Love Defined | Week 1

Hey. It's good to be here. We're starting a new series today called Love Defined, and and I and I just wanna show you a quick video clip of this incredible, beautiful love story proposal that happened in Santorini, Greece, I think last year. And it's just it's it's it's kinda cool. Just watch what happens here.

Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans. No matter how much you plan, sometimes things at the proposal can get in the way. Oh. Kevin Arietta decided to propose to his girlfriend of four years, Natalie, on vacation in Greece. They're in Santorini. No. Uh-oh. And so then Oh, no. No. No. No. Yeah.

Is that an ice cream sandwich? That's a no. It's a candy bar. So everything's going great. She looks like she's excited. Does the hands on the face. There's the ring, and there's Oh, no. Person number one Oh, and person number two.

How about that? When he had to refilm it, that probably wasn't as exciting because this the the surprise is already over, but they reenacted it. But true story, it really happened. And and I was thinking about that. It's like, here's this beautiful proposal of love in this beautiful setting and this love story,

and this couple just walks right in the middle of it all and is completely oblivious to it happening. They're standing there with all this happening, and they're eating snacks and pointing to all the other things they wanna go see. And I go, it's kinda the same when it comes to the greatest love story ever.

Jesus coming into this world, becoming a man. God the son becoming a man and coming into this world diving into our chaos and proposing this love for us where he lived a life we couldn't live, died a death we couldn't return from, and he loves us in that way.

And a lot of us, we miss it. And sometimes, even though we know it as Christians that come to church,

sometimes we get so distracted by the other things we're looking at that we just walk through our day and almost don't notice it anymore. We just walk right through the middle of it without it letting it drive how we live. And and that and that's true. And so this series we're gonna go through is called Love Defined.

And what we're gonna be doing is we're gonna be going through first, second, and third John, three books of the Bible. Like, how long is this gonna take? Well, if you look up first, second, and third John, they are a total of seven chapters in total totality.

First John's only five chapters. Second John's one chapter. Third John's one chapter. And so we're gonna be looking at it because what's happening is in these books, we get the idea and the definition of love, hence, love defined.

And what we're gonna see is the big idea for this week to open up the series is simply this. God doesn't just display love. He defines love. He is the very definition of love, and and and we are called to love one another the same way God loves us.

And we're gonna take that apart. We're gonna look at this because what's happening in first, second, and third John is they're written by a guy named John. Yeah. Pete. His name was Pete, but he wouldn't know. And it's John, the same guy who wrote the Gospel of John, fourth book of the New Testament.

He was the last surviving disciple and one of probably the last survivor of of anyone that had actually walked with Jesus when he was here in bodily form. He's probably 85, 90 years old now. It's happened this late. And it's over sixty years after Jesus had died and resurrected.

And what he's been leading and pastoring churches and shepherding them. And he writes these letters in response to some of these churches in this area. So they were meant to go to all these churches. And he was confronting this idea that they had these false teachers.

They were people that had been in the church and then stepped out because they'd formed a different view of who Jesus was. It's like they saw God incorrectly.

And what they saw God incorrectly was they didn't believe he came as a man. Not in in the flesh. He didn't come in come in in the flesh as a man because of this idea of Gnosticism, which is they believe that, you know, flesh sins. They're sin. And so all flesh is bad.

Therefore, God would not have entered and and taken on the form and become a man because that would make him be bad.

That make him be tainted with evil, which is an incorrect view. And it actually dismantles the entire gospel and the whole biblical narrative that points to how God made atonement for us so we can enter into relationship with him. So it dismantles, and as Warren Wiersby, great theologian once said, truthfully, he says, what we think about God determines how we think about everything else.

So once they got this different view of who Jesus was, they got a different view of how you find truth and how you live. So then they ended up also attaching to these other secret religions where they said that you gotta know this deeper truth, this secret truth.

And they knew that they knew this truth. And since you have to join the club, and then you'll learn this list of secret truth, and that's what transforms you. That's what you need to know. You need to know the secrets. And on top of that,

that caused them then to act in a way that was very contrary to how they didn't become like Jesus because they redefined who Jesus was.

They thought it was all about knowing things to make you right. And because it was about knowing the list and not agreeing with that, they would not be obedient to God's word. And primarily, they were very unloving people.

They didn't love the way we're called to love one another. So he really goes after this idea of he's trying to teach in these letters a theological stance and a practical point of how how do you know you're a Christian? Because these church workers are like, are they right? What's going We're freaked out. Why are they teaching these things? And they're not mean. He goes, it's simple.

Do you believe that Jesus came? That God the Son became a man, walked amongst us in the flesh, lived a life we couldn't live, died a death we couldn't return from, and atoned for our sin, and made us right with God because he loves us? And because of that love, do we love one another?

