The Hero Brings Love

All right, well, good morning. How are we doing today? Good. Merry Christmas, like Donnie said. Happy to see everybody here. Thank you. If this is your first time with us, really appreciate it. You made a great choice being here today, Sauldam Baptist Church, obviously. We are a warm church family that is proud of our history and have an incredibly hopeful future because we want to be pursuing what the Spirit has for us in our present. So that’s where we’re going, and excited for you to be here with us today.

Like Rhett teased up for us, we had a goal of $1,500 for our Lottie Moon Christmas offering. Can I get a bit of a drum roll? Anybody want to give me a drum roll? You see, you can have drums in church. Here you are. We have $1,395 raised for Lottie Moon. So I am, man, I am super excited. So that means, obviously, we’ve got today, we’ve got next week. If you still want to contribute to that offering, then, man, there’s plenty of time.

Today is also special for the Lottie Moon Christmas offering. I didn’t know that, or I didn’t know this. Today is the anniversary of Lottie Moon’s passing. So decades ago, she’s in Japan. She’s incredibly sick. Try and get back to America for her to kind of end her life here, and she passes in transition in Japan. So today takes on a whole new significance for myself. It’s, you know, y’all’s pastor leading our church through this season. So if nothing else, man, I’m super grateful for the generosity that’s been shown by our church to that fund.

So as we continue through our Advent series, today we are going to be looking at love. But also, I’m thinking about 2024. You know, we are having a really good year, and we’re starting to come to the close of 2023. But some really good things also are happening in next year. You may have seen this, may not have seen this in your bulletin. We have a couple things coming down at you. We have a new Sunday school class that will launch sometime early spring. So stay on the lookout for that. We also have a new kids’ ministry rollout happening also in the spring. And we have some other ministry initiatives that we’re going to be rolling out. So this is a really good spot to be if you don’t have a church home. And if this is your home, then, man, why not invite somebody into it? So we’re excited about all that.

So how about this? I’m going to pray for us, pray for the sermon, pray for our new year, and we’ll jump into it, okay? All right. Lord, thank you for today. God, thank you for your grace of bringing all of us here this morning. God, thank you for your kindness to redeem us. Thank you for your kindness to send your son. God, thank you for providing church for us. God, we need this very deeply. Lord, I want to pray for the sermon. God, that you would help me to not overstate my own opinions or preferences. But God, that you would help me just to clearly state what your word says. Lord, I pray for all of our hearts that we would be open to what you have for us this morning. Lord, I’m incredibly excited about new Sunday school classes for adults and for kids. I’m excited about what’s going on here. And I’m asking God that you would anoint and bless those things. Father, that you would prime the pump spiritually at our church. Lord, for us to receive what you have for us, ultimately, so that we could give it away to our community. Lord, we do love you. And it’s in your great name that we pray. Amen.

So obviously tomorrow, Christmas morning, and as I was thinking about Christmas morning and giving gifts, I was reminded that there is such a thing as knockoffs. Anybody ever received a knockoff of a gift before? All right, so we got a couple of them on the screen coming at you. You know, you’ve all heard of Arm & Hammer. Has anybody ever received Arm & Hatchet baking soda? So that might be one of them. Whenever you need some OK shampoo, if you don’t go for Olay, go for OK. There’s obviously your cream betweens instead of your Oreos. You know, that’s the, yeah, I’m going to progress past that one. You’ve got a couple Sharpies. Do anybody have a Skirpy or Skirples? And then there’s my personal favorite, Sonic the Hedgehog. But you got Harry Potter the Wizard written up top, and Sonic’s name being Obama.

You know, I don’t know where you find something like that, but I think I would want to buy that just because of how poorly made that was. And then you have Franz Traummers. Not Transformers, the famous movie series, but Franz Traummers, something altogether entirely.

So anyways, you know, we’re all about to open up gifts tomorrow. We’re about to give gifts. We’re going to receive those things. And there’s some knockoffs in the world. Let’s make it a little more serious. I think there’s some knockoffs of something that we all really want. Love.

There’s different knockoffs that you can get of love in this world. And I’m just, I’m reminded of that this year. You know, I’m reminded of the knockoff of, I will love you as long as you’re useful to me. If you could provide something for me, then I’ll love you. If you can do something for me, then I’ll tolerate you in my life. Or maybe the knockoff of, if you’re attractive to me, if I find you desirable in some way, then I’ll love you. If I like the way you look, I’ll love you. But at the moment that changes, my love’s going away.

