Three acts of love

Good morning, one hope. How you guys doing? Merry Christmas. I can't believe it's already here. Uh but yeah, if you've been with us the last month or so, four weeks, you know, we have been following the advent calendar, uh following the themes of Advent, uh leading up to Christmas Day, the birth of Jesus. Uh and we the first week we talked about the first advent candle, the candle of hope, which is appropriate for our church, one hope community. Uh but this hope candle kind of points us to the anticipation of the birth of Jesus and what that birth would do for us. So that hope that birth would bring to the world. Uh the second week was the peace candle which was the manifestation of the birth of Jesus. what how it worked itself out that with this birth of Jesus uh the peace that God would bring between us and himself and each other. Uh and then third, last week Stephen talked about the joy candle. We lit the joy candle and the joy candle is the response that we have to the birth of Jesus to what he brought to us in our salvation. We respond in gratitude and thanksgiving and joy because of that great salvation. Uh and this week is our last candle. We just lit the love candle. And so the love candle is the culmination of all these other candles that the birth of Jesus is the visible expression of God's love to us and brings about the joy and the peace and the hope and all the other candles. So there's a lot that we could talk about with the love candle, there's so many verses in scripture, uh so many uh themes that we could talk about, but today as we talk about the love candle, the verses that we're going to look at talks about the act of love, the acts of love, what love does. And so in the uh passage that we're going to look at today, it's these three acts of love that bubble up out of this passage that I want to look at today. Uh but before we do that, uh let me pray for us. Jesus, we do want to pause here and to say thank you for your word, for your Holy Spirit who reveals your word to us. Today, I pray that my words uh would be your words and that you would help us by your spirit to hear what you want us to hear and to respond the way you want us to respond from your word. So we're thankful for this season that reminds us of the beauty of Jesus and his birth and what that means to us. So may your spirit uh continue to birth that hope and that peace and that joy and that love in us each day as we reflect on this. So we are thankful for this time together in Jesus name. Amen. So our first passage I mean our passage that we're going to look at today is 1 John 4 7-12. So let me read that for us. Let me move this out of the way so I'm not right here. It says, "Beloved, let us love one another. For love is from God. And whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only son into the world so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son to be a propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God. If we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us. So, yeah, these three acts of love that bubble up here. And I'll just go ahead and share with them upfront is that these three acts. So I want us to understand today that love is active. It's not passive. This divine love that the Bible talks about this agape love, this biblical love, Calvary love is active and it's not passive. So today we're going to talk about how love uh initiates that God pursues us that love imitates that God wants us to imitate who he is and then love incarnates that he came to be with us. So first love initiates love incarnates and then love imitates are the three actions of love we're going to talk about today. So let's jump in verse seven. says this, "Beloved, let us love one another for love is from God and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God." So, we first see that uh before we get into love initiates and the act of love, we want to see that uh the origination, the origins of love. Where does love originate? And it says in this verse that love comes from God. It's found in God. And what does that mean? He's the owner of the love. He's the source of the love. He's the creator of that love. So love is not found in us. And it seems pretty simple when you read this verse, but often we assume that love somewhere is found in us. But love is found in only one place and that's God. This Calvary love. So he is the love originates in God. It's from God. Uh in verse eight, it says God is love. So love does not only originate in God but it permeates God. Says God is love that it affects and infects every part of his being. It's not the only characteristic or quality of God. He has others but love does infect and affect every part of his being. So his this love flows from his being to his doing. Uh it's in his nature. It's in his being. It's in his character. So God is love. So love originates in God. And this love permeates God and who he is. And the way I thought about it this past week to help me understand a little bit more because love is a noun and it's also a verb. It kind of can get confusing. Uh this is giving. That's the example of giving. So we give which is an act that we do but it comes from our character or our our spirit our desires our nature of generosity. So you have generosity that's in your nature and it moves you to give this act of giving. The same with God with love. So God's justice is loving. God's holiness is loving. God's righteousness is loving and so God this love not only originates with God but it permeates his entire being. So uh now we move into verse 10 and it says uh what this love does how it moves God out. It says this love is not that we loved him but that he loved us. And if you skip down to verse 19, it says, "We love because he first loved us." And so this first act of love is that love initiates. It moves out. It compels God to move towards us. And initiate means to cause. It's the reason. So this love initiates and overflows from God to us. It moves towards, it compels, it uh gives to or gives toward