[SPEAKER_00]: Hey guys, my name is Jesse, if I've not met you before, tonight's my first time preaching at one of our main services and I feel very privileged to be able to bring this message.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is a final message in our Advent series in which over the last few weeks we've been unpacking one John or nine and ten.
[SPEAKER_00]: Tonight, I'll attempt to deepen the understanding of these verses by examining the surrounding passage, clarifying some of the language we see in, and some of the structural features employed in the verses and unpacking their implications for us.
[SPEAKER_00]: One of the best parts of Christmas is the gifts.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want you to take a second and think of the best gift that you've received at Christmas time.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe it was the one right at the top of your letter to Santa when you're a kid.
[SPEAKER_00]: You've been dreaming about it for weeks and weeks and weeks and it was just sitting there under the tree.
[SPEAKER_00]: Or maybe it was a little more recent where someone who knows you spent time and effort to be able to get you something that just was perfect.
[SPEAKER_00]: With every gift that you receive, we all get one or two stinkers.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're placed at the back of the cupboard or re-gifted at the early stop opportunity.
[SPEAKER_00]: And item you have no use for, or a present where you question if the giver really knows you at all.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let me tell you about one of those gifts that I've received.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have it here.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is my Nick Cox bubble head.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a story behind why I received this gift.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you weren't aware, or couldn't pick it up, because of the S&D player here, I'm a big S&D fan, as unfortunate as that is.
[SPEAKER_00]: And in 2024, I got invited over to Charlottes' House with Matt, who's part of our congregation here.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was a Saturday night, and Jordan Charlottes' brother was there as well, and watched the game with us.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's a big Melbourne fan.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was a wet and windier fair.
[SPEAKER_00]: The skills of both teams were below par.
[SPEAKER_00]: In the third quarter, a tactical change was made where my favorite player, Nick Heinz, was brought on to the field.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was the sub at the time.
[SPEAKER_00]: I hope Nick is a lovely person.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have no ill will against him and I wish him the best in his endeavors.
[SPEAKER_00]: But as a footballer for Essenden,
[SPEAKER_00]: It's safe to say he wasn't my favorite.
[SPEAKER_00]: The D's were the better team on the night, but in the fourth quarter, ascending we're making a comeback.
[SPEAKER_00]: We kicked the last four goals, until guess who got the ball.
[SPEAKER_00]: He picked it up, ran in a circle, dropped the ball, and Melbourne turned it over and went forward and all of our momentum was lost, no chance to win the game.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, obviously, there's more moments in a game than just that one, but Nikkehne was never my favorite player and boy, the Jordan Mac and Charlotte here about it that night.
[SPEAKER_00]: Fast forward to Christmas time, that year.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was once again invited over to the Smiths, Fittina, and handed a present.
[SPEAKER_00]: I unwrapped it and looked at Jordan who had a big smile on his face,
[SPEAKER_00]: Now this is a Nick Cox bubble head.
[SPEAKER_00]: It isn't even a player I didn't like, who at that point had already been delisted by Essenden.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just another player named Nick, who plays for Essenden.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now I get to be reminded of one of my least favorite players with this Nick bubbling he's head back and forth at me.
[SPEAKER_00]: While this gift wasn't my favorite, which I think was by design from Jordan, what this piece of plastic represents to me is more than just the gift itself.
[SPEAKER_00]: This miss invited me over for dinner, providing me with considerable kindness, hospitality and love.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is what I'm gonna be talking about today.
[SPEAKER_00]: Before I do that, let me pray.
[SPEAKER_00]: Heavenly Father, thank you for this space where we can come to know you better.
[SPEAKER_00]: We ask that you help us to hear your message tonight and be challenged by your calling.
[SPEAKER_00]: Guide us to find the love that you have for us this Christmas.
[SPEAKER_00]: Amen.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's take a look at where we've been before we crack into where we're going.
[SPEAKER_00]: So in week one, Darren discussed verse nine with us, and he told us to remember the God the loves us.
[SPEAKER_00]: And to marry our understanding of the cross with Jesus' birth at Christmas time.
[SPEAKER_00]: In week two, Linda spoke on verse 10, and unpacked the atoning sacrifice of Jesus and challenged us to reflect that love onto others.
[SPEAKER_00]: The verses we've been discussing over the last three weeks now are one John, four, nine, and ten.
[SPEAKER_00]: Darren and Linda have done such a fantastic job covering those two verses.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm going to finish things off by expanding the passage a little.