Or maybe the love knockoff of, are you nice to me? Are you going to treat me well? Which means as long as I’m in your good graces, we’re good. And I’m going to love you. But the moment you turn sour on me, that’s the moment that I’m out the door.

We all want love. We all want real love. We don’t just want knockoff love. But the thing is, the world can only offer knockoff love.

I came across this survey that was conducted amongst children. And these kids were asked, what is love?

Chrissy, age six. Love is when you go out to eat and you give somebody most of your french fries without making them give you any of theirs.

Danny, age seven. Love is when mommy takes coffee for my dad and she takes a sip before giving it to him to make sure the taste is okay.

Bobby, age five. How appropriate is this? Love is what’s in the room with you at Christmas if you stop opening presents and just listen.

Mary Ann, age four. Love is when your puppy licks your face even after you left them alone all day.

Karen, age seven. When you love somebody, your eyelashes go up and down and little stars come out of you. That’s how Becca looks at me every day. That’s right, Rick.

Jessica, age seven. You really shouldn’t say I love you unless you mean it. But if you mean it, you need to say it a lot because people forget.

And then my favorite, Rebecca, age eight. When my grandmother got arthritis, she couldn’t bend over and paint her toenails anymore. So my grandfather does it for her all the time. Even when his hands got arthritis too. That’s love.

Man, don’t we all want real love? Are we tired of knockoff love? Anybody in the room, are you tired of knockoff love? I know that I am, and I’m tired of giving knockoff love.

You see, here’s the thing. God really cares about love. And because we’re made in His image, I think you and I, we really care about love too. We want to get it right. We have deep feelings about it. We yearn for it. We talk about it. We sing about it. And the good thing is God’s word speaks about it.

This is what God’s word says about love. It’s in 1 John chapter 4. It’s going to be on your screen, and I want to read it together, okay? So it’s going to be on your screen. Just follow my lead.

Dear friends, let us love one another, because love is from God, and everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. The one who does not love does not know God, because God is love. God’s love was revealed among us in this way. God sent His one and only Son into the world so that we might live through Him. Love consists in this. Not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.

Man, that is love.

There’s one main truth that I want you to embrace this morning. There’s one thing I want you to hang your hope on. There’s one form of real love that will not wear away, and it is this. Love gives life.

Now first, for us to understand that statement and to understand this passage, we have to define love. And John does that for us because He defines who God is. John, the author, says that God’s nature is to love. Now see, John, the author, the one that wrote 1, 2, and 3 John in the Gospel of John, he’s sipping on courage because he’s all the time explaining God’s very nature to us. Not just what God has done, but who God is.

Now see, in John chapter 4 of the Gospel, he says that God’s nature is to love. In 1 John of this book, he says God is light. And here he says God is love. John’s all the time explaining who God is. So he says God is love. But what in the world does that mean? John Piper asked that same question and he came up with this. Love is from God the way heat is from fire or the way light is from the sun. Love belongs to God’s nature. It’s woven into who and what He is. It’s part of what it means to be God. The sun gives light because it is light. The fire gives heat because it is heat. And we can add God gives love because He is love.

God, see, doesn’t just have love. He is not just loving. It’s the fact that God in the core of who God is, is love. Which means that love is pure and perfected in God. Not in us. Or said differently, God defines love. Not us. We offer knockoffs. As best as we can, we are stumbling, broken, trying to be faithful lovers in the image of God. But God Himself is love. Those love knockoffs, they all fall short of God’s glorious standard and His good way.

The knockoff of attraction will wane as my skin starts to wane. The knockoff of usefulness will wane the moment I can no longer provide to my family what I can now. The knockoff of the condition of you liking me and me liking you will one day fade away. We can only offer knockoffs. But God cannot change. There is no shadow of change with Him. So when the Bible says God is love, love is perfected in God. God’s the real thing. And I think that all of us in the room need to deeply consider the fact that God is love. Especially Christians. Especially people that call ourselves followers of God. Sons and daughters of God. If God is love, then what does that mean for us?

You know, John begins this passage I read by saying, let us love one another. The key to being more loving is not to try harder. That’s another knockoff. The key to being more loving is to recognize God’s love for you. God’s love is the fuel for your love. So when you wake up in the morning, do you say, God, You are love? When you go to bed at night, do you rejoice in the fact that God is love? When you mess up with your family, your friends, your co-workers, or your neighbors, do you say, God, You are love? And because of that, I get to have another try. Or do you upset your family, your neighbors, your co-workers, and you say, goodness gracious, if I could only just try harder.

