Everyday Church
God Loved Us First
(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. (upbeat music) - Hey, my friend. What's great to be with you today on the Everyday Church podcast. And I hope you're having a great day in the Lord. And today is Monday, and I hope it'll be a great week for you. And I hope you got a chance to be in church yesterday and worship with other believers. What a great, great opportunity that always is. I'm always encouraged when I get in there and I begin to worship. I don't know about you, but worship for me is just a place where I can go. And my problems, my issues, my cares, they become so, they become minimized. I was so, so just a little transparency, I guess. So yesterday, morning before church, I was just, I don't know if it was me personally. I just, I felt not really attacked, I guess. That would be a, maybe a strong way to put it. I just, I felt like a lot of stuff was going wrong before I got church, nothing big, nothing crazy. I just felt like a lot of stuff was going wrong. I don't know if you ever have days like that. And by the time I got to church, man, I was so, I was just anxious. I even told my wife, I even told her I said, man, I gotta get up and preach it a little bit. And I said, part of me, I don't even feel ready to preach. Not that I hadn't studied and prepared, I had, but I just, I felt so overrun by anxiety and just everything that was going on that day. And man, we got into worship, and we got in a time of worship. And it was near the last song, we sang the song, "Wonderful, Merciful Savior." And man, we just got singing that. And I was standing in the back, waiting to come on the stage. And man, I just got really just back there by myself, listening to what was being sung and the words and just worshiping. And man, I just, in that moment, it just stilled my heart. It just, I could feel the anxiety just kind of leave. Man, I'm thankful for that stuff. I know that may sound mystical to you, I hope it doesn't. I'm not that way at all. But man, I love to be in worship. I love to be able to be together, worshiping with other believers. So all that to say, I hope you got to go to church yesterday. That's a lot to start a Monday off with, right? So hopefully you got to be in church and worship with other believers. So here's what we're going to do. We're going to blow through a few verses here in first John chapter four. And we're going to finish this chapter, this last chapter this week. And looking forward to moving on. First John's a great, great book. I hope it's going to help you in encouragement to you. And so, yeah, so, so, we're talking about a lot about love. Last time we were together, the statement John made in first John chapter four is God is love. Not that he's full of love. Not that he has love. Not that he can't love. But God is love by his very nature is love. And I think that's interesting. You know, everything else we know about God, he brings peace, he brings joy, all those things. But the Bible says this about God that he is love. That's who he is. And we were talking about how there is no fear in love. Perfect love casts out all fear. Then verse 19, he makes this statement. John makes this statement. We love him because he first loved us. And I'm just, I'm so thankful that the Lord took the initiative in this relationship because if he didn't, I wouldn't even realize I needed him. The Bible says, so think about this for a moment. The Bible says that it is the goodness of God or the love of God or the grace of God. However you want to say it, that leads us to repentance. It is God's goodness that got you to this place where you even realized that you needed a Savior. That's what the scriptures tell us. It is the goodness of God that leads us to repentance. I find that scripture in the book of Romans. And so it's the love of God that brings us in to this place where we even realized that man, I'm lost and I need a Savior. It's the love of God that revealed to us the payment of sin in Romans six and 23, the wages of sin is death. But the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. And so what do we know about the love of God in his love for us is he gave us his love through his word. His word, it convicts us, it transforms us. The Bible says the preaching of the cross, the message of the gospel, the word of God, you could say, is to them that perish foolishness, but to us that believe it is the power of God to salvation. So it is the love of God through his word that brings me to this place where I see my need for a Savior. It is the word of God that brings me, or the love of God I should say through his word that brings me to this place where I also understand that there is a Savior, someone to redeem me and save me from my sins. And that same verse, the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. Eternal life comes by the work of Jesus Christ. And so it's God's love that revealed to me that I had a Savior that I could call upon and Romans 10 and 13, who so ever should call upon the name of the Lord, shall be saved. God loved us first. And out of that, he changed me and transformed me. And he has enabled me to love him. I can't, a lost man can't love God. A dead man can't love God. And we were dead and trespasses and sins. So we love him because he first loved us. Man, I love that. Any time I think of that, I just, I'm reminded that God's love for me is greater than my love for him. It's so much greater. My love fails. God's love does not. My love has limits. God's love does not have limits. I tried to love God through a broken, I'm a broken individual. You're a broken individual. And the best we know how with the power of God working in us, we express our love to God, but even that fails and falls short. But see, God's expression of love for us does not fall short. It's greater than our love. God's love is greater. And so he says, he goes on to say, if any man say, I love God and hate his brother, he is a liar, but for he that loveeth not his brother, whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has seen? Right? And so John is constantly going back to this issue of loving your brother, displaying your love, the love of God, that God has bestowed upon you, displaying it or living it out, you could say, for those who are in need of God's love and we're all in need of God's love. And so he says that how, in other words, you can't. You can't say that you love God whom you have not seen if you don't love your brother whom you have seen. You know, you and I, we say things that why I love God, I love Jesus. Well, you've never seen Jesus. I've never seen Jesus. I've never seen God. I know we exist by faith. And through that, he changes me and transforms me and I love him. But I'm loving a God that I've never seen that I'm putting my faith in. And John says, how can you say that you love