Advent: Love

You can take interactive notes here. At the end of the message, you can email the notes to yourself.

 Merry Christmas, everybody. I invite you to open your Bibles to 1 John. This isn’t technically something that people really look to often in the Christmas season, but it really is great because it’s a theology of understanding why Jesus was sent into this world.

So 1 John, we’re going to be looking at chapter 4, uh, starting in verse 7. I want to begin just by reading it. We’re going to read a huge chunk and then we’re going to analyze just a few verses for our time together. First John chapter 4 verse 7 says, Dear friends, let us love one another because love is from God and everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.

The one who does not love does not know God because God is love. God’s love was revealed among us in this way. God sent his one and only son into the world so that we might have life through him. Maybe that sounds a little familiar to like John 3 16. He sent his one and only son to die for us. Verse 10, love consists in this, not that we love God, but that he loved us and sent his son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.

Dear friends, if God loved us in this way, we also must love one another. No one has ever seen God. If we love one another, God remains in us and his love is made complete in us. This is how we know that we remain in him and he in us. He has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and we testify that the Father has sent his Son as the world’s Savior.

The whole meaning of Christmas. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God remains in him, and he in God. Last verse. And we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. Again, God is love, and the one who remains in love remains in God, and God remains in him. Let’s pray. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we just invite you into the space.

We ask you, God, that you would just give us a new picture of your love. Your scriptures talk about how we need to search the depths of your love. I believe, God, for eternity, we’ll be spending our days exploring further and further the height and width and depth of your all surpassing love for us. God, thank you.

I pray, God, that you would Give us a new understanding of what your love is for us. In Jesus name, I pray. Everybody says amen. Amen. For four weeks, we’ve been talking about Advent. And so we’ve looked at hope, joy. Last week, Pastor Caleb talked about peace. I so wish I was with you last week. That was wonderful.

Listen to the sermon online. Good job. He hates when I do this. And now, love. If I can be honest, I wish we switched it where Caleb was the one preaching on love and I was the one talking about peace because I don’t know about you, but for me, I think love is the hardest for me to define. It’s the hardest one for me because I feel like we have so many misunderstandings and, and, and, and we have the wrong definition.

Like, in one sense, love is unbelievably simple, but yet in another, especially in our human experience, love is extremely complicated. First of all, Jesus definition of love. It’s very different from our culture. If you think about it, in today’s world, this should be on the screen, uh, by the way, love does not equal tolerance.

Right? We’re in a world today where that’s what we think all love is. Now, I actually believe it’s a Christian idea in America today, why we are tolerant, because when defined properly, it’s a wonderful thing. Christians led the way in making sure that we believe the way of Jesus is never by coercion. You never force somebody to have faith.

It has the opposite effect. And so, especially as Baptists, too, we are known for saying, No, anybody can believe anything. Right? And so that’s a beautiful thing. However, what has happened now is now tolerance is viewed as you are not loving if you don’t declare every belief and every action as equally good, true, and beautiful.

See the difference there. I can say, you can worship your thing, but I also can say, I believe this way, the way of Jesus, is the only way, and your way is wrong. But I want you to have the freedom, the ability, to do that. But today, love, it’s like, if you love somebody, you tolerate them. But that doesn’t logically make sense.

Just because, let’s say, someone in this room believes that heroin is good for them, that doesn’t mean I am hateful. By pointing to the stats, pointing to the evidence, and saying, with all love, I highly disagree. It is deadly. My disagreement may actually save your life. So, to love is sometimes to disagree.

So, love is not tolerance. Also, the definition of love in our culture. Love is like being really nice. Love isn’t niceness. I, I know, I, I want our church to be a loving church. But, Sunday mornings, the couple minutes before we gather, it’s not It’s short. It’s superficial. I think it’s necessary. I think we can do better at it, right?