That's how you know if you're a Christian. And that's what he's writing to talk about. So we're gonna go through this and it's gonna define love in practical ways, theological ways, but it's really defined by God himself.

And what we're gonna do is we're gonna start in the verses that we just read to you. So we're going through seven chapters, and we're gonna Quentin Tarantino, this series, by starting in chapter four.

Yeah. It's like that movie where it starts with the the end game, and then you go, how did that even happen? And then you go back and find out how we got there. And and and so what it means is chapter four is like this this right in the middle of these these three letters. And it really does

finalize this is exactly what he's talking about. This idea that we have to really understand the love of God so then we can love the way God loves us.

That's the whole point of all of this in in in defending the faith and all of that. So even in trying to defend against false teaching, it's not about winning an argument. It's about, let's get to the practical of what does it mean. Where did the false teaching take them? Where do they need to go? And what we're gonna see right here is like God doesn't just display love. He defines love. And it looks like in the verses we already read. There's three points in here on how it's defined. And the first point is love receives.

Love receives. That's these first two verses. Dear friends, let us continue to love one another. So he does say we need to love one another because he already shared that in chapter three. He goes, for love comes from God.

And anyone who loves is a child of God and knows God. But anyone who's not love does not know God for God is love. So he said God is love. Now a lot of people misread that. And they think, I'm a child of God because I love people. But when we do that, we're actually loving in what we think is love.

And what we're really saying is, love is God, not God is love. You realize those are two completely different concepts. When you say love is God, you've now defined God by the way you think what love means. And you've limited God to just that definition. God is love does not mean that's all he is.

God is love means that's his attribute. He has the attribute of love, perfect love. When he says God is love, it's saying if you wanna know what love is, God is the very definition of what love is. But he's also holy, and righteous, and merciful, and wise, and just. He's like He's he's All of these things perfectly

together. When you pull this one out and make that the only thing, that's where you get into the weirdest ideas in teaching.

And when you think God is just love and you define love the way we define love, then it means I don't really need to do this or follow him on that or trust him on this because I'm just I just love peace and love, man. Nice vibes, all that kind of stuff. But that's not what it is. He defines it.

And he doesn't open up so much with a command, but a claim about God's various nature, that he is love. And the key point there is what is this love? What is this love? And in here, this word is is is agape for love. See, in Greek, see, in English, we say love, and that can mean a lot of different

Matter of fact, when when I whenever I used to do weddings and do marriage premarital counseling back in the day, one of the first questions I asked, because I actually asked them separate, I asked the future husband and wife, define love for me. You'd be shocked how many times y'all define it differently.

And yet, hey, what do you think is gonna get you through this marriage? What do you think is, we're in love. Oh, you love? Yeah. She loves me? Yeah. Okay. You're using the same vocabulary, but you both have a different dictionary. And when two people say they love each other, you assume you mean the same thing.

When we hear this God is love and we need to love one another, we imprint what we think love is on that instead of letting God define it. And the Greek helps us define that. Because there's four primary words for love in Greek.

And they're all good. They're all things we should do. But there's one particular that he's talking about here. There's one word that's phileo. Phileo. That means a brotherly love, sister love, a comradeship, this idea we're we're there for one another. We actually we named a city after it. Philadelphia.

City of brotherly love. There's also a kind for a love between a husband and wife. I love you like a wife or a husband. It's called eros. It's where we get erotic. That's all I can say about that in church. So, and and and then there's a third another one that's Sturge I I can't never pronounce it. But it's it's family

love. Love as a family. So that one, a lot a lot of shouting and guilt inducing and and and and panic attacks, all that kind of stuff. No. Just kidding. Just the the family type love. Those are all good. Those are all qualities we should have.

But when God says for us to love one another and he describes God's love for us, the word used in this entire passage on love is agape.

God loves us with agape love. And that's really defined in Greek as it's a love of God. It's a God love. But yet he also calls us to love one another. Not with filet o, not with that. It's it's it's just we're supposed to love the same way. And that is the challenge. Because agape literally means not a feeling. It's a willed,

self giving commitment that is sacrificial. So Boston was right when it said when they sang, it's more than a feeling. It's actually really not even about a feeling. It can generate feelings, but you don't have to feel it to do it. And also, when that kind of love comes in, it's it's not measured

by how strongly you feel the love someone has for you. It's measured by what it cost that person to love you. That's the love

we're called to have for one another because that's the love that God has for us. And the reason he starts off with saying that God loves us so much, because look at verse nine and ten. He says, God showed us how much he loved us by sending his one and only son into the world so that he might have eternal life through him.

This is real love. Not that we love God, but that he loved us and sent his son as a sacrifice to take away our sins.

