's attributes are an expression of God's holiness. So listen. So God's love is a holy love, not a pampering love like a helicopter parent. God's mercy is a holy mercy. God's justice is a holy justice. So listen, here's where we begin. Do you want to experience the perfect love of God? And it doesn't begin with our idea of God. It begins with God's idea of God. [00:44:05] (74 seconds)  #GodIsHoly

And so John begins this message about God's love in a very surprising place. He doesn't begin by talking about our feelings or our needs for love. He begins by talking about the person of God himself. So if you're a note taker, I want you to write this down. The first thing we're gonna see in first John one is that in Jesus, we see the clear truth about God, and that is he is light. God is light. The experience of perfect love begins by understanding the truth that God is light. [00:40:39] (34 seconds)  #JesusIsLight

In light of who Jesus is, you see who you are and you recognize I have a need for God. He is holy, I am not. He is good, and I'm sometimes not. The good news is that in the light of God's holy character, in the light of God's holy character, we can find perfect love. But that perfect love comes at a cost. Someone has to deal with the sin. Someone has to deal with the shame. Sin and shame are barriers to the perfect love that we desire that God made us for. [00:48:54] (33 seconds)  #LightExposesNeed

And so the reality is, friends, that the perfect love of Jesus, it restores what sin has broken. So the first thing that we saw is that in Jesus, we see the clear truth about God that God is light. But secondly secondly, in Jesus, we face the dark truth about ourselves so that we can be restored. One day, a little boy ran up to his mom. He said, mommy, mommy, guess what? I'm nine feet tall. She said, what? Nine feet tall? How'd you figure that? He said, well, I took off my shoe, and my shoe is a foot. And I measured myself with my own shoe. Nine shoes, nine feet. I'm nine feet tall. And mom was like, no, sweetie. No. No. We don't measure our height with our own shoe. We measure our height with a 12 inch ruler. [00:49:27] (58 seconds)  #TruthLeadsToRestoration

To say, I'm just gonna do my own thing and call it God is a huge barrier to experiencing the perfect love of God. In other words, the number one killer of your experience of perfect love is just doing things your own way and not having any regard for walking in the ways with God. [00:57:22] (18 seconds)  #DontGoYourOwnWay

We can handle sin in such a way as we're just redefining God now. Instead of dealing with the reality of our sin, we just redefine God as if he doesn't care about sin. When the reality is he loves you so much, he wants you to know his perfect love that playing games with sin is gonna be a problem there. Nothing reveals your view of God more than how you think God views sin. [01:03:34] (28 seconds)  #DontRedefineGod

But I just wanna say this today, because perfect love is available in Jesus no matter what darkness you may be going through. I want you to think about this for just a second. New life always starts in the dark. If you're going through a dark time, you have some dark things you're trying to deal with, just be hopeful. New life always starts in dark. When you plant a seed, you plant that seed into the soil in the dark, and from the dark, a new life springs. Think about a child in the womb. In the darkness of that womb, a new life is being knit together and will one day be born into a whole new reality. [00:38:01] (36 seconds)  #NewLifeStartsInDarkness

It's true. Years ago, I was walking to auditorium to this church where I was serving, and from one side of the room to the other, it was pitch black. I walked in. I was like, oh, no. I was gonna take a shortcut. I just waited for a couple minutes, and I could suddenly see, and I walked right on through. The reality is living in the darkness of our own understanding, doing our own thing, being our own god, going our own way, it can it can be so that we just settle into that, our eyes adjust. And we just stumble along like everything's good without realizing that that's not a normal thing. The light of God's character is to guide us into his way. William Barclay is a famous bible commentator. He put it this way. Barclay said, we never really see ourselves until we see ourselves in the presence of Christ, and we awake ourselves to ourselves and to our need of God. So let ask you, have you ever had this experience before? [00:47:58] (55 seconds)  #SeeYourselfInChrist

Every form of life has its enemy. Listen, friends. Life with God has its enemies. There's one particular enemy of your life with God that will rob you so thoroughly. Here it is. It's the word sin. This word right here, sin, in this particular instance is. It means to fall short, to miss the mark. There's a standard and to miss the standard. In fact, missing God's holy character is is a big way to miss God's love all throughout. Not because we're talking about earning it, we're talking about living contrary to it. In first John, this word sin occurs 27 times. Oh, news flash. In our passage today, first John one five through first John two two, the word sin occurs nine times. [00:56:32] (50 seconds)  #MissingTheMark

Or some of you, to be completely honest with you, you've been raised in a religious environment and your understanding is God's holiness requires him to be angry with you about sin. That's how many people view that God's approach towards sin is anger. That's it. That's all there is. That's how he does it. Some people think God's holiness makes them automatically anger. You broke my laws, now suffer the punishment. That's how a lot of people view it. I just wanna say this. According to scripture, God deals with our sin problem, not according to wrath, but according to love. Wrath is the last resort. Wrath is final judgment. Wrath is at the end. It's not on the way. It's at the end. It's the last stop. [01:04:02] (48 seconds)  #LoveBeforeWrath

Confess. This word confess literally means to take this the other person's side. Homologueo. Say the same thing. God says sin is a disruptor, gets in the way. We go, you know what, God? You're right. I don't want anything to do with that. I'm gonna bring it to you now. Let's resolve this. If we confess our sins, God is faithful. Faithful to his holy character, faithful to his promise that the death of Jesus on the cross covers all of our sins. [01:00:59] (26 seconds)  #ConfessAndReceiveGrace

Earlier, we confessed that nobody's perfect. Remember that? You said so yourself. Reality is nobody is perfect except for one person, and that's God. And here's the problem. God is perfect, and you are not. God is light, and we are not. And light and dark do not just mingle together. They are incompatible. They're exclusive to one another. God's perfect holy character does not just mingle with our darkness or our unholiness. In fact, Jesus said it this way. You're familiar with John three sixteen. In that passage, John three nineteen to 21, Jesus said, he came into the world to be a light, but many don't come to him because they don't wanna step into the light because their deeds would be exposed. In other words, it's in light of God's holy character that we realize what we ain't. We start to realize we have reasons for shame. [00:46:23] (57 seconds)  #StepIntoTheLight

sometimes it's like, well, I well, I can be perfect. I can't be perfect. Well, I'm not asking you to be perfect. Think of it this way. Think of a married man. As a married man is out hitting on the ladies, trying to date some ladies. That'd be pretty wrong, wouldn't it? He said, what do you mean? What am I supposed to be a perfect husband? I can't be a perfect husband. Like, no, dude. Nobody expects you to be a perfect husband, but we do expect you to be a faithful husband. You will never be a perfect husband. You can be a faithful husband. You'll never be a perfect Christian, but you can be a faithful one. [00:54:17] (31 seconds)  #FaithfulOverPerfect

Now in verse eight, we saw that we could easily fool ourselves. Right? And the interesting thing is, if you look at first John chapter one, just simply follow the pronouns. We, us, are, we, we, us. I mean, this is a journey we do together. Imagine not going to church as an event for like a hour or so once a week. Imagine church being a community of people that you're developing relationships so that you can walk in light of who God is together and help each other stay true to God. That's what we're talking about here. [01:01:31] (36 seconds)  #TogetherInLight