But it’s not like love. It’s just being nice. It’s a wonderful thing. But love is something different entirely. And I think another way that our culture defines love, and I think when we hear the message of love, we may misunderstand it, is we think love equals desire. Uh, but I don’t think it does. Like, I don’t know, here’s how you know if somebody’s from Queen Creek or not.

I love the breakfast burrito from Diamond Dot. Anybody know Diamond Dot in the room? You’re all locals. The rest of you? Go back. I’m just kidding. Uh, right. Diamond dot is a gas station. You wouldn’t even know about and you go in and you know what? It’s great though. And I love it. I love the breakfast burrito.

Now, does that mean I’ll sacrifice for it? No, it just means I want to consume it. And for many of us in our relationships, I love you, meaning I lust for you, meaning I want to get from you. And maybe, just maybe, our divorce rates are so high because once I’m no longer getting enough from you, I’m going to move on to the next one.

Of course, there’s grace for those in the room who have divorced, but I just want to make the point that we have a misunderstanding of love. See, lust wants to get. But love wants to give and so the definition I think will be helpful here as we read I think God defines love in 1st John 4, but I want to make sure many of us have the wrong definition But not only does Jesus have a different definition than ours Jesus’s distribution of love is very different From our earthly experience, uh, without God, we’ve only experienced what could be called conditional love.

Uh, we have friends, we have loved ones, where honestly, your relationship is dependent on your performance. So as long as you do X, Y, and Z for me, I will make sure I love you back. But the moment I feel like that contract is swaying, maybe I won’t love you as often. In the church world, maybe I will love you as a church member, but the moment there’s disagreement, maybe I’m out the door going somewhere else.

That, that is not love. And so we experience love, and it’s filled with heartbreak because it’s often conditional. And also without God, we’ve only experienced occasional love. Um, I have a spiritual director, and we talk a lot about just our childhood, and I think I had incredible parents. But, one thing that happened, and I think there’s a lot of, you’re not my therapist, so I don’t have to explain myself.

But, one thing I did notice is I am used, I was kind of trained for occasional love. Sometimes I would get the whole world. I would get the best Christmas present out of everybody, but other times things would be promised and not delivered at all. And so you just never knew, am I going to receive this love today, or am I going to be ignored today?

And we actually tend to do that with God. Is this, is your love going to be forever or is this temporary and we go back and forth? See, when we talk about God is love, we’re bringing all that baggage to the table. For us, many of us interpret when we read God is love, that means God approves and affirms your lifestyle.

I don’t think that’s in the biblical text. Others, that God won’t ever demand anything from you. He won’t be rude. He won’t feel off putting. Well, Jesus seemed to off put a lot of people. And he was, of course, full of love. I think we can tend to believe that God only loves you if you do something for him.

Maybe you’re raised like me. If you forgot to read your Bible in the morning, you’re like, I’m not even gonna pray to God because he’s mad at me because I forgot to read my Bible. That is a misunderstanding of love or that God loves you if you are perfect or that God loves you only when he feels like it and maybe he’ll show you favor today, maybe he won’t.

So although love is misdefined and poorly distributed in our culture, love is something we cannot live without. We don’t just desire love, we are defined by our love. Cue the saying you’ll hear a lot at Passion Creek Church, your vision of God’s love determines the version of your life. So this is an important topic today.

It can change your life. It can change your life from one degree to the next. And so my hope as we really rigor, rigorously study these just three verses, verses 8 through 10, then maybe we walk away here with a better definition of love, and maybe we have a greater understanding of how Christ distributes that love, especially through the Christmas story.

So let’s look at this again in 1 John 4, verses 8. 1 John 4, 8. The one who does not love does not know God. The one who does not Love. Is he saying those who don’t tolerate people, those who aren’t nice, those who don’t desire things with a burning passion, right? And it’s now getting hard. How do I define if somebody is loving or not?