And when you jump down to verse eighteen and nineteen, it says, such love has no fear because perfect love expels all fear. He's talking about agape again. This this love. He goes, if we are afraid, it is for fear of punishment and shows that we have not fully experienced his perfect love. We love each other because he first loved us. So keep saying,

I will never be able to do this love if I don't truly have received that love from God, and I have to receive it and truly believe it.

And receive is not a one time thing. It starts with that first time you you accept Jesus as Lord and Savior, so to speak, and you invite him. But this is a receiving that it says to abide in. It means that we gotta continually receive it and go back and remember it because we can't do this. We will never love others and even love God back until we have embraced and understand

truly how much God loves us, and we're not living out of a fear of God, that type of fear that says I'm getting punished. That's the idea that I have to go earn God's love. I'm trying to do all the right things, and I'm afraid that he's gonna be mad at me. If I live with that attitude, I will never be able to consistently love this way. And a matter of fact, you will react to a sermon like the one I'm giving right now with either frustration,

anger, or or total defeat. We have to embrace it. It's like this. How many of you like french fries? Anybody hate french fries in here? Because you're not an American. Just kidding. Love french fries. How many like french fries with ketchup on them? Yes. Yes.

Okay. You might be in my camp. How many of you only like french fries with ketchup on them? Yes. Two normal people right here. Rest of y'all need counseling. Tartar sauce. Yeah. Tartar sauce. On ket, on those, you need those with fish and chips. Otherwise, you can't eat fish and chips.

And and and and you have to have either you have to have cocktail sauce with shrimp or there is something seriously wrong with you. Is there anyone here that could eat a shrimp just straight up just you just eat it? Oh my gosh. You like to eat washers too, don't you?

Yes. Yeah. You probably are Seahawks fans. That that that there's the connection. I get it now. But back to ketchup and french fries. Okay? See, this crowd always gets me off track. My daughter is just like me. Now, didn't say I don't like french fries without ketchup. I'll eat them,

but I won't eat as many, and I'm not as happy about it. And I get mad like, oh, they didn't get any ketchup. We have no ketchup. This is gonna be so frustrating. It's just when I have the ketchup, it's easy.

It's easy. And I will eat more. I'll go further into that. My my son used to work at McDonald's when he a teenager, and he brought home a whole bag of french fries from McDonald's.

And and and and and my daughter is the same as me. She's even worse about ketchup. She puts ketchup on her ketchup. That's how much she loves ketchup. She eats after the service, she goes, you know me, dad. I would drink ketchup.

And so we got the fries. We're like, yeah. And I ran, get the ketchup. Yeah. And I ran, I go, uh-oh. Only one little squirt came out. And my daughter quickly grabbed two fries and she goes, at least I got to eat two the right way.

And then we started eating them a little bit, but he's like, oh, you know, we we didn't eat them all. We didn't eat them all. See, can force myself, and I'm not saying I absolutely hate french fries without them. It's just I'm not gonna naturally dive in. That's Jesus. That's his sacrifice.

That's his love for us. The catch up of Christ is what allows us to love all of us french fries out there. It's that's true. If you disconnect from that, it becomes a burden to love. It becomes a task and becomes something that you're just trying to force yourself because you're afraid God will punish you if you don't.

And the key is to remember his love. That's why he says you can love because he loved you first. Go back to his love. What it says he died, he sacrificed. That word for sacrifice is so much deeper. It's it's it's it's a deeper form of love. And he's called us to it.

But we will never do it consistently or do it without the wrong attitude if we don't understand this. Jesus loves you more than you can love yourself, and he's not mad at you.

What he did on the cross was he took our shame. He took the guilt. He took that. If you if we accept that, if you profess that and you just accept that love and forgiveness, all you have to do when you sin is repent.

Hand it back to him, reminded that he already died for it. You don't have to live in guilt and shame. You just have to walk away from it and walk back towards what he's called you to walk towards. That's it.

You don't have to avoid him. You don't have to say, oh, I'm sad that you I I disappointed you again. You don't have to mope around. God's not like, hey, give me some distance before you talk to me, man. I'm a little bit upset. That that's what your your wife does to you, not not Jesus.

Oh, man. That got really quiet and cold in there. So now I can't talk to the ladies for a while until they settle down and they're not mad at me anymore. I'm teasing. You guys get that. Right? If you're new here, don't panic. No. It's it's this idea that he's not angry. And, yeah, he'll discipline us. The Bible says that.

That might be God trying to get your attention. He'll allow things that will stop you going down a road. He'll he'll make things like, why is this hard? Because sometimes he'll allow things in your life to get your attention. But discipline is different than punishment.

Punishment is concerned with the past and what you did. Discipline's about direction for the future and where you're going. Good parenting disciplines. It doesn't punish.

