5/3/20 1 John 3:16-24 “Worse Than the Coronavirus!”

01 May 5/3/20 1 John 3:16-24 “Worse Than the Coronavirus!”

5/3/20    1 John 3:16-24    “Worse Than the Coronavirus!”

There is one thing that really strikes me just about every time I sit before a blank screen on the computer and that is we are really a nation of words.   Whether we are a farmer or a mechanic or we haul gravel or teach school or if we are a homemaker, we rely on words.  We read words to follow directions, we listen for words of instruction and comfort, and we say words to others in a way of communicating.  Our President even makes jokes with words which the press cannot even begin to understand.  I cannot imagine living in a world without words or a language.  And sometimes this gets a little confusing because we have so many words that sound alike and mean different things.  For example we have the words there, to, you and four.  Then we have different words meaning the same thing.  A good example here would be all the different names that fingernail polish and lipstick makers have for red.  I have also heard and I don’t know if this is right or not that the Eskimo people have many words for snow.  Today we are going to look at the word love and see if it has different meanings and which of these meanings means the most to us.

Here is a rather sad story from Sermon Central but it makes a very good point.  Maybe this even happens sometimes.  There was once a young married woman with two children standing by her sink washing dishes.  She got to thinking that there must be more to life than this.  When her husband got home, he found a note saying that she had left.  He was stricken.  She would call every week to check on the children.  At these times the husband would always tell her of his great love for her and beg her to come home.  She always said no and hung up.  He finally hired a private investigator to find her.  He then went to her apartment and was very nervous.  He had flowers for her and he had rehearsed what he would say.  She opened the door and he started to speak when she ran to his arms and began to weep.  “Let’s go home.” She said.

Months later when things had started to heal, he asked her something that had bothered him.  He said, “All those times we talked and you refused to come home.  Why did you now decide to come home?”  She began to cry and said, “Before you were just telling me you loved me.  When you came, you showed me.”  Sometimes we just have to show people our love.  Saying it is not enough.

But before we can even get this far, we really have to know what love is.  The first thing that comes to my mind is the love a man and woman have in marriage.  Another image is the love that a mother has for her child.  And another image is the love a child has for a peanut butter sandwich.  Here are three different kinds of love but the same word.  None of these definitions of love are wrong.  They just are not complete.

In the next chapter in 1 John we have him telling us that God is love.  Let’s see how this works.  In our opening verse today we find that Jesus Christ laid down his life for us.  This is what the ancients called agape or sacrificial love.  Jesus sacrificed his life to pay the sin debt for everyone in the world whether or not they had been born yet.  This is the love that Jesus has for us, for you.  This is the love that made Him weep.

Now we are called to do the same thing.  We are to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters.  Now you may be thinking to yourself about now, ‘I don’t know if I could ever do that.’  And that is ok.  Most people are not called upon to make this sacrifice.  As a matter of fact, most Christians of these ancient days were not called upon to do this either.  We read about many and we may think that most Christians gave up their lives.  But we have far more in today’s world who make this sacrifice.  I would like you to think about the persecuted church around the world for a minute.  We have thousands and thousands of people killed every year because they believe in Jesus Christ.  So, it still happens.  But our so-called leaders say it is not news worthy so we don’t hear about it in our papers too much.  Our press is in sad shape.

Then John goes on to talk a bit about the things that we have and the people who don’t have or in some cases people who have nothing at all.  Just about any day of the week you can tune into some news channel and find people in need.  Many people need food around the world.  Starvation is a huge problem today.  Many people need adequate shelter as their homes have been destroyed or they live in cardboard boxes.  Millions of people do not have an adequate water supply to live.  We used to have good health but this coronavirus has changed that globally.  These are all things that we take for granted.

And we like to think that this want or need is very far away, on the other side of the world.  A few years ago I took a group of young people to the reservation at Fort Totten.  We entered a different world.  No one took anything for granted there as most were very, very poor according to our standards.  We used to help out the homeless women and children at the YWCA right here in Fargo.  They didn’t take anything for granted.  We used to and still do serve many food baskets at some of our holidays right here in our local area and I would guess that many of those people don’t take these things for granted.  There is poverty right in our midst that we don’t notice.

And what John is telling us today is that we cannot look at these people and do nothing and still say that we know what love is.  Remember the great commandment.  We are to love our God and then our neighbors as ourselves.  Love is doing.  Loving denotes action on our part.  You cannot love our neighbors if you sit back and say, “That is really bad but there is nothing that I can do about it.”  There is always something that you can do.

But it is not only that we help our neighbors and strangers in their needs, we also have to help them in the truth.  And the truth is Jesus Christ.  Back when John wrote this, people were not in the habit of helping others out too much.  Everyone was pretty much on their own.  If you got sick or were injured, there were no doctors.  If you were in debt, you either went to prison or you became a slave of some sort.  The only people of that time who helped out the widows, orphans and poor people were the Christians because this just wasn’t done in their society.

