Okay, let me read for us our passage. Would you turn with me to 1 John 4, verse 19? We love because he first loved us. If someone says, "I love God" and hates his brother, he is a liar, for the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.

And this commandment we have from him, that the one who loves God should love his brother also. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we pray that as we listen to your word that we would remember that this is something that is authoritative into our lives. Your word is not optional. Your word is not just a religious text.

It is your direct word to humanity. So Father, as we listen, would we not just be convicted? Would we not leave with nice Christian ideas? But Father, would our desire be to live out the things that we hear? And so worship and love you with all our hearts. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.

Well, you know, one of the coolest things is at our old church, we've been here for a little over a year now, we had to, or I had to teach every Friday and preach every Sunday amongst other various Bible studies that kind of happened during the week. And one of the great pleasures that I think Kazia and I personally have had as we've come here is we've been able to kind of sit in at least one service of worship and to listen and to worship alongside you.

And really, it's been such a joy for us. From day one, when we entered into these Berean doors, we were like, "Man, people are so kind, so warm, so inviting." We loved it here from the get-go. And people, I think, are genuinely caring here, genuinely kind. The church, I think, ought to be this way, but what we're going to be hitting today, as you can kind of guess from the text, is that the challenge is that it goes much more than or beyond this kind of interaction with one another.

This call to love one another is more than just being kind, is more than just exchanging pleasantries. And a question we could kind of think about is, what distinguishes the interactions we have with each other here at church with an interaction we might have on an elevator with a stranger, when we kind of say things to each other or not?

Or maybe if you're washing a car in front of your house and a neighbor comes out and you're kind of exchanging pleasantries with them, or with some coworkers or just people you might know. What makes it any different than a social club you might be a part of? And the challenge is that we are called to love one another, and here's the difference, because God loved us.

That's a striking challenge to us. That our love for one another is not to be anything less than how God calls us to love like he loves us. Because when we see the enormity of God's love, a love that went all the way to the point of sacrificing his own son on the cross, that we can't just settle with loving just a little bit better than the average person.

And so we're gonna be going through three points today. The first is the reality, which is we love. That's the reality. Secondly, we love because God first loved us. That's the reason. And thirdly, we must love one another. This is the result. This is the application. And so first, we love.

And this comes from verse 19a. Very simple. If you look at your text there, it says we love. That word there is the word for agape. Many of us are familiar with that. And that term is a very loaded term, agape love. Agape is to love based on a sincere appreciation or a high regard of someone.

Agape love is a selfless love. It's actually a love of the will. It's a decisive love. It's a commitment made. It's a strong love of pursuit. It's pursuing another person's good and not really being so consumed about your own. This agape love is different from philia love, which is brotherly or friendly love.

It's different than eros love, which is romantic love, or storge love, which is familial love. It's based on the blueprint of God's love for humanity. It's ultimately where love draws definition. Like all things, God is the standard. And that's why in 1 John 4, it says that God is love.

R.C. Sproul says this, "In the New Testament, love is more of a verb than a noun. It has more to do with acting than with feeling. The call to love is not so much a call to a certain state of feeling as it is to a quality of action." Agape love is ultimately the way that God loves us.

This is the love that is being repetitiously used here in 1 John 4. If you were just to do a cursory scan of the chapter, the word just pops. This isn't how we tend to use the word love nowadays. Like when we say, you know, the Disney love or rom-com love, based on fuzzy feelings.

This isn't like when we say, "I love a certain type of food, like pho or steak or sushi." This isn't like when we say, "Oh, the sun's out. I love the spring. I love the summer." Or, "I love my bed." Notice how the expression of how we normally use the word love has much to do with self-centeredness.

What an object of our love can give to us, and so it draws in us something. Its basis is found in bringing myself some kind of joy or happiness. But agape love is self-sacrificing. It looks at another person and how they could be loved. This is a love that doesn't ask for anything in return.

This is a love that will go to war for the object of that affection. This is a long-lasting, it endures, it perseveres, it is steadfast, it's a heavyweight love, it's anchored, it's immovable, this kind of love. And again, it's modeled by God's love for us. And so it becomes very possible that even traditionally high forms of love, like a love that a parent would have for their child, that that might not be true agape love.

