Everyday Church
The Method of Loving Others
(upbeat music) - Hello, friend. Welcome to today's podcast, Everyday Church, with Pastor Jason Keefer. Everyday Church is a daily podcast where believers learn together, grow together, and serve together. - Hey, I'm a friend. I hope you're having a great day, and the Lord is great to be with you on the Everyday Church podcast, a place where we can grow together and serve together, and just be together as God's family. Amen, it's just, it's amazing to think about how the Lord places us and family, and groups of people, spiritual families, to where we can love one another and grow together. You know what a shame it would be, is to go through this life and not really fully embrace, and therefore experience. The Christian experience as far as church goes, as far as being in a body of believers. So I encourage you today, whatever it is you're doing, you're going through, if you're not, plugged in, get plugged in. Listen, maybe you're in a different area, then we are, get plugged into a local church. If you're in this area, we'd love for you to get plugged in, and that's the tool of Baptist. It's just a great place where we love God and love others, and God's doing some great things. So I wanna encourage you, get connected, get in there, and serve the Lord. He intended for us to do that. So today we're gonna pick up in 1 John 3, and verse 16, and we left off yesterday talking about the message of loving others. This is the message that you love one another. We've heard it from the beginning. Nothing's changed. The difference now in the old covenant and the new covenant is the difference now is that restoration has restored, or is restoring in us through the Holy Spirit, that power to love, the ability to love and rise above self. So as we get to verse 16, John says this, he says, "Hereby perceive we the love of God, because he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren." And so today we're gonna talk about the method of loving others, right? So the message is that we should love others. How do we do that, right? I think sometimes we, yeah, yeah, I'm doing that. Okay, well, what does that look like in your life? Well, he goes directly to the example given to us by Christ, right? Hereby a perceiver, no, we know the love of God would be another word you can use there, because he laid down his life for us. We know the love of, we have experienced the love of God in the Christ laid down his life for us. While we were yet sinners, Roman says, Christ died for us. And so what an amazing, an amazing thought this morning, or this evening, or afternoon, or whatever time it is you're listening. I always forget, not everybody listens in the morning. That's just my time for devotions, but whatever time works for you, but whatever time of day it is, hereby we know the love of God. Why? Because he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. We know the love of God. So John will later say it this way. We love him because he first loved us. That's knowing the love of God. We experienced the love of God. We love him first. Our love for others flows out of our love for God. Our love for God flows out of his love for us. So it's think of it this way. You can turn a faucet on, and you can do a number of different things with that water that comes out of the faucet. But it's first got to come out of the faucet. Well think about this. For it to come out of the faucet, it's got to come out of a source. If you live in the city, the city has a water plant where they send you water down the line, and they also send you a bill for it every month, right? If you live maybe in a rural area or out in the country, you're more blessed to be on a well, where you have a well and that's your source. You're pulling water from the ground. The water goes from the well into a tank, from the tank to your faucet and to your faucet, it just provides everything that you need, right? So think of it as the faucet coming out of the faucet is me being a blessing to other people. Man, when that water comes out of the faucet, you can wash your face, you can refresh, you can drink the water, you can cook with the water. That water, you're the faucet, that water's coming out and it's doing a number of different things. But if that faucet's not hooked up to a source, it's zero good, it's no good, right? So it is, it comes from Christ. Our love comes from Christ. So what do we know is from Christ's love before I can ever love anybody, I've got to learn to love him. And I want you to think about a couple words this morning, and the first one is this, that the method of loving others is that I would love with submission, love with submission, submitting yourself to Christ first. I'm in submission to him, I'm in humility to him. And why? Well, he laid down his life. What is that? That's an act of submission to the Father. His first step, his display of love to the Father was submitting his will to the Father. He said in John chapter four, he said, "I've not come." He said, "My meat is to do the will of him that sent me and to finish his work," right? Well, what was he saying in an act of submission, "I've laid my will down and I'm going to do the Father's will." Same for us. If we're ever going to humbly submit ourselves to others, it's going to be after we submit ourself to Christ. So with submission, with submission to God, then the other is with sacrifice. So he says, "Because he laid down his life for us, we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren." So there's sacrifice there. I should give of myself. I should lay my life down, lay our life down for the brethren, give of myself, sacrificially, so that others may benefit from God's love, sacrificial love. That's giving without expecting anything in return. That's loving without expecting anything in return. That's hard sometimes when it comes to dealing with people, sometimes we can be hard to deal with. I'm sure you understand that. I understand that. I can be hard to deal with. All you have