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Sermon- On Purpose: Be Love for God's World · North Raleigh United Methodist Church Podcast

• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: Beginning in chapter four, verse seven.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: Beloved, let us love one another because love is from God.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: Everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: God's love was revealed among us in this way.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through Him.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: In this is love.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: Not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: No one has ever seen God.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: If we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his spirit.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: And we have seen and do testify that the Father has sent his son as the Savior of the world.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: God abides in those who confess that Jesus is the Son of Son of God, and they abide in God.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: So we have known and believed the love that God has for us.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: Love has been perfected among us in this, that we may have boldness on the day of judgment, because as he is, so are we in this world.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: We love because he first loved us.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: Those who say I love God and hate their brothers or sisters are liars.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: For those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen cannot love God whom they have not seen.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: The commandment we have from him is this those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: This is the word of God for us, the people of God.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: So today we are finishing up a sermon series on our purpose statement, and you can see the purpose statement on the front of your bulletin.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: Belong as you are, become like Jesus, be love for God's world.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: And today we are reflecting on that final piece.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: Be love for God's world.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: To be or to do, that is the question.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: At least that is the question for the Apostle John in this letter that he wrote.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: To be love or to do love, what is the difference?
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's all about motive, about demeanor.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: I have known people who do things that one might call loving, but the manner in which they do them does not feel loving.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: I once had a flat tire in the middle of nowhere and needed help changing it.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: A man stopped to help me, which was an act of love for sure.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: He was doing the good, the neighborly, the Christian thing.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: But as he struck up a conversation with me, he quickly turned the whole affair into an opportunity to convert me to his brand of religion, all the while belittling my own.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: That did not feel very loving.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, because his act of love felt anything but loving, it made me question the genuineness of his motives and it made me wish he hadn't stopped in the first place.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: To be love or to do love?
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: Our answer to that question tells us a lot about our own spiritual maturity.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: Do we just do acts of love because we know we're supposed to?
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: Or do our acts of love flow naturally from our heart through the Holy Spirit at work within us?
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: In this letter, John has a lot to say about love.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's a dense passage that we just read.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm gonna break it down into bite-sized digestible pieces.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: And if you want to keep it open in front of you to follow along, that might help you.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: So first, John tells us that God is the source of all love.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: In verse 7, John writes, Love is from God.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: And again in verse 16, he writes, God is love.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: So love is from God, and God is love.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: What this means is that God's very nature is the purest, most perfect love there is.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: All the love that we experience and offer comes from God.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's a gift from God.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's God's very nature offered freely to the world.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: This also means that God defines what pure and perfect love looks and feels like.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: Here's how John describes it in verses 9 and 10.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: God's love was revealed among us in this way.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: God sent his only son into the world so that we might live through him.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: In this is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: So love in its divine, purest, perfect form, is self-sacrificing love.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's the kind of love that Paul described in 1 Corinthians 13.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: It is patient and kind, it is not self-seeking, and it does not keep a record of wrongs.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: And because love is from God, it never fails.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: So God is love, which means love is from God, and love at its best naturally takes a posture of self-sacrifice for the good of the beloved.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's a parent eating less when money is tight so their child can have as much as they need.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's a spouse sleeping in that awful hospital chair bed during their beloved's hospital stay so they don't have to be alone.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's foregoing a Saturday of relaxation in order to bag potatoes for food banks or to build a house with habitat for humanity.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: Love, as God reveals it to us, is self-giving and self-sacrificing.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: So after John makes it clear that God is love and love comes from God, he tells his readers about the impact of God's love on a person.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: First, it forgives our sins, allowing us to lead a forgiven life.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: We don't have to carry around the burden of guilt for past misdeeds.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus' death atoned for these sins.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: So when we confess them to God, we are forgiven.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: And these misdeeds no longer have power over the state of our souls.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: They no longer get to define who we are and how we relate to God.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: Instead, God's love enfolds us and draws us into God's very heart.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: John calls this abiding.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: Here is what he writes in verses 15 and 16.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: God abides in those who confess that Jesus is the Son of God, and they abide in God.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: So we have known and believed the love that God has for us.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: Abiding in God is what we might call today having a relationship with God.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's resting in God's love and letting God's love infiltrate your entire being.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: And abiding is the work of the Holy Spirit within us.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: Verse 14 says this by this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his spirit.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: So this is what God's love does to a person.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: It forgives them and it makes a home for the Holy Spirit to abide within them.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: This means a person who abides in God's love is filled with the Holy Spirit who is love.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: So this person who is filled with the Holy Spirit by God's love becomes love for the world.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: They don't just do loving things because they know it's the right thing to do.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: They are loving.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: Loving actions flow from their everyday living because the Holy Spirit, who is love, abides within them.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: John calls this being perfected in love.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: And this is a major tenet of United Methodist theology.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: The aim of sanctification, of becoming like Jesus, is to be perfected in love.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, when United Methodist clergy are ordained, the bishop asks us 19 historical questions that have been asked of every Methodist clergy since the days of John Wesley, the founder of Methodism in the early or the late 1700s.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: Of these 19 questions, three of them are about being perfected in love.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: Are you going on to perfection?
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: Do you expect to be made perfect in love in this life?
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: Are you earnestly striving after perfection in love?
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: Every ordained clergy has to say yes to these questions.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: And there's always a heaviness to the air when the ordinance answer these questions in front of all the other clergy because these are big questions.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: Do you expect to be made perfect in love in this life?