That even a love that you might have for a good friend, that might not be agape love. Agape love is very specific. And so in verse 19, when it says that, it says very simply, very matter of fact, "We love." It's a clause in and of itself, that's it.

There's a clause that comes after that, it says, "We love because you first loved us." But that first clause can be taken alone. We love is a statement of fact. It doesn't have any direct object attached to it. It simply characterizes that word, "We." That's it. We love. And then who's the "We"?

If you look back at 1 John 4, verse 7, it says, "Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God." And that's who it is, it's the beloved. That's the "We" that's being talked about there. And that word is agapetoi. It kind of sounds like agape, because that means those who have been loved.

The loved ones. The ones who have been loved by agape love, these are the agapetoi. And that's us, that's "We." As the believer. This is the saint, this is the Christian. Believers are characterized by this. This word, there are different moods when you think of verbs. Three very common ones are indicative, imperative, and subjunctive.

This word is an indicative verb. It's not an imperative. This isn't saying, "Go and love." It's not a command to us that says, "This is what you want to do. Do it." This is a fact. This is a statement. This is what we love. This is talking about a reality of what already is.

There, of course, is an imperatival aspect of love. If you look at Ephesians 5, verse 1, it says, "Therefore, be imitators of God as beloved children and walk in love, just as Christ also loved you and gave himself up for us." That's an imperative. So we are called to go, we are commanded to go and love people.

Here, it's an indicative, a truth and reality of what we already are as justified, saved people. This is the truth of what we're called to. We're born again people. We are dead to sin and alive in Christ. The old has gone, the new has come. And now this is who we are.

We are people who love. We're characterized by it. Why? Because this is what God is like. And so where we were so bent on loving ourselves, there is another lesser known Greek word for love. It's called philoutia. And that word is love of self. Now we are people who agape, love others.

We are people who are sacrificial in our love. We are not self-serving in our love. We are not self-centered or selfish in our love. When we look across the world, when we look at the person next to each other, the type of love we're called to love with is this type of love.

It's heavy. It's a pursuing. It's to their good. We don't walk through these doors thinking, "What can I get today? How am I feeling today? What is this person going to do to make me feel welcome today?" It's a love that says, "How can I love others?" And as every Christian walks through these doors, that we are entering in as people who love every one of us.

And when the world sees the Christian, they see a person who loves as God loves. We don't come in just being kind to each other. We come in consumed with the understanding and the depth and the breadth and the length and the height of God's great love for us.

And so, this is who we are. On a side note, that doesn't mean that they'll call us loving people, talking about the world. It doesn't mean the world will look at us and say, "You're loving." This world holds all sorts of insults at Christians who proclaim the truth of love because we don't preach a gospel that tickles ears.

When we preach a gospel, that is a love and truth. It is a love that will smell of the aroma of life to those who are of life and the stench of death to those who are unbelieving, to those who do not know Jesus. That's why in John 15, 18 through 19, it says this, "If the world hates you, you know that it has hated me before it hated you.

If you were of the world, the world would love its own. But because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, because of this, the world hates you." However, with that said, the Christian is still characterized by love. They can look at you and not agree with what you're saying, but the world will still be able to sense in you something different.

We are characterized by it. In Galatians 5, verse 22, the fruit of the Spirit, the first fruit, the first of this list of this fruit is love. It says, "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such things there is no law." Some people think that the first word in the list many times becomes an umbrella to everything else that follows.

It may or may not be the case here, but love at the very least is placed up front. In Matthew 22, verse 36-40, all of the law, all of the prophets, all of scripture is based on this concept of love. It says, this man who walks up to Jesus and asks, "Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?" And Jesus said to him, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind." This is the great and foremost commandment.

A second, and there is a second, the second is like, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." On these two commandments depend the whole law and the prophets. Many times we come into church, we live our lives understanding with great clarity and fervor that we are called to love God, and we will pursue and chase after that.