And how you know you've fallen into punishment is when you get really frustrated. You finally do something because your knuckleheaded kid is not listening to you. And yeah, you give them I'm not saying you abuse them. You might do the same thing you would do if you're disciplining, but you do it in anger. You do it in anger. Yeah. You think you're gonna well, then fine. You're not doing this.

And it was nothing about the future, about redirection. It was more about you're gonna pay for what you did because you made me mad, which is a good parenting sermon, by the way. You can remember that. Discipline is calm. It's more like, I'm trying to help you get to the right path.

And that's what God will do because he loves us. He's not angry with us. We don't have to worry about that. And so many of us carry around guilt and shame that you don't have to if you just give it back to Jesus. But then some of us out of fear of the sin, we just can't seem to get past it.

And it hurts. We get stuck with hurts too. And frustrations. And if we really believed, what are you afraid of on trusting God? Because if you really believed he loved you this much, can you just believe it and accept it? And that's surprisingly, that's how it helps unlock us loving others.

There's the mystical power of the Holy Spirit involved, but there's also a practical reason while receiving it, meaning looking at it closely. That's why you take communion. Remember the cross. Why? Why does he want us to remember the cross? Because we wanna remember what he did to rescue us from ourselves.

Because sometimes we forget that. And when we forget that, we get judgmental, and we think we're better off than other people, and that's why we get frustrated. Do you ever get really impatient with people that you're so impatient, like, why do they keep doing this? Why can't they figure this out? Why can't? I'm so angry with them. They're probably sitting right next to you right now. That's probably the person that does that to you the most.

You know how you'd stop being that way? How you can have more patience?

Sit before the Lord and look at the sin and look at how many times he's forgiven you. How much patience he's had with you. The fact that he came and died for you and me. I I here's what I do. I sit when I whenever I sit for the Lord, I'm getting so impatient with my life is so unfair. Why are they mean? Why can't they figure out why my kids won't do this? Why is my boss a jerk? Why is And you start to get built up, you're so angry, and then you go sit and let the Lord show you your own sin and your own And you see his incredible grace and absolute love and patience,

and all of a sudden you're like, I think I should probably be more patient with the people around me because God was so patient with me.

I mean, the thing that blows my mind about the love and grace of God is think about this. When I sit there and I sit before him and I'm convicted and I confess, I can't believe I did this again. I know that this isn't good for me. God said this isn't the road to go down. And yet, got this attitude. I did this thing. Whatever it is, I've gotten impatient and blown up. Right? I've I've done it again. And this is like, alright. I keep doing this and I don't wanna do this. If you think it's all about you earning God's love, you get frustrated with that and you finally just give up. Like, can't do it. God, I can't do it.

Guys, commitment to Christ is not about perfection. It's about continuing. It's about not quitting. It's about staying in the fight. It's about going back to his love. Receive his love over and over again, and that'll help you share his love.

Because I sit there and go this blows my mind that I can sit there and do the same thing, and then ask for forgiveness and go, okay. That's cool. Jesus did. You're right. And I can go back, and then, two days later, do the same thing again. Sometimes twenty minutes later do the same thing again. And I go back to God and sometimes I feel like, God, it's me again.

And then you feel stupid and you don't even wanna do it because you think God's mad at you and you think that he's like a human that says you keep doing this. I don't trust you anymore. But how could he not trust us? Before we were even born, he already knew every sin we were gonna do.

He climbed on the cross and took all of those sins on in advance. He already paid for them. He already died, and the death of his was more than just the death. It says he died and sacrificed, gave up his life. That was more than just the moment he died. He didn't just take a beating for us and die a horrible death.

It says, God, the father, made him sin. That means he imputed, put all the guilt, all the shame, all the horror of every sin ever committed. Jesus had that laid upon his soul. And when I think of that, I can't

I can't cannot quite ever understand the depth, the height, the width, as it says in the New Testament, of God's love. When you sit in that, it's not about hellfire and brimstone, look at your sins, horrible people. It's the fact that we are sinners, and God was so agape in love with us. And the more we embrace that,

it unlocks our ability to love others. So I'm not saying you better go love others and get it right because you're stuck in the fear. That's not what I'm saying. What I am saying and what he's saying and what the bible says is if I truly embrace and receive the love of Christ,

I should love others naturally. That should that should be a byproduct. That's what he's saying. You know you're a Christian when that starts happening because you've actually embraced the love. So if you don't love others, I'm not saying perfectly,

but if you consistently refuse and you will not love in the way it's called, you know, if you can't get past the point of just going to church and just showing up at church instead of showing up as the church, there's a problem with your relationship with God.

It's not force yourself to do it. The first thing I would say is sit back and go, why do I find it impossible to do this kind of love? And you're either believing a lie, you see God incorrectly, you think he's forcing you and you better do this, and then the fear, the punishment, all that, and that gets discouraging.

