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Love In Deed – 10/1/23

Title

Love In Deed – 10/1/23

Teacher

Peter Hubbard

Date

October 1, 2023

Scripture

1 John, 1 John 3:11-24

TRANSCRIPT

Those last couple of verses that she just read in 1 John … When you come to those, it almost feels like John is throwing up a Hail Mary. A Hail Mary in football is when the quarterback, the team know they’re going to lose. And so, you just throw everybody you can throw down in the end zone, and you huck the ball down there, and you just hope it ends up in the right hands. And when you’re reading John, there are times where you come to passages like that where it just feels like he’s hurling out so many themes, like belief, love, commandments. And it can just feel like you’re going to shut down. Who’s going to catch the ball?

But if it feels that way, it’s because we just haven’t thought deeply enough about what John is doing in 1 John because when you press into those last couple verses of the passage we’re about to look at, you will notice he actually is giving us a summary of the three tools he’s teaching us in 1 John. Three diagnostic tools: this is how we know. Number 1, belief in Jesus, that we believe in the name of the Son. Number 2, love, that we love one another just as he commanded us. And number 3, obedience; whoever keeps his commandments abides in God.

So, last week we talked about the third diagnostic tool, obedience. This week, we’re talking about the second, love. Let’s ask God for help.

Father, John, in this little letter is teaching us that you are love. Your love is without need, fully and freely given. You don’t come to us this morning seeking value, needing us to give you worth. You give us worth! Everything we can see, all creation is gift, the overflow of your love. So, we pray that we would not lie to ourselves and pretend that we made ourselves or we can provide for ourselves or we can save ourselves. We are people of your love, the loved-on ones. And this morning as we take some time to wallow in your love, we pray that you would fill our hearts with gratitude. We pray that you would open our eyes wider to the way you love, specifically the way you have loved us through Jesus on the cross so that we can be transformed by your love and then pass it on to others, so may we increase and abound in love. May we learn how to love people we disagree with without losing our convictions.

Free us from the resentments that many of us carried in this room that tend to suffocate our love. Show us how to love manipulative people without being manipulated or becoming manipulative. Grow us as a church in generosity. As we’ve been loved by you and everything we have flows from your love, may we hold our things, our money, our plans loosely in the sense that we’re ready to share, ready to give. Lord, glorify your name through our church’s giving as we’re able to provide for our needs here and then around the world. And show us, Lord, the relationship between love and assurance as we open your Word now. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

So, if you’re not in 1 John 3:11, go ahead and turn there, 1 John near the end of the Bible. Last week, Sara Kuburic illustrated the subtlety of the relational breakdown that’s currently happening in our country with her article in USA Today entitled “What Is ‘Modern Monogamy’? Why It’s a Fit for Some Couples.” She writes,

“The term ‘modern monogamy’ is sometimes used to speak to a dynamic where an individual prefers an exclusive partnership with another person but understands relationships as impermanent or seasonal.”

Originally monogamy meant you marry one person for life, and then over time it began to mean you marry one person at a time. And now, according to Sara, you’re modern if you recognize that marriages can be seasonal. “I love you currently in this season of our lives, but as we move into a new season, I might have to move on so that I can keep growing. You were good during your childbearing years, got us some kids. But it’s time for me to…” according to Sara, “It’s time for me to move on to a new season.” She continues,

“Sometimes, to remain compatible with someone throughout a lifetime, we stop ourselves from growing and changing.”

There is no greater violation of the first commandment to postmodernity. Never commit to a relationship that might restrict you or hinder your evolution as an individual; never love in a way that might cost you anything.

1 John 3:11-24 is describing a very different kind of love, a love that is much more substantial and much more beautiful. Look at verse 11, 1 John 3:11.

“For this is the message that you have heard from the beginning [it’s not a trend. It’s not a cultural craze] that we should love one another.”

That’s the message. And that’s my message today. If you’re planning on dozing, get that part before you fade away. That’s it.