But there is a second commandment that goes in conjunction with it, that is that we are called to love one another. In Colossians chapter 3, verse 12-14, it says, "So as those who have been chosen of God, holy and beloved," that chosen people, holy people, people loved by God, it says, "put out a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience, bearing with one another, forgiving each other, whoever has a complaint against anyone, just as the Lord forgave you, so also should you." And then he gives his last statement, he says, and Paul says this, "Beyond all these things, put on love." Beyond all of these things, put on love, which is the perfect bond of unity.

In 1 Corinthians 13, verse 13, it says, "But now faith, hope, love abide these three, but the greatest of these is love." Christians love. And the question swings to us then, are we characterized by this love? When people say that you are a person who loves, if someone, if I were to go up to your co-worker, would they be able to look at you and say, "I don't agree with everything, but this is a person who loves." A family member, a roommate, when the world sees us, what goes through their mind?

It's not a personal effort of love or trying to be kind or considerate. Do they see God and his love in you? See, this is really difficult. Even if this were an imperative to go and love others, this is not something you can muster up with sheer willpower or human exertion.

Loving something is something that happens supernaturally. It's something that happens in the heart as it transforms you. So why does this happen? What is the reasoning behind all of this? Well, that brings us to our second point. It is because God first loved us. That is the reason why we are characterized by love.

We love because God first loved us. And this is found in the second half of verse 19. It says, if you look there with me, "We love because he first loved us." As I was preparing for this sermon, I was wondering, "Man, is this too elementary a principle? Is this too much, like something we already know?" This statement is so just, you know, it's a verse you memorize.

But there is some depth in this. In 1 John 4, verse 7 through 8, a little earlier on, before our passage, it says, "Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love." See, our love for one another is because love is from God.

So then anyone or everyone who loves is born of God, it says there, and knows God, it says there. There's some rationality going on here. Right? Like anyone who is born of God, anyone who knows God, what will it be? What will happen to them? They will love one another.

It's a characteristic of it. And Pastor Peter was talking about like sounding and walking like a duck last week. I'll use a chicken today. If you think about a chicken, and you try to describe a chicken to someone, he has a beak, he has, he has, what else does he have?

Feathers. He has feathers and that thing underneath, it's like a waddle, or I forgot what it's called, but there's that thing he has, and we see all these different things, right? And we look at this, and we say, "That's a chicken." Where did that chicken come from? It came from another chicken.

Characteristics are passed down from chicken to chicken. That's just how it works. Now anyone who is born of God, anyone who knows God, will love. Why? Because God is characterized by love. God is love, is what it says here. You don't just go and grab an animal and staple up a beak or feathers onto it and say, "Here's a chicken." Neither can we be Christians who say, "I've been born of God, I know God," and we staple onto ourselves niceness.

We're characterized. And we can have a lot of other good characteristics. We can have diligence. We can have knowledge of God's Word. In general, maybe we can even pray a ton. We could give to the poor. Without love, 1 Corinthians 13, we know that it means nothing. As we look, we love because God first loved us.

As we look at... Okay, so God's love is the blueprint and the DNA that kind of gets injected into us. We're gonna be looking at three qualities as to why God's loving us first causes us to be people who love. And here's the first. Someone greater than us has shown us sacrificial love.

Someone greater than us has shown us a love where he would kneel down to serve. Addie and Hudson, they're my two children, four and two years old now, and they've been fighting a lot more. And my son, Hudson, has been kind of running up to Addie and taking things from her.

And she'll go and play with something else and he'll run up and take that thing from her and she'll go to something else and run up, take that thing from... And he'll take that thing from her and after a while, she just starts screaming, right? Because that's just annoying.

So he starts screaming and screaming and it's really hard for her to share and we try to teach Hudson. But something that I realized is there's a difference between when I tell her to go and share and then when I model what it looks like to share. When someone of authority kind of does something, it makes it a lot easier for those who are just, say, underneath, those who are underneath to follow by example.

That's just kind of how it is. We used to go to a restaurant all the time when I was a kid and my family would go to a place called Spires and it's like this diner and we always had the same thing, fried chicken, all this stuff. But it would always take forever because there would be a four-course meal that would come out for like four bucks or something.

And then so we would eat and I would get bored. And as a kid, I was very restless, I was very energetic. Addie is kind of like... She's from me, she's so crazy. Because I was crazy. And I would knock over my water and my drinks all the time.