Because none of us can make each other love somebody else, right? I can’t command you to love something. But the thing that you love, I don’t have to command you to love. Nobody has to tell me, Jeremy, you need to love Becca and your kids. Nobody has to say, Jeremy, you need to love fajitas. Nobody has to say, Jeremy, go love being outside. Those are just things I naturally enjoy. Because God is love, and I’ve been born of God, naturally, I just want to love people as long as I’m tuned into God’s love for me. So if you struggle to love others this morning, the solution is just to embrace God’s love for you.

You know, all of us this morning when we got into our cars, you were a little chilly, right? Yeah, a little chilly, okay? And to warm up, what’d you do? Turn the heat on. Did anybody try to warm themselves up by doing this number? Okay, maybe for a moment. Did anybody try to, like that? Okay, now here’s the real question. Did anybody look at the passenger in their car and start saying, oh, oh, on the passenger? I hope not. Did anybody put your hands on your passenger’s face and start rubbing like that? No, I don’t think you did. If you did, then you’d be, I see, be egging at each other. If you want to warm somebody up in the car, you just turn the heat on and Open the vents. You just open up the source of love, and it’ll take care of itself. And the same is true in our relationships. You don’t have to try to muster up the love for somebody. You don’t have to force yourself into doing it. You don’t have to work harder. You don’t have to do this number or get your breath on somebody. What you do is you just channel God’s love through you. And that begins with embracing God’s love for you.

Sure, this sounds a little weird, I guess, but here’s the deal. Do you believe God is love? If you believe that, then just continue to believe that. Continue to tell yourself, God, you are love. God, you are love. I guarantee the more you meditate on the fact that God is love, the more loving you will be to others. Guarantee that. I personally believe nobody can have a personal experience with God’s love and not be changed, and people around them not be changed.

Wednesday night, we studied this passage out of Ephesians. I’ll just read it over you. Ephesians 3, verses 17 and 18. I pray that you, being rooted and firmly established in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the length and width and height and depth of God’s love. God clearly has limitless love for you and for your neighbor and your co-worker and for this world. And do not doubt His ability to continue to douse you with love and give love to others through you.

By the way, subtle plug, you need to be here on Wednesday nights. Buck, how many do we have in here right now? Have you counted yet? We don’t count you, okay? We might have 85 in here. I don’t know. Between adults and kids on Wednesday nights, we’ve got 70 people up here. And you know what we’re doing? We’re praying and we’re reading God’s word and we’re having a family meal together. Man, we looked at this passage, Ephesians 3, and I did not just try to teach you my thoughts about this, but we looked at this and we just believed it together. If you’re struggling to trust, does God love me? Or you want to know more, how do I love people? I want you here on Wednesdays. It’s a really good spot for you.

So returning back to our passage, Buck, sorry to put you on the pedestal there. I forget the right word. On the spot. I should just stick with what I’ve written. Okay.

So what does God’s limitless love do? We saw that God is love. Now what does His love do? God’s love gives life. Now see, here’s another difference between God’s real love and the world’s knockoff love. The world demands love from you to give love to you. The world says, I will love you in response to your love for me. You make the first move. And if I like it okay, then I will start loving you in return. But that’s not how God works. God woos us to Himself by first loving you. Romans 5 verse 8 says that God proves His own love for us and that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. When we were wrong, God came and stepped toward us. When we were hostile to God, keeping Him at arm’s length, He, like a good father, pulled us into Himself. When we were hating God, God still loved us. Not theoretically, but He sent His son to die for us.

God gave. In love, He gave. And what did He give? He gave His best. Not just some thing, but He gave some one. He gave His one and only son. Parents in the room, would you give up your child for someone you love? Would you give up your child for somebody that hated you? The Bible describes us as people filled with sin, which means we are people that do not naturally love God. God so loved. He gave us His very best before we wanted it.

God did not send Jesus because of drudgery. He did not send Jesus because of duty. Certainly not because He needed to. God did not send Jesus because of mere slavery to a plan. No. God sent Jesus because He loves us. I read one commentary that says this. It’s one thing to talk about love. else to show love. The Christian God is not a talking God. He is an acting God, a doing God, a serving God.