But then John breaks that down into two different kinds of relationships. First, we could call this the pattern of lovelessness, verses 12-15. And he holds up Cain as the prototype of lovelessness. Let’s review the story. If we go all the way back to Genesis chapter 4, Adam and Eve had two sons, Cain and Abel, who made offerings to God. Cain offered the fruit of the ground. Abel offered the firstborn of his flock. God looked favorably on Abel’s offering but did not regard Cain’s. Genesis 4:5,

“Cain was very angry and his face fell.”

That’s an interesting expression, isn’t it? It’s a semitic expression. Can somebody show me what does that look like — his face fell? Yeah, there’s a downward, some sort of slumping, facial features, body. We would say today he was disappointed, he was depressed, he was heavy hearted, he was down, discouraged, in the pits. You could almost hear Cain saying to God, “Come on, I tried. What do you want?” In Genesis 4:6,

“The Lord said to Cain, ‘Why are you angry, and why is your face fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is contrary to you, and you must rule over it.’”

Implied here, God outlined clear expectations to Cain and Abel. But I could so see myself doing this. Even though the instructions are clear, Cain seemed to have imagined, “I know God said this, and this is the way he wants to work for me to worship him, but anybody can do that, like my lame brother, Abel to just do what he’s told. I’m going to do something creative, something that’s just more me. As I worship God, it’s more me as I worship God.” And God says to Cain essentially, “How about you start by doing what I’ve asked? And by the way, look at that foot in your door. Sin is crouching at the door.”

This is a big point we don’t want to miss. Lovelessness often flows from woundedness. Lovelessness often flows from woundedness. Or you could say it this way — Lovelessness flows from and feeds on anger and hurt. Anger and hurt are two of the most common, not the only, but two of the most common ingredients of lovelessness. When I feel shafted, wounded, wronged, hurt, disappointed, I am far more likely to rationalize my resentment.

There’s a striking contrast. If you keep reading through Genesis between Cain — “his face fell” — and when God appeared to Abraham much later — “he fell on his face.” Big difference between falling on your face and your face falling! A lot of people, we go through life with a fallen face. Despondency is different from true humility in the presence of God, where we fall on our face, “Yes, Lord.”

So, Cain here is mixing a lethal drink of anger and hurt resulting in lovelessness. Paul warned us. Ephesians 4:26,

“Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil.”

The easiest way for the devil to get his foot in your door is to DoorDash you a warm meal of resentment. And when he delivers that meal of resentment, which smells so good, just watch his foot as he leaves. His foot is in the door. He’s not done. John lays this out in 1 John 3:12 — three descriptions of lovelessness.

One, lovelessness is related to the evil one, 3:12,

“We should not be like Cain, who was of the evil one.”

The devil has a vested interest in the breakdown of marriage, family, friendships. It’s part of his divide-and-conquer strategy. If we think that’s just happening because of our culture or that’s just the trend of our day, the enemy is going to get his foot in the door, often through broken relationships. The evil one has a vested interest.

Number 2, lovelessness is rooted in resentment. Verse 12,

“And why did he murder him? Because his own deeds were evil and his brother’s righteous.”

So, Cain’s resentment was driven by a deep conviction of unfairness. “God called my deeds evil and your deeds good. Who is God to declare what is good and what is evil?” See, that’s taking us right back to the Garden. Who gets to define good?

And then third, lovelessness results in lifelessness, lifelessness, both for the hated and the hater. For the hated, Cain murdered his brother, verse 12, last part. So, obviously, Abel is literally lifeless. But notice the second part of verse 14.

“Whoever does not love abides in death.”

Cain is still physically alive, but the Bible is saying he’s spiritually dead.

“Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.”

Love and life are linked. And where there is lovelessness, there will be lifelessness both for the hater and the hated.

Now at the center of this section is a metanarrative beneath the narrative, the big story beneath the little story. You’ll see it in verse 13.

“Do not be surprised, brothers, that the world hates you.”