Well, if you’re in 1st John, just look at 1st John 3, 16, is one example of how John, the scriptures, define what love is. Verse 16, 1st John 3, This is how we have come to know love. He laid down his life for us. Who is that? Jesus, right? We should also lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. So whoever does not love, we have to, we just learned in chapter 3, whoever doesn’t sacrifice.

Right. Write this down to love is to sacrifice for the good of another ahead of your own. Now, I think we need to view love as like a diamond. And so the diamond has many different angles, many different dimensions, and so it’s our job to constantly look at one angle. So one angle of agape love, which is the Greek word here for love in this biblical text is sacrificial love pointing to Jesus, dying on the cross.

And then saying, we must sacrifice as well. So what does that look like? I think it’s, it’s sacrificing. It’s inviting strangers over to your home, even though you’d much rather. Just what you say have, um, sweats on and PJs and, uh, hot coffee, right? It’s putting yourself in uncomfortable situations. All the parents in the room, love is getting up at midnight to comfort your children after a terrible nightmare.

This happens a lot in the home of the Van Camps. I dream every night. She never dreams. They took it from me. It’s sacrificing your wealth so that more people can hear the name of Jesus, right? So, whoever does not love, whoever does not sacrifice, what happens? Does not know, God, that word know is meaning to be intimate, which Adam knew Eve, and that’s how they conceived their son Cain.

And so this know is this intimate knowledge. So here’s the Trayvon Kemp version of 1st John 4a. So far, it’s saying, whoever does not sacrifice for the good of another hasn’t experienced intimacy with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This is, we’re doing a lot of theology here, a lot of teaching. We’re going to get somewhere here, okay?

Why? Okay, so whoever does not know, does not love, does not know God. Why? Because God is love. So if you know Him, you’re going to rub off on, He’s going to rub off on you. And ultimately at its core, God is love. Now the scriptures have several different areas in the Bible where it says God is insert blank.

God is love is a huge one. God is holy. God is truth. God is spirit. God is righteous. I think it’s pretty funny when people talk about this verse, they think that’s the only time God is, no, God is love. But he’s also many other things, but they don’t contradict each other. They all flow from the same source.

And so every action, here’s what we have to know, every action and decision from God is from a place of love. Because it’s not that God occasionally loves. God doesn’t, like, it’s not a verb. It’s a noun. He is the source of, he is love. You get that? Right? And so, anytime, and this is, we’re about to really dive into this.

Does that mean God can never hate? To the contrary, actually. God must hate if God loves. Cheesy example, again. Selah scored two soccer goals a couple weekends ago, had a dad, wanted to fight. I’m like, we’re already at this age, she’s six, but okay. And so for me, I felt a bit of wrath. I felt like, okay, let’s get ready.

I’m going to take care of this dad. Now is that, now that’s probably, I didn’t do anything. We’re okay. But it was from the source of love for my daughter that I was willing to do what I needed to do to protect, right? So for God to be love, he does, he has to hate sin. Right? And so we, we’re going to see that even more.

Verse nine, okay? Stay with me. So let’s talk about God’s love again. God’s love was revealed, revelation, shown, manifested among us in this way. I love that phrase, among us. John in John one, his first, the gospel that he wrote, he says that the word was made flesh and dwelt among us. He wants us to see that similar language.

He came among us in this way. God sent his one and only son into the world so that we might live. through him. God sent his one and only son. This is a helpful text because this actually proves the divinity of Jesus. Think about this. God wasn’t, sorry, it doesn’t say God, Jesus was born into the world. No, it says that he was sent into the world.

Babies are born into the world, right? They’re born into it. God existed from all eternity. God, the Father, God, the Son, God, the Holy Spirit. So God, the Son, Jesus Christ was from the foundation of the earth. Read this in Colossians 1 as well. And so we have to see he was sent into the world. It’s very important theology.

God, Jesus is God. And if he is not, his sacrifice wasn’t enough for our sin and we do not have eternal life. This is also why the virgin birth is crucial to Christianity. I saw a stat the other day that said, Barna Research said, I think, I don’t know the percentage, but it’s a scary percentage of Christians think the virgin birth isn’t that necessary.