All the help and aid we give out today is due to these early Christians.  We wouldn’t have doctors or hospitals or orphanages or welfare if it were not for Jesus Christ and these ancients.  However, today we have much of this happening in the name of the United States or maybe in the name of North Dakota.  These things are not done in the name of Jesus.  And as we have gotten away from calling out to Jesus in whatever we do, we have gotten away from programs that do any good.  We have made our government and its programs into our god while the real God waits for us to call.

We all know that our actions speak louder than our words and this is really what John is saying here.  We have to be careful with these actions in our churches also.  Many times, we spend far too much time trying to be a church rather than following God.  It doesn’t matter to God if we have an auditorium that seats 10,000 or if we have a church of small size.  It doesn’t matter to God if we sing all praise songs or all old-time hymns or anything else.  It doesn’t matter to God if we have a lot of money in the treasury or not.  What matters to God is what is in your hearts.  Too often we concentrate on the show and not the go.  This has become a huge problem in our churches, especially our larger ones.  This has to be a matter of the heart.

The first thing that you should be doing every week as you gather here is not to talk or ask ‘what God can do for me.’(gimme, gimme) The first question should be ‘what has God done for me,’ past tense.  That’s why we have God moments in our services.  God created all that you see just for you.  He sent Jesus to teach you.  Jesus died for your sins 2000 years ago.  I could spend the rest of the sermon telling of things that God has done for you.  But I think that you already know all of this, and I’m just reminding you.

The important point here is that you don’t come to a worship service expecting to get something out of it for you.  As long as you stay focused on yourselves, you will be disappointed in all that you do including coming to church.  You need to quit focusing on yourselves and start to focus on Jesus.  You are to come to church so that you can give.  Give your praise and adoration to Jesus.  Give your attention to His message.  Give your joy and life to the one who gave it all to you.  If you quit expecting something from church, then you will start to get something out of it.  Christianity is full of dichotomies like this.  You have to surrender to be free.  You have to give up your lives so that you can finally live.  And now you have to first give it all to Jesus on Sunday morning so that He may give something back.

There are many who just don’t understand this at all.  If they don’t get something out of our service they leave.  When they don’t get something out of the next place, they leave.  Then we have what I call church hoppers.  These people never get to know the true spirit of the church.  They never get to experience Jesus.  There are many legitimate reasons to leave a church but there are also many bad ones.

All of these things have to do with our hearts.  I’m not talking about the beating organ that we all have in our chests.  I’m talking about our souls.  If you come to church every week (or watch this) and you are at ease with all that I say, then your heart is at rest with God.  This is a good thing.  This is where we want to be all the time.

How many times do you have to make a decision with a moral consequence?  How many times do you not tell the truth or not tell all of the truth?  How does your heart feel?  How many times do you set a bad example?  How does your heart feel?  I hope you can see where I’m going with this.  You know when you are doing something wrong because you can feel it inside.  In most of us God has put this little regulator that tells us when we are doing wrong.  It is called our conscience.  This is how we know if we are walking with Jesus or not.  A doctor cannot go inside us and find it but we all know that it is there.  And we don’t like it when we are not in tune with Jesus.

And not being in tune with God is a far worse pandemic than the coronavirus or anything else.  There are many religions of the world that slaughter others just to try to appease their so-called god.  There are many countries in the world that slaughter others just because their color is wrong or their religion is wrong or they live in the wrong area.  There are many dictators in the world that slaughter people because they feel like it.  These people have no conscience but I believe that they all knew this was wrong at some point in their lives.  They knew that this wasn’t right.  But they build themselves up so much with evil that it doesn’t matter to them anymore.  However, it will matter to them when they are standing in judgment.  No one in the world has free reign to sin.  There will be consequences.

I don’t think that I have to go on with this as we can see this first hand by going to Fargo or maybe even just uptown where you live.  Sin runs rampant.  John is telling us to listen to this inner feeling.  Follow this instinct that God has put in us.  Follow the Holy Spirit.  This is the way to peace.

This is the way to begin a new life.  Jesus Christ doesn’t expect perfection.  But He does expect us to try to follow Him and this voice inside of us.  He would like you to follow all the time but He realizes who we are.  We are a broken people living in a broken world.  The only way to achieve peace in turmoil, love in hate, and friends in loneliness is to come and follow Jesus.  Any time is a time when we can take our sins to Jesus and He will cleanse us.  We also need to reflect on our lives.  We can think about how we can be better listeners to our hearts.  And if you need a spiritual heart transplant, then after you confess your sins, ask Jesus to live in your heart.  This will make listening to your heart that much easier.

I hope that today that you have been able to see that it is not important that you talk about love.  It is important that you do love.  Show your love in acts that are Christ like.  And don’t come to God in prayer or church or any other setting expecting something in return.  Come to Jesus in praise and adoration.  Come to Jesus in humility.  Jesus will reward you but not if rewards are your goal.  Jesus rewards us in ways that we never think about.  And if you need proof, look where I am today.  A life of surrender to Jesus is the best life that there can be.  Thank you Jesus for this love that I don’t deserve.  And thank you for first loving us.  Let’s pray.