to do is ask my wife and kids. They'll tell you in a heartbeat. So we love without expecting anything in return. That's the sacrificial kind of love. But then I think sometimes we stop there for not careful. Go down to verse 17. "But who so hath this world's good "and see if his brother have need "and shuteth up his bowels of compassion from him? "Listen, how dwelt the love of God in him? "Man, now he's starting to get down "to where the rubber meets the road. "Man, now it's like, this isn't hypothetical. "This isn't some kind of like spiritual belief. "It is a spiritual belief. "But what I'm saying is, he's putting an into action. "He's putting an into what we can understand. "Look, if I have something, "and I see somebody that needs, they're in need, "and yet I just am like, well, you know what? "Sorry, sorry about your look." God says this. He says, "How does the love of God dwell on that? "Like how can you say the love of God dwells in you "whenever you have opportunity to be a blessing to someone "and you're not? "So if someone needs food and I have food, "but I'm not willing to get my food, "how dwelt the love of God in me? "Someone may need time. "Maybe someone needs you to spend time with them. "But yet you have time, you're not willing to give it. "How dwelt the love of God in you?" That's what he says. I remember one time we were coming out of a Burger King. I'll never forget. We're coming out of Burger King, and I preached a message. It may actually been this passage. I don't remember. And I remember we went through Burger King drive-through and we got our food. Leah was little, man. She was probably like four or five years old. And as we drove out, there was a homeless lady sitting there. I was actually a husband of a wife, I think, sitting there. And Leah, she didn't miss a beat, man. She said, "Dad, can we give them our food?" And I was like, I remember in that moment, I was like, "Yeah, what are you gonna do with that, right?" And what are you gonna do with that? And so I remember we, I said, "We'll go buy some food, buy them some food, "find out if they want some food, and we'll buy it for them." And she said, "No, no, Dad, I wanna give 'em our food. "I wanna give 'em our food." And so we went back and she got out of the car, we got out of the car together, we gave them our food. And of course, we went back and ordered more food. But I remember that moment, I was like in this moment where I was like, "Why am I being, "why is this a challenge in my mind, right? "Why is this even a question in my mind?" Someone needs food, regardless of why they need food or whether they're gonna need food tomorrow. Like in this moment, they're hungry and they need food. Like, and I have it, am I not willing to give it to them? Right? And so that taught me a big lesson. Another time we were in Washington, D.C., and it was cold, it was spring break, we went up there on a trip and a blizzard, a literal blizzard, not a Florida person's blizzard, like a real blizzard had blown through. And I mean, most everything was shut now, we were freezing, you know, just trying to get around. And so we were walking, trying to find a restaurant to go to, and we passed this gas set and I said, "Will you buy me a bowl of hot soup?" And I just kept walking and Lee was like, "Dad, what are you doing?" I was like, "What do you mean, what am I doing?" Well, he needs some hot soup. And he was like, "He can't okay." And she said, "We have to go buy him some soup." And so anyway, I could finally wear to sell soup. And so we did talk to the guy, maybe give him some money, I don't remember. But it's amazing, sometimes it's amazing what your kids will do and trying to help you see reality. Why do we live, why do we live in a way where it's hard for believers to take what God has given them, to find people that are in need, to share God's love with them? I wonder why we find it so hard. I think one of the greatest needs is love. I think it's hard to love people that look the world. He's already, look, John just said, "Don't think it's strange when the world loves you. "Don't be surprised, or when the world hates you. "Don't be surprised when the world hates you." And now he's turned it around and he said, "Look," he said, "How can you not have the, "how can you," verse 17, "who so ever hath this world's good "and see if his brother had need "and shut up up his bowels of compassion from him? "How dwells the love of God in you? "Like, where's the love of God had?" And I just wanna say, man, but look, there's submission in loving God, there's sacrifice in loving others, and look, you love others with substance. Somewhere in your life, there should be something coming out of your life to show that you love other people, okay? And I know there's been a lot of people been a blessing in my life and the help of my life, and it's just shown me that they love me, that they love me and they wanna be a blessing in my life, and so put feet to it, man, right? Put feet to it, let's do it. Hey, listen, today, go out there and find somebody. Think of somebody, you probably already know somebody that maybe needs you to share God's love with them. Maybe it's somebody that you've had hard feelings with, maybe you need to sit down and run them a card, buy them a gift card, stick it in there, hey, listen, go buy yourself a cup of coffee. Find somebody that has a legitimate need, so hey, let me meet that need for you. Like, let me, let me meet that need for you. Let me help you with that. And most often, it's usually financially, people are struggling. And that was a great time to be like, you know what? I know, I know the love of God in my life. I've experienced, hereby perceive we the love of God. We know the love of God. We've experienced the love of God. (upbeat music) - Thank you for listening to Everyday Church, a daily podcast where believers learn together, grow together, and serve together. If this episode was an encouragement to you, be sure to hit like, share it, and subscribe for future content. (upbeat music)