Love in Action

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Well, to stay on track and make sure I’m going where I need to be, I try to plan out a calendar of sermon topics and passages for a year at a time. And then do that in pencil, be willing to throw that out and move on to something else if God leads me to. In the last few weeks, I’ve been in one of those situations where I’ve really felt like what was on my calendar was not where God was leading me.

because early on this year, I planned for October a series of messages on choosing godly leaders and some things that the Bible says about the qualifications for people that we would choose to lead us. Over the last six months, guys, I have watched the situation in our country deteriorate into something that boggles my mind, honestly. And the thought of coming in and preaching to you all about, here’s what the Bible says about selecting godly leaders, felt a lot like coming in and giving you advice on how to pick out a really good live chicken at the grocery store.

There aren’t any. Now, I’m not saying there aren’t any good godly men and women anywhere running for office. But honestly, first of all, I would never come in and tell you how to vote.

That’s not my responsibility. I would give you some principles. These are the kinds of characteristics to look for in a godly leader.

And then trust you all with the leadership of the Holy Spirit to make your own decisions. But I look in particular at the presidential race. Guys, and not only am I a registered voter in my party, but I’m actually an elected official in my party, and for the last few months I have been prayerfully considering resigning that post and my affiliation with my party because I’m thinking years down the road, talking to my grandchildren, what did you do when America was going over the cliff, and I want no part of it.

I want no part of cheerleading the destruction of our country with either of the major candidates. Okay? Y’all going to fire me?

I think a lot of us feel like we’re in that same boat, but I just, it turns my stomach. And the reason for preaching how we can elect godly leaders is wanting to build a better country. And if I can say it this way, I’m not as concerned with making America great again as I am with making America good again.

But the more I think about that, and I told you this a few weeks ago, we’re not going to do that by voting. We’re not going to change America by voting. We’re not going to change the world by voting.

We’re not even going to change our community, really, by voting. Because we’ve voted this way and that for hundreds of years, and very little has changed, especially in recent years. And I made a statement a few weeks ago, if you’ll recall when we were doing a series on spiritual disciplines.

I made a statement that I hadn’t planned on saying, but I hadn’t thought of it until the moment that it came out of my mouth, and then it kind of stuck with me, and I thought maybe God gave me that. That we’re not going to fix America by voting. We’re not going to turn this nation back to God by voting.

We’re going to turn this nation and the hearts of the people back to God by serving, by serving other people. I can go out and I can vote for any of the three people who are on the ballot in Oklahoma, and it’s not going to make that much of a difference what my little contribution is. But if I go out and serve people here in my community, if I go out and serve people in the name of Christ to show them the love of Christ, that has the potential to change everything for somebody.

And the needs are out there. The opportunities are just waiting out there for us to go in and change somebody’s world. And I think sometimes, especially if we’re fairly comfortable, I think we forget what needs are out there.

And I started looking at a few things in our state this week and saying, okay, what does it look like? And I was surprised to find out that, did you know one out of four children in our state struggles with hunger? this is America.

And one out of four children in our own state struggles with hunger. And one out of 16 seniors. There are people in our own community tonight who don’t know what they’re going to eat next or where it’s going to come from.

Now it’s not as bad as some other places in the world. We don’t have people starving to death in the streets, but we have people who don’t know where their next meal is going to come from. In our state, there are 11,000 children.

That would take me a long time to even count that 11,000 children in state custody right now because their parents couldn’t take care of them or something along those lines. Whatever the reason was, 11,000 children in the custody of the state instead of being with a loving family. And some of those may be in foster care homes, foster homes where the people do love them.

And I’ve also heard horror stories about foster care. But there are 11,000 children in our state who are in the custody of the state. Last year, 4,709 women in our state made the choice to end the pregnancy.

And we know that’s wrong. We know what the Bible says about abortion. And we can point our finger all day and say that’s a sin, and it is.

But we can’t ignore the fact that many of those women made this wrong choice because they felt they had no other choice. Because of their circumstances, because of pressure put on men. And I’m not excusing that.

Nobody is more pro-life than I am, so I’m not excusing that. But I’m trying to offer an explanation. Sometimes people do things we don’t approve of because of the circumstances they’re in, and they don’t feel like they have any other choice.