I often meet people who are wondering, does anyone love me? They’ve been abused, abandoned, betrayed, lied to, mistreated, deeply wounded. Anybody resonate? You may be like this Where you can barely ask the questions, but you still do. Does anyone love me? Will I ever be loved? The good news of the gospel provides a resounding yes to these questions. You are loved, and you always will be loved by God, who is love and who wants to shower you, deluge you, cover you with His love. How do we know He sent His Son? To make sure we don’t miss it, John says twice, God sent His Son for you.

Love gives, and love gave His best to you, not as a secret, not something to be hidden, but as a public gift. Verse nine says that love was revealed among us. Imagine this: love had flesh and bones and lived among us. Love was a child at age five learning how to fish with His foster parent. Love was a kid at age 10 learning how to read and write in the Hebrew alphabet. Love was a teenager going through His gangly, awkward years trying to figure out who He was in the world. Love was a 30-year-old that ate and drank with His buddies. Love was a 33-year-old that went exactly toward His destiny.

But love also ministered to us supernaturally. Love put His hands on the untouchable. Love healed the broken and the lame. Love bridged boundaries between warring peoples. Love approached oppressive people and offered forgiveness. And love went to the oppressed and offered hope. Love, though, also was sacrificial. He gave Himself to a public execution. Nailed to a cross. Naked and fully exposed. Why? Because God loves you. He loves us. God so loved that He gave His very best. That is who God is.

And you may be in this room dealing personally with the fact that, yeah, Jeremy, you talk about a loving God, but all I’ve met are unloving Christians. I get it. I’m here to say that I’m part of the problem because I’m going to fail you too. The best I can offer as a mere man is knock-off love. I’ve got my moments where I can channel God’s love by turning the car on and turning the heat on and opening up the vents to warm you up. But that’s—I’m going to stumble out of that.

But here’s the thing. God does not change, and He does not waver or wax or wane in His incredible, limitless, pure, perfect love for you or the person that you have a grudge against or the person that slighted you. Love gave. God is love. Love gives. And what happens when love gave? What happens when love gives? Life is born. Love gives life. And I’m using love as a reference to a person here because God is love. So God gives life. Love gives life.

See, love gave His Son to be the atoning sacrifice for sin. But we don’t use words like atonement very much, do we? What’s atonement mean? Atonement is this: it’s the process by which someone appeases an estranged party. Now that’s legal jargonese. What that means is love is how you get right with somebody you wronged. Look at that word. Just look at the word atonement. It’s separated. At one meant. Atonement is the process by which me and Becca, who are supposed to be one, but I’ve done something stupid again and I’ve separated us. Love is how I make us one again. Love is how you extend a hand to somebody and say, man, I messed up. You forgive me. And we all do this.

You may not use the word atonement in everyday language. You probably shouldn’t use the word atonement in everyday language, but we all do this. Husbands, you ever buy your wife flowers after you had an argument? Did somebody say no? Wives, you ever give your husband Saturday afternoon to go do something? Kids, at least some of our kids may color a picture for a teacher they disobeyed. You may buy your friends dinner after you know you hurt their feelings. We know what this is. It’s how we buy somebody back. And that’s okay to say. We all do this.

But here’s the deal. We’re just people. So the atoning sacrifice to make our relationship okay is never actually that costly. Because we are just people. It may hurt in the moment, but it’s never that costly. But it’s different with God. You see, with God, we are all in trouble because we have all caused offense through sin. Every white lie, every slip-up of disobedience is an infinitely bad sin against the infinitely glorious and good God. Which means an infinitely worthy sacrifice is needed. And nobody In this room can provide that. None of us can provide the sacrifice needed to appease God. The gospel is that God gave the sacrifice we were supposed to. The gospel is that God supplied the atoning sacrifice. We caused the sin, so naturally we should have to supply the sacrifice. But we cannot. We can’t. But God did.

You see, here’s the thing. Sin is serious. And God hates it. But God’s love is greater than we could ever imagine. Which means Christ’s sacrifice was a worthy sacrifice for God to give because of you. You may slight somebody and they demand a sacrifice that you just don’t think is worth it. You say, “Oh, that person, they’re not worth that. This situation doesn’t merit that sort of response from me.” But God says, “Whatever it takes, I just want them back. Whatever it takes, I just want them in my family again.” God gave whatever it took. God provided the sacrifice in love for us.

And our hearts could be stirred by that. And we might have this momentary sprint of faithfulness to God because we’re so grateful. And we say, “Lord, You are so good.” But if you’re like me, you’ll fall out of gratitude for that. And you’ll slip up and you’ll disobey and sin again. What do you do in that moment? You might remember these words:

When Satan tempts me to despair and tells me of the guilt within, upward, I look and see Him there who made an end of all my sin. Because the sinless Savior died, my soul is counted free. For God, the just is satisfied to look on Him and pardon me.

