Not everybody is going to know, but in 2004, my mom gave up, lost her battle, her two and a half year battle to pancreatic cancer. And when we started planning the funeral, my brother and my dad and I sat around and stared at each other, not really knowing where to go, sharing a lot of stories, but not knowing where to go. And by her hospice bed, we found her white Bible.
And in this white Bible, she had several things marked and notes by them and things. And we started using those notes, and I just went back into my dad’s office and I started working through it and praying through it. And I was a CPA at the time.
I wasn’t a pastor, but my mom was a home ec teacher for the Clay Center High School. And then later on, stayed home while we were young and worked in the school food service while she got her master’s. And then she was a principal in the Clay Center School District at a couple different schools.
And so education was near and dear to her heart. And as I read what she had marked, I ended up calling her funeral, the final lesson plan, because she had so much encouragement for us. And I remember sitting down with the pastor of the Clay Center United Methodist Church, and we were going over this, and I said, here’s the layout for the funeral.
And I walked him through what the lesson plan was, where the speakers were going to go. And he said, huh, would you like to do the sermon, too? And I was like, no, I’m good on that one. Not for my mom’s funeral.
But in that, I remember the verses that stood out to me were in 1 John 4, that the last encouragement she had, the last lesson she wanted to give to us was to love one another. And it made me feel so blessed that that’s what my mom lived, and that’s what she wanted us all to do when we were gone. Those were her parting words.
And so 1 John 4, and the whole book has been so special to me since that time. And there is just so much in here on how we can learn, and how we can learn to live as followers of Jesus Christ. The sermon series that we’re working on all the way up to Lent is called, Hello, God, How Can I Really Know It’s You? How can I know it’s you? How can somebody else see in us that it’s God? And how can we know if somebody else has God in their life? How can we know that God is present? And John basically just says these words, love like God.
Look at that example. And that’s who we’re called to be as disciples. Will you stand as you are able? We’re going to look at 1 John 4, verses 7 through 11.
Last week we did 1 John 4, 1 through 6, and we’re going to work our whole way through there. So I encourage you again to bring your Bibles to take notes, because we’re going to spend a lot of time in the Bible. You can use your apps on your phone.
Go home and read the book of John, especially today, Jesus’ final conversation with the disciples at the Last Supper, where it was John 14 through 17, where he taught them so much, which is deeply connected to some of this text. 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.
By this the love of God was manifested in us, that God had sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him. And this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His only Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought to love one another.
The Word of God, inspired by God, for the people of God. Thanks be to God. Amen.
You may be seated. If we look at 1 John 4, 7, I can summarize what John was trying to tell the church with four words. He said, beloved, love, love, love.
Any questions? Beloved, love, love, love. Let us love one another, for love is from God, and everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Now, one thing that has been foundational for my faith is in my studies of 1 John, especially 1 John 4 and 5, growing up and knowing full well what Jesus said the two greatest commandments were.
Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, and the second is like it, love your neighbor as yourself. Now, there is a reason when I read this that Jesus says, you know, do these, doesn’t just say, hey, these are the two greatest commandments. He says, first, love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength.
And when I read 1 John 4, I see some of the depth in that, that Jesus basically is saying, if you really want to love, you need to love like God. And if you want to love like God, you need to have God in you. So when we love God first, we’re able to love our neighbor more.
We’re able to love our spouse more. We’re able to love our friends more. We’re able to love our coworkers more.
We’re able to love that one person, that one person who we don’t even want to mention in church, who bugs us, who gets to us every time, but Jesus just says, love them. The one who seems like an antagonist, even the Antichrist we were talking about last week, Jesus doesn’t say, hate them, pray for them to burn. Jesus says instead, love them.
Love even the Antichrist. Love those who fight against Jesus in the world today. And oh my goodness, it seems like so many people are fighting against Jesus today.
Love, love, love. Love, first he says beloved. Remember I told you he had two things.
He kept calling them throughout 1 John, 2 John, and 3 John. One is my little children. The other one is beloved.
How does it make you feel if you are beloved? That means beloved just simply says by John, you who are loved. And then if you connect that with my little children, some of us, you know, we have to learn things through life experience, and sometimes we don’t really know what love is until you get married and face life struggles with someone else and until you have your own kids. Then you start realizing how much your own parents loved you so much.
How much they sacrificed for you. And how much your parents care about you. And how much your parents, even though you don’t like when they say no, trying not to look at my boys as this is happening, even when they say no, they love you so much.
