Love vs Fear

Has anybody ever been to Science City? Did you do it pre-kids or post-kids? Post. Nice. The, let’s just say it’s almost like worlds of fun.

There’s so much to do and they’re so busy the whole time. I keep thinking they’re going to get tired of this but they go from one thing to the other to the other. And they had this, they had what I would call an obstacle course but they called it a kinetic something or another to make it sound scientific.

And I was in a group with three boys and they played on the kinetic activity area for about an hour. And the mom of the other two boys were there and we were talking about the boys and the curriculum that they were working on with their homeschool stuff. And we were also talking about, oh, and this was when we were all around the Legos building something that could go on the wall, different surgeries they’d had and problems.

And I talked about how we have one son who needs glasses, the other one has great vision. And then the other one is just about to get braces and the other one has good teeth. So they each have their issues.

And then as we were talking about the times where they had hurt themselves, I started realizing as I was telling the stories about the injuries that occurred that one son seemed to have no fear whatsoever. I don’t know if you can guess who that was. And I was just reeling off the injuries one after the other, the cuts, the scrapes, the bruises, the wounds, the repeated offenses of running into things.

And the other one, I couldn’t name as much. You see, the truth is one of them is pretty much has always been fearless, whether it’s with talking to people or whether it’s with when he goes and does stuff. And the other one has, you know, he’s a little more hesitant like checking it out before he gets into it.

And sometimes with the one who is fearless, I think, you know, a little fear wouldn’t hurt. I mean, it would hurt less. And for the other one, I’m thinking maybe a little less fear and you could get out there and do things without abandonment.

Now, in life, we all have things we fear. Until we come to the day we are perfected, we have things we are fear. And sometimes those fears are just drivers.

They drive us to do what we do, to say what we say, to interact how we interact. If you hear someone or you hear it come out of your mouth where you have an angry response or an elevated pitch where your voice goes up, a lot of what generates that are the fears behind it. Not necessarily what another person is doing or saying, but what that triggers in us.

Now, as we continue in 1 John, how do we know it’s God? How can I really know it’s you? God, how can I really know it’s you? Today, John is introducing another factor along with love that helps us understand who it is with God, who it is in us when God is working in us, and who it is in other people when God is working in other people, and how God can work amazing things for us, even when we have phobias and fears and doubts and worries and anxieties. How many of you, just by saying those words out loud, makes you cringe a little bit? Listen to these words in 1 John 4. We’re going to start at verse 16 and go through 21. And believe it or not, that means we’ll be done with 1 John 4. And there’s only one more chapter in 1 John after that.

Will you stand as you are able? We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this, love is perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment, because as he is, so also are we in this world.

There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment. And the one who fears is not perfected in love. 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 the commandment we have from him that the one who loves God should love his brother also.

The word of God, inspired by God, for the people of God. Thanks be to God. Amen, you may be seated.

In case you didn’t know, we live in a city that has been in the news a lot lately. And that’s because there’s something historical going on. It’s called three-peat.

And when we look at that, the national media, some of them just are in awe of this record the chiefs are accumulating. And others, especially people online, are getting tired of it. So they create the narratives we’ve talked about, about how the officials just go for Kansas City, no matter what the statistics say.

And how the league wants Kansas City to win. In all of this, one quote I read this week was from a guy named Shannon Sharp. And you know it’s gotta be unbiased.

You know who Shannon Sharp played for? The Denver Broncos. So when Shannon Sharp was a football player, he was not my favorite guy. Because boy, he could accumulate the yards on the Chiefs.

He was a tight end. But now he’s a commentator for Fox Sports. And he said this, the greatest advantage an athlete can have is another man’s fear.

Who do you think he was talking about? One specific individual. I think I heard it. Yes.

And his mother would be pleased that you said Patrick and not Pat. The people who are really angry with him like to call him Patty too, which is something you hope that he hears. So it fires him up.

Patrick Mahomes saying he is someone who does not fear the other team. Because if the Chiefs have the ball last, and it’s within one score, who’s gonna win the game? The Chiefs. And so somehow they developed this thing that no matter how bleak it looks, no matter how many points they’ve been down in the playoffs and in the Super Bowl, they believe they will come through, that they will win.

And on the other hand, what he’s talking about too, what Shannon Sharp is talking about is the fear of someone on another team, when Mahomes steps on the field. Now, fear, like I said, is quite a motivator and can play into what we think or what we believe on what the outcome is. Fear is something that can squelch our faith.

Now, when I think of this, I think of in Deuteronomy and Joshua, when it was close to the time for the Israelites to cross the Jordan River and go into the promised land. And in this promised land, this is what they had been waiting for 40 years as they roamed aimlessly around the desert so God could bring them back to faith. And the next generation went in there.

And in Deuteronomy, they sent scouts into the promised land. And the people of God who had survived by God with manna and quail, and all of it came directly from God and they knew it in their survival. When they were running out of water, Moses could put his staff on a rock and water would come out of the rock.

