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1 John 4:9-18
Translated from Persian:
Our reading this morning is from John's first letter, chapter 4, verses 9 to 18.
This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.
Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.
This is how we know that we live in him and he in us: He has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Saviour of the world. If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God.
And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus.
There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.
Thank you, Leili, for helping us find our way through the slides. What is the Persian word for Jesus? Isa. Oh, Isa.
Jesus is good news for those who are looking for love. Let us pray. We love because you first loved us.
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that all who believe in him might not perish, but have eternal life. Father, thank you that from the beginning of time, your purpose was love.
And you created us out of love, to be loved, and to return that love to you and show it to one another. Father, open our hearts today, that we might receive more of your love. For Christ's sake. Amen.
We Are Made for Love
Well, we are made for love. I mean, just look at me. Sorry, that's not in the script. They laughed.
We are made for love, okay? We're made to give and to receive love. Love affirms.
As parents nurture, we're probably, Jonah's making his way around the church. I'm watching him. Make sure you get a cuddle today, all right?
As parents nurture, as they show love, their children are affirmed. As they're guided and their parents provide for them, that love kind of overflows.
It's the foundation. It's where we learn love.
Love guides our socialisation. I can still remember, did you have one of these? I've got a photograph of me with a friend in about grade two. And we've got our arms around one another's shoulders.
Have you got one of those photos from growing up? There's this thing about having a friend. You just kind of hang out together, right? There's nothing happening. We're just being together, and that's really good.
So from that foundation, that safe space should be a safe space called family. You then kind of begin to hang out with others, right? So there's socialisation going on. Love is the kind of key to that. We make friends.
And then love surprises and amazes us when we fall in love. Well, that's an amazing experience.
And then lifts us into the euphoria of sexual intimacy. There's this whole kind of just, you know, I'm doing this with my arms, like layers. This keeps on opening up. It just gets bigger and bigger.
Love matures and deepens in relationship and may even have the opportunity to pour itself out again when children are born. So it becomes like this kind of rinse cycle. You know, one reinforces the other.
Love releases the powerful bonding hormone, although I believe it is truly a neuropeptide called oxytocin. You've learned something this morning.
And that can carry us up and then dump us down. We've all had those experiences, haven't we?
No wonder so many songs are written about love. It's like, you know, if you're kind of a duck in the bathtub, you know, the waves just keep on moving you.
We're moved. Love moves us.
Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places
Now, I've got to take another survey here. You know, each week we produce an email, and I'm, you know, quite funny and entertaining in those emails. And I even sent you a song.
Did anybody see the song this week? One. Okay, half a dozen. Right.
Now, hang on. We're about to have an interruption to our normal broadcast because the song's really cool, right? So open up the weekly broadcast and watch the song.
It's my daughter's favourite love song at the moment, and she's cool. She's 22, so she should know. And the point of it is that Jesus is good news for those who are looking for love.
In one sense, our hopes can be so high, all right? The feelings can be so strong. But as we know, it often ends in tears. It's this kind of strange experience called love.
Hmm. Well, in 21st century Australia, love seems to have been reduced to a consumer commodity. Okay, farmer wants a wife and all the rest of it.
And quite often, love is confused with sex in our culture. Like it's a bit hard to tell what people are talking about until you kind of get further on into the conversation.
And I have a question this morning for you about the world we live in here in Deep Creek. Could it be that we are looking for love in all the wrong places?
Could it be that we are looking for love as a culture in all the wrong places? Just a question. I wonder what you think.
Because love is God's good design, God's good gift for us, but we don't always experience it in a good way.
When something goes wrong at my house, I usually check the manual. How about you? Let's check in with God about how we are supposed to use this crazy little thing called love.
Some people got it. We're in John's first letter. So I've popped the Bibles out. You have access to those. I didn't get the page number. Somebody can find it. It's right down near the back. If you get to Revelation, you've gone too far.
In Chapter 4, sorry, Chapter 3. No, we're in Chapter 4. Check the script carefully. Yeah, Chapter 4.
The Disciple Jesus Loved
Now, you have to know who John was. Who was John? John was a disciple.
John wasn't just any disciple. John was the disciple Jesus loved. So if you read John's Gospel, you'll see the names of all the other disciples appear.
Whose name doesn't appear? His name. John never puts his own name in the Gospel.
But when he refers to himself, he says, the disciple Jesus loved. Have you noticed that reading through John's Gospel?
Okay, here we are. This is the guy.
Now, he writes differently from the other three Gospel writers. You'll know that if you're familiar with the four Gospels.
