Perfect Love - Week 6: “Perfect Love is Meant to Be Shared” - Full Service

God wants to make his amazing incredible love visible to other people. Get this, through you. And maybe you're on the other side. God wants to make his love visible to you. How's he gonna do it? He does it through Christians. And friends, that is what we're going to see today in first John chapter three. That's what it's all about. In fact, here's our big idea. If you're a note taker, want you to write this down. In first John three, we're going to see that God's perfect love is seen in his imperfect family. [00:35:08] (31 seconds)  #LoveSeenInImperfectFamily

God does not have grandchildren. We must all become sons and daughters of God through your own faith. So your parents' faith can influence you, but it's your own personal faith that gets you in the family of God. You gotta trust Jesus for yourself. So God does not have grandchildren. Number two, God does not have only children, where it's just you and God, you relate with God, and you don't need anybody else in the family. [00:43:33] (24 seconds)  #PersonalFaithNotGrandchildren

You already have everything you need. You have the Holy Spirit who gives you a love greater than your own, and you have a family of people full of needs that you can get to know and help out. We have everything we already need. It's all right there. And the truth is there's some of us here today, you have a need. And there's some of you here today, you have what that other person needs. If only the person with the need could be known, and then the person who has what they need could be known, if only the need could be shared, and then the provision could if only both of those people could get together, you know what would happen? Both of them would experience God's love in a tangible, real time way. [00:54:03] (39 seconds)  #ShareNeedsShareLove

What good is it to believe in loving God's family in theory when it never boils down to actually loving a particular brother or sister in their need? John is getting intensely practical here. It's easy to love God's family in principle. It is hard to love God's family in a person with needs, but that's what we're called to do. And so I wanna offer you a guilt relieving statement. Here it is. Loving God's family as this passage says, it's not about what you don't have. It's about what you already have. [00:53:29] (34 seconds)  #LoveIsAboutWhatYouHave

There is nothing that Jesus offers to you. There is nothing that Jesus calls you to that is convenient. Not one thing. Everything he has for you that will transform your heart and your life and grow you into the person you were meant to be is absolutely inconvenient to you. So if we're gonna operate on the matter of convenience, we're gonna miss the whole thing. [00:56:43] (25 seconds)  #NoConvenientFaith

Sacrifice. It's to give up something you love for something you love even more. Sacrifice. Now, me, I love my free time. But you know what I love even more than my free time? I love seeing God's family look and act more like Jesus. So I wanna give as much of my time as I possibly can to the point of sacrifice so that God's family can look and act more like Jesus according to how God has called me to do that. [01:02:30] (28 seconds)  #SacrificeTimeForFamily

How you view the church, how you treat it is gonna determine how you experience it. And if you treat it like an event, an event will always be impersonal. An event doesn't know your need. An event isn't gonna sit with you in the ashes and pray with you. And so the only way for the church to feel like a family is if you treat it like a family. So here's a question. As we read through first John, as we read God's word together week in and week out here, as we see God's vision for his people, [00:57:32] (32 seconds)  #TreatChurchLikeFamily

Those are two different things. When you go to a restaurant, someone greets you. Hey, glad you're here. Come on in. So somebody greets you, somebody seats you, somebody takes your order, somebody serves you. That's what happens at a restaurant. Your responsibility, do whatever you wanna do and offer your opinion along the way. Tip, don't tip. It's all up to you. Oh, the way, best of all, you can leave your mess and just go. Try that at a family dinner. [00:58:41] (27 seconds)  #ChurchNotRestaurant

Just give it a shot. Someone's gonna get smacked more than likely, if that's how you're gonna approach it. At a family dinner, you gotta help set the table. What are you standing there for? At a family dinner, you gotta help get the food and prepare some of it and get the drinks on the table and set the table and serve other people. At a family dinner, somebody's gotta clean up. And guess what? It ain't other people. You gotta get involved in that. There are dishes that need to be done. Oh, by the way, there's also trash that needs to be taken out. [00:59:08] (30 seconds)  #SmallSacrificesBigLove

Jesus shows us what sacrificial costly love looks like. What does it look like to sacrifice in God's family? Well, it literally looks like not one big heroic act where you're like, I did it. But it looks like countless small sacrifices, countless little self denials to recognize and meet the need of others in God's family. And oh, by the way, in doing so, nobody's gonna notice you. Nobody's gonna applaud you. You're not gonna get a t shirt. The only one who will know will be the person and Jesus. [01:01:51] (35 seconds)  #AgapeUnconditionalLove