They do it out of love. They care about you. That kind of love is the same similar kind of love that God has for us.
That he looks at us and he doesn’t say, oh man, you’re a liar. You’re a cheater. You’re a thief.
He looks at us and he says, my child, I love you. I gave everything for you so that you could know me and so that you could have the opportunity to love me back. Love comes from God.
And everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. If somebody truly loves, not loves as the world says we should love, but loves as God, then we know they are from God. Jesus, when he gave the new commandment in John 13, said it like this.
I’m giving you a new commandment that you love one another just as I have loved you. That you also love one another. By this, all people will know that you are my disciples if you love one another.
Now, as we are talking about this series and wondering how we can know it’s God or wondering how others can know it’s God, people who aren’t even the church can know that someone of the church is of God. Jesus just simply said, by this, all people will know that you are my disciples. Not because you follow the law.
Not because you are able to argue and maybe win an argument, but because you love one another. If the world looks at the church, and some will look at the church and say whether it’s, you know, people are perfect, they’re still sinners. And they call us hypocrites because we still sin.
But if we love one another, if we don’t gossip about one another, if we lift one another up in prayer, if we speak positive things to one another and about one another, then the world can see from the church, how can we really know it’s you, God, because we love each other. That seems pretty basic. But if somebody sees, how can we even love our neighbor who we don’t really know that well? How can we even love those who are outside of our circles if we can’t love our church family? If we can’t love those whom we may know some of their flaws and some of their mistakes and some of their setbacks.
That’s love. That’s the kind of love that God gave us in Jesus Christ. In fact, John goes on to say that God is love.
How do we know it’s God in us? Because God is love. And so if God is love, then it is what John is saying there is agape, agape, agape. That’s the Greek word that you’ve probably heard many times.
That’s the Greek word for love that tells you it’s not just a love as the world would love kind of thing, but it’s a sacrificial love. Some call it unconditional love. That you would sacrifice for someone, whether or not they would sacrifice for you.
That’s the kind of love that Jesus gave us. Agape, and when it’s used as a verb, it is agapeo. Now, this is a little silly, but if you think of it as someone with a Cockney accent saying, I got a pothole, agapeo, I got a pothole, that’s how agapeo is kind of pronounced.
I got a pothole. Now, you’ll never forget it, right? I got a pothole. That is where John takes it, and it’s not just love being a thing, or not just love being a condition, or not just love being a noun, but that’s where it’s a verb.
That’s why that word is so important to transform love, not just being into a thing or a concept, but a verb where love is action. Love is what we do. Faith is not just saying, I believe in God.
Now, the difficulty with just saying, I believe in God, is what does that do for you? James in James 2 said it like this. James 2, 19, you believe that God is one, you do well. The demons also believe in shudder.
God is love, and if we believe in God, and if we love God, so we ought to love one another, so we ought to actively show our love towards one another, actively lift one another up, actively bless one another. There’s a point to having a church, and it’s not just so you can look good or feel good about it yourself. It’s so you can have a body of people who are imperfect that you can love and show God’s love to you.
And when you are shown that kind of love by other people, just like because Jesus showed that kind of love, that is how we ought to love one another. In John 15, Jesus said it like this. This is my commandment, that you love one another just as I have loved you.
Greater love has no man than this, that a person would lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. Love in action, love as a verb comes from Jesus.
God is love. Agape love says greater love has no one than this, that a person will lay down his life for his friends. You know anybody who did that? Well, Jesus did it for you.
He showed you that kind of love. In Philippians 2, Paul tells us, if you go further back, that Jesus is saying, I’m laying down my life for my friends. It’s bigger when Paul looks at it and he says, this is the mindset that you ought to have in Philippians 2, that because you have Jesus’ example, this is the attitude.
You should have. I mean, Jesus in Philippians 2, Jesus was equal with God, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, co-equal parts of the Trinity, co-equal in heaven, and he didn’t consider that something that he needed to hold on to. Why? Because his father told him to do it and because he loved us.
Being found in the appearance of man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. I mean, look at that regression of being one with God in heaven, all the power on heaven and earth, but he gave all that up. And who did he give that up for? For all of you, for all of us, for God so loved the world.
They gave that for us. And then, of course, the good news is he was given all authority on heaven and on earth after the resurrection when he ascended to heaven and sat at the right hand of God. But it wasn’t because he fought for it through war and through this like they wanted a Messiah to do.