There are needs all around us. We have neighbors, we have friends, we have family members today who are struggling with some need, and not necessarily even one of these. Some of them are grieving the loss of a loved one.

Some of them don’t know how they’re going to pay their bills or buy groceries. some of them are struggling to raise their children alone and maybe not admit what a struggle it is sometimes. As I sat down this week and started to think about all the needs that are around us it was hard not to cry about it and it was hard not to get overwhelmed as I started thinking of all the lists of all the needs that are out there in the community and quite honestly there’s not a list I could come up with that would be exhausted because there are needs that I don’t even see and don’t even recognize.

Their needs, I wouldn’t even notice until they come into my world, until they smack me in the face. We were discussing the other night how Charla needs to go see the eye doctor. And we were talking about some things about that.

I was doing some searches online for eye doctors. And then while I was on there looking for eye doctors in the area, I started looking at other medical stuff in the area. And I realized there are a lot of places for the poor to obtain medical help in the city.

And there are a lot of places in Tulsa. But this area, there’s not a lot of options for people. And I’d never thought about that need.

We’re not rich, but if we need to go to the doctor, if she needs to go to the doctor, we can pay for a doctor visit. If the kids or I need to go, we can go down to Ada and be taken care of. It’s not a need I really thought of, but there it is.

There are tons of people in our own community who are thinking, am I going to eat or am I going to go to the doctor? And I’m just using that as an example to say there are needs out there we don’t even think of until they’re sort of dropped in our field of vision. Our world is hurting.

Our community is hurting. Some people in this room may even be hurting. And many people feel alone.

Many of the people who are hurting feel alone. They feel like nobody cares. And many times if just one person cared, it makes all the difference.

If they felt like one person cared, it makes all the difference. And I can speak to this personally from my own experience. I’ve had for a while had to raise Benjamin and Madeline on my own.

That was a tough time. I did it, but that was tough. There were things that I couldn’t do.

There were things that were hard to do on my own. And being around people at church and being around other friends, it helped to be around people that you know cared about you, but at some point you go back to the house at night and the kids are in bed and it’s just you. And it can be hard not to hear that voice.

You’re totally alone. And you know what encouraged me and kept me going were the times where the older couple from church said, let’s go to lunch and then we’ll go with you to the grocery store. Because they knew what a struggle it was to get me and the kids through Walmart.

Okay. Tough. Anyway.

Me and a one-year-old and a three-year-old in Walmart. And they said, we’ll just walk through Walmart with you while you do your grocery shopping and help keep the kids occupied. I loved that.

It took an hour and a half of their day, but it changed. Is that a shock that it took an hour and a half to get through Walmart? Walmart.

I bought groceries once a week. We went to the store once a week. If we didn’t get it at Walmart, we just didn’t get it because I wasn’t driving them in other places.

Took an hour and a half out of their week, but I loved it. There’s somebody coming and helping me mow my yard because by the time I couldn’t have a one-year-old and a three-year-old out there with me trying to mow this big field, and by the time they were in bed, it was dark. Little things like that that made a huge difference and made it feel like I could go on because somebody cared.

Most many people in our community, if they felt like just one person cared, it would make all the difference. We’re going to look at a passage this morning in 1 John chapter 3 where he talks to, where John talks to the early Christians about this concept of demonstrating love. Not just saying, hey, I love you.

Hey, I care about you, but actually showing it. And there’s a change that God makes in our hearts, and there’s a capacity that God gives us to love that we might not have had to such an extent before. And he basically says in this passage in 1 John 3 that if we love God, first of all, we’re going to love other people.

And if we love other people, we’re going to show it. So verse 14 says, we know that we have passed from death unto life because we love the brethren. And we want to be careful about how we understand that verse there.

Make sure you understand what it’s saying. We know that we passed from death into life because we have love for the brethren, because we love the brethren. He’s not saying we have eternal life.

He’s not saying we have inherited eternal life because we love the brethren. He’s saying we know that we have eternal life because we love the brethren. He’s not saying that love for one another is the cause of eternal life.

He’s saying it is the evidence of the change that God has made in us that leads to eternal life. So make sure you don’t misunderstand that. He’s saying here that it’s going to be evidence.