Love. There are different words in the New Testament for love. This is a special one. This is the word that describes only God's love. It's the word agape. Agape describes the unconditional love of God. It describes the undesirable love of God. It describes the inexhaustible love of God, and God's love comes to us through the person of Jesus. The moment we trust Jesus, that's what we get to us. So I would say it this way, you can describe God's love with two words, gift love. [00:44:46] (34 seconds)  #ShareGodsGiftLove

Contrast that with human love. God's love is gift love. Human love so often is reward love. Very conditional. I love you if. I love you when. I love you because, and stop doing those things and things change. That's human love. But here, we see in our passage, this is a message you've heard from the beginning. What's the message? That we should love one another. In fact, think of it this way, we should agape one another. Our job in the family of God is to take the unconditional love of God he's given to us and share it with one another. [00:45:30] (35 seconds)  #ChurchPeopleJustLikeYou

Because the reality is sooner or later, God's gonna call you to stick with a church family somewhere. And my promise to you, friends, is that those folks there, they're gonna be just like you. In fact, help me out. Answer aloud, yes or no. I wanna hear your voice. Okay? Yes or no? Are you perfect? Yes or no? Do you have issues? Yes or no? Yes. Do you sometimes hurt others? Yes or no? Yes. And so will God's family wherever you are. Don't let Cain like people keep you from the calling of God on your life to experience God's deepest love. [01:10:20] (36 seconds)  #AmICainOrChristLike

Why does God have a family? He wants to love that family. Yeah. Why? So that we would reflect his love, not just to one another, but to a world that thinks it knows what love is but doesn't know. That thinks love is a feeling. That love is conditional. That love is based on what you want and nothing more. [01:06:48] (20 seconds)  #AbidePutDownRoots

Notice also the word abide occurs there two times. We're gonna talk about that in coming weeks. This word abide, it it means remain. It means remain. These are commitment words, friends. Commitment words to put down roots in order to grow fruit. These are commitment words that we're called to do here. In fact, I've learned the hard way. Made a lot of moves in my life. And here's what I figured out, you can't grow fruit on the move. You gotta get rooted somewhere. [01:09:26] (34 seconds)  #UseWhatYouHaveToLove

What good is it to believe in loving God's family in theory when it never boils down to actually loving a particular brother or sister in their need? John is getting intensely practical here. It's easy to love God's family in principle. It is hard to love God's family in a person with needs, but that's what we're called to do. And so I wanna offer you a guilt relieving statement. Here it is. Loving God's family as this passage says, it's not about what you don't have. It's about what you already have. [00:53:29] (34 seconds)  #SeeTheBrotherInNeed

And then he uses several biblical metaphors. You can't be a city by yourself. Remember Jesus said his people are a city on a hill. You can't be a city by yourself. You can't be a family by yourself. You can't be a church by yourself. You can only do that with other Christians, not just the Christians you go to meetings with, but with Christians you know and are related to. [00:51:48] (27 seconds)  #GrowDayByDayTogether

God is not content to relate with a person as an isolated individual as if they were an only child. There are no only children in the family of God. You gotta learn how to grow day in day out with these other immature people because that's what God has called us to do. His love is a family love. In fact, Tim Keller Keller put it beautifully. Keller said, the bible calls us to be a community of the king. [00:51:13] (26 seconds)  #ChurchCareInAction

When I shared with the church family what was ahead of me for the next several months, flowing into our house were meals every day, gift cards for grocery. We did not pay for groceries for months. We had a stack of gift cards that were for the grocery store, the one that everyone goes to. We had prayer cards given and every single time again, this is a church of 5,000 plus. Every single time someone gave something to us or ran into us, they they all said the same thing. Thank you. Thank me. Thank you. Thank you for sharing. Thank you for opening up this journey to us to be able to pray, to know, to provide whatever we can. Thank you for doing that. [01:11:33] (51 seconds)  #ChurchIsHomeNotHouse

It's true. A homeless family, that's not a good thing. That's not a good setup. And a house is different from a home. A house is just building, but a home is about belonging. And every single one of us deep down inside, we have a desire. We long to belong somewhere, to be a part of some family somewhere. So I just wanna ask you directly, where do you call home? [00:35:49] (24 seconds)  #IsGodsFamilyYourHome