And my dad would get so, so frustrated at that. I would find ways to knock it over. They would move the cup all the way over and I'd somehow figure out a way to go and knock it over. And it's not on purpose, it's just... That's how crazy I was.

Now, there was this time though where my grandfather was with us and my dad, he would get mad anytime I knocked it over. And he would... There was a stint where he would try to teach me. He would make me... If I knocked it over, he would make me go and ask the people for napkins and I have to get on my knees and I clean up all the water and stuff like that.

And I'd be crying the whole time. And then there's this time when my grandfather was with us and he was a very quiet man. He doesn't really talk very much. And then I did it. I knocked it over. And what does a son do when you do something like that?

You look straight at your dad. Like, "Uh-oh." Straight at dad. And I looked and then I saw the fire in his eyes. And I was like, "Whoa, there it goes." But I remember this. My grandfather, he just quietly just grabbed a stack of napkins out in the middle and he just went under the table.

This old man. And he just started wiping it up. What happened after that was so... It burned into my memory. Because my grandfather, he's like the patriarch of the family. Because my grandfather was doing that, my dad, it just extinguished the flames from his eyes. And do you know what happened?

He just like, "Jet!" underneath the table and he started wiping it up. And before I knew it, my entire family was down there wiping it up. And I was just standing, I was just still sitting down like, "What just happened?" When someone greater than us shows a sacrificial love, it makes it much easier, I think, for many others to follow by example.

Because when we see the example of what's given to us by God, in Philippians 2, verse 5 through 8, this is one of my favorite passages in scripture. We see it so clearly here. It says, "Have this attitude in yourselves, which was also in Christ Jesus, who although he existed in the form of God." This is an astronomical assertion.

"He did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but he emptied himself, taking the form of a bondservant and being made in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross." God first loved us, and we can use that as a means by which we will arm ourselves and say, "We will go and love others." But we ought to stop and think about what that looks like and what that means.

That God loved you. God is the powerful and exalted God. God is transcendent over all things. If you've been in Colossians with us, it's staggering who Jesus is. God is powerful and holy and just and sovereign. He knows all things. He is the authority over all creation. He deserves everything.

He is actually the only one that is worthy of every ounce of worship that can come out of us. His very existence demands our worship. If rocks could speak, it would start screaming "worship that God." All creation sings this phrase. Angels are worshiping day after day, minute after minute.

And he chooses to love us. This is how God loving us first sets the course for us. When someone so great loves us, it causes us to love others. That's A. B, this is the second, love is shown for people who have no business receiving love. We can't just think, "Well, it's God though.

He should." Because He is characterized by love. We actually have to sit and meditate and ponder about the enormity of what kind of took place on that cross. That this great and transcendent God didn't just love the best of us, He dispenses His love on the worst, on the sinner.

As an unbeliever, there was a time I grew up in the church and I was an unbeliever. And I came and I thought I was a pretty respectable, good, nice person. High school yearbook, go to my high school yearbook, look it up, I was voted nicest person. Pretty good person.

The next year, you know what I was voted in? Happiest person. Pretty nice. I thought, "What is it? Of course God should love me." And I saw myself, I viewed myself more as a person in the middle of the ocean that's like, "Okay, then I guess what I need to feel like is I'm a victim in this.

I'm gonna go to hell, and so God save me." But no one pauses to think about what it looks like to save a sinner. Romans chapter 5, verse 8 through 10, but God demonstrates His own love toward us. Beautiful. He shows us His love, but then look at the means by which He does that.

In that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. And we go, "Great. Look at that. While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more than having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God." That is, as sinners, deserve His wrath.

Verse 10, "For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life." Enemies. If you were to think about like World War II imagery, and there are trenches, and there's the enemy, and they're coming, and they're killing.

They're killing your fellow soldiers. They're killing the people that you call your brothers, and this is just an atrocious thing, and all this craziness is happening, and bombs are flying, and bullets are whizzing, and all they want is for you to die. They're waking up and going to sleep, taking turns in the middle of the night so that they can continue that idea of trying to destroy you.