It’s the reason why we know we have life. Our love is evidence that God has given us eternal life and that he’s changed our hearts. And on the other hand, he says here in verse 14, He that loveth not his brother abideth in death.

Now he’s talking about abiding in death. He’s talking about the old man, the old way of living, the condemnation that we’re under, apart from Jesus Christ, where God has not yet given us eternal life. And he’s not saying that refusing to love our brothers, and he’s not saying that hating our brothers is the cause of that.

He’s saying that it’s the evidence of that. We don’t gain or lose eternal life based on our attitude, but where we stand with God is going to show up in our attitude. Does that make sense?

And then he says in verse 15, Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him. Have you ever seen people in church? Certainly not this one.

But have you ever seen people in church that just think they’re a cut about, they’re a little better than everybody else, and they like to tell others how they’re done here? I’ve seen some of those people. Well, I’ve never done anything really bad.

It’s not like I’m a murderer. You hate the person sitting across the aisle from you, and I can tell it all over your face. Okay, this is not my opinion.

This is not even John’s opinion. This is the revealed word of God. Jesus said in Matthew chapter 5 that if somebody is angry with their brother without cause, he equates that to murder.

Jesus is the one who said that if you hate somebody, if you’re angry with your brother without a reason, it’s essentially murder in your heart. Because right before that, or right after that, I forget the order, he’s talking about adultery and said, yeah, yeah, you Pharisees think you’ve never committed adultery. You’re so great.

You’re so wonderful. But I’m telling you, if you’ve looked on a woman to lust after her, you’ve committed adultery in your heart. And then he says that about hatred and murder.

So this is not all that radical, what John says here, that whoever hates his brother is a murderer, because he gets that right from Jesus. Jesus said, if you can look at your brother and hate him, you’re a murderer. And folks, hate is not really being angry.

I struggled thinking about this a little bit this week. Wait a minute, am I not a Christian because I had that? I will admit to you there are sometimes I get angry with people.

Am I alone in that? I guess I am. We all get angry at people.

And there may even be a moment where it feels like hate. But my understanding of hate is it’s a continual state. I may get mad at what you just said or did, but I’ll get over it.

Hate is like a grudge that goes on and on and on. Can we sin in our anger? Yes, we can.

What he’s saying here is that if you’re someone who holds on to a grudge, if you are someone who hates somebody around you, check yourself. Check yourself, because that’s evidence that something is not right in your heart. Something is not right between you and God.

It’s not a problem between you and that other person. It’s a problem between you and God. He says, whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him.

So if I hate somebody, I can never be forgiven. Uh-uh. Once you trust Christ, once God forgives your sin through Jesus Christ and what he did on the cross, and once God changes you from the inside out, you may still sin, but God looks at you through the righteousness of Christ. You’re not classified as a murderer anymore.

You’re not classified as a hater anymore. God looks on you and sees the righteousness of Christ. But he’s saying here, no murderer, no murderer receives eternal life, has eternal life abiding in him. And so if we hate, if we fail to love those around us, it’s evidence that something is not right between us and God.

Verse 16 says, Hereby perceive we the love of God because he laid down his life for us. And I’ve said many times that the most important way that God has ever expressed his love for us is at the cross. The love of God begins at the cross.

Not in chronological terms. God loved us way before that. He loved us enough to devise the whole plan of sending Jesus to the cross. When people say, oh, God just loves us and wants us to be happy.

God’s love for you began at the cross. Don’t be looking for all the other love and blessings that he has to pour out if you haven’t received the love that He poured out to you on the cross. You want to know how much God loves you?

It’s not because He lets you find a good parking space at Walmart. I’ve heard that. You want to know how much God loves you?

It’s not that He lets you win the lottery. What were you doing with that ticket anyway? You want to know how much God loves you?

It’s not because, oh, I feel blessed because everything in my life is going wonderful. That is kid stuff. You want to know how much God loves you?

Look at the fact that he laid down his life. God the Son went to the cross for you. Not because you were good and because he just loved you.

With all the wrong that you and I had done, with all the sin, with all the wickedness in our hearts, with all the shame we bore, he still loved us enough to lay down his life. And so in turn, John says in verse 16, we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. Not in the sense that we’re going to die for their sins.