The seed of Cain will always despise the seed of Abel. This should not surprise us. So, number 1, the pattern of lovelessness.

But number 2, the pattern of love. Now we get to the positive example. We move from Cain to Jesus. Love is related to Jesus. Verse 16,

“By this we know love.”

Now, John is writing to churches in his day that are full of hurt people. You can imagine the men listening to this letter being read the first time, beaten at work for making a mistake; women who were afraid to go home; slaves, mistreated and humiliated; children not knowing whom they can trust. And John is saying, “By this we know love.” Don’t begin with your parents. Don’t begin with your siblings, Don’t begin with your pastor, your church, your friends, your coworker, your coach. All of those may have fragments of love or not. But if we begin there, in our quest for love, we will always live a life that is precarious, one step away from resentment when they disappoint us. John is saying start here — “By this we know love.” We begin with the cross. It is a depth of love you will find nowhere else. Love is related to Jesus.

And then secondly, love is rooted in self-giving. Now this self-giving manifests itself in three ways. First, love gives up. And by give up, I don’t mean cave in. I mean offers up. Look at verse 16.

“By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us.”

John the author of 1 John, had a brother named James. And this is another famous brother combo like Cain and Abel, but different. They were disciples of Jesus, and one day, on their way to Jerusalem, Jesus was explaining to the disciples what was going to happen in Jerusalem. He would be arrested, killed, and then he would rise. Apparently, John and James only heard about the rise part, and so they pulled Jesus aside on this trip to Jerusalem, and they said to him, “We have a plan. When you rise to that throne, how about James on your left, John on your right? Sound like a plan?” And Jesus begins to explain to them you don’t understand what you’re asking. But as he’s explaining, the other disciples catch wind of their request, and they are indignant. And they begin to go at each other. And Jesus has to calm them down like a middle-school playground. “Break it up. Let me tell you about my kingdom.” And Jesus explains, “In my kingdom, the rulers don’t do what they do in man’s kingdom. In man’s kingdom, the rulers go up in order to lord over. In my kingdom,” Jesus says, “the rulers go down in order to serve under, to give.” And then he made perhaps one of his most famous statements. All of this story is in Mark 10, Mark 10:45.

“For even the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

And this week I was thinking as John wrote those words in 1 John 3:16,

“By this we know love that he laid down his life for us,”

I wonder if John’s mind raced back to that event, where he and his brother had this image that if we follow Jesus, he’s going to take us up, and we’re going to get everything we want as far as prestige and power. And Jesus said, “No, actually, we go down first, and you lose everything to gain everything.” John had to learn what it meant to love, to give up in order to serve. He had tasted the acid of lovelessness and watching the disciples go at each other. He saw how contagious his request was and the request of his brother. But since then, he has tasted the sweetness of God’s love in Christ. Brothers and sisters, do we realize that our culture does not understand this kind of love?

Let’s go back to that article by Sara Kuburic, “Modern Monogamy.” Later in the article, she defines modern monogamy as

“loving yourself enough not to sacrifice your whole life for the sake of a relationship.”

Now, I know many of us may be thinking of relationships that are abusive and we’re thinking, well, yeah, there’s a time to start thinking about yourself and not love because you’re married to an abusive person. But even then, could it be that we have received a Disney version of love and shrunk love down so much that we can’t imagine that real love might say “no”? Real love might say “stop, get help,” or even real love may get out, and still be real love? But what Sara is describing here is loving yourself enough not to sacrifice. Imagine if Jesus loved us that way. “I love myself so much I won’t sacrifice.” Where would we be?

This article really got to me this week, and I was wondering why. Don’t worry. I’ll get help. But part of it, I think, is because of what my wife and I are walking through right now. If you’re visiting, my wife has a rare, aggressive cancer, and the last couple of weeks have been really hard. I’m so thankful she is here this morning. But her immune system was wiped out, just sick, exhausted, may have another surgery this week and ongoing chemo. And when you’re walking through something like that — and I’m looking around and see many people who totally understand this — there is a depth of, aspects of, love that you begin to experience, that you cannot experience in the shallows, a kind of commitment. And the thing I think that made me react so strongly to this article is the way Sara is describing this. If you’re modern and you want to really mature and develop, it just sounds so sophisticated, where you’re looking out for yourself and you’re moving on.