They hate you. You know, this thing, this understanding of Romans 5, 8 through 10. While we were enemies, this is when God loves us, not with just some flippant love, but an agape love. Loving of our good. Have you ever had anyone out to get you? To make your life miserable?

To destroy you? Someone that wants to hurt you, or said slanderous things about you? Someone who's screaming at you, and spits in your face, maybe metaphorically or whatever? Have you ever had anyone who actually wants to kill you, because they hate you so much? With every last fiber of their being, just vitriol and venom against you.

Have you ever thought what it is for transcendent God to love you? That's why in Luke 6, verse 31, it says, "Treat others the same way you want them to treat you. If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them.

If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. If you lend to those from whom you expect to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners in order to receive back the same amount.

Here it is, but you love your enemies and do good, and lend expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High." He uses that term on purpose, sons. The DNA passed from father to son, sons of the Most High, for he himself is kind to ungrateful and evil men.

Be merciful just as your father is merciful. That's the second reason why God's example of love causes us to love others. He loved undeserving and wretched people. If God can love a wretch like me, it is infinitely easier for me to love other wretches. And finally, this letter C, God's love for us came at great personal cost.

It cost the life of his very own son. Now, we can't take too much time to go into it, but I was meditating on Genesis 22 again. I really love the story where Abraham is called to sacrifice his only son, Isaac. Remember how old he is. This is it.

This is the only son he's going to get. And God says, "Go up and sacrifice him." Abraham, you know, like, "Okay, God must know what he's doing," goes and walks up this hill with Isaac and straps on him. You can just imagine putting onto your own son the wood by which you're going to burn him, wielding the knife that you know you're going to kill your son with.

And without thinking too much about, "Well, I would God command him to do such a thing." That's not for today. He goes up and he lays down his son Isaac on this altar and he binds him, stares down at his face. And what's Isaac going to do? He's not going to be humming.

He's going to be staring at his father straight in the face. And Abraham was ready to do it. He was ready to kill his own son. Now, we can look at that and question what God's doing there, but whatever the case, God stops him. Think about that. He stops him from killing his own son.

Can you think about the cross? Cross by which Jesus walks up a hill with wood strapped to his back. Goes up and what happens as he's nailed to the cross? We see it sometimes. That as a son cries out for his father, father looks down upon his son and he turns his face away.

That is great personal cost. We love because he first loved us. Transcendent God loves us. Transcendent God loves sinners. Not only that, what it cost to purchase the sinner, the wretch, the enemy, cost Jesus. We think because he's alive again and that understanding of the fact that he rose from the dead, that fine, great, but we forget to realize and we forget and we don't realize that Jesus took eternal wrath for us.

So are you a person characterized by this kind of love? Does this Agape love characterize you? Do you follow in the example of God's love for you? Does this great love for you cause you to transform in heart? That we don't walk through those doors just thinking, "What can I get today?" We walk through those doors with that kind of love becoming the framework, becoming the vehicle by which we love one another.

Because this brings us into our final point. Let me bridge this into it with just a couple of verses here. But in John 13, 34, that's why the world, it says this, that the world will know us. A new commandment I give to you that you love one another even as I have loved you, that you also love one another.

By this all men will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another. Dwight Moody says the world does not understand theology or dogma, but it understands love and sympathy. And so the third and final point here then is we must love one another. That's verse 20 through 21.

And it says, "If someone says, 'I love God,' and hates his brother, he is a liar. For the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen." And this commandment we have from him that the one who loves God should love his brother also.

And here you have to unpack that. As the person who says, "I love God," and hates his brother is a liar. He's saying, "How can you love your brother who's right here next to you?" You're saying you love him. You can't love him. I'm sorry, you can't love God without loving him.

That's what it's saying here in this passage. But this is the direct result. This is the application that we are called to love one another with this same love. It's talking specifically about brothers here. This is Christian brothers and sisters. This is, these are believers. This is the church, specifically.

And we might ask that question, "What about non-believers? Are we not called to love them with this kind of love?" Well, what this is more saying is we ought to be loving people who are closest to us. If we don't love our own family and we're going around loving all these other people, you ought to be questioning what your love is even made up of.