us. It pursues. So this first act of love initiates that God pursues us and we're the recipients of that love. Praise God. Uh so God so love originates with God. It permeates God and that love initiates towards us. Compels God to move towards us first. It doesn't wait on us to fix ourselves. But God initiates. This love initiates. Uh and I get the picture of this is that this divine love, this agape love, uh this Calvary love, it's uh bursting into our world again. It initiates. It's bursting into our world. It It's invading our history and our lives. It's intervening into who we are and our stories. So, it's this divine love that's bursting into our world. You see it throughout scripture of this divine love not holding back. Uh and what love is not in this is not it's not passive. It doesn't wait on us. It's not complacent. It's not indifferent. It's not static. It doesn't stand still. It doesn't hoard, but it gives. And it doesn't hold back and it's not reserved. But God allows his love to burst. And it's it's like God's holding himself back sometimes. He's wanting to burst into our history, into our world, into our lives. And you see it uh throughout scripture. Couple examples, the Abrahamic covenant where God burst into Abraham's life in Genesis. And he gives him this great promise that he is going to bless all the families of the earth through Abraham. But it's this divine love that burst onto the scene that invades Abraham's life to say, "I have a plan. I have a promise that my love is going to conquer uh for you." We see it in Moses's life. God burst upon the scene again. His love invades to reveal himself through the law, the law of Moses that reveals God's character, his holiness, how we should relate to God. But God's divine love is bursting into our world again to uh Moses's life and to how we should relate to God. We see it in the Davidic covenant in David's life, the king of Israel that we've been teaching on in 1 Samuel. we get to 2 Samuel, the Davidic covenant that God burst into uh David's life, into his world, and says it's not just going to be a temporary kingdom, uh uh an earthly kingdom, but it's going to be eternal kingdom that lasts forever. And this culmination is going to be in Jesus in the birth of Jesus. So the culmination of this divine love bursting into our lives, into history, into our world is at the birth of Jesus that God is initiating. And we even sung about it in our song this morning that the shepherds, you even see it in the Christmas story, God's divine love bursting even through the angels singing to the shepherds. God's love is not being held back. He's bursting and invading and intervening towards us in his love. Uh so love pursues us. It initiates. That's the first act of love. And we see that climax in the birth of Jesus. Which brings us to the second act of love. Verse nine. Uh let's see. It says in this the love of God was made manifest among us [snorts] uh that God sent his only son into the world so that we might live through him. And that those verses those words remind me of another verse. It says he was made manifest among us this love. First uh John 1 says that uh let me see John one or try to write them all down so I wouldn't have to and the word became flesh and dwelt among us and we have seen his glory glory as the only son from the father full of grace and truth. So he made he was manifest among us. He the word in John 1 that is the eternal God. The word was with God and the word was God. He stepped out of eternity and again he stepped into time and space that the word uh didn't wasn't passive, wasn't complacent, wasn't indifferent, but he's he initiated and he incarnated into our world. So the second act of love, not only does it initiate, but it incarnates. is that even in this chapter 4 verse two it says by this you know the spirit of God. Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God. So we see that love incarnates. It came to be with us. It didn't wait for us to fix ourselves again. It didn't wait for us to figure out our brokenness and sin. Rather, it became flesh and blood became human. God became human and he saw our brokenness and sin and darkness and he acted. And how did he act? He became flesh and blood for us. He took on humanity. Philippians 2 6-8 says this kind of gives us a a deeper definition of what this incarnation is. says, "Who though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped." So he was God. The word was with God. The word was God. But what did he do? He emptied himself by taking the form of a servant. Being born in the likeness of men, being found in a human form, he humbled himself. So we see that God uh emptied himself by taking on humanity, by taking on flesh, by becoming a servant, by being born in likeness. So this incarnational love takes humility. He humbled himself and he also veiled his divinity so that he could identify with our humanity. So it took sacrifice as well. this incarnational love uh took sacrifice on God's part that he didn't give up his divinity. He still had his divine nature but he took on a a human nature so that he could identify with us and our brokenness. So humility and sacrifice and he also entered into our world and darkness and dwelt among us. This is the beauty of Christmas for me is this presence that God in his divine love couldn't hold himself back. But he had to initiate. His love compelled him. This divine love compelled him to come be with us. And this beauty and mystery of Christ, the incarnation, you have this for me it's you see this chasm. Every Christmas as I meditate on this, I see this chasm between God and man, between heaven and earth, between ultimate reality and our reality, ultimate reality of what we know should be and our real reality of where we are in our brokenness. And and we see this contrast. I see this contrast between God the king and God the baby. Uh God the beautiful and God in our brokenness. God the in his majesty, but God in our messiness, life and death, light and darkness, and even holiness in our sin. And