It’s because he fought for it by loving us. By loving us to take on Satan all by himself. And he won! That is the greatest news we can even imagine.
That is something we have to be thankful for every day. John goes on to say in 1 John 4, in this is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation of our sins. You see, he says also that the one who does not love does not know God, for God is love.
If you don’t show love, if you don’t love one another, you don’t know God. That’s how we know that it’s really God, is that love shows through us. And it’s not a love like the world would love.
Jesus said this so clearly. He said it’s a sacrificial kind of love. It’s not a love that says, hey, I don’t want to step on your toes because you got your own thing going and you got your own truth going and you got all these things that you like.
It’s a love that says, I love you so much, I’m going to tell you the truth. I’m going to tell you that you need Jesus. I’m going to tell you that what you did here was not of God so that you can know God’s love even deeper and that we live and move and act not out of feeling like we don’t want to get caught, but we live and move and act out of loving God.
I mean, Jesus, when he gave the new commandment, said, love one another. And then he said, this is something in John 13 that we cannot take lightly. He said, if you are my disciples, if you obey my commandments, there is a lot of connection between obeying God and loving one another.
I mean, Jesus said the two greatest commandments were to love God and love one another. We think sometimes as we get caught up in the world that obeying God is not part of loving, but it is the deepest and core root of everything that there is. So basically, God is love and it all started with God.
John says, he loved us first and sent his son to be the appropriation of our sins. Not that we love, but because God loved us. Another thing that it’s good that it’s not just up to us because our love and the way we show it is so up and down, but God is steadfast in God’s love for us.
And we can always rely on God’s love. Raise your hand if you’re the greatest sinner in this room. God’s love.
Jesus died for those who sin. And John said, if we think we’re perfect, then we’re missing the point. That God is love and we need God’s love.
And that’s where we get God’s grace. Love like God. How do you live out life as a Christian in 2025? I almost said 2000.
My brain showed me 2024 in my head, but I had to overwrite that. 2025, we love like God. We humble ourselves before God.
We show love to those who may even hate us, who may even hate God. But we have to know they need to know God. They need to know God’s love and trust in God.
Juan Carlos Ortiz said it like this. He said, watching a trapeze show is breathtaking. Has anybody ever been to the circus? Watching a trapeze show is breathtaking.
We wonder at the dexterity, the timing, how they have to work together. We gasp at the near misses. In most cases, they have a net underneath.
When they fall, they jump and they bounce right back up to the trapeze. In Christ, we kind of live on that trapeze. The whole world should be able to watch and say, look how they live, how they love one another.
Look how well the husbands treat their wives. And aren’t they the best workers in the factories and offices, the best neighbors and the best students? That is to live on the trapeze being a show for the world to see. What happens when we slip? The net is there.
The blood of our Lord Jesus Christ had provided forgiveness for all our trespasses. Both the net and the ability to stay on the trapeze are the works of God’s grace. Of course, we cannot be continually sleeping on the net.
If that is the case, I wonder where the person really is a trapeze artist. If we are living like the world, how are we going to know it’s God in us? The best way to know if you have God in you is to love like God. Remember what Jesus did.
Remember how we can sacrifice that love that we might have for our immediate family members. How do we grow that? With the power of God, we can love beyond our own household to our church family. And we can grow in love and love beyond our own family to our neighbors.
And we can love those who are hurt and fallen and downtrodden and who have just lived with the pain of not knowing God. But we can only do that if we let God be in our hearts and in our lives. Let’s pray.
Almighty God, help us to love like you. Your love that you showed us in Jesus Christ is the greatest example that you being perfect, you being one, would humble yourselves to walk among us, to be vulnerable to the hate and the violence of the world. But to defeat that by one means, and that is love.
Put within us sacrificial love. Put within us that agape love, that agape, help us to put love into action. That it’s not just a concept or a thought or a warm fuzzy, but it’s love that reaches out a hand.
It’s love that says, I will help you even if you never are able to pay me back. It’s love that says, I will be there with you. It’s love that says, I will help you get.
It’s love that says, it’s love that works through action. It’s love that is sacrificial. It’s love that never ends because it’s love that is of God.
Help us to be a blessing to others by loving them. Help us to show the world that God is alive and real by loving them. Help us to show the world that you have a love that cannot separate us.
Be separated from you by anything that happens in this world. Help us to love like Jesus in everything.