No, it’s, it’s almost everything because our sin Separated us from God. We’re no longer one with God, right? We have been banished from the garden and so now we need somebody to represent God and represent man We need the perfect ambassador to reconcile us And so Jesus is fully man because he came from the womb of Mary So he is human but at the same time he didn’t have an earthly father Right?

He was conceived through the Holy Spirit. This makes him fully God. It’s really important, Adam, when he, uh, sinned, and, and sin was introduced into the world, you see this in Romans, like, five and six, that Adam is called federal headship. If you are, if you have a earthly father, you have the curse of Adam over you.

You are born in sin. You are bent towards destruction. You, uh, you are an enemy. of God. Okay, so this is all important. It’s sent into the world, human, but also fully God. That’s a lot of theology. You’re like, man, Caleb didn’t even do this much theology last week. It’s okay. Let’s keep leaning in. Look, this is so important because we have no hope and we honestly have no love without this theology.

Stay with me. Let’s, let’s continue. Verse 10, and sent his son to be, sorry, where am I? Oh, sorry. Love consists in this, not that we love God, but that he is Loved us and sent his son to be the atoning sacrifice For our sins. Notice that it’s not that we love God first, but is that he first loved us I think we constantly think we’re greater than we really think we are.

The other day I was talking, uh, with Caleb and, and, uh, I, my dad flies. And so we’ve been talking a lot about airplanes. And you mentioned an article that I saw on Instagram as well that said, check this out. This is how great men are. Over 50 percent of men are fully convinced they can land a plane. If they need to any men in the house, think you can land a plane, right?

You’re like, Oh, of course, Kate. Okay. We’ll take you up and, uh, hopefully. Hopefully we survive. Uh, the more I go on this plane, with my dad at least, it’s like a 1967, I mean, like, we pray to get it started every time, and yet we’re totally fine going in the air with it, and so we go, and he’s trying to get me to land, I’m, I’m not, no, no, no, no, no, no, I, I’m okay flying, like, in the air, but landing is a whole other thing, there’s, there’s a lot of different dimensions.

Why do I share all this? To say, it’s funny how we just assume, yeah, we’re great, We can do that. And then you go to see it and you’re like, Okay, 50 percent of men cannot land a plane. They can’t even park. You know what I’m saying? So how can we land a plane? Right? But this is what we do. We think we’re greater than we really are.

And so we have to know this in this passage. John is being so nice. You can read, like, God is love. You’re like, I love this. And he’s like, he loves you, sinner. You’re a sinner. We, you’re so much sin. I had to, like, die for you, but I love you. We have to see this juxtaposition here. There’s a paradox. We have to see we are, we’re sinners.

We are bent towards destruction. This sounds super harsh. But it’s exactly what we need to hear. And here’s what it is. Our culture insists, and I feel this pool to say. We talk about God’s love in a sentimental way, and thus it’s in a superficial way, right? Like God, man, he would never hate. He would never call a thing evil evil.

He doesn’t like to talk about sin. Everything is just, just good. I know for me in my marriage, we made progress when my wife could finally tell me in the morning when my breath stank, you know? Like the first couple years, she didn’t even say that. Like, you know, we were, we were just dandy. And now she’s a whole lot more honest.

I told her to give her more examples of this today for me to share. And she’s so kind. She’s like, I can’t think of anything. So I thought of some, no, I’m just kidding. Um, I want to have a good Christmas. Um, we actually almost planted, we, we almost planted a, we did plant a church, but when we were 21 we went through an assessment process.

We didn’t wanna plant a church then, but we wanted to see what we needed to do to get ready. Uh, we were 22 actually, so we got married at 21. Right. Okay. And that 22, we had a marriage assessment. Y’all, this was terrifying. I mean, they analyze your aunts and uncles. They ask you why you bought a Furby in the 90s.