And they learned to become completely dependent on God. The scouts went out, led by Joshua, who would succeed Moses. And his number two guy was a guy named Caleb.

And as they went out and they spied to see what the lands looked like, they said, they came back. And a lot of the people were going, a lot of the spies were saying, this is not good. This is the land of the giants.

Now, if you look at historically on how big the Israelites were, they weren’t that big of people anyway. They were just stiff-necked, as God would say. And so that covers a lot of ground.

It was all heart and all stiff-neckedness. They went there and they said, they’re giants. I don’t think we can do this.

This is not happening. And Caleb, who this is the first time we really hear of Caleb, steps up and he says, hey, whose are we? This is, I think we can do this. I think we can trust in God that if God says, go here, we can go here and we can survive.

We can flourish. We can overcome all the obstacles in our way, even if giants stand before us. And God and Moses talked and later God and Joshua talked.

And at the beginning of Joshua, God said this a couple of times to Joshua before he said this to the people themselves. In Joshua 1.8, God said, have I not commanded you? Say this with me. Be strong and courageous.

Do not tremble or be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go. Say it again without the words. Be strong and courageous.

That is what he was called to do. Now courage doesn’t just come from being stiff-necked. Courage doesn’t just come from being stubborn.

And courage doesn’t just come from having this mitigated lack of fear. Courage comes when love can overpower fear. Now am I reading this into the Old Testament just to make it sound cool because John is using this now? I think if we go back a little further and we see that in some of my favorite verses I have on the slide, Deuteronomy, because I was reading in Deuteronomy, but it’s actually Exodus, but it’s the Deuteronomy slide.

The next one. Moses would go out of the camp and there was a tent outside the camp. They called the tent of meeting.

And when he would do that, the cloud would descend upon the tent and the people would stand up outside their own tents and watch Moses out in the tent. Well, actually they’re watching God because they saw the presence of God there when Moses was actually there. And this is what would happen in the tent.

It says, the Lord used to speak to Moses face to face just as a man speaks to his friend. When Moses returned to the camp, his servant Joshua, the son of Nun, a young man would not depart from the tent. Now, the words that are famous in there are that the Lord would speak to Moses face to face just as a man speaks to a friend.

Moses was set apart. Moses was a prophet who was special, whom they would expect one like him to come, which was another layer of who the Messiah was that Moses in his prophetic ability was a type of Messiah, a type of Jesus that they would foreshadow to see who Jesus was. But what is often overlooked in this verse is that when Moses would leave, Joshua did not leave.

He would stay in the tent of meeting and meet with God as God was preparing his heart to lead a people. So Joshua, before he led the people of Israel, knew God, had a relationship with God. So he had to know God’s character and that his strength didn’t just come from knowing God would do what God said, but because he knew God loved him.

A relationship is not a relationship without that love in there. And Joshua had the courage, and God could say, be strong and courageous because love backed that up. Now, in verse 16 of John 4, it basically, I don’t know if you noticed, but there is nothing new.

Normally, when you read, there’s something new. In this transitional verse, where John adds another point, he goes back before he does that and covers ground we’ve already covered. In verse 16, it says, we have come to know and believe the love which God has for us.

God is love. Is that a new idea? No. He already said that back in verse seven.

Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. God is love, and the one who loves abides in God, and God abides in him. Does abiding in God and, does God abiding in us and us abiding in God sound familiar? Okay, tell me all the details from last week, if you can.

When we abide in God and God abides in us, the ultimate result from that is love. That that’s how we can know love and recognize love on someone else, and love is then how we can recognize God from someone else. By this, and when it says by this, it’s pointing back to verse 16, by this, that we know and believe the love that God has for us, that God is love.

By this, love is perfected within us. Now, again, this isn’t a new concept. We talked about this last week.

Love is perfected in us, and when it is perfected in us, it gives us confidence in God. It gives us what Wesley called the assurance of God within us, and the focus of the early Methodist movement wasn’t on being the most perfectly pious person, although they worked on piety, and they worked on not sinning, and they worked on doing the right thing. They believed the shortest way home to being perfected was through love, that if we could be perfected in love, in agape love, in sacrificial love, then we would have entire sanctification.

I just, I knew Dana would help me out if nobody else did. Entire sanctification, and that is the point, the goal, the everything we do, everything we do in Hope Builders, that’s the goal. I hope that’s not new information for you, that it’s to grow in love, and grow to the point where we reach our telos, or our end.

Telos, in the Greek, is interpreted as perfect, and we think of it as someone who makes no mistakes, but it just means God’s love is fully within us. Do you have those times where you really feel that love of God, or that love of God is so overwhelming, you gotta do something, you gotta step out of your comfort zone, and help someone, and share with someone, and be with someone who needs God’s love. The Lord used to speak to Moses face-to-face, and then Joshua spoke to God, and then Jesus did, and John is now asking the disciples to spend that time with God, to grow up, to get this confidence.