[SPEAKER_00]: And including some additional verses that grow our understanding and eventually our application of the passage.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's have a look at the whole passage.
[SPEAKER_00]: It reads, dear friends, let us love one another for love comes from God.
[SPEAKER_00]: Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God, whoever does not love does not know God because God is love.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is how God showed His love among us.
[SPEAKER_00]: He sent His one and only Son into the world that we might live for Him.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is love, not the we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as an attorney sacrifice for our sins.
[SPEAKER_00]: Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
[SPEAKER_00]: No one has ever seen God, but if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is made complete in us.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, before we jump right into the passage, let me tell you a little bit of the why.
[SPEAKER_00]: The reason John is making this statement, with what feels like such a pointed barb is because it is pointed.
[SPEAKER_00]: The people John is writing to is a small church in Ephesus who's quite young in faith.
[SPEAKER_00]: And they've had some of their leaders abandon them in a really harsh church split.
[SPEAKER_00]: The split arose because the leaders who had left the church were spreading harmful information to an impressionable church.
[SPEAKER_00]: They argued that Jesus was not flesh, as the spirit is good, and therefore could not interact with evil.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, this is harmful because if Jesus is not flesh, there is no suffering.
[SPEAKER_00]: If Jesus isn't human, then he didn't actually die.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if he didn't actually die, then there's no sacrifice.
[SPEAKER_00]: This would call into question the love of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: John is telling the church in Ephesus and us that it is essential that Jesus was a human who was sent, grew and died, or else the sacrifice is meaningless.
[SPEAKER_00]: The second point John is making is that the teachers who left seemingly had to sustain for the flock that they were shepherding.
[SPEAKER_00]: claiming that because of their superior knowledge, they were more impressive, and therefore could treat their community with the lack of respect.
[SPEAKER_00]: We read in the passage, John's Rebuttal to these church leaders, with a pointed remark and squarely at them, but also something that we can take care for no doubt.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, there are a couple of fascinating linguistic and structural choices within the verse that the author, John, has made, that we may not realize when we first read the passage.
[SPEAKER_00]: Initially, when you read the passage, you may read it with our modern understanding of love, a passionate feeling that you fall into, where emotion takes over the brain and we're led by the heart.
[SPEAKER_00]: You might think of movies like Love actually, where it crushes and flings and break-ups are explored.
[SPEAKER_00]: Or you may think of your favorite food or your favorite song, which you love.
[SPEAKER_00]: However, the Greek language presents some complexities that we must be aware of in order to understand this first.
[SPEAKER_00]: There are actually four different words for love within the Greek language.
[SPEAKER_00]: Use differently, depending on the context, or what the author or speaker is trying to get across.
[SPEAKER_00]: Firstly, we have eros.
[SPEAKER_00]: Eros is the love that is associated with romance and sexual desire.
[SPEAKER_00]: It focus on physical attraction, lust, and longing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Valentine's Day is all about errors.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is a fire that burns brightly when the date is fun and conversation is easy, but it can also dim in times of trouble or burn out altogether.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's quite reactive in nature and actions and attitudes towards the recipient can change based on their temperament and whether they love you back.
[SPEAKER_00]: Store gay is an instinctual form of love with familial bonds.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's generally a naturally occurring sensation with members of family that binds them together.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is the loving arms of a mother, or it is the waiting arms of a father ready to catch you when you fall.
[SPEAKER_00]: Or it's siblings who fight all day long that when times of need arise their best friends again.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is grounded in empathy and it's almost biologically encoded into us.
[SPEAKER_00]: Feleo is what you experience with your chosen family.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's the love between deep friends, emphasizing a mutually beneficial relationship.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's nature is one of give and take, in which you and another person share a common bond, vision or hobby.
[SPEAKER_00]: Most people here are sitting next to someone who they share a fileo love for.
[SPEAKER_00]: Communities, sports teams, and friendship groups are all built around fileo love for one another.
[SPEAKER_00]: Finally, the Greek's fourth and final definition of love is agape.
[SPEAKER_00]: Agape is the highest form of love.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is sacrificial and volitional, or in other words, it's an act of the will.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is important, as it's the only definition that is an act not a feeling.
[SPEAKER_00]: You, or God, chooses a garp, I love.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not driven by any form of attraction like Eros.
[SPEAKER_00]: It isn't due to a shared or common belief like Feleo, or it isn't an instinctual connection, like Storge.