I've seen people, and I'm guilty of it, going around loving other people and maybe I don't love my family. I've seen people who love and serve others so much and neglect their parents. In the home, you see the true self. With others outside, you can fake it because you can turn it on and off.

You can control it. But in the home, you can't control it. You're always with them. You are who you are in the home. And the church, then, is a family. But many times, we don't act as if it were. That's why church is something we do on weekends or during apportioned times.

Rather than invest in the church as how Scripture calls it to be. It's brothers and sisters. And so this is a direct call for believers to specifically love each other with God's love. This is how the body of Christ is to be built up and loved. This is the DNA of the church.

This is the thing that kind of flows through us. We pull together a bunch of people who have been loved by this weighty love of God. They begin to love each other. They love non-believers as well, but there's a special form of love that happens in a pool of believers.

Unbelievers are incapable of loving with God's love. And this isn't a knock on unbelievers. This isn't to say that they're incapable of some form of love. The true Agape love, only believers are capable of it. Because you have been transformed into it. And so you bring these people together, and you get what you see in Romans 12.

It's almost a competition of love. People outdoing one another and showing each other honor. Genuine love is there. Kind of something that sticks to each other. But here, he uses the word hate in verse 20. If you look there. If someone says, "I love God," and hates his brother.

Hate. That is to dislike strongly with the implication of aversion and hostility towards somebody. Obviously, there are people you might hate. There are people who might have said something against you, or maybe you don't like the way they hold themselves. People you would consider enemies. Maybe people that you would think, "That's a bad person." You might actually even find yourself doing that here in our church.

We're not above it. When you see people backstabbing, when we see churches splitting, there's active hate there. And we ought never to think that it can't happen here. And hate starts small, and it grows, and it grows. First John chapter 3 verse 14 takes the understanding of hate even a bit further.

It says, "We know that we have passed out of death into life because we love the brethren. He who does not love abides in death." Verse 15. "Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him. We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.

But whoever has the world's goods and sees his brother in need and closes his heart against him, how does the love of God abide in him? Little children, let us not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and truth." What's striking here in First John 3 is how hate is described.

It's not described just as bitterness, or vitriol, or annoyance, or fighting words, or slander, or attacking. It's described as someone who sees a brother in need and closes his heart against him. This is actually shown as someone who is not a loving person. So it's not just outright hostility against someone.

And so in First John chapter 4 verse 20, going back to our text, that's why hating and not loving is actually much more similar than you might think. It seems almost an absurd parallel, but it's not. Because a Christian who is born of God will love as God loves.

That's the reality. God isn't just telling you not to hate and to love people, so we exist somewhere in the middle plane. But he's saying you are born of love. That's why it's a similar thing. He is telling you that this is what someone born of him looks like.

This is a Christian. So if you think about it, in our fallenness, we are prone to hate people. But in our salvation, we are instructed and transformed to love others. And it's gonna be a struggle. And maybe we would naturally think there's a person here or there that we hate, or you might even say, "I don't really hate anyone." You might actually be thinking that right now.

You might just call it frustration against someone or annoyance, and maybe it's just that. It could be maybe just a little bit of an annoyance, a little bit of frustration towards someone, maybe. But you have to ask the question, "First of all, do I love him?" Because maybe that's not even the problem.

I don't hate anyone. So what? God says love. Maybe we need to learn to scrutinize and evaluate our own hearts to see how we view people and see if there are any seeds of sprouting roots of hatred in our hearts. When you expand the definition of hate, you begin to see the ugliness of what hate is.

Hatred isn't just wanting to hurt someone. Maybe it's not wanting them in your life. Maybe it's wanting nothing to do with them. Maybe it's wishing they didn't exist. The fact that they are impinging on your world, impinging on your comforts and conveniences, makes you want them gone. In sin, what we do is we declare ourselves God, and all these people here are there to serve me, to pray into my kingdom, my life, my world.

And if someone doesn't fit into our idea of what life should look like, we close them off. We shut them out. And in a way, we hate them. Hate them because of them, they're an obstacle to something you want. By the way you treat people, they very well might be people you're hating right now at church.