But what breaks my heart is you will never really know what love is because you’re moving on perpetually. There’s a kind of commitment and a kind of love you experience going through a variety of seasons — the really, really happy seasons and the really, really hard seasons. And you can’t look ahead and figure that out on your own and figure “Oh, that’s exactly what I need” or “That’s what I need.” And my wife and I were talking about this just imagining the horror of actually taking her advice. It’s unthinkable that “Hey, we, I didn’t sign up for cancer at this stage in my life. I want to continue to evolve as a person. I want to travel. I want to grow. I want to do other things. So, I need to let go of this ball and chain,” according to Sara, “this person that might hold me back from becoming all I want to be or I’m supposed to be.” And when you put it in those terms, it’s just unthinkable. There’s a rare Hebrew word for that kind of man who would do that to his wife. It’s “jerk.” Right, Joe?

When God calls you to walk through a difficult season and you’re stretched beyond your capacity, it forces you, as we’re going to see in a moment, to cry out to God in a way, and for him to meet you in that moment and the two of you to share something that you might not otherwise experience. And what John is doing here is saying … I’m using marriage as an illustration, but John is talking about this for the whole community. Look what he says in verse 16.

“By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.”

Who are the brothers? “The brothers” is Christian code for your church family, your imperfect, messy, forever family. And in order to do this, love gives up.

Secondly, love opens up. Look at verse 17.

“But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him?”

We see a need. We’re able to meet that need, yet we close our hearts. I love the King James translation of that. Any of you remember that? “He shutteth up his bowels.” I hope he does. We’ll stick with “closes his heart.”

So, three common reasons we close our hearts. Number 1, we feel overwhelmed by abstract need. We feel overwhelmed by abstract need. Allan gave me an article by Neil, well, it’s actually a speech by Neil Postman way back in 1990. He said this.

“The tie between information and action has been severed. Information is now a commodity that can be bought and sold, or used as a form of entertainment, or worn like a garment to enhance one’s status.”

Think BuzzFeed. Think Fox News. Think CNN. “It comes indiscriminately, directed at no one in particular, disconnected from usefulness; we are glutted with information, drowning in information, have no control over it, don’t know what to do with it.” And it leaves us, Postman explains, in a state of helplessness, in the face of what he calls “decontextualized information.”

Now what is that? Decontextualized information. Let’s think of the opposite. What is contextualized information? You’re at work. Your coworker and you are the last ones at work. He goes to leave. His car won’t start. You have cables. He makes fun of your politics continually. You have an opportunity to open up your heart or to close your heart. And the reason that’s contextualized is you know your coworker, and you know his need, and you have cables. So, it’s a real situation with familiarity, and you can actually meet that need.

That’s very different from the flood of information, “decontextualized information,” we get continually through news feeds, like floods, hurricanes, murders, scandals constantly bombarding us. And most of the time, you literally can’t do anything about it. And so over time, when that is the primary news you’re feeding on, “decontextualized information,” your heart begins to close because you’re used to watching the news to be entertained, not to be catalyzed to action. So, first we feel overwhelmed by abstract need.

Second, we schedule for a closed heart. Soren Kierkegaard said,

“The result of busyness is that an individual is very seldom permitted to form a heart.”