[SPEAKER_00]: A garp, is the love that John is writing about in the text.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why is it essential that we understand that this agape is the love written about in the passage?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, specific characteristics of agape are distinct and bring a more powerful and beautiful image to our mind when we reread the verse.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's go over some of these characteristics in relation to our text today.
[SPEAKER_00]: Firstly, it's divine in nature.
[SPEAKER_00]: Verse eight tells us the God is love.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not the God has love, not that he loves when there's something in it for him, that he is love.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is a divine form of love that is always and forever.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's very nature of God to be love.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's out of this nature that God's actions happen.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's Niagara and in his book, a Garpea and Aeros put it this way.
[SPEAKER_00]: When God loves people, this is not a judgment on what people are like, but on what God is like.
[SPEAKER_00]: When we understand that God begins from a place of love, it contextualizes the actions he takes, which leads us to our next trait.
[SPEAKER_00]: A garpe is love in action.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's action-based.
[SPEAKER_00]: It involves an actor that can be traced back to the love being expressed.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's show not tell.
[SPEAKER_00]: God isn't using just empty words to express his desire for us to feel loved.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's giving us evidence.
[SPEAKER_00]: We see how much we mean to him by incredible action.
[SPEAKER_00]: Without the action, the words have less meaning.
[SPEAKER_00]: The proof is in the pudding.
[SPEAKER_00]: We see in verse 10 and Linda Sermon last week that the action is God sending his son as an attorney sacrifice for us.
[SPEAKER_00]: And what an action that is, and it needed to be, the price Jesus is paying is God Gansham, and the father is willing to pay that for us.
[SPEAKER_00]: Next, a Garpe is choice, not a feeling.
[SPEAKER_00]: Most of the time, when we think of the word love, we think of it as a feeling, something that you fall in and out of, a response of the heart.
[SPEAKER_00]: A gapay by contrast is a response of the will.
[SPEAKER_00]: It takes an emotional response out of the equation and instead replaces it with a thought out, committed and decided response.
[SPEAKER_00]: That means so much more than one based on the fleeting nature of a feeling.
[SPEAKER_00]: To prove that it was a consider choice, Jesus was sent as a baby, grew, ministered, and led before he was sent to the cross.
[SPEAKER_00]: We read in Luke 22, 41 and 43, he withdrew about a stone's throw beyond them.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now down and prayed, Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me, yet not my will, but yours be done.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not only was the choice made for Jesus to die, but the Father made that choice over and over and over again.
[SPEAKER_00]: The Father was pleaded with by the Son to reconsider, but there was no other way.
[SPEAKER_00]: Finally, the last characteristic of a garpe love is its unconditional in nature and therefore one way.
[SPEAKER_00]: A gapay love does not require reciprocal love to exist.
[SPEAKER_00]: It just loves.
[SPEAKER_00]: We read in verse 10, not that we loved God but that he loved us.
[SPEAKER_00]: This indicates that the love exists regardless of who we are, what we do, or whether we do or not deserve it.
[SPEAKER_00]: God loved humanity, while humanity didn't deserve it.
[SPEAKER_00]: This love doesn't care about your creed, family, status, gender, ability, what you have or don't have, or what you have or haven't done, whether you love someone or don't.
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, it loves despite that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Martin Luther King Jr. put it this way.
[SPEAKER_00]: They may come a time when it will be possible for you to humiliate your worst enemy or even to defeat them.
[SPEAKER_00]: But in order to love the enemy, you must not do it.
[SPEAKER_00]: The Greek language has another word for love.
[SPEAKER_00]: It calls it a Gapé.
[SPEAKER_00]: A Gapé is more than romantic love.
[SPEAKER_00]: A Gapé is more than friendship.
[SPEAKER_00]: A Gapé is understanding redemptive goodwill for all.
[SPEAKER_00]: Agape is an overflowing love, a spontaneous love which seeks nothing in return, and theologians would say that it is the love of God operating in the human heart.
[SPEAKER_00]: When you rise to love on this level, you love all people, not because you like them, not because their way is appeal to you, not because they are worthful to you, but you love all people because God loves them.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you rise to noble heights of loving the person who does the evil deed, while hating the deed that the person does.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think this is what Jesus means when He says, love your enemies.
[SPEAKER_00]: A Garpey love is transformative, radical, and complex.
[SPEAKER_00]: The point of this verse is to illustrate that this is the kind of love God has for us and the love He expects us to give to the rest of the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: What this passage is saying is that love, a garp-a love is God's unconditional choice to sacrifice His Son, despite our human failures, to express His overwhelming undeniable love for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: When we read this verse, we should interpret the word love with this understanding every time.