Or you're trapped in a sin that's become your precious. My precious. And you can't possibly imagine your life being lived without keeping that.

That's why we have to look at the love of Christ. And you gotta receive it all the time. But you know what? I'm gonna do something I've done. There's already been several 100 people that have done this. I think I just explained what the gospel is, what Jesus did for us. The way you're made right with God

is not go do good things and then he loves you. You can't earn it. We can't be good enough because God's perfect. And that's why him coming in the flesh is so critical and the false teaching just takes you away from the gospel because he came so he could take on what we couldn't. He came

and settled the justice issue of God so that sin was judged in him as opposed to in us. And how you get that right is it says if you confess with your mouth and believe in your heart that Jesus did that, you will be saved. It starts with his grace. You have to accept it. You can't earn it, it's received.

You just have to believe it and accept it. And what you have to believe and accept is, I can't do it on my own, that's what being a sinner is, But Jesus did it for me, and I need to turn to him. I need to confess and profess. Confession is not like I'm so horrible. It's just, I've I've done this. I can't do it. Thank you.

That's what it means to be a Christian. So I'm gonna stop. I'm gonna pray with some of us.

Because I think there's some people in this room right now that you you need that love. You've never accept you might have been in church for your whole life. Have you ever just confessed Jesus is Lord and confessed that you're a sinner and professed that Jesus is the answer and invited him? Have you ever accepted that proposal of love?

Have you said yes? So I wanna do it. And so what we're gonna do is we're gonna bow our heads and close our eyes, and I'm gonna invite some of you to pray with me. And make sure you all bow your head and close your eyes. Last night, were staring at me, and it's creepy. I don't want that.

Just do what I asked.

Now, if you understand how much God loves you, you don't have to carry that shame or guilt or that perfectionism. You can just confess it, profess, and God will take that sin away and he'll take your hand for life.

And if you've never done that and you'd like to do that right now and receive that love right now for the first time, I'm gonna ask you to just hold your hand up because that's symbolic, but it's powerful for you. I see those hands going up.

And what you're doing is you're actually symbolically holding out your sin to him. And he's taken it. And then you're gonna take his hand for life. So with all these hands raised, just if that's you, just pray something like this. Dear Lord, thank you.

That even though I'm a sinner, which means I can't do this, I can't be perfect, and even when I've tried to be good, I've gone about it my own way. I haven't trusted you. I haven't followed you.

But you came and you lived a life I couldn't live and died a death I couldn't come back from. So right now, in the best way I know how, I hand you my sin and I wanna take your life hand for life and accept that love and that forgiveness you are giving me that I don't even deserve. And I'm thankful.

So help me as I take your hand to walk from here and learn how to live from it. Not get caught in the fear and the trap of trying to live for it, but just receiving your love each and every day. I pray this in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen.

Amen. There was a ton of hands, probably over a 100 in here again. That was awesome.

But don't try that yourselves. I'm a professional and you're not. So See, it wasn't that hard. I didn't even do that great of a job of it, but Holy Spirit knows what he's doing. Love receives.

The second thing it does is love gives. Like I just read in in nine and ten. Here's what Jesus did. It's what we just talked about. But that verse, that word for sacrifice in verse 10, it's not about some vague gesture of goodwill. It's a specific technical word of sacrifice at cost.

And if we're gonna love each other the way God called us to and allows us to and the way he loved us, which is what it's saying we we should do, we're gonna have to love our church and love one another in a costly way. You don't just show up at church, you show up as the church.

Coming in here is not just about your own little personal spiritual growth plan. It's about us being the body of Christ. And like John said, they will know you're Christians by your love, agape love. The world is not gonna see we're Christians because we're nice to each other.

It's gonna see we're Christians because we sacrifice for one another. And what we're really doing is we're sacrificing to be a part of the kingdom that God empowered us and allowed us to do. That's what he built us for. He built us for this kind of love.

And and and it comes because it's a response to understanding how much we've been loved. We don't have to be fearful.

We don't have to worry, as he says in 1819. We can go forward with what God asked us to do. Not to get him to respond with love, but the fact that we are responding to his love. Going, wow, if he would do that for me,

he loves me better than I love myself, then the things he's asked me to do to follow him, to love in order to love one another, to reach people for Jesus, I should want to do that. Because, wow, the way I feel after accepting his love, he's saying, and here's where life is found.

It's not a you're not paying for something. This is not a version of, yeah, you know what we ought to do? We should love each other. We need to sacrifice. And that's why for your kid to play in this little league, you gotta volunteer in the snack bar two times during the season. That's not what we're talking about.

It should be a natural response, like I said, but it is costly. There's a story how King David understood this even before Jesus came, his relationship with God. He's called a man after God's own heart in the Old Testament.

