July 28, 2002

Service Theme – "Our God is Here"

1 John 4:7-21

How to Walk with God

1. Introduction

1. Illustration – from Sermoncentral.com: One Saturday morning a wife awoke to the delightful smell of waffles and the sound of her two small boys in the kitchen with her husband. Padding down to breakfast, she sat on her husband’s lap and gave him a big hug for his thoughtfulness. Later that day, she and her husband were having a heated discussion in their bedroom when their four-year-old, Jacob, stopped us in midsentence. Standing in the doorway, he said, "Mommy, try to remember how you felt when you were on Daddy’s lap."
2. Context – We all struggle with knowing how to love each other. We struggle with loving like God does. But John has some insights for us this morning that can help us figure out how to love. In 1 John 4:7-21, he writes,

1. Scripture Passage

1. 1 John 4:7-21 (from The Message): My beloved friends, let us continue to love each other since love comes from God. Everyone who loves is born of God and experiences a relationship with God. The person who refuses to love doesn’t know the first thing about God, because God is love – so you can’t know him if you don’t love. This is how God showed his love for us: God sent his only Son into the world so we might live through him. This is the kind of love we are talking about – not that we once upon a time loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to clear away our sins and the damage they’ve done to our relationship with God. My dear, dear friends, if God loved us like this, we certainly ought to love each other. No one has seen God, ever. But if we love one another, God dwells deeply within us, and his love becomes complete in us – perfect love! This is how we know we’re living steadily and deeply in him, and he in us: He’s given us his life, from his very own Spirit. Also, we’ve seen for ourselves and continue to state openly that the Father sent his Son as Savior of the world. Everyone who confesses that Jesus is God’s Son participates continuously in an intimate relationship with God. We know it so well, we’ve embraced it heart and soul, this love that comes from God. God is love. When we take up permanent residence in a life of love, we live in God and God lives in us. This way, love has the run of the house, becomes at home and mature in us, so that we’re free of worry on Judgment Day – our standing in the world is identical with Christ’s. There is no room in love for fear. Well-formed love banishes fear. Since fear is crippling, a fearful life – fear of death, fear of judgment – is one not yet fully formed in love. We, though, are going to love – love and be loved. First we were loved, now we love. He loved us first. If anyone boasts, "I love God," and goes right on hating his brother or sister, thinking nothing of it, he is a liar. If he won’t love the person he can see, how can he love the God he can’t see? The command we have from Christ is blunt: Loving God includes loving people. You’ve got to love both.