I mean, it’s everything, right? And so analyzing all of this stuff and they were asking like, what do you hate about your spouse? And both of us were like, we love you. Hate? I love everything about her. And, and so literally, they were like, this, this couple is prepared for a church, except they like each other too much.

They need to do a little more marriage, get a little more honest with each other, and begin to hate each other, I suppose, and then they are ready. So two years later, we were ready, and, uh, everything was quite fine. Uh, no, think about it though. True, deep love is not superficial. In fact, it’s really, really True love is being honest and yet loving all the more.

And this is where a lot of us miss the Christmas message. We want to sentimentalize it. We don’t want to talk about the bad things or the hard things or the evil things. But yet, if sin is never bitter, then Christ is never sweet. So we have to see that. Think about how honest Jesus love is for us. Why was he sent in the world?

It says later in verse 10, For our sins. Some of you may have the translation propitiation for our sins. That word atoning or atonement. My, uh, theology professor always helped me remember it. Atonement literally just means at one ment. It was this theology in the garden when Adam and Eve sinned. We were no longer one with God.

We were created to be one. Jesus in John 17 prayed, Oh, Father, that they’d be one as you and I are one, and may they be one in us. Perfect unity, but at the garden, because of sin, we are no longer one. And we feel that. That’s the, quote unquote, hole in our hearts. It’s that depression and anxiety because we were created for something more.

The problem, of course, is that sin deserves a punishment. If somebody were to murder your parents, you wouldn’t say, Oh, it’s okay. We’ll look over it. A righteous judge would say you have to pay for that penalty or else the judge would be corrupt. And so God is holy and he’s love. What does he do to solve this problem?

And so we see at Christmas, we celebrate. Jesus was made flesh to live among us. And then at Easter, we celebrate. Jesus was made sin to die for us. So So, instead of God punishing you for your sin, which you rightly deserve, God sent his own son, himself, to punish him so that you would not be punished. See how loving and honest this is at the very same time?

It’s Christmas, man. Christmas, uh, 2003. Okay, I’m not bitter. Uh, in Christmas 2003, my cousin Jeremy Where are you? Oh, you’re in the back doing the slides. Grandma, he’s my cousin, so that makes sense that we have the same grandma, right? I don’t need to define that. My grandma bought all the boys, there’s like, I don’t know, like, nine of us cousins, boys, they all got air hockey tables.

And I was the youngest at that time, so they’d open it up, and everybody had the same size, you know, box, but mine was smaller, and I kept thinking, what is gonna happen here? So, air hockey table, air hockey table, air hockey table, it gets down to me, and it’s this little box right here. I’m like, is it keys to a car?

You know, what are we doing here? And it was literally, friends, it was a pen. Homeboy got an air hockey table. I got a pen. She’s like, but it makes noises when you write. I said, I’m done. Like, this is, I knew I wasn’t the favorite, but I thought I’d at least be top five, right? And I want to sentimentalize and say, well, it’s because she knew I’d be a writer one day.

I wrote a book and it’s all because my grandma bought me a pen. But I threw that thing away right when I got home. Now, but what is that? Sometimes gifts, a gift is loving, but also it’s kind of confronting. Like you’re not an air hockey guy. You write. Okay. And this is. What? Christ is doing it away. I love you, but you need to know the honest truth about you.

The late Tim Keller, author and pastor in New York City, he put it this way, the gospel says you are simultaneously more sinful and flawed than you ever dared believe, yet, more loved and accepted than you ever dared hope. This is the Christmas message. It is a both and. It’s offensive and yet the greatest love you’ve ever heard.

It offends you than you could ever imagine and it loves and accepts you more than you could ever hope. Let me put it this way. All grace and no truth is deceivingly superficial. My marriage, we made progress when we finally were able to be honest with ourselves, honest to each other, honest about our past.