So, this really hit me last summer when I was on my sabbatical (or a year and a half ago on my sabbatical), and I had a morning devoted to going to the dump. Woohoo! So, our deck was falling apart, ripped apart a deck, borrowed a truck, threw it in the truck, took it to the dump, and while at the dump unloading the wood, I noticed an elderly couple struggling to get their truck unloaded. I’m retired. I’m not in a rush. I was able to help them get their truck unloaded, talk about the Lord on the way back, went over to Home Depot, was talking to a contractor, got to share Jesus. At the end of that morning, I was thinking … And I know we can’t always live this way, but I was thinking maybe I schedule my life too tightly so that when there are needs around me, I’m so busy that I literally don’t have time to respond because I’m always moving on. That’s what I mean. We schedule. We don’t put margins in for maybe, God, you have someone you might want me to assist or need you might want me to meet.

Dr. Kelly Kapic, professor at Covenant, says this.

“Christians are often burnt out from overcommitment to church activities or ministries; or they go to the opposite extreme, never volunteering for anything because they fear the unending demands that will come once they have committed. Too often the options are either try to do everything or simply do nothing.”

So, a fear of saying no to something leads us to an inability to say yes to something or anything. We can’t say yes to anything because of our fear of saying no to something. What’s going on there? Maybe it’s a fear of man problem. Maybe it’s we’re not sure how to schedule our lives into healthy rhythms to where we can live with an open heart and say yes to certain things and also recognize we’re human and we need to say no to other things. That’s something many of us need to wrestle with. We schedule for a closed heart.

And then third is we have tried and have been hurt. So, we’re overwhelmed by abstract need, or we scheduled for a closed heart, or we have tried and have been hurt. Many of us have tried opening our hearts. We’ve shared our struggle in life group or with a friend. We’ve poured ourselves into someone who had needs, and it didn’t go well. And so, our response to that is I tried; it didn’t go well; I’m done. But here’s the danger. Now, I’m going to quote the oft-quoted C.S. Lewis from Four Loves on this, but I don’t think you can get better than this.

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give it to no one…. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your own selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”

In other words, the thing many of us fear is actually a characteristic of love. But you can’t love well without at times being hurt. So, if you’re committed to never being hurt, which is what many of us are aiming for today, you’re committing to having a closed heart. And as Lewis warns us, you put your heart in that casket, and it will literally suffocate you. Love opens up.

And then third, love steps up. Verse 18,

“Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and truth.”

John is calling us here to stop analyzing our love, talking about our love. As brothers and sisters, yes, we’re going to have gatherings like this where we unpack love and examine it, talk about it. But this will never convince the world of our love. Deed and truth, John is saying, as we go from here, as we love one another well, and as that spills out into our community.

Now, this is where John takes an unexpected turn. He has explained love is related to Jesus, love is rooted in self-giving, and I’m expecting him to say next “well, then love results in eternal life, parallel with the opposite, lovelessness leads to lifelessness.” But he doesn’t. He says love results in assurance. He goes back to his main point in 1 John — “By this,” verse 19, “By this we shall know.” So, what he’s about to say is connected to what he just said. When we love in deed and in truth, we are pressing into the reassuring presence of God. This is so important. Hypothetical love leads to hypothetical assurance. If you have a church that doesn’t love well, you will have a church that’s uncertain about what they believe. Isn’t that interesting, that connection John is making?

Look how John explains this. When we love, we are experiencing God’s greater knowing. Verse 19,

“By this we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our heart before him; for whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything.”

So, we’re stepping out. Lord, I don’t know, but I know you know. And when we love, we are experiencing God’s greater loving. I love the way he just sticks that in there — “beloved.” That’s your name. That’s your identity. Are you uncertain about who you are? If you’re a follower of Jesus, we are. When we love, we are being who we are in him.

And then third, when we love, we are experiencing God’s greater giving.

“Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God; and whatever we ask we receive from him, because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him.”

Now, this is where my mind starts breaking down because again, like the next three verses after this, three sentences after this, there’s just a flood of big John-like terms. Look at them there in verses 21 and 22 — love, assurance, prayer, obedience. We could spend hours unpacking that. I just want to tell a story. And in this story, you’re going to see all four of those and I believe will catch the relationship of these that John is communicating.