And I think, hang on, am I supposed to be doing slides here? Yeah. Okay, can we go back one? Have we got the staircase yet? That one. That's Point Hicks Lighthouse on the Victorian coast where Captain Cook first sighted the continent of Australia. There's an interesting fact.
It seems to me that when you're reading John's Gospel or perhaps these letters, it feels a bit like you're going over the same ground over and over again. I don't know if you've had that experience when you're reading John or even these letters. You're kind of thinking, like, I start to get confused. He keeps on talking about the same thing over and over.
I think it's a bit like a spiral staircase. It's purposeful. He's introducing you to a subject, in this case God's love. And then he comes back to that but he comes back to it at a higher level and he keeps on talking about God's love and then he comes back to it. You think, we've been here before, John, but he's at a higher level or you feel like he's drawing you into something. Just think about that next time you read John's Gospel or one of his letters.
God's Love That Never Runs Dry
In our passage, thanks, next slide, John mentions love 17 times in 11 verses. I highlighted them all. You're not supposed to read it. I just wanted you to see it.
And the other thing that's kind of, oh, yeah, you can see it, okay. Another thing that is highlighted there is the word God. So we get love 17 times and God 12 times in these verses.
What do you reckon he's writing about? God's love. And famously, our passage today says things like, God is love. Okay, there's a fridge magnet for you.
A reasonably bold statement, I would have thought, people might pick that. What do you mean you say God is love? Look at, okay, we've all heard that conversation too probably, but John knew Jesus personally, saw him raised from the dead, had the kind of full experience, you know, on the day of Pentecost with the Holy Spirit and all that stuff.
He knows. He's not guessing. He's telling us God is love.
It even defines love. Another famous John 3.16 in the Bible is 1 John 3.16. I read it to you earlier. Here it is again.
This is how we know what love is. Here's the definition. Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. That's the definition of love. Jesus Christ laid down his life for us.
Implication, we also ought to lay down our lives for one another. Very similar to John 3.16, which will be very well known to you, but I'll just make sure I get it right by reading it out.
So what is John doing? He's pointing us to the source or the origin, the home of love.
Really what he's doing is saying, if you want to know what love is, look here. If you want to know what love is, look here.
And, of course, he's right, isn't he? Because no other love, no other human love is ever enough.
It always seems to come up against some kind of limit. When the romance fades, commitment is required to sustain it.
I had a conversation recently with a couple, you know, a friend of a friend. Can you please ring my granddaughter? She's thinking about getting married.
And I've been living together for eight years and I didn't get to meet them. I had to have a telephone conversation. They were going to check me out.
And I talked to them about the wedding service, to have and to hold, for richer, for poorer, sickness and health, better or worse. You know how it goes.
I haven't heard back. I don't think I passed the test.
When the romance runs out, commitment is required to keep the wheels turning. And even our best love, even our best commitment, can't always get us there.
Love That Expands and Multiplies
Tell you a story about, next slide, thanks. Tell you a story about Deb Warner. You might have seen Deb Warner. She's been featured in The Age and so on.
She's a member of my former congregation, married, four boys. What can I tell you about Deb Warner? Just have a look at her. She's been around the block a few times.
One of her boys, Luke, is a policeman. One of her boys, Ben, is a drug addict. Luke goes to work. They put him behind the counter. I can't remember which station it was. Let's call it Glen Waverley.
First job of the day, they bring in his brother. The first thing he had to do as a policeman was to check his brother in.
Deb loves her boys and she's going to bend over backwards for them and she's sent Ben to Thailand, I think twice, for rehab.
You can't always get people into facilities here so that's what you do. You fly them over. You pay the big bucks. You get them cleaned out and they send them home again.
First time round, he finished the program, went to Bangkok Airport, stole a bottle of scotch from a duty free store while he was waiting for the plane, was arrested. Yeah, not a good outcome.
One day, Deb had a group of policemen hanging around outside her home. It was freezing cold morning like today. She watched them for a bit and then went out and invited them in for a cup of tea.
They said, oh, we can't come in. We're going to do a raid on your house. We're just waiting for the superintendent or whoever needed to be there.
She said, I don't care. Come in anyway. The son's a copper, right, so they brought them in, gave them a cup of tea and then when it was time for the superintendent to arrive, they all went outside, stand up and then came in and raided the house looking for Ben's drugs.
Time and time again, she's bent over backwards for her boy. What do you do if your child is a drug addict? What can you do? What can you do when giving all you have is not enough?
Well, what she's done is she now advocates for the parents of drug addicts and has formed a little support group and she's kind of doing that. That's what she can do.