He'd become king. And you know, if you know his story, he he he paid the stupid tax often as I talked about last week. He would do things, but yet he's called a God a man after God's own heart. You know why? Because he Commitment is not, like I said, about perfection. It's about continuing.

Every time he was confronted and realized he had done sin, he felt so bad. He would confess. He would just confess it. And the Lord would reco would would would redeem him. He'd say, it's good. I I've forgiven you. And then but then the Lord would say, here's what I want you to do now.

Was it telling him I want you to do this as you're you're gonna go prove that I can trust you again?

No. It was you were going this way in sin. You've stopped and confessed. You don't just repentance isn't just stopping for the sin. It's like, now trust me and get back on the path that I know that you're really meant to be, and that's over here. So he did this one time. He'd done a census.

He's he's a great king, and God had blessed him, and all of sudden he did a census to count his army. Now that seems like no big deal, but it was because God knew his heart. He knew what he was doing. He's like, I wanna see just how powerful I am. And God's like, you're you're losing track of what you're supposed to be doing this for. And so he sent a plague in the land because he's king. That's how he's gonna redirect David. He's gonna get his attention because he did love his people. He's like, what is going on? And he realized right away that this is happening because God's trying to get my attention.

And so he went to the Lord. He confessed. I have sinned. I shouldn't have done this. I'm so sorry. And God restores him. He's like, it's good. Then he says, I want you to go out to this place. You'll see it. And I want you to build an altar there and and and and worship.

And so he does it. Remember the order of this, guys, because we get these out of order. When does he say, I want you to go do this, and when does David respond? After he has been reconciled. After he's forgiven. It has nothing to do with his forgiveness. It has everything to do with his direction in life.

He goes, get back on track with why you are who you are and what I've called you to do. So he rides out there, he gets there, and it turns out that there's this threshing floor he wants to buy, and he ends up buying more of the land. But the threshing floor where they thresh out the wheat, and and and he said, this is the spot, but it's owned by a guy named Arun of the Jebusite. And he goes, hey, I want this land. The Lord told me I wanna buy it, brought a whole bag of silver overpaid for it and said, I wanna give you this because I wanna build an altar here. And Aruba says, well, this is for the Lord, you can have this land. You can have that spot. Matter of fact, I'll go get some of my wood. I'll help you build the altar for free, and I'll bring some of my cattle, and you can offer those as a sacrifice.

And David, of course, said, oh, that's so much easier. Thank you. I thought this was gonna be hard to follow the Lord, but since you're gonna do all the work for me, that is awesome. I can just sit here and enjoy the worship, and I didn't have to do nothing. That's not what David said, by the way. He said, no.

I will not take from you and then offer to God something that cost me nothing. Sacrifice. Did he do that for God's love? Did he do it just to prove to God that he loves him back?

He did it as a response to listening to God's word to say, you're right. Instead of counting my army, I should be following your will and living out the purpose you gave for me. And part of that was this worship. And here's the crazy part, what God did in that. I've stood on that threshing floor

because I've been to the temple now. That land he bought is where they eventually got said, here's where the temple's going.

And and and and I've stood there because the Temple Mount, temple's destroyed, but you still see this round circle where they left that threshing floor open because that is where when they built the temple, God had in place the holy of holies is right in that spot. And the whole temple,

the whole system of sacrifice was to prepare us to understand what Jesus did. It was all pointing to Jesus and his love. The temple was all about a symbol of God's agape love to rescue us. And David got to be a part of that, and he joyfully did that. And as he bought that land and realized that, he got excited.

Then God said, you're not gonna be the one to build the temple. Your son is. He goes, that's okay. He gave him over half of his wealth. He just poured all in, bought all the supplies, built it all up. He set his son up to go, there. You just you can build it now. You gotta do the the work, but I've set you up. He was excited to sacrifice financially.

He gave from that. He worshipped. He went after it. And when God just told him this simple dumb thing, I just want you to go build this simple altar and worship in this one spot, and and and he paid for it. He gave. He sacrificed. He had no idea that that simple act of of of faithfulness in giving

turned into the entire temple. When God asked us to serve and give, he's gonna do the same thing. We get to be a part of something. It's not you owe these dues, you better pay. And ask yourself, if you come to church and you've a Christian for a long time and you show up at church, just ask yourself,

which response do you give?

Do you allow someone else

to do the offering to God that he's asked from you? Do you let someone else double down and serve extra because you don't use your spiritual gift to serve? Do you let the other people, the the small percentage of people in this church that give way beyond a tithe, you let them cover your offering? Just ask yourself that.

And if you do, there is something wrong with the way you understand God's love because you don't trust him. You don't really believe that those things are actually not a requirement that's getting something from you.

