Love Came Down December 23, 2018 I John 4 We come this morning to the 4 th sermon in our Advent series. So far, we have pondered the themes of hope, preparation, joy, and this morning: love. Remember, our theme verses are Luke 2:10-11, Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; He is Christ the Lord. Tomorrow night, we will consider the theme of adoration, O Come, Let Us Adore Him. But for today the theme is love. And the approach I am considering is the fact that in the coming of the Christ child, love personified came down. This emphasis on love is not that we love Him, but that He loved us! That is perhaps THE most remarkable aspect of the coming of the Messiah. I know, I know that the idea of God becoming man blows our minds, it is truly too much for our pea sized brains to comprehend. But as mind blowing as is the incarnation, the reason behind it is even more remarkable. As I mentioned this past week, compare this to other religions. The whole concept of religion is that we do certain things in order to appease the gods and cause them to respond to us in favor. We do bad things and displease the gods, we do good things and the gods respond with favor. That is the religious pattern. Go to central America and see where the Mayans or Incas or whoever set up altars for the people to offer their human sacrifices, whether young women or babies, in order bring good favor from their gods. Even in Old Testament times, babies were killed and placed before gods like Molech or buried under the corner of buildings. The idea of human sacrifice to appease the gods is pretty common stuff in religious history. Even today, children are being offered up, even to satan, in religious ceremony. The pattern is that in order to please the gods, sinful humans must offer sacrifices, even human sacrifices to appease them.
But our God is different. He is unique. He is the opposite of expectations. He sends HIS Son to be sacrificed so that we can be right with Him. Isn t this remarkable? Doesn t this blow your minds? We sinned against Holy God and His response is to send His only Son to die to make things right. That is love personified right there. That is mind blowing love. That is agape love, selfsacrificial love. The advent of the Christ is the supreme time in all of human history when love came down from the Father on high. That truly is what happened there in Bethlehem, love came down. And in case we missed the point, His birth highlights what a coming down it was. He came as the lowest of the low. So, as we look into Scripture on this topic, I urge you to notice the directional aspect to love. It comes from one direction. It then goes in other directions. But the text is clear, love of the type that God most values comes from God, demonstrated by God most supremely when He sent His Son, His one and only Son. READ 1 John 4:7-21. Main point: Our God demonstrates His love for us in sending His Son to live among us and then die for us. This event is totally unique in human history, not only in reality, but also in concept. In other words, no other religion has anything comparable. Can you think of any other world faith where the god sacrificed himself for the people? In every other faith, the people sacrifice for the god. But our God acts out of His character, which is grace and mercy, steadfast self-sacrificial love. I know this sounds elementary to many of you, but it would still do us well to contemplate it once more at this time of the year. This is the time when we remember when Love came down and dwelt among us. (2 parts)
I. Self-sacrificial love originates with God, not us. vv. 7-10 It begins when He responds to our rebellion against Him with a promise to save, to redeem, to reconcile. He responds with love! I think of the verse in Paul s letter to the Romans, (5:8) God demonstrates His own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. There it is, while we were still sinners, sinning against Him, He sent His Son to die for us. The love starts with Him. v.7- Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. Here we see the direction, from God to us, shown to us, given to us, instilled in us. The only way we can love like this is because we have seen it, received it, been taught it, had it come and reside in us. You have to be born by this love in order to give it out yourself. And then we see that it springs forth out of God s character. He IS love, it is essential to His being. This does not mean He is love and love is God. Instead, it means that He is characterized by such love at the core, the center of His being. Love is who He is and how He functions. Everything He does is motivated by His love for us... before we ve earned it. Again, can you see how different this is from all other faiths? With Allah, he is a task master, requiring strict obedience. There is no love at the core. With other faiths, there is sense of power and authority, but not the relationship. We have to prove our relationship by obedience and then the god(s) will be happy with us and bless us. But with us, He loves and then instills this love in us so we can love others. It starts with Him, and is demonstrated most supremely in the sending of His Son. He did so because that is who He is. Make sense?