[SPEAKER_00]: We send you understanding of what love means in the verse.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's another structural element of the passage worth knowing about that the writer John employed to help us hear exactly what he's trying to say.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now within different pieces of media, horses, riders, and directors will employ different literary structures to help them get their point across.
[SPEAKER_00]: and give their audience a hand in understanding what's happening within the text.
[SPEAKER_00]: As a child, when you're first learning to write a story, you might have been told that you need to have a beginning, a middle and an end.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is a basic story structure, the beginning establishes our characters and the setting with a sense of intrigue about what's to come.
[SPEAKER_00]: Our middle engages with an obstacle, a challenge or a goal.
[SPEAKER_00]: Finally, our end wraps it all up ideally with a satisfying conclusion.
[SPEAKER_00]: One day, the dog left his home.
[SPEAKER_00]: He went to the park, fetched the ball before heading home to sleep.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you want to get a little more advanced, you might have heard of the hero's journey.
[SPEAKER_00]: Created by Joseph Campbell and then adapted by Christopher Vogler in his book, The Riders Journey.
[SPEAKER_00]: This structure is used all throughout media to guide writers in taking their audience on an adventure.
[SPEAKER_00]: Creating intrigue and suspense and ultimately telling a tale in which the audience can relate to the hero.
[SPEAKER_00]: As you can see, there are steps that the writers employ to create their works.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some famous examples of movies that employ the hero's journey are Star Wars, Luke Skywalker's journey from Farm Boy to Jedi, guided by Obi-Wan and Han to rescue Lair and destroy the Death Star.
[SPEAKER_00]: or the Lord of the Rings where Frodo Baggins goes on an epic quest to destroy the one ring, guided by Gandalf and the Fellowship with Sam as his loyal companion.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right as employee structures to help organize the narratives and the audience, sometimes without even knowing it, we'll recognize that a structure is being used.
[SPEAKER_00]: John hasn't used the hero's journey in this passage.
[SPEAKER_00]: However, he has employed a common structure that was used in ancient literature to help him illustrate his point.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, this is important to acknowledge because as we can see from the beginning, middle and end, as well as the hero's journey narrative structures, we are used to mostly linear narratives.
[SPEAKER_00]: However, John isn't using one of these.
[SPEAKER_00]: He is using an approach called the chayastic structure.
[SPEAKER_00]: The structure was used in famous works such as the Iliad and home as Odyssey, and the Bible is littered with chayastic structure.
[SPEAKER_00]: A chayastic structure uses repeating motifs in a mirrored pattern pointing toward the middle, which is the main idea of the story.
[SPEAKER_00]: It looks a little something like this.
[SPEAKER_00]: Theme A is written about, followed by theme B, then C, then D, before reaching the story's central axis.
[SPEAKER_00]: Once this has been reached, the themes are then repeated in descending order before we reach the final theme once again.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let me give you an example.
[SPEAKER_00]: I use one of the most famous biblical stories to illustrate what it is and why it gets used.
[SPEAKER_00]: In Genesis we read the story of Noah and his faithful obedience and God's eventual covenant with him and the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: The writer whose identity is unknown and plays a chastic structure to help the reader understand the story and its narrative.
[SPEAKER_00]: We aren't going to read the whole story, but I'll go through a basic outline of the story up on the screen.
[SPEAKER_00]: The account of Noah begins with God pledging to destroy all flesh.
[SPEAKER_00]: It reads, so God said to Noah, I'm going to put an end to all people for the earth is filled with violence, because of them I'm surely going to destroy both them and the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: The end of the story and the flight account in Genesis is where God reminds Noah of the covenant he has for him and all life on earth.
[SPEAKER_00]: It reads, so God said to Noah, this is the sign of the covenant.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have established between me and all life on earth.
[SPEAKER_00]: You'll see then, one by one, as the story unfolds in Genesis, it is mirried at the back of the story and at the end of the story.
[SPEAKER_00]: On the screen, you can see the rest of the story, and the thematic mirroring within the story.
[SPEAKER_00]: The reoccurring themes make the story easy for us to consume and remember, and the cascading structure guides us the reader to the central narrative point, right there in the middle of the story.
[SPEAKER_00]: But God remembered Noah, and all the wild animals, and the livestock that were with him in the ark, and he sent a wind over the earth, and the waters receded.