So when the time and opportunity comes for you to love them, you will avoid them. You'll say the superficial, due diligence stuff, and then you'll sidestep and go, "Whew, got that done." Go on with comfortable living. And there's a potential we might be doing that to one another. Maybe even possibly today we did it.

We can be polite and smile and say, "How was your week?" And we grow protective though inwardly of ourselves. Rather than having our hearts stretch and reach out towards others, we grow inward, and we will interact only with those who can serve some purpose in my own life. Do you know how you might show hatred to a homeless person?

You roll up the window when you come across them on the freeway, right? It's not that that's wrong. You don't make eye contact with the guy. It's not that that's wrong. Think about it a little bit. You sit there, roll up window, don't make eye contact, green light, hurry, hurry, hurry.

You go, "Whew." It's an interesting thing. It's the fact that we don't need to give them money. We don't need to sit there and think, "How am I going to get out of this car and talk to them or share the gospel?" It's not that. I think the danger is in the middle of the heart.

You close off your life against them. It's just a rolling up of the window. Very simple. We don't do the old style. It's very simple now. You just pull up the little automatic, and they're closed out of your life. That's hatred. Think about it metaphorically. Don't we do that with people in our lives?

People we'd rather not deal with? People that don't have anything to offer us? Rather than sitting there and thinking, "How can I love them without just kindness?" But with agape love. The way God loved me, how can I love the brothers? How can I love the sisters? To pursue their good.

To be sacrificial in our love for one another. To be decisive in our love to say, "I will love them today." What we do is we kind of go, "Zzzz," and we roll up our heart window. Maybe even to each other. We don't make eye contact, and we just hope it passes quickly.

You know how God could have hated us? He could have just rolled up that window as we went on our way to hell. He didn't have to go there and hate us. Just let it happen. "Go to my wrath." But he loved us. God himself came down and interacted with, and dealt with, and embraced sinful men.

Lepers touched Jesus. Not just simple physical leprosy, but spiritual lepers touched Christ. He did the exact opposite of ignoring us and hoping and pretending we didn't exist. He went to the cross. Hating someone says, "Go away to them." Hating someone says, "I want you out of my life." God in his love not only saves us, but he doesn't just say, "I want you out of my life.

You're an inconvenience to me." He says, "I will die for you. Come into my kingdom. Come into my house." Who does that? Come into my house. Take on the inheritance of my very own son. And so this might be what hate looks like in our lives. We roll up the window.

The church, we must love one another as God loved us. Not a love of our own world, but a love from God. A self-sacrificing, far-reaching love. This isn't just being inclusive, or nice, or considerate. It's the way God loves you. That's how you love each other. If you say you love God, but hate brothers, it says here in this text, you are a liar.

If you're wondering, "Man, am I hating people?" And if we're thinking that now, and it says here, if you say you love God, but you hate your brothers and sisters around you, you are a liar. First John, I love it and I hate it because it's so black and white.

It makes it hard. Like, "Am I not a Christian?" We're not going to go into that. But the understanding of this is if you are a Christian, you ought to look a certain way. If you say you love God, but hate your brothers, liar. You can sing all the song you want.

"Jesus, I am so in love with you." Maybe God is looking down and saying, "Hmm, sure about that?" I had to kind of go through my heart again today. You can serve however much you want. You can even pick out a few people to say, "Those are the people I'm going to serve." And so they're like a project.

They're like the ones that we can say, like, we can point to in our own hearts and say, "See, I am loving people." And maybe we'll just even pick one person we kind of don't like and say, "No, but we're to be characterized by love. Whoever we come across, that's just what happens." If you are saying you love God, but you hate brothers, you're a liar.

If you are doing that, you're always going to have a portion of the heart that resides in darkness. You're going to have a portion of the heart that you're unwilling to surrender to the transforming love of God. You'll have a portion of your heart that you declare yourself as deity over it as you withhold mercy over somebody.

In Matthew chapter 5 verse 23, that's why it says there, "Therefore, if you are presenting your offering at the altar," and hopefully that's an act of love for God, an act of worship before God. Presenting your offering at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you.

Leave your offering there before the altar and go. Help you reconcile to your brother and then come and present your offering. The idea of that is kind of what we're seeing here in this text. There's a statement, it's called a fortiori statement. I learned of it in seminary. I thought it was kind of a cool thing.