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. 10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. I hope you can see how powerful are these words. The sending of His Son was to show to one and all the love He has. Again, allow these words to sink in to your soul, He sent His one and only Son into the world THAT we might live through Him. That s backwards. We should be sending our sons so that we can live. We should be sacrificing since we are the ones who have wronged the other. But this is the kind of God He is. Even though He is in the right and we are in the wrong, still He sends His Son so that we might live through Him. That is love! That is the definition of love. Then notice the clarification that the definition of love is not that we love Him, but that He loved us, loved us enough to give up His Son as a sacrifice of atonement, to make right the wrongs we have committed. Again, we use the words, we know the words, but the weight of them cannot be measured. Almighty God was so in love with us that He was willing to do what needed to be done to atone for, pay for, make up for what we have done to Him, which was most unloving we might say. He loved, we rebelled. We rebelled, He loved. He sent His Son, we rejected, He loved. He calls us to Himself through the One whom He sent to die for us. Folks this is all messed up! Doesn t He know, this is not how it works!!! It s supposed to work like this: He loves, we rebel, we atone, His love for us is restored. Instead, it is He loves, we rebel. In the immediate aftermath of our rebellion, He promises redemption by His own plan. He preps us for the plan s fruition, tells us about it for generations, promising hope even for those who simply trust that it will happen. He doesn t require us to make it right, He is okay if we simply believe Him when He tells us He will fix it! That right there is love, isn t it? You don t have to fix your mess, you just have to believe me when I tell you I will clean it up for you!
And then the day comes when the central piece in the plan takes place. God shows His love by sending His Son. He has Him named Jesus, (Yahweh saves!) reminding one and all that His purpose was to save, to rescue, to reconcile. He sends Him in such a way that we might know for sure, for sure, for sure that it was an act of love. He was born in deplorable conditions even for the day. If He really is Almighty God, then I think we can rest assured that He was able to send Him in some other way. He could have made it happen differently. But then we remember that the purpose of His coming was to demonstrate His love. Ahh, now it makes sense. I remember being asked by someone who will remain nameless if I would like to come and help clean out his goat shed. Now, I loved him but not that much. I m a farm kid, I ve cleaned up after stinky animals. But that is not what I would choose to do as a demonstration of my love. Let me build you something! But God chooses to send His Son, to the delight of the heavenly host, to a location usually relegated to the animals. I guarantee you, no manger scene you see this time of year adequately prepares you for the reality of being born in a stable. Yet that was God s choice for His Son, His one and only Son: stable, manger. It was not a pretty, quaint sight! It was done to make a point. The apostle John puts it this way, For God so loved the world He gave His one and only Son. That s love right there! II. We can only love as we have seen Him love us. vv. 11-21 Any love we have, any love we express is only as a result of love we have received from God. We are incapable of any such love ourselves. It has to first come to us from God. THEN and only then can we spread such love around.
11 Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us. Can you see the concept here? Now, I know there is much more here in I John 4 that we are skipping over this morning, but I trust you can see the concept. We talk about love a lot, for some talking about love is all that they preach. But so often it is backward. It is our love for others that is in mind. And those things are good and true. But the truth is that such a love must first come from God. Our response to His love is to distribute that love, both to God and to others. Our love does not result in His love, rather it is the opposite. Our love is evidence of His love in us. When we love in this certain, self-sacrificial way, it shows that His love has run its course in us. It has taken hold. It has worked. It shows that He is living is us, we are saved, rescued, reconciled. The purpose for His love will be completed: a right relationship with Him and a right attitude toward others. Others will see it, experience it, and want it for themselves. This has always intrigued me, that the type of love that only comes from God and then is shown to others is intended by God to blow people away. They won t even believe it when they experience it. It is so counterintuitive for us to self-sacrificially love others that when it happens, people don t understand it. I remember being questioned by a case worker, a man sent by the government to deal with problem people and situations. He would not believe that anyone would do what Joan and I were requesting to do. He sat at a table and pushed me to tell him the REAL reason we were inviting such a person to live in our home. NOBODY does that, so why are you? But here s the sad truth: too often rather than demonstrate such love toward others, we demonstrate that God has more work to do in us. The truth is that the completion of the work of love in us is a lifelong, never fully completed work in us. And too often we are satisfied with less than what God has for us. In other words, too often we demonstrate that we are people who still need God s love than demonstrate His love in us. That is the sad truth.