Because you know, deep down, if you don’t, if, if, if the person loving you truly doesn’t know you, you know, they don’t love you. You know that they love your pretend version of you. And so you still have that ache. There is a wonderful thing that happens when you are fully known and yet still fully loved.

And most of us have never experienced it. It’s deceivingly superficial. You think you’re loved, but you’re not. On the same token, the other side, all truth and no grace is devastatingly critical. Right? We see this happen in marriages all the time as well. It’s so critical. Right? Bringing up the stuff you’ve done in the past.

Bringing all, it’s, it’s harsh. It’s, it’s hurtful. It’s bringing up facts just to bring more condemnation. And this isn’t God’s love either. Some of us have a version of God where it’s all grace, no truth and it’s hollow. Some of us have a version of God where it’s all truth and no grace and it’s really harsh.

And yet the good news of Christmas. Is that it’s all truth and all grace and really it’s deeply sacrificial, full of love and sacrifice and truth, full of, full of joy, being fully known and fully loved. And again, you can hear these sweet nothings all day that he loves you, but his love isn’t harsh. He died for you, right?

His love isn’t hollow. He. He came and did something about it. He doesn’t just send sweet nothings from heaven. He sent his own son. So that you and I could have life. Life in abundance. So I hope today you have been offended and loved. At the very same time. Cause that’s what Christmas is actually all about.

So I want us to use this time to reflect because some of us, we assume God’s love is hollow. It’s kind of how we’ve been raised. And so we feel like he’s not really there for us. And so I want you to To meditate on this reality that Jesus was sent into the world to stop your crying.

The Bible says he’ll never leave you. He’ll never forsake you. We have history to prove that. We, we can see the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. That, that tomb is empty. We can point that he came again and, and And He came to save us. He didn’t just leave us. He sees us in our brokenness. We see Jesus care for Lazarus, who, uh, the family of Lazarus, after Lazarus died, He had compassion, and He cried.

And then rose him up again. He came to stop your crying. He loves you. I want you to know today, God sees you. And this is so hard to believe, but because of the cross, God accepts you as His own.

What I love is that we can take a thousand steps away from God, but it always just takes one to come back to him because he’s constantly following. Why? Because, know from this verse, we love because he first loved us. First Corinthians 13 says love never fails and never gives up. It’s patient. It’s kind.

This is who God is. But also, maybe in your version, your head, God’s love isn’t hollow, but it’s harsh. It’s deeply critical. You don’t like pastors because all they do is get up here, talk about how sinful and broken and how you fall short. Merry Christmas. But to those, I want to tell you Jesus was sent into the world to stop your trying.

The reality is, is you can’t outrun your sin problem. Doing good works to get to heaven is, is like putting icing on a burnt cake. It’s still a burnt cake. Every other religion, I believe, it seeks to make bad people into good people. But that’s not why Jesus came. Jesus came to bring dead people to life. To rewire our affections and our desires, to create in us a new heart and a new spirit, to see the world in a different way, to realize I need to have new habits that reflect my new desires that God has placed within me.

My heart is no longer hard, but it’s soft, it’s vulnerable, open to the love. of Christ. It’s not about being self righteous anymore. I’m saying God loves me because of what I’ve done. No, God loves me because of what Christ has already done. See, so many of us are exhausted this Christmas because we’re just trying to be lovable.

And the Christmas message says His love is on offer. Stop trying and just simply start receiving. That’s why I love, that’s why we give gifts at Christmas for our family. What’s the point of a gift? You didn’t earn it? I don’t even earn that pen, right? But the point of a gift, it’s not your gift until you what?

You take it and you open it. And Jesus was sent into this world so that you and I would receive him. And he’ll comfort us, stopping our crying. And he’ll comfort and assure us we don’t have to try anymore. God loves you. He has a plan for you. There is hope for you. It’s not sentimental. It’s not superficial.

It’s deeply sacrificial because of the blood of Christ. And for that we rejoice. Let’s pray.