It literally means by a stronger argument. What you see in verse 20 and 21 is a fortiori statement. It's that if you can't do the lesser, you cannot, the greater is not true in your life. That's what it says there, right? It says, "If anyone says, 'I love God' and hates his brother, he is a liar.

For the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has seen." Oh, I keep flipping those, huh? "Who does not love his brother who he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen." In Matthew chapter 7 verse 11, I'll just give you one example of it.

"If you there being evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give what is good to those who ask?" The reality of this passage is it's more difficult to love someone you can't see, God, than it is to love someone you can, your brothers.

You can't love God if you're hating other people. It cannot exist at the same time. If we're not characterized by a love for people, we can't deceive ourselves in saying we're loving God. We could easily be today setting up a kingdom where we close ourselves up and we're building up our own kingdom, a Christianity, a church that's just some scary styrofoam castle in our lives.

We're playing a church game and there's no real agape love happening here. We go past that, there's those three things in the bathroom all the time. In my mind, I thought it was so funny. It's like we engage in God-centered worship and we equip believers with God words and then I take a bathroom break.

Then we get stuck there. That's what we do. We're here to worship God. But the third one, building Christ-centered community and love and accountability, really loving each other with almost that same affection that we have for God. It's kind of there for people. So we'll do our meetups, we'll do our meals, but are we on our knees for each other?

Are we praying? Are we asking each other deeper questions? Not because you know that's the right thing to do, but because you care deeply for them. You're not satisfied with when they say like, "Yeah, we're good. Same old, same old." Are you concerned for the spiritual health of one another?

Are we sharing our struggles? When we look at each other, do we see how that person fits into my life? What they can add to my life? Or do we have a deep concern for them? So it says in verse 21, "And this commandment we have from him, that the one who loves God should love his brother also." We do this by laying down our lives for each other.

Mind you, it's not just doing nice things or serving each other per se. It's laying down your lives. In 1 John 3 verse 16, "We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought also to lay down our lives for the brethren." So this example of Christ laying down his life for us, and then that same word, "laying down life," placed upon us, says, "You love others like that." John 15, 13, "Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends." I had a whole thing of application.

We could just shoot it up, and I'm not gonna go through any of these. These are just... We were supposed to, but we're gonna run out of time. So I wanna remind you of who John was. The author of this book, to close here. He was someone called the Son of Thunder, along with James.

And remember, Jesus, he names them that in Mark 3. And the reason for that was because they were just reckless and really like... You know those people who are kind of meatheads? I feel like they're kind of those kind of guys that just wants like, "Hey, let's go. Jesus, they did this to you, so rain...

You want us to pray and it's gonna rain down fire upon them?" Very graceless type of people almost. This was someone brash and rash, judgmental maybe, but even someone like this, he becomes someone who's known as the apostle of love. It was as he grew and matured in Christ.

Remember, we are called to love because God first loved us, and love is not something that we can muster up with our own strength. It's not sheer human exertion. It's something that supernaturally happens as we ponder and meditate and deepen in our understanding of God's love for us. It's the only way.

And so this is maybe my plea, my exhortation to us as a church. Can we love one another? So simple to say that, love one another. But can we truly love one another? Because this unity is vital in carrying out the mission that the church is called to. This isn't something nice to have on top of what we do as a church.

How we love each other is going to be the proof of whether or not we truly love God and understand his love for us. This is not something to sweep under the rug. If we just superficially continue our interactions with each other without deeply loving each other, there is no true unity in the spirit and it's just a matter of time before Berean crumbles.

We will not be able to stand together in a world that's looking for every reason to tear us down. We ought not to be looking at others to see why others aren't loving me. The call is for us to go and love others. Challenged by God's call on my life to go and do that.

This is not duty, this is now desire. This is not a church game, this is who we are. This is our identity. The stakes are high because God will empower us to love each other. As we deepen in our understanding of his love for us, the stakes are going to be like will you answer the call of what it is to be a believer.

So would you take a moment to pray? Then after a moment our praise team will come and lead us in some songs of response.