Deb is a Christian. She knows what it means to draw deeply on God's love when her love has run dry. Can you hear me? This is the thing we need to hear.
This is why Jesus is good news for those who are looking for love because we can't do it on our own. We're not strong enough. His love mercifully changes us. His love renews us. His love reforms us.
But we never stop drinking, taking in, relying on his love. The minute you think, good, I've got this, look out. Look out.
And because the love Jesus has for us invites us into the source of love, into the presence of his Father, into the relationship of the Trinity, we're kind of integrated into this never-ending circle of love. We become a part of it.
There's a slide for this. I spent a great deal of time preparing this slide. Okay, here's how it works. Let's start with the Father. The Father loves the Son who loves the Spirit who loves the Father. The Father loves the Spirit who loves the Son who loves the Father.
Can you see how this works? This is the Trinity. This is who God is. What did John say? God is? Okay, then. This is what he means.
Before he'd even acted to create this world and us and so on, there's already a love relationship. He wasn't lonely. He needed somebody to love. There's already happening.
And the reflection of that, which is like the Christian life, is next to us. God loves us. We love others. They love God. That's how I got here.
A friend told me about Jesus. I came to love Jesus. I came to love God. Do you know what I mean? Like it just goes on. And the other way around.
God loves others. They love us. We love God. This is a little demonstration of the church in a reflection of the Godhead.
So, you know, mission is not just a thing we do. It's who we are. So Jesus invites us.
Our love for Jesus, his love for us invites us into a love that never ends, never runs dry, and which is always available to us.
You see, Jesus is God's son by nature. The only begotten. You know that. He's special, right?
We are God's children by adoption and grace. We are both children. That's love.
Had a friend, John Bradfield. He's just a big teddy really. Had a baby girl and he just loved her so much. His wife fell pregnant again and he booked a cup of coffee with the vicar and he said, Kev, I have a problem.
I said, Brady, tell me your problem. He said, I love my little girl so much. I don't know that I'll have any love left for the next one. And I don't want to have to take some of that love and share it. You know what I mean?
Like he's just so all in for his girl and then there's another one coming and he really didn't know what the love thing, how it would work. And I said, Brady, relax. It just expands. It just gets bigger.
So it's not like you had to kind of slice a bit of love off here and lend a lease to the other one. What do you do? A gardening thing, you cut things off and stick them in the ground? What's that called? Anyway, they grow. It's not like that.
So imagine having something that just expands, like just gets bigger. And if you've had children, you've experienced that. Imagine how God thinks about you.
This love of God is made available to us on the cross. Verse 9, this is how God showed his love among us. He sent his one and only son into the world that we might live through him.
This is love. Not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. God loves first. It's safe to love him back.
And it's an effective love. It's a love that transforms us as the Holy Spirit of God comes in to revive our spirit and live in us. We know that we live in him and he in us because he's given us of his spirit.
So this is how we're incorporated into that experience, that love of God, that family of God. The spirit comes in. We are made children of God by grace and adoption. We are part of the family. The love expands.
And one of the great things about love is that it multiplies as you give it away. Have you noticed that? You don't have to hold on to it for fear that it might run out.
No, no, it's like being a conduit or a channel. The more we love, the more we kind of give out, the more flows through. God's love is poured into our hearts. Have you heard that before?
Just think about that. God's love is poured into your heart. Just open it up. You get more. And we experience its transforming power as we share it with others.
Dear friends, let us love one another for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.
And marvellously, it is in this pouring out of the love we've been given that others can see this amazing love of God for themselves. You see, no one has ever seen God, but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete.
Mission is not something we do. Evangelism is not something we do. It's something we are.
And as you do you, people see the love of God. Somebody once said, you are the only Bible most people will ever read. You know, frankly, I don't know your colleagues, your extended family, the person who lives next to you, maybe the only thing they know about Jesus is you. Think about that.
Here John is saying, that's okay. God will use it for good. We love because he first loved us.
If anyone says I love God yet hates his brother or sister, they're a liar. For anyone who does not love their brother and sister whom they have seen cannot love God whom they have not seen.
And he has given us this command. Whoever loves God must also love his brother and his sister.
Friends, there's so much in the world that is broken. Jesus gave himself for us so we could be free to give ourselves to him and to others.
His love sets us free to love. Knowing you are truly loved transforms you. Knowing you are truly loved transforms you. It somehow or other sets you free. It gives you permission, opportunity, peace.
Truly loving transforms others. Just love. We don't have the power to do it. God does and gives us of his spirit that we might be like him for others.
Friends, Jesus is good news for those looking for love.