If that's what you think it is. It's the church or God just wants something from me. You don't believe that his love is so great that just like David realized, it's something he wants for you. And it's the way we love each other, and it's the way we point people to Jesus, just like what David did.

And it's bigger than what you think. You think, well, my little bit won't matter. It matters huge. And it's what God built us for. It's what it built us for. Because ultimately, not only does love give,

but it flows. It flows through us. That's the last point. If you look at verse eleven and twelve, he says, dear friend, since God loved us that much, we surely ought to love each other. God lives in us. And I love this last statement. And his love is brought to full expression in us. Love flows.

There was a a a an Ohio sheriff named Doug Timmerman that years ago, he found out and and and at the University of Ohio Medical Center, he found out that there was a woman that was gonna die, desperately needed a kidney transplant, and they they hadn't found anybody. And he just went in and off and and donated it.

Never met her, didn't know her, just donated a kidney, saved her life. So, yeah, he did this loving thing that impacted her. But it didn't just flow through him into her, It flowed and it transformed and it and it inspired other people. It reached more people because it started this chain reaction,

kinda like a really committed version of the pay it forward. I'm gonna pay for the guy's coffee behind me thing, like Starbucks. They ended up within that next month, five more people that were dying got five per strangers that went and donated a kidney because of what he did.

It flows through us, guys. When you do one simple act, you sacrifice one way, other people will do it. Other people come to know Lord. Other people, you know, that's what happens.

In the same way, when God asked us to be loving this way, yes, it's a love that we will never do consistently and never understand it independent of seeing and embracing how great of a sinner we are, but how great of a savior Jesus is, and how much he loves and is patient and has grace and mercy. Because then we can trust and have that power. It's the catch up, man. And we can then love others, and then we will choose to give sacrificially

of our time, of our money, of our lives. Because we know that we trust God for the rest of life. And he said, this is what I built you for. And in the end, when we do that, guys, man, ladies, you're just like like us as the men, I just I wanna speak to the guys because I is one. What I'm talking about here

is what we long for as men.

The thing you think you're missing, the thing you there's gotta be more, or you feel frustrated, you feel depressed, or you feel inadequate, you feel like, I just wanna be the guy. I I wanna be a hero for my home. I wanna be six you just you want to know that you were doing something that was greater than yourself. It's why we like we it's why we like war movies. And you watch that heroic people, you go, I wanna know that I had courage, and I was the man who stood up. I wanna know that I did that. I wanna know that it changed things. I wanna know I had a legacy. And we run after it thinking my career's gonna give it to me, or sex is gonna give it to me, or entertainment's gonna give it to me, or watching sports is gonna we run after all these things.

There's nothing wrong with those things. It's what we try to make them fulfill, and then we end up just not happy. And then you come here and you hear this thing about giving and sacrifice. You're like, I'm not gonna do that. You're just trying to manipulate me. Guys, this is the answer to what you're longing for.

The thing that is driving you, God says, this is the way. This is it. This is what we were built for, all of us. But men, we're supposed to lead the way. And in the church, men, we woefully do not lead the way in this because we think that we gotta find something out there.

We are walking right through the middle love story, and engaging in that type of love is the answer, and we're pointing at that while eating a snack.

And it's all because we just I don't know what it is, but we are caught up with just not understanding how much God loves us. Because if you can understand how much he loves you, you can trust that what he's asking you to do, you don't need to be afraid of.

You're gonna find what you want there. But we just have to have the courage to just trust. Stay in the fight. Just don't quit. Just let it. Love's received. Receive it before you go you try to give it. Love gives. Jesus at full cost, and we need to be the same way. Not just a jester. Really do it.

And then love flows. It's meant to move. We get to see people's lives change. You realize that even John, like, you know, in Jesus in the gospels told his disciples, you're gonna do more than I do.

What he meant is, you're gonna do it through me, the Holy Spirit. I'm gonna empower it. But you're gonna get to actually do and see more life change and see more things happen than I did in my time on earth.

Now he died to give it and make it possible. It's all about him. But what he's saying is, I'm inviting you. I'm gonna let you be the full expression of my love to the world. That's what he's saying. We get that's what we're built for. That's the thing we long for. But we get caught up in the distractions.

And I sit there and I go I when I used to read that, I go, that's kinda weird. I can't imagine that. And then I realized Jesus had a 120 disciples when he died. That's how many people stuck with him at that moment. Peter gets up a few about a month later and preaches a sermon, and 3,000 people come to Christ.

Look at how many more people. He just pointed to Jesus, then Jesus pointed to Jesus. Although Jesus is the one that's pointing him. Jesus just threw he so Peter gets to it. He didn't have to go do that for God's love. He's saying, you're gonna get to enjoy being the tip of the spear and getting to see. That's the thing we long for. I made a difference.