Love gave His best. Love gave life to you. And life for us meant death for Jesus. Life for us meant death for Jesus. For us to live means that something had to be sacrificed. I don’t know if you’ve ever watched a sacrificial process before. But usually whatever gets up on the altar doesn’t come off on its own strength. For us to live means that someone had to die in our place.

And it’s always that way with love. To truly love someone else means you must die to your preferences, desires, and plans. When I screw it up with Becca and I need to make it right, guess what I’m not doing? I’m not watching football. I’m not making coffee. I’m not doing whatever in the world I want to be doing because I need to die to that desire to make a relationship right with her. Death always has to happen. And you can’t maintain love for someone else while maintaining self-centered motivation for your own sake.

Thing is, God loved so much. He even loved to the point of death for Himself. I don’t have the space to unpack what it means that on the cross, God died. But I can say on the cross, God died. Died for you. When we embrace that love, what do you think happens? We begin to live. I think we begin to live when we embrace God’s love. When we embrace His love for us and the sacrifice that He gave in our place, we’re born. We are truly born.

The Bible or theologians use another word for that. It’s called regeneration. Regeneration is the new birth, meaning born again. It’s uniting spiritually dead and selfish hearts with God’s loving and living hearts that His life becomes our life. His love becomes our love.

Here’s the thing. Ephesians chapter 2 says that we are all born spiritually dead. We’re all like spiritual zombies walking around. Our bodies are animate, but our hearts are unloving, which means we must be made alive. That is not something anybody in this room did for yourself. You did not make yourself alive. You had to be made alive. You had to be born into life.

The Bible describes meeting God’s love that way. God in His love gave His Son that we could be born again. Saved. Whatever word you want to use, that’s what happens when we embrace that love for ourselves.

It’s not enough to learn about that love. It’s not enough to know about it. It’s not enough to sing about it. It’s not enough to give tithes for it. It’s not enough to memorize verses about it. It’s something that must be personally experienced. You must experience that love for yourself.

I thought about putting a picture of a dish on the screen that Becca and I made last night. We made some chicken curry. It’d be one thing for me to tell you about it. For me to tell you about the sauce that Becca made from scratch. To tell you about the chicken.

That was incredibly tender. To tell you about the vegetables that she put in it that highlighted the flavor of the chicken, and it was sweet and savory at the same time. But it’d be a different thing for you to go home and make it, right? I don’t want to see pictures of your food that you take at the steakhouse. Because all I’m reminded of is I’m not eating that steak right now. Wes, come on, man. What I want is to eat the steak.

And God’s love is kind of like that. I could tell you about it. I could describe the ingredients. I could tell you the process for how you come to enjoy it. But you got to enjoy it. You got to take it in for yourself. God’s love is that way. Have you done that? There’s God’s will for us. I’m not a prophet, but I know God’s will for you. Everybody in the room. God’s will is for you to embrace the love that He wants to give you. That’s God’s will for you. Whether you have done this 15 years ago as a teenager, or you’ve never seriously thought about the fact that God loves you and you’re just ready for me to wrap up, God’s will for you is to open your hands and embrace it.

So actually, I want to do that this morning. I want us to take a posture of embracing and accepting. I’m going to close our sermon. I’m going to close my sermon. And I’m going to pray for us. As I’m doing that, I want everybody to show me your hands. And take those hands and just put them like this. Don’t hold yourself. Just hold them out like this. Tomorrow morning, somebody’s going to give you a gift. And to enjoy that gift, you have to do this and accept it.

If you’ve never accepted God’s love for you, I want you in this moment, don’t follow my prayer. Just tell God about it and ask Him to help you accept it. If you are born again, if you do know God, what I want you to do, just accept it again. Tell yourself, God, you are love. I am loved by you.

Let’s pray. Lord, even me, I’ve got my hands out right now, Lord, because I want to accept Your love again. God, I’ve known You for 15 years. I’ve known about You for my entire life, but I still struggle to really know Your love. God, I pray that You would help me to embrace Your love for me again today. God, I pray for the folks in this room that have never tasted and seen just how good and sweet You are. And I’m asking You to help them to embrace it too. Lord, we need more of Your love in our hearts. Trust You to have Your way with us. Thank You, Lord. Amen.