I cannot die for any of your sins. I don’t have enough righteousness. Oh, you’re in trouble.

If you’re expecting me to die for your sins, I know nobody is, but if you’re expecting me to die for your sins, you’re going to be sorely disappointed because I’ve got enough of my own to pay for. Fortunately, Jesus paid for all of it. What he says here in terms of laying down our lives for the brethren.

I’ve heard people say that Jesus died for us, now we’re supposed to live for him. Laying down your life can have a couple of different meanings, doesn’t it? laying down your life for the brethren doesn’t mean you die for their sins.

But just as Jesus sacrificed himself for our sins, so we can sacrifice ourselves for the good of those around us. We can live to serve other people. Verse 17 says, But whoso hath this world’s good and seeth his brother have need and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him?

This word bowels is what we know to be the intestines, and that was the seed of the emotions in ancient Middle Eastern culture. So where we would say my heart is breaking, my heart is spoiled, they would say the bowels, as awkward as that sounds to us. So when he says we shut off our bowels of compassion, he’s saying if there’s no love in your heart, if there is no feeling, to put it in our terms, if your heart feels nothing towards your brother, if you see those around you who have need and you have the capacity to meet that need and yet you feel nothing how again is God’s love in your heart?

that’s the question he’s asking if you see somebody in need and you have the ability to meet the need and yet you feel nothing can you really say God’s love is right here? now does that mean wait a minute there are starving children all over the world and I have food at my house so I’m a horrible person No, we cannot possibly. We cannot possibly meet every need that every person has.

But we can meet somebody’s needs. And when we’re confronted with a genuine need, and by the way, not everything that is asked of you is a need either. But if we can look at a genuine need, especially from our brother, and we have the means to meet that need, and yet we say, well, good luck with that, and walk away and feel nothing, There is no evidence there of the love of God.

He says, my little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue, but in deed and in truth. Guys, let’s not just tell people that we love them. Let’s not just slap them on the back.

Love you, man. He says, we’ve got to do it in deed. We’re not talking about the British phrase or the British sounding phrase.

Do it in deed. In deed, in action. We need to demonstrate it.

because here’s the truth, folks. If we don’t live it, it’s not love. We can say we love people.

We can say, I love you. I love the community. We can say we love someone.

But if our love is not lived, it’s not love. If our love is not lived, it’s not love. If it is not backed up by actions, it’s not love.

He asked the question. He said, how can you look at somebody who has this. .

. they’re starving to death on your front doorstep, and you’re feasting inside, and you feel nothing toward them. He says, how is that love?

How is that God’s love? It’s a rhetorical question. The answer is it’s not.

Because the way we love God is the way we’re going to love other people. The extent to which we love God is the extent to which we’re going to love other people. And it’s a love that should be demonstrated.

If I told my wife every day that I loved her, I do tell her that, but nothing else in this scenario is real. I just want you to know that. If I told my wife every day that I loved her, and that I smacked her around, and I took my paycheck and gambled and drank it away to where she was left trying to struggle to feed everybody, and I was out running around and having affairs, do I really love my wife in that scenario? No.

Because I’m telling her I love her, and yet there’s no evidence to back it up. There’s no demonstration, there’s no manifestation of the love. It’s just a word.

And I was brought up in church to believe that love is a choice. Love is not a feeling. Yes, there should be feelings that accompany it.

But love is not a feeling, love is a choice. Because just like with your spouse, there are going to be days where I don’t feel especially warm and fuzzy toward you after what you just said to me. and yet I choose to love you anyway.

With your children, there are going to be times that you want to squeeze them until their eyes pop out. And yet you still choose to love them. And we choose to love them by demonstrating that love.

Now even after I have to give you a spanking to my child, I’m there with a hug. And I’m there to dry the tears. Folks, love is a choice.

And love is an action way more than it is a feeling or an emotional thing. Unless we take the love that we say we have and we back it up with actions, John points out through this whole thing, it’s not genuine love and it’s certainly not the love of God loving through us, which is what we’re supposed to have. And non-believers, people who have never trusted Christ can love.

And I don’t mean it to sound like Christians are the only people who can love anybody. Non-believers love too. But they can’t love the way God loves.

And hear me on this, we cannot love the way God loves. Because of our human nature, we’re selfish. But God can love through us.