[SPEAKER_00]: God remembers Noah.
[SPEAKER_00]: In the midst of the devastation, when all seemed lost, God remembered Noah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Ultimately, this is the point of the Noah's arc story.
[SPEAKER_00]: When all seems lost and you're overwhelmed, God is there with you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Seize you and will work to help you.
[SPEAKER_00]: It centers on God's mercy, and the story's climax is God working with the one person who has listened faithfully.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks to Noah and his righteousness, God saw the beauty of humanity and spread.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now let's look back at our passage and see how John uses the classic structure to help us in our understanding.
[SPEAKER_00]: Remembering that we're looking for mirrored themes cascading to a middle point climax where the ultimate point of the passage can be found.
[SPEAKER_00]: We see our first theme in verses seven and eight, which reads, dear friends, let us love one another.
[SPEAKER_00]: For love comes from God.
[SPEAKER_00]: Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.
[SPEAKER_00]: Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.
[SPEAKER_00]: There is a clear exhortation from John to love because God is love.
[SPEAKER_00]: The argument within these two verses is that you cannot claim to be part of God's family if you do not share his inherent familial trait.
[SPEAKER_00]: Love.
[SPEAKER_00]: Even going so far as to say that if you profess to love God but do not love, then you do not know God at all.
[SPEAKER_00]: Again, we must remember that God's definition of love within this verse is much deeper than our own understanding.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we need to continually read the word love as our fleshed out definition of a garpe.
[SPEAKER_00]: If we then turn to the verses bookend, we see the completion of this theme.
[SPEAKER_00]: No one has ever seen God, but if we love one another, God lives in us and His love is made complete in us.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now the first thing that this verse does is seemingly admit a problem within our faith.
[SPEAKER_00]: No one has ever seen in God.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now it's important to note that in this instance, John is referring to the Father.
[SPEAKER_00]: John proceeds to provide an immediate solution to our problem.
[SPEAKER_00]: Through Jesus' followers, God becomes visible.
[SPEAKER_00]: For the revelation of His inherent characteristic love,
[SPEAKER_00]: We link our start and our end through the knowledge that God is love.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the completion of His love is that when we become the visible evidence of the invisible God, our second theme is logical action and reaction.
[SPEAKER_00]: Verse nine reads, this is how God showed His love among us.
[SPEAKER_00]: He sent His one and only son into the world that we might live through him.
[SPEAKER_00]: God's action is sending his one and only son into the world so that we may die, so that he may die so that we may live.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is a decisive action.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is an gradual realization of God's love, but it's an objective intrusion into the timeline of history.
[SPEAKER_00]: God's action is decisive.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's sacrificial and it isn't just a sentiment.
[SPEAKER_00]: Cross God crossed the boundary from the ethereal to the earthly in the form of a baby.
[SPEAKER_00]: This action calls for a reaction.
[SPEAKER_00]: Rather than being another action from God to His people,
[SPEAKER_00]: verse 11 reads, dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is an imperative from God in response to His action.
[SPEAKER_00]: The implication is that this is necessary.
[SPEAKER_00]: Given the Father's vertical action, in sending His Son to die out of overwhelming love for us, we must in turn respond horizontally to our brothers and sisters and show them love.
[SPEAKER_00]: If we don't, we are stopping the completion of God's love in the world and we're putting a lampshade over his light.
[SPEAKER_00]: John is saying to us and the church in Ephesus that he's talking to, don't worry about the example of others around you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Don't follow the crowd, don't follow societal norms.
[SPEAKER_00]: Your example is, and always will be, the sacrificial love I have for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is how you should be treating those around you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Finally, at the heart of the passage, the caastic structure places the most critical aspect in the middle.
[SPEAKER_00]: As we've learned, a caastic structure mirrors its themes from beginning to end, culminating at the midpoint of the verse.
[SPEAKER_00]: Whether versus message, the lesson we need to know above all else occurs.
[SPEAKER_00]: verse 10 reads, this is love, not that we are loved, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is the center of the verse because we must fully and truly understand God's sacrificial love for us to love others in the same way.
[SPEAKER_00]: Linda walked us through what the atoning sacrifice means last week.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I won't spend too much time on it, but it is worth repeating.
[SPEAKER_00]: The atoning sacrifice is the standard.
[SPEAKER_00]: The reason this structure is so important is that it forces us to realize that we cannot move from God is love our first theme to loving your neighbor without passing through, understanding and internalizing God's sacrifice for our sins.