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: Now, of course, the key to answering yes to these questions is knowing that it's not our own striving that will bring us to these goals.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: It is the Holy Spirit at work within us.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: Our job is to abide in God and allow the Holy Spirit to rule in our hearts so that our love will grow more and more like God's love.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't mean we'll be perfect in every way, never making a mistake.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: It means the love that flows through us will be ever more connected to the source of all love, God.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: These questions are not just for clergy, they are for all of us.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: They are for you.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: By the power of the Holy Spirit and God's love at work within you, are you going on to perfection?
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: Do you expect to be made perfect in love?
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: Are you earnestly striving after perfection in love?
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: That is the difference between being love and being love.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's all about whether your acts of love are motivated by your guilt that you must do the right thing, or by the Holy Spirit of love at work within you, transforming you into a greater reflection of God's loving self.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: So, so far, John tells us first about the nature of God's love, that it's from God.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: Love is from God.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: And he tells us secondly about the impact of God's love on a person.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: It forgives us and allows us to abide in God through the Holy Spirit, being perfected in love.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: And thirdly, John tells us about the result of God's love.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: God's love gives us confidence, boldness.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: We don't have to fear judgment from God or from others because we know that God's love for us is eternal and it gives us eternal life and a permanent place in God's family.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: In the United Methodist Church, we call this assurance, this unwavering trust that though we don't fully understand how everything works in life or in death, we know that God's love is the strongest force in this life and the next, and it will carry us through.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_00: And perhaps most importantly, for our church's purpose statement, God's love gives us purpose.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: We are sent by God's love into the world to be love for God's world.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: With the Holy Spirit living within us, with all of God's self-giving love, we become agents of God's love for the world.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: We are the way God shares God's love with the people around us.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: This is what John writes in verses 19 to 21.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: We love because he first loved us.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: Those who say, I love God and hate a brother or sister are liars.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: For those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen cannot love God, whom they haven't seen.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: The commandment we have from him is this those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: Now, this is pretty self-explanatory.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: Because we are so loved, because God's love abides with us through the Holy Spirit, we become love for others.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: If God's love is in us, we can't hate another whom God loves.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: If we hate another, love cannot fully be reigning in our hearts.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: Now, this is a challenging word, but it's one that describes what being perfected in love looks like.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's loving as fully and freely as God loves.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: This is God's mission for us.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, you've probably heard this language over the years about God's mission in the world.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_00: Some say that God's mission is to save souls, to convert everyone across the globe to Christianity.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's a spiritual mission.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's about securing confessions of faith and baptisms.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: I say that is too narrow of a mission for the fullness of God.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: God's mission is nothing less than complete redemption of the entire globe.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: God's mission is to attain peace everywhere.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: God's mission is to end famine and poverty.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: God's mission is to overthrow injustice and heal the earth.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: God's mission is to save souls through forgiveness and freedom, through kindness and mercy.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: God's mission, as John writes in verse 9, is so that the world might live through Jesus.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: So God has a mission on this earth, and it is for the complete of the entire created order.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: That is what love does.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: That is what God's love is working on even now in all places throughout the globe.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: And the astounding thing is that you and I are commissioned by the Holy Spirit to be part of this sacred rescue mission.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: When we abide in God's love through the Holy Spirit, we are sent to be God's redeeming love for the world.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_00: We are God's hands.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: We speak God's words.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: We are God's ambassadors, helping to advance God's mission to save the world.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: This is why we are a church that takes service so very seriously.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: It is because we know that God's mission to save the world is a matter of life and death for so many.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: And we are called to be love and contribute to the flourishing of life.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_00: And we don't do this begrudgingly.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_00: We want to do this, we get to do this, we love doing this because we are so full of God's love, we want to share it.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: I was not here when the blessing initiative was started, and I know many of you were not either, so let me retell this story as best as I can.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: An anonymous$2 million gift was given to our church with the simple instruction: give it all away to people in need.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: This wasn't a gift given begrudgingly, and it wasn't given because someone decided they needed to do something loving.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: No, it was a gift given in love, and it is evidence of God's love at work flowing in this concrete, self-giving way, and the results have been remarkable.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_00: Not only have we been able to give$50,000 grants to organizations doing amazing ministry for people in need, we've also deepened our understanding of the call to be love for God's world.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: We have discovered the joy of partnering with ministries who help us actively engage in service that we might contribute to the flourishing of those around us.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: We've packed hygiene kits for refugee hope partners, being love for our refugee neighbors.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: We've packed emergency bags for a Methodist home for children, being love for kids who need emergency shelter because their homes are no longer safe.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_00: We've prepared battles for habitat with humanity, being love for neighbors seeking affordable housing in our community.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: And beyond our blessing initiative partners, we have church members who devote themselves to service in a number of ways.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: We have folks who go into the prison weekly to be a friend and Christian witness to people on the inside searching for forgiveness and hope.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: We have folks who toil away in the garden across the street, rain or shine, and who give much of what they grow away to food banks to feed the hungry.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: We have Stephen ministers who walk with people in crisis, and we have members who volunteer at community organizations like Note and the Pocket.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: We have folks who build ramps for our neighbors.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_00: We have folks who travel to Mexico and Peru to build whatever our church partners in those places need.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: Our church takes service so seriously that I can't name all the ways that y'all are being a blessing in our community.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: But what I can name is that these are not things we simply do because we feel like we have to show God's love.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: No, all of these ministries flow from who we are.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: People who abide in God's love and are conduit, conduits of God's love for the world.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_00: To be love or to do love?
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_00: That is the question for us today.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_00: And the answer to that question lies in how you respond to this one.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_00: Are you abiding in God's love so that God's love abides and flows through you?
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_00: In the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.