God can give us a capacity to love as he does. But it’s not enough just to say, I love you. At some point, there’s got to be some evidence.

At some point, there’s got to be a sacrifice made. At some point, there’s got to be saying, I can meet this need for you. Let me show you.

Let me show you the love. I put the people who came and wandered around Walmart with me. People send me cards all the time.

People tell me they were praying for me. And it was great. I know they were and I know they meant it.

But coming and walking around Walmart with me to help me with the kids while I bought groceries still sticks in my mind today because they proved that they loved me. Church, we can tell our community that we love them. Now how do we prove it?

There’s got to be some action where Trinity proves to Seminole. And not just one time either. But where this church proves to the community around us and a mile or two up that way, that we really do love them the way we say we do.

And that God wants to love them through us. And each of us have people in our lives who have needs. People who are struggling and people who are hurting.

And it’s one thing for a Christian to be in their world. Maybe you’re a close friend or family member. Maybe you’re just on the fringe of their world.

Maybe there’s somebody you see at the store. maybe there’s somebody you know from the school maybe it’s somebody you run into at the post office but it’s one thing for a Christian to say I love you and I’m praying for you it’s another thing entirely for us to step in and prove and demonstrate that love by meeting the need that we can we can say we love people but it isn’t love if we don’t live it and I try each day that we come in here to give you some kind of practical steps some kind of practical thought about what you can do when you leave here to put what we’ve learned from God’s Word into action. But I can only give you the most general ideas right now because this is something that’s going to have to take place as a change of heart for each of us.

For God to get a hold of each of us and show us what He’s called us to do. Because this isn’t about starting a program. When a church wants to do something, it seems like a lot of times the first thought is, well, how can we start a program or a ministry to do that?

And this is not a program thing. This is not a ministry thing. Now, we can start ministries to show compassion to people.

We can open a food pantry or a clothes closet. Those things are fine. I’m not knocking those things.

But for the church really to do what it’s supposed to do, we’re each going to have to discover the ministry that God’s called us into. We’re going to have to each discover the needs that God has put right there in our radar for us to meet. It’s not the church as an organization doing ministry.

It’s a church as the people meeting needs where we find them. So what I would suggest for you to do, what I would plead for you to do really, is today and in the coming days to ask God to show you the needs that he’s placed in front of you for you to meet. Ask him how he wants you to minister to the hurting right here in your own backyard.

We’ll take up collections and we’ll send money and we’ll send people to meet needs on reservation states away or in countries over the seas. And those things are great. I fully encourage those things.

But we should be at least as inclined to meet the needs of the people in our own neighborhood. Because when we get involved in people’s lives and we start sacrificing our time and our resources and everything else to try to meet needs around us, we’re going to care for people the way God calls us to. People are going to see that we really do love them and that there’s something to this Christianity.

There’s something to this Jesus who loved us first. And most importantly, we’re going to bring glory to Jesus Christ. We are bringing glory to Jesus Christ because we’re fulfilling what he left us here to do, to be his hands and feet. And so I apologize that I cannot give you any more specific steps of saying, well, you need to do this, this, this, and this. There’s a show that my kids watch occasionally called Special Agent Oso, where they learn about some task and then the steps to do it.

You’re brushing your teeth and they break it up into three steps and say, this is what you need to do. And it’s wonderful. I can’t give you those steps of how this looks for you this morning.

To go and meet the needs of people around you. The only thing I can tell you, again, is to look for God’s leading. Because He’s put people in your life.

The needs are probably already there. We just float through. I know I float through life sometimes so oblivious that I don’t notice them until they smack me right in the forehead.

Ask God what needs He’s put in your life. It may not be money. It may just be time.

It may be somebody needs a shoulder to cry on. It may be somebody needs a hot meal. It may be somebody needs a visit and encouragement. It may be somebody needs somebody to watch their kids for an hour, so they go buy groceries.

I don’t know. That’s the point. I don’t know.

But God will tell you. God will tell us if we look for it. Because if we love people, if we love the community of Seminole, if we love our neighbors, if we love our friends, if we love the people that we know at the school or the grocery store, if we really do love these people, we’ll show it.

God wants us to show it. So I believe He’ll show us exactly how to do it.