Love is perfected in us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment, because as he is, so also are we in the world. What does confidence in the day of judgment mean? If you ask people, one of the greatest fears people have in the world today, there’s financial stuff, but another one of the greatest fears people have is death, and death is, some of it is the fear of dying, and how agonizing that process can be, but some of it also is this uncertainty about what happens after death, or an uncertainty of if we have been good enough that we can stand before the judgment of God, or uncertainty that even we get the opportunity to stand before God for judgment. That is something that is huge.

Now, before we go too far, who is good enough to stand before God in judgment? On our own. Jesus, yes, and that is actually what ties so we can stand before God with confidence. In Colossians 3.3, it says, that in Christ, we are hidden by God in Christ, meaning that when God looks at us, he sees who? Jesus, and when God looks at us and sees Jesus, then we can have confidence.

Then we can understand that love, because the love of God is most manifested that we can see in Jesus Christ, that he would give his only son, and the confidence that we have isn’t confidence that we are good enough, that we are strong enough, that we were courageous enough, that we did enough good things, we had enough good deeds, that we overweighed our good deeds over our sins. Our confidence is that God sees Christ in us, and when Christ is in us, that love of God grows and grows and grows and grows each year, and that’s where the perfection or the telos or the end of love comes so we have no resistance to the love of God within us. And then it goes on to say, there is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear, for fear has to do with punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love.

The fears, the worries, the anxieties, all that stuff is natural. Having love that overpowers that stuff, not just a stiff neck, but love that overpowers it, love that says, you know, in the Bible it does say we are to fear God, and sometimes that means to be reverent before God, but sometimes it means we need to fear Him. Now, there are two ways, maybe more, but two main ways that you might have grown up if you grew up in church.

One is this fear that if you mess up, you might not have time to repent, and then you’re toast. You know, every week you come back and you realize what a sinner you are, so you gotta repent again and receive Christ and do it all over again and again and again and again. Another one that I grew up with was that you don’t fear, you don’t worry about it, you know, it’s all covered.

You’re coming to church, you’re doing good, it’s all covered, so I don’t remember. The truth is, I don’t remember until I read the Bible for myself ever having a fear for my own soul. And again, those two of those, there’s something better that’s in between.

Like, if you have no fears, that might not lead you in the right direction. If you have too much fear, you might be like the parable of the tenants where, you know, the one who got five took the talents and used them and he got how many more? You guys are great at math, look at this group. And the one who had two talents got how many more because he used them? And the one with one talent got how many more? He buried it, he got no more, and then he had the audacity to tell the master, I knew you were harsh and I worried about what you were gonna do if you came and you found that I lost what you gave me, so I buried it, here, here’s what you gave me.

And if we go through life and say to God, here’s what you gave me, it is an insult to God because God gives us the power and God gives us the love to overcome the fear that keeps us from doing what God has called us to do and that love is what propels us. In case you have any doubts at this point. And the winner is love, fear does not equal love.

Fear is something that is a tool of Satan to keep us from having that confidence, that assurance, that peace in our heart that we can stand on the day of judgment and God will lift us up through Jesus Christ. There is no fear in love, fear is the loser, love is the winner. If someone says, well, we love because he first loved us, God loved first, it says that back in 4.7, it’s not a new thing, John circles back on a lot of things.

So this is important, why is it so important that God loved us first? Because we need the love of God within us, the love that we have just by our feelings and who we are as people is not enough to sustain us. It’s likely not enough to sustain in a relationship either. We need the love of God within us to help us to grow up and overcome the fears that we have and because it came from God, it started with God, so God will carry us through.

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 not seen. How can I know it’s you, God, that’s coming from me or in someone else? How can the world look at the church and know it’s the same thing? Love God and then we’ll love one another. When we love one another, the people can see God’s love in us and that overcomes fear, it overcomes hate, it overcomes so many things and when we overcome those things that we see so prominently in the world today, whether it’s in the media, whether it’s in circles, whether it’s in gossip circles, whatever it might be, then the world knows that God is in us or God and we can tell when God is, when John says test the spirits, he’s telling you here, one of the ways you can test the spirits is to see if somebody loves like God and doesn’t hate like everybody else and the commandment we have, the commandment he gave us, the commandment John emphasizes again is to love one another.

If you love God, you love one another. You love your brothers and sisters and then you can love your neighbor. I feel like I’m repeating myself just like John but love is the key even to overcoming fear.

Let’s pray. Almighty God, thank you for the love that you showed us in Jesus Christ, that you loved us first so now we can love others. We pray that your love in us would be perfected, would grow to completion, would give us the sanctification we need to serve you, to love you, to step out in faith, to have assurance today that we can share your gospel with others even when it’s uncomfortable and have assurance that we can stand before you on the day of judgment and when you say, so tell me about what you did, we just lean on Jesus.

We lean on your love and we can stand before you face to face as Moses did, as Joshua did and feel your love and have confidence because we have Jesus in our hearts and our lives. We abide in you and you abide in us and your love reigns supreme. In Jesus’ name, amen.