then you see the incarnation that God bridges the chasm and the contrast that God's love compels him to give his son to take on human form. And he did this because he humbled himself. He sacrificed. He wanted to be with us. And so I wanted to share a Christmas memory of mine with you guys. This is Christmas. We have an intimate group here. I used to listen to this guy. You know, my dad listened to him and I kind of just caught it secondhand. Every Saturday this guy named Paul Harvey would come on the radio and he would share his stories. I don't know if you've heard of Paul Harvey, but great storyteller. is not with us anymore. But every Christmas I would hear this story, The Man and the Birds, and it stuck with me. And uh I started sharing it with our kids. Every Christmas we would either watch it or listen to it Christmas Eve or Christmas Day, but I know my kids my kids probably got tired of it. [laughter] But it's a great story that kind of encapsulates the the incarnation and this love that incarnates on our behalf. So, I'm going to get Derek to play it for us. You get to listen to it right now. And just listen to a Scrooge. Now, he was a kind, a decent, and mostly good man, generous to his family, upright in his dealings with other men. But he just did not believe in all of that incarnation stuff which the churches proclaim at Christmas time. It just did not make sense. And he was too honest to pretend otherwise. He could not swallow the Jesus story about God coming to earth as a man. He told his wife, "I'm truly sorry to distress you, but I'm just not going with you to church this Christmas Eve." He said he'd feel like a hypocrite. That he'd much rather just stay home, but that he would wait up for them. So, he stayed and they went to the midnight service. Now, shortly after the family drove away in the car, snow began to fall. He went to the window to watch the flurries getting heavier and heavier. Then, he went back to his fireside chair, began to read his newspaper. Minutes later, he was startled. by a thing sound and then another, then yet another. At first, he thought somebody must be throwing snowballs against the living room window. But when he went to the front door to investigate, he found a flock of birds huddled out there miserably in the snow. They had been caught in the storm. In a desperate search for shelter, they had tried to fly through his large landscape window. That was what had been making the sound. Well, he couldn't let those poor creatures just lie there and freeze. So, he remembered the barn where his children stabled their pony. That would provide a warm shelter. All he would have to do is direct the birds into that shelter. Quickly he put on a coat and galashes and he trapped through the deepening snow to the barn and he opened the doors wide and inside the barn he turned on a light so the birds would know the way in. But the birds did not come in. So he figured [clears throat] that food would entice them. He went back into the house and fetched some breadcrumbs and sprinkled those on the snow, making a trail of breadcrumbs to the yellow lighted wide open doorway of the stable. But to his dismay, the birds ignored the breadcrumbs. The birds just continued to flop around helplessly in the snow. He tried catching them, he could not. He tried shoeing them into the barn by walking around and waving his arms, but instead they scattered in every direction. Every direction except into the warm-blooded barn. And that's when he realized that they were afraid of him. They were afraid of him. To him, he reasoned, "I'm a strange, terrifying creature." If only I could think of some way to let them know that they can trust me, that I'm not trying to hurt them, but to help them. But how? Any move he made tended to frighten them and confuse them. They just would not follow. They would not be led or shued because they feared him. And he thought to himself, "If only I could be a bird now. I can be a bird and mingle with them and speak their language and tell them not to be afraid. Then I can show them the way to the safe warm barn. But I would have to be one of them, wouldn't I? So they could see and hear and understand. At that moment, the church bells began to ring. The sound reached his ears above the sounds of the wind. And he stood there listening to the bells at listening to the bells. peeling the glad tidings of Christmas. And he sank to his knees in the snow. Paul Harvey, I hope for you and those you love, this will be a wonderfully merry Christmas. Yeah. So beautiful story. Love is incarnational. The second act of love, it's incarnational. It takes on flesh and blood for us. It sacrifices itself. It humbles itself and becomes present with us. So love initiates. It bursts into our lives. It pursues us. Love incarnates. Uh it came to be with us. And this third act of love as we finish up which we find in verse 11 it says uh it say beloved if God so loved us we also ought to love one another. Simple verse here but if God loved us we ought to love one another. that love initiates and incarnates in this third act of love. Love imitates. That we are to reflect the God that loves us. We are to bear the fruit, bear the image of the God who has given himself for us. We are to imitate that love to others. So God initiated towards us. Why? So that we could initiate towards others. that that love, that Calvary love would compel us to go and to move towards and to give, not be complacent, not be indifferent. And that love incarnated and identified with us so that we could do that with others. So that we could humble ourselves, that we could sacrifice ourselves, that we could be present with others the way he was present with us. Uh so a couple of uh illustrations as I was thinking through this uh point, a positive one and a negative one. positive is in my own life I've seen this picture play out as you know many of you know we were missionaries but as we had to move out from our western western world and western values and ideals to move towards Thailand uh to move