a God whom you've never seen, but yet you can't love your brother who you can't see, right? Think about that for a moment, right? And you love God, I love God. We've experienced this transforming power in our life and do you love your brother? Are there people in your life that you just have written off and you said, you know what? I can love this group over here, but man, I can't love this individual. They did this, they did that. Well, I go back to what Jesus said, Jesus said, love your enemy. Wow, what a statement that is, right? Love your enemy. Pray for those who despitefully use you. You pray for people that you love, don't you? You carve time out for people that you love. And you know what I'm saying? And so who is it maybe that you're struggling with today? Who is it that you're struggling with and they've done your wrong, they've hurt you and they've said this, they've done this, they've done that. And you're just at the end of your road and you're like, man, I can't love him anymore. And so the Bible says that you can't say that you don't, you can't say you love God and then not love your brother. It doesn't work that way. And this is the command of verse 21, he says, this commandment have we from him that he who loveeth God, loveeth his brother also. You know, I'm like you, there's people I struggle with. There's personalities that I struggle with. There's people that maybe I don't gel mesh with very good and I find it hard to love. I've heard people say, and I think this is ridiculous. I think this is, it's not biblical. I've heard people say, the Bible says you gotta love him. You don't have to like him. Really? Like really, like think about that for a moment. You gotta love him, but you don't like him. Well, how are you gonna display love to something you don't like? Right? I think sometimes, you know, I tell my kids, they'll say, I don't like so-and-so and I just, I tell them sometimes, hey, you gotta get over yourself. Right? You know, sometimes I gotta get over myself. I gotta get over myself. Now, I wanna say this because I think sometimes we mistake loving people as if though we should accept everything they do. We should be tolerant of everything they do. We should be receptive of everything they believe. And don't think that's true. Don't think John's saying that because John's been very clear about that, right? He's telling them, look, there's people coming in among you. They're not of God. You know it by their spirit. You're gonna know by the Holy Spirit that lives in you, that they did not truth. I mean, there's so many things and so we're not. The Bible is not saying that we should expose ourselves in a way to where we're, we become vulnerable to lies or we become, we become prey to the enemy, right? You know, people, sometimes people that aren't believers, they'll say, well, you know, I thought Christians were supposed to love everybody. Well, I mean, sure, right? I mean, Jesus was very obvious in the way, in the love that you should love your enemies. But I think even Jesus, when you look at Jesus's life, Jesus didn't allow himself just to be run over and mowed over. I mean, there were times where, there was times where it came before, before the garden of Gethsemane where they arrested him, there were other times they tried to do him harm and he would either walk away or disappear or do something, right? So Jesus isn't just saying here, I am, right? Manipulate me, abuse me, all these other things because I love you and I think sometimes we think that. The thing I love is love sets some really healthy boundaries, right? And here in particular, John is talking about the love that we have toward our brethren, right? The love that we have toward those who are of the faith, of light-minded faith, who are, they're in the same place I'm in. They're redeemed, they're restored, they're transformed by the grace of God, growing in Christ. And so as a body of Christ, this is one of the ways that we operate is by the love that we have one for another. And so I would encourage you, if you're not already, like don't, I think this is a great, these verses here give us great understanding as to why we shouldn't go it alone, right? Why we shouldn't be isolated in our Christian walk? Why we shouldn't, you know, just kind of be out there by ourselves and doing our own thing and, you know, and all that other stuff. When reality, the love of God brings us together, brings us in a family, places us in a family so that we can carry out the love of God. John has already said, he's already said in chapter three that how can you have this world's need for your brethren and say you love them and not help them, not give that? Why, what's he saying? There's a way to carry out God's love. There's a way to display God's love. And I would just encourage you, I would even encourage you today, sometimes. Sit down, write somebody a note, text them. Maybe somebody you just been at odds with and you don't even know why. Just sit down and say, look, man, I don't, we ought to love one another. And we can do more together if we would just love one another with a God type of love. First Corinthians 13, love bears all things, believes all things, hope with all things, and dearth all things. Charity or love never fails. And so I think that oftentimes we see failed things, we see relationships that have failed, we see failure in relationships sometimes. And we give up and love, the love of God never fails. And so I would encourage you as you go throughout the day today, find somebody who may be struggling with that. And I want to encourage you to love them as only Jesus can love them. And he'll love you, he'll love them through you and you can be a blessing in their life. Man, I hope you have a great day today. I want to encourage you, ask the tool of abdas.com go there to our website and you can get connected with some other ways that we could serve one another and be with one another and help one another. I want to encourage you to like this podcast, share it, get it out there, help people with it and all that good stuff. So we can get the message out there. Just, I hope you'll have a great week this week and love to hear from you. You can email me at everydaychurchabc@gmail.com and we can get connected there and love to hear from you and how we can better serve God together. So praying for you this week. I hope you have a great, great day in the Lord today. Let's go to the Lord in prayer. Father, thank you for your love for us, for your goodness to us, for your grace that you've given us. Father, thank you for everyone that would listen to this podcast that this would be a help to them and encouragement to them. Father, we pray, we love you. Ask that you be with us as we go throughout the remainder of the day. Your precious name, we pray. Amen. (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)