He raised up 11 primary leaders. He had 12. One ditched on him and betrayed him, but he had these 11 primary leaders he raised up to go out. In my thirty six years, I have raised up thousands of leaders. And I'm not bragging. I'm saying Jesus was right. When I trust his love, I've been able to see legacies changed,

families saved, and a whole family's coming to Christ then, and then the kids do, and then the grandkids. An entire courses of eternity changed by billing to just trust God's love and let it saturate me so much that I'm gonna trust him where he chose to go. So, hey, you love me sacrificially and you gave, I'm giving.

You let it flow and go through you, I'm gonna do the same thing. And I'm telling you, this is where it's at, guys. And if you don't wanna believe me, believe my dad.

I wanna tell you about the last conversation I had before he died. I didn't know he was gonna die. He had a massive heart attack twelve hours after I had this conversation. Never talked to him again. He died. But if you don't know my father, set it up, he was the type of man that every man in here wish he was

from this world's perspective and even the other world's perspective. He was a professional athlete. He was almost as good looking as me. It's pretty impressive so far. He but he was a a soldier. He fought in World War two, Korea, and Vietnam, but he didn't just fight in those wars. Bona fide war hero in all three.

He led men well. I talked to several men that served. I tracked one down that I didn't even know these guys were alive years ago. And he wanted to thank my dad. I told him he had passed. And he goes, all of us guys that stealth work together because your dad moved on and other stuff. And

he goes, we've we've stayed in contact. And he goes, we often think of your dad because he saved our lives so many times. He was the bravest guy we knew. He would go first. He knew what to do. There'd be situations that most men would get their men killed. Not only did he not get us killed, we were able to succeed.

And every one of us is thankful because we wouldn't have been married because they're all single before that. We wouldn't have our wives. We wouldn't have our kids. We wouldn't have our grandkids. And it was all because this man stood in that gap and stayed in that fight. He had courage, he was a leader, he sacrificed.

And I'm talking to him about life this last conversation.

And as we're talking, he looked at me and he he didn't get mushy very often. Matter of fact, most of the things I say he says, I had to church him up and make them sound smoother, I guess. But he did look at me and he said, son, you know, I'm proud of you.

Because my dad loved the Lord as well. The Lord got ahold of his heart, and it changed everything. And he goes, because you know what? You've stayed on mission. You've stayed in this fight. And and and you're still young, but I'm gonna encourage you, stay in the fight. That fight that says love like Jesus loved.

Be on the mission he died to give us. Live the life he wants us to have. Don't be about fear. Lead how you've led because you need to stay in the fight because it is a fight. I've learned that the fight for the gospel to share with people is more important than any fight I got in at war. I'm proud of what I did,

but if you look step back into all of eternity and compare what I did in in in protecting people's lives and saving them, all I really did was give them, buy them more time. But everyone dies, So my gift to them was temporary. But then I started to know the Lord. And the real fight,

the thing that really matters is what you do and what I try to do, and you're a leader in this, is we buy people eternity with love.

So stay in the fight. That's what he said, that last word. I'm proud of you. I love you.

And stay in this fight. So if you don't wanna believe me, trust a wise old soldier who knew what was up, and he was everything we run out there trying to be. He was actually fantastically successful at his job too, and he was a great dad. Yet none of that mattered to him as much as love, the Lord,

because he knew that's what enabled him to do all the other stuff. So my challenge to all of us, including myself, as I relisten to my dad's words, is are you in the fight?

And do you stay in it? Because that is love defined. Father God, I thank you, Lord. I thank you that you love us more than we love ourselves, and I just pray that everyone in this room or listening would truly understand and embrace that.

I know that none of us, including myself, will ever truly be able to comprehend just how high and wide and deep your love is. But, man, the parts we can believe and trust and see and understand sure seem to be incomprehensible to me.

So, Lord, I thank you that you loved us that way. May we embrace it and receive it, myself included. And each and every day, allow that love to then transform from the inside out that we become people who give, we sacrifice, we have agape love for others.

And in the process of doing that, may it flow through us and out and will let us be the tip of the spear and get to see and be a part of the glorious thing that you're doing. And I thank you that I get to do this, and I pray for anyone struggling right now, anyone who's just hurting

and has just just had a hard time. I really pray for anyone that maybe is hearing this as and they feel more guilt than they feel conviction. And, Lord, that they don't need that guilt. Lord, let them know that this isn't about guilt. This is about grace. This is about love. This is about you. This is about

how much you love us. And may we all just surrender to that love each and every day. I pray this in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen. Hey. I love you guys very much. Thanks for joining us online today. Be sure to follow us on social media to stay up to date with everything happening here at Rock Point.