13 We know that we live in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. 14 And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. It is not as though He loves and then just tells us to go out and do that to others. He also gives us Himself, His Spirit lives in us, helping us, empowering us, guiding us. He has given us every spiritual advantage to do what He has called us to do. He has shown us the way, He has given us the message, He has even saved people like us! Can you see the connection here between love and saving? Can you see the connection between love and the unlovely, the world? The epitome of love is God sending down His Son to be the Savior of the world! 15 If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in him and he in God. 16 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 him. 17 In this way, love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment, because in this world we are like him. The secret to the source of love is simple: just acknowledge, believe that Jesus is who He says He is. It is the same as it has been from the beginning. Believe that God will be true to His word, that He will fulfill His promises, that He DID fulfill His promise. That is all we can do. That is all that is required of us. And even in that, such faith comes from Him. No one comes to the Son unless the Father draws him to the Son. But that s it! There is nothing we can say or do to add to that. That is our part, simply believe to be true what God has said about His Son.
When this is the case, He lives in us, and we live in Him. It means we fully acknowledge that such our situation could only take place as an act of His love, not ours but His. Again, we see that he IS love. Indeed, when we see such love being lived out in us, it ought to blow us away, proving that God must be at work. In other words, seeing such love exhibited by others is intended to blow their minds. Seeing such love exhibited by us is intended to blow OUR minds. It must be the result of God s love coming down to us. It will mean that we come to rely on that love from above, not only for our eternal life but for how we live day in and day out. We will see ourselves as conduit for the transmission of love from above being distributed to those around us. We will become more loving because the One living in us IS love. Making sense? 18 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. 19 We love because he first loved us. 20 If anyone says, I love God, yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. 21 And he has given us this command: Whoever loves God must also love his brother. There it is again, we love because He first loved us. We can love, we ought to love, we are called to love because of that day when love came down. He made it all possible. In fact, in case we think we are capable of such love, he reminds us that this conduit must flow in certain directions. If we say love is flowing from us to God, then it also means that it is flowing from us to others. We cannot say love is flowing from us to God while at the same time being okay with it not flowing to others. It does not originate with us. It is not our love. It is HIS love, flowing through us. And, it has to flow in multiple directions. If it s His love, then it will flow as He wants it to flow.
I know this passage seems to be repetitious, but there is a flow, there is a purpose in all the repetition in themes. It must mean that God thinks it s important that we get this concept through our thick skulls. Any time we love self-sacrificially, it ought not cause us to pat ourselves on the back, but marvel that God s love has taken root in us. Indeed, if it is not at work in us, it ought to cause us to question whether or not His love is in us, or whether we understand how this is all intended to work. Once more, can you see how this is the opposite of how we think? If we love God enough, He will love us. If we love people enough, God will love us. NO! The only way we can love God and others is if the love of God is in us. And if we do not love others, then it means we have not adequately understood His love toward us. The flow is the opposite of what we naturally think. It had to start with God, it started when love came down! I summarize by quoting Jesus Himself as recorded by this same apostle John, this time in John 15:12-13, My command is this; Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. If we believe this passage is the Word of God, then what should be different about our lives? 1) We will remember where this true, self-sacrificial love started, not with us but with God. 2) We will be in awe that God so loved us that He sent His Son.
3) We will see as our mission the spreading in every direction the love that God has shown to us. 4) The world around us will be different.