[SPEAKER_00]: Real love or a gap they involve confronting the ugly reality of sin, which the Father in His infinite grace has done at the cost of Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: not because we have done anything, not because we deserve the because he loves us.
[SPEAKER_00]: Tim Keller says this, the gospel is this, we are more sinful and flawed in ourselves than we ever dared believe.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yet at the very same time, we are more loved and accepted in Jesus Christ than we ever dared hurt.
[SPEAKER_00]: All God us is that we be transformed by His love.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's from that transformation and understanding of God's love in our lives that we should seek to love others.
[SPEAKER_00]: We see how this love affects us.
[SPEAKER_00]: We feel it in our hearts.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why then would we not want to share it with others?
[SPEAKER_00]: When you go and see a new movie and it's amazing, do you not tell other people?
[SPEAKER_00]: When you go to a new restaurant and they've got an awesome menu, do not organize to go back there with your friends.
[SPEAKER_00]: We aren't sharing this because we need to be saved.
[SPEAKER_00]: It isn't to be redeemed for our sins.
[SPEAKER_00]: Those have already been wiped clean on the cross.
[SPEAKER_00]: It isn't about works and deeds.
[SPEAKER_00]: We don't get a better house in heaven than more people we show kindness to.
[SPEAKER_00]: None of that matters here.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's because love, a garp, a love is radical.
[SPEAKER_00]: Life changing, beautiful.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if we don't love others, we've missed the point of the gospel.
[SPEAKER_00]: We haven't understood the cross.
[SPEAKER_00]: Importantly, there's no addendum to the verse that says, you don't have to love them if they're annoying.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just like Jesus was sent for each one of us, we are called to love everyone.
[SPEAKER_00]: Even if just like us, we didn't do anything for God.
[SPEAKER_00]: They haven't done anything for us.
[SPEAKER_00]: We are called to love them.
[SPEAKER_00]: Even if just like we never deserved this sacrificial love, they might not deserve it, we are called to love them.
[SPEAKER_00]: verse 12 puts it so plainly, no one has ever seen God, but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.
[SPEAKER_00]: The completion of God's love is when we understand the sacrifice of the cross, let ourselves be transformed by it and love people
[SPEAKER_00]: Throughout this series, Darren and Linda have asked us to remember the cross when we consider the birth, which I wholly agree with.
[SPEAKER_00]: However, there's an incredible life that happened in the interim.
[SPEAKER_00]: A man who came to Earth as a baby grew up and began to minister calling people to follow him.
[SPEAKER_00]: He called Fishaman,
[SPEAKER_00]: What do he do?
[SPEAKER_00]: He went to the fringes of society where he met with women, children, the poor and the sick.
[SPEAKER_00]: He didn't stay in his comfortable bubble because he knew that for his message to reach as many people as it needed to, someone had to show people love.
[SPEAKER_00]: A Garpey love is God's unconditional choice to sacrifice His Son despite our human failures, to express His overwhelming undeniable love for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: The passage we've been looking at today tells us that this is what we need to be giving out.
[SPEAKER_00]: you and I must love unconditionally, sacrificing for others despite their human failures to express overwhelming undeniable love because that is what we have received.
[SPEAKER_00]: Importantly, not because you have to, but because you have been transformed and you should want to.
[SPEAKER_00]: We have the Holy Spirit to call upon.
[SPEAKER_00]: We have the example of Jesus to follow.
[SPEAKER_00]: We don't have to do it alone.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you're sitting here, this Christmas time and you don't know God, that love is the most fantastic present you could ask for this Christmas.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is sacrificial, it's unconditional, and you do not and never will need to do anything for it.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you're sitting here and profess to no God, to love God, how are you going to give the greatest present anyone could ever ask for this Christmas?
[SPEAKER_00]: As a band comes up, let me pray.
[SPEAKER_00]: Heavenly Father, Jesus, we are in awe of the sacrifice that you have made.
[SPEAKER_00]: We want to truly understand the atoning sacrifice for ourselves and internalize what it means.
[SPEAKER_00]: Out of that knowledge and understanding, help us to see the need this Christmas of those around us.
[SPEAKER_00]: Help us to seek out opportunities to love people, showing people the visible nature of who you are through our actions.
[SPEAKER_00]: Give us a forgiving heart, a patient nature, and allow us to see people how you see them, wholly deserving of love.
[SPEAKER_00]: This Christmas helps us to give the greatest present of all.
[SPEAKER_00]: Amen.