towards the Thai people and away from our families and what we knew here in the states [snorts] uh and then giving up you know our our western culture culture to get to know to veil that you can't really ever give up your culture. It's a part of who you are. But to veil that so that we could identify with the Thai culture and the Thai people. Uh and it was like being a baby being born again that first year where we had to learn the language, we had to learn the cultural cues of what they were saying, their body language, all all that stuff that came with it. uh and we even moved into their neighborhoods and moved uh from here to there so that we could be with them among them to dwell with them uh to be present with them. Uh, but even this last week, the negative one is this last week and I don't even I haven't told my wife. I had I was on my way to an elder meeting at Steven's house on Wednesday night and I usually stop by QT. I don't know why QT and get something to eat. I never eat at QT only except when I go to these elder meetings because I have a little time. So, I got a hot dog there and I think they had pretty good brisket sandwiches. So anyway, I was coming out and this lady was there uh and she was asking for money and I thought I think I saw this lady yesterday. It's like and I didn't even really pay attention. It's like I've had this happen so many times and but I didn't even listen to her. I kind of just said something. I don't have any cash and I went to my car and then I was watching from my car as I was eating and this other guy kind of went over pursued her and said you know what do you need? And she really did. She took him. She needed gas. She needed uh gas for her car. And I know we've all been in these situations, but for me, watching him pursue her and then she really did have a need. He went over, paid for her gas, she got in her car, and she went away. And but I don't think it was a coincidence that I was studying this passage thinking of these actions of love and then for me to just not even consider that that I've become so cynical in people asking for money that it even allow the spirit of God to uh help me in that time or even pursue her to figure out what she really did need if she did have a need. And again, I'm not saying you should give to everybody coming out of the gas station. That's not what I'm saying. But I was convicted as I was studying this text and the spirit of God convicted me to at least pay attention, at least to listen, that love initiates, that it pursues, it doesn't withhold. uh and in a real sense that God wants us all to imitate at his act of love whether it be big decisions, small decisions, but he wants us to move towards one another. And even it's a strong text at the end of this uh passage verses 19- 21 that says we love because he first loved us. If anyone says I love God and hates his brother, he is a liar. For he who who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. So again, this [snorts] invisible love that God wants us to reflect who he is, that it initiates and pursues, that it incarnates, that it humbles oursel to be able to listen to sacrifices ourself to be able to be with people and then it imitates and uh and it's hard sometimes. It's hard to pro, you know, again, we that love does not find itself its origins in us. We don't have it to produce. And even if you read verses like 1 Corinthians 13, listen to this and then think about we are to imitate this love to one another. Love is patient. Love is kind. Does not envy. Does not boast. Is not arrogant or rude. Does not insist on its own way. It is not irritable or resentful. It does not rejoice at wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth. Love bears bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. But even in that definition, just think about, you know, how do we pull this off? And uh verse 12 kind of how do we imitate this love, this Calvary love? And it verse 12 and 13 gives us the answer. says, "No one has ever seen God if we love one another. God abides in us and his love is perfected in us. By this we know that we abide in him and he in us because he has given us of his spirit that God abides in us. That he's given his spirit to produce that Calvary love in us to be able to give that away. that he's the source, he's the power, he's the creator and owner, and that we are there to reflect and to give away what he has given to us. And it's who he's given to us, the spirit who lives in us is the spirit of love. the spirit that bears the fruit of love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control. Uh so yeah, just think about your past week or your past month and uh these acts of love. Where has love initiated towards you recently? Or where have you initiated towards others recently? And where have you pursued uh or not pursued like in my case on Wednesday night? Uh where has love incarnated towards you this past year? Or where have you done that for others? Where have you uh humbled yourself? whether it be towards a spouse, towards your children, towards co-workers, uh that this type of love God desires for us to reflect in those relationships, in our environments that we find ourselves in, in the circles of influence that this type of love God desires for us. And even in my relationship with Heather this past week, you know, this text and these actions were on my mind and heart and we had to work through some things as we discussed Christmas and planning and what that looked like with family. but allow me to initiate toward her and to pursue her and to get some of these some of these things figured out. So, in summary, love is active. This Calvary love, this divine love, it's active. It's not passive. It's not complacent. It's not indifferent. It didn't wait on us to fix ourselves before it came to pursue us. So it it initiates God pursues us and we should pursue others. It incarnates, it [snorts] is with us and we should be with others and love imitates. God is in us and we should reflect and give that away. Let's pray.