It’s a story familiar to many of you. It’s when Corrie ten Boom encountered a German guard after World War II. In 1947, she traveled from her home in Holland to Germany to share the message of God’s forgiveness through Jesus with a nation that was suffocating in guilt and shame. And in one meeting she began talking about the way God just casts all our sin into the deepest ocean. And at the end of that, she noticed coming down the aisle a man she recognized immediately. He was a guard at the concentration camp she and her sister Betsy had been sent to for sheltering Jewish people. And of course, he didn’t recognize her because there were thousands of women there. But her mind was flooded with memories of being paraded, starving, naked in front of the guards. She remembers suddenly these pictures of her sister, Betsy, her bony body marching in front of her shortly before she died at that camp.

The man came to her and explained that he had been a guard at Ravensbrück. And after the war, he had become a Christian, and God forgave him for the terrible things he did. And then suddenly he reached out his hand and asked for her forgiveness. Corrie froze. She fumbled through her purse, her mind racing with her own need of forgiveness every day. How can she not forgive him? But then her mind began thinking “Does he think just by the asking, he can erase my sister’s death?” It seemed like hours. It was only seconds. His hand was still there. She knew she needed to forgive him. But her heart was cold.

“‘Jesus, help me!’ I prayed silently. ‘I can lift up my hand. I can do that much. You supply the feeling.’ And so woodenly, mechanically I thrust my hand into the one stretched out to me. And as I did, an incredible thing took place. The current started in my shoulder, raced down my arm, sprang into our hands. And then this healing warmth seemed to flood my whole being, bringing tears to my eyes. ‘I forgive you, brother!’ I cried, ‘With all my heart!’ For a long moment, we’d grasped each other’s hands, the former guard and the former prisoner. I had never known God’s love so intensely as I did then.”

Don’t miss that. “I had never known God’s love so intensely as I did then.” Do you see the connection between obedience, prayer, love, assurance? Many of us long for a rapturous experience of the love of God, and at times God gives that. But most of the time, he puts us in the middle of difficult, sometimes unimaginably difficult situations, where we know I can’t do this. And we ask, and we obey, and he pours love in us, and that assures us, and we experience his love, like Jesus experienced on the cross, in a place that we would not expect it. But if we think we can manage our lives to protect our hearts to keep everyone at a distance, we will, in a sense, protect our hearts, but we will protect ourselves from love, and we will always be uncertain. Do I really know the love of God? What John is saying — this diagnostic tool of love will be used in the middle of impossible situations, messy life groups, difficult friendships, hard marriages. But God will meet us.

So, where should I begin? Well, will you pray for an open heart to receive, first of all, his love through Christ? If your faith is not in Jesus, we beg you right now cry out to him. This is a love you will find nowhere else. And when you have experienced that, are you willing to pray? Because I promise you, you’re going to have opportunities this week. God will put you in situations where you will have opportunities to open up your heart or shut it down.

To continue preparing ourselves to be in a place where we will open up our hearts, we want to remember what the Lord has done, his broken body, his shed blood. I strongly encourage you to approach this with two mindsets, as we’ve talked about. First of all, thankful and thoughtful. Thankful — If you’re a believer in Jesus, we encourage you to partake of this mini meal with gratefulness because God sent his Son to wash away all your lovelessness, sin, shame gone.

But also thoughtful because Paul warns in 1 Corinthians 11 don’t partake of this mini meal while despising or humiliating your brothers or sisters. In other words, I can’t say, “God, I love you, I’m so grateful” and then treat a brother or sister like dirt. So, be thoughtful in the sense that if there’s resentment we need to let go of, if there’s a relationship we need to pause and go make right … Thankful, thoughtful.

Father, thank you for teaching us in this passage what your love looks like. We need your help. Please, Lord. If we just listen to the news and get swept into this cultural moment, we will become people characterized by lovelessness. We will just react. But we’re here this morning because we’re looking to you and listening to you. You pour your love into our hearts now as we cry out together, as we remember. We pray in Jesus’s name. Amen.