1. Not This Again?!

1. It seems like we’ve been hung up on this topic for a few weeks, hasn’t it? Yet God considered loving each other important enough to have John write and write and write some more about it. If the Creator of the universe believes this is a critical issue for those who would follow Him, then we probably ought to keep on focusing on it.
2. There’s a Beatles song that repeats over and over again, "Love is all we need." And in a very real sense that’s true. But we don’t need what our world defines as love. We need what God defines as love. Peterson defines very eloquently what God’s love looks like: This is how God showed his love for us: God sent his only Son into the world so we might live through him. This is the kind of love we are talking about – not that we once upon a time loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to clear away our sins and the damage they’ve done to our relationship with God. I can handle that! What could be more beautiful than God loving us enough to send His Son to "clear away our sins and the damage they’ve done to our relationship with God"? That’s awesome stuff! I’d really like to just quit now and feel all warm and fuzzy inside. I’m sure that’s what John’s original readers were thinking too.
3. But John goes on. My dear, dear friends, if God loved us like this, we certainly ought to love each other. Now if you’re talking about that warm, touchy-feely love the world sells to us, that’s okay. But what about the love that is supposed to be played out in the little things in every day life? What about the love that is supposed to make me want to get up off the sofa after I just sat down to get something for my wife? That’s a tougher kind of love to live. And I often don’t do very well with it. But that’s the kind of love John is writing about – the kind that doesn’t just get us through the big struggles in life. It’s the kind that enables us to act in loving ways in the little things in life. Song of Songs 2:15 says, Catch for us the foxes, the little foxes that ruin the vineyards, our vineyards that are in bloom. A strange phrase in the middle of a love song, but I believe it makes a very important point: it isn’t the big things that tend to make our love grow cold. It’s the little things that eat away at our loving even as the little foxes chew away at the blossoming grape vines. And when the big things cause our faith to take a fall, it’s because of the little things that have been eating away at it over a period of time.
4. People don’t just suddenly wake up one morning and decide out of the blue they’re going to have an affair, or cheat their company, or leave their faith. The decisions are made over a period of time, as these folks allow the little foxes of sin and selfishness to eat away at the foundation of their faith. That’s how love grows cold. John is warning us against letting that happen in every way the Spirit inspires him to. John tells us that loving each God enables us to love each other, which enables us to love God more, which enables us to love each other more. The beautiful thing is that it can be an endless cycle if we don’t allow little foxes of sin or selfishness or character flaws or unforgiveness or a number of other things to eat away at our love. The old saying goes that Rome wasn’t built in a day. It takes time for our love to grow cold. We can’t afford to allow that to happen! It’s time we got out the weapons of the Spirit and put those little foxes to death!
5. John adds, God is love. When we take up permanent residence in a life of love, we live in God and God lives in us. This way, love has the run of the house, becomes at home and mature in us, so that we’re free of worry on Judgment Day – our standing in the world is identical with Christ’s. There is no room in love for fear. Well-formed love banishes fear. Since fear is crippling, a fearful life – fear of death, fear of judgment – is one not yet fully formed in love. We, though, are going to love – love and be loved. First we were loved, now we love. He loved us first. If we put those little foxes to death as God calls us to, we get to live permanently in His love. The cycle of love goes on and on. And as we allow God to perfect His love in our hearts, that love replaces our fear. Fear of what awaits us on the other side of death goes out the window as we learn to live our love for God and each other. And as we allow those little foxes to be picked off.
6. I tend to be a worrier. I tend to be a bit concerned that there just may be something I’m not aware of that God wants to deal with that’s keeping me from experiencing His love fully in my life and from sharing His love with others. I know those things have got to be there, because I’m not where I’d like to be in my faith. You know what I mean? But I’ve got to remember that phrase Peterson uses: his love becomes complete in us – perfect love! I’d like everything within me to be wrapped up neatly and perfectly in an instant. That isn’t how God works. He uses crisis points in our faith to help us make huge leaps toward Him, but most of our walk of faith consists of a process of becoming more like Him. I can experience His perfect love in my heart in an instant, but learning how to live that love takes a whole lifetime. What John is basically saying is this: if we love God and love each other, and don’t do anything to hinder the process God is using to purge our hearts and keep them pure, we are living as God designed us to live. We are living the lives of love that God longs for us to live. As Peterson words it, If anyone boasts, "I love God," and goes right on hating his brother or sister, thinking nothing of it, he is a liar. If he won’t love the person he can see, how can he love the God he can’t see? The command we have from Christ is blunt: Loving God includes loving people. You’ve got to love both. From Homiletics Online: As Soren Kierkegaard put it, To love another person is to help him to love God. We all need to help each other learn to love.
7. Illustration – from Homiletics Online: Henri J. M. Nouwen understood better than many people how the life of love works (The Inner Voice of Love New York: Doubleday, 1996). A Catholic priest who gave up a prestigious seminary position to help care for severely disabled people, Nouwen wrote, Love deeply. Do not hesitate to love and to love deeply. You might be afraid of the pain that deep love can cause. When those you love deeply reject you, leave you or die, your heart will be broken. But that should not hold you back from loving deeply. The pain that comes from deep love makes your love ever more fruitful. It is like a plow that breaks the ground to allow the seed to take root and grow into a strong plant. Every time you experience the pain of rejection, absence or death, you are faced with a choice. You can become bitter and decide not to love again, or you can stand straight in your pain and let the soil on which you stand become richer and more able to give life to new seeds. The more you have loved and have allowed yourself to suffer because of your love, the more you will be able to let your heart grow wider and deeper. When your love is truly giving and receiving, those whom you love will not leave your heart, even when they depart from you. They will become part of your self and thus gradually build a community within you. Those you have loved deeply become a part of you. The longer you live, there will always be more people to be loved by you and to become part of your inner community. The wider your inner community becomes, the more easily you will recognize your own brothers and sisters in the strangers around you. Those who are alive within you will recognize those who are alive around you. The wider the community of your heart, the wider the community around you. Thus the pain of rejection, absence and death can become fruitful. Yes, as you love deeply, the ground of your heart will be broken more and more, but you will rejoice in the abundance of the fruit it will bear. Loving God and loving each other can cast out those fears of being hurt again we hold on to so tightly. Loving God and each other brings healing. Are we going to choose the healing God has for us? Are we going to choose to live the life of love in Christ, or are we going to keep feeding the little foxes? We have a choice.

1. Conclusion

1. Have you been struggling to love with God’s love in the midst of the little struggles life puts in our path? Have you been struggling with fear – fear of judgment, fear of pain, fear of God? Today is the day God wants to begin the process of healing within you. But you have to choose to allow Him to.
2. If you are making the decision this morning to love others, and to allow God to kill off those little foxes and make His love grow within you, please come forward to the altars and pray. Seek God’s face, and He will meet with you. If you are making a choice for God this morning, come forward now.