God Is Love -- A Message for July 14, 2024

1 John 4:7-21 

Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.  

Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.  

This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him.  

This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.  

Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.  

No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us. 

This is how we know that we live in him and he in us: He has given us of his Spirit.   

And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world.  

If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God.  

And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. 

God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.  

This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus.  

There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. 

We love because he first loved us.  

Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen.  

And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister. 

Here end this reading of the word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God. Amen. 

Let us pray.... 

Sermon God Is Love 

If you look up the origin of the phrase “put your money where your mouth is” there are explanations going back to 17th century England and con men. Con-men would tell people they had medicinal toads who would cure them of every ailment under the sun. The victims of the con men just had to buy the exorbitantly priced toads, eat them, and they would be cured. The con men would demonstrate how safe their products were by pretending to swallow the toads whole – but they used sleight of hand tricks and secreted the toads away. The victims would eat the toads and then become ill – not so ill they would die, but certainly ill enough to be extremely uncomfortable. The putting your money where your mouth is phrase came about because of the sleight of hand maneuver – the toads were the source of the money, and they pretended to put them in their mouths. 

When we tell someone to “put their money where their mouth is,” we mean that instead of just talking about doing something, it is time for them to act. This theme – that we must act instead of just talking about something – permeates the letter of 1st John. The Elder who wrote this letter wants Christians to “live out” their love for their neighbors.  Show up with a bag of groceries when a neighbor is hungry; bring a bottle of water to the exhausted landscaper in your neighbor’s yard; pay your friend’s electric bill when the cut-off notice arrives in the mailbox. Although the Elder wrote this letter in the 2nd century, there words have 21st century implications. We must always be on the lookout for people who are in need and people who are hurting, so that we can exemplify Christian love in our kind actions towards them. 

The Elder emphasized the loving nature of God. Love emanates from God and is showered upon Christians, the children of God. Love emanates out of us, the Christians, to other people. Just as God loves us and fills us with the Holy Spirit of God, we must be loving to the people we meet. 

The Elder states that God has expressed God’s love for us in two specific ways. First -- God shared Jesus with us – he died to atone for our sins – he was resurrected to remind us that nothing is more powerful than God and God’s love. And second -- On the first Pentecost, God filled God’s followers with God’s Holy Spirit – the active living spirit of God that gives us strength and power to live out our Christain faith in the world. As followers of God, the Holy Spirit flows into us. We are strengthened and comforted by God’s Spirit supporting us.  

We are entering a strange and stressful time in the life of our country. Our attention will become more and more focused on politics over the next few months. People will take sides and will take personally attacks on “their” candidate. Mothers will disagree with daughters, grandsons will disagree with grandfathers, brothers will disagree with each other, neighbors will have conflicting yard signs and messages on their lawns. People’s stress levels will rise when they defend their candidate and party against the opposition. 

Although we all have “feelings” about our political ideals, it is important for us to remember that we are first and foremost Christians. Our family is the people we join with as brothers and sisters in Christ. So, no matter how much we differ in our political views, we must remember we love each other, and we value each other and our relationships with one another. So, we must be mindful of our words, strive to be kind and compassionate, and work to listen to each other even when we do not agree with each other about everything. We are ultimately on the same team – God's team. And, as the Elder emphasizes in their writing, God loves us and encourages us to love each other and work together.  

When we find ourselves disagreeing or preparing to argue, remember the message of the 1960s hymn “They Will Know We Are Christians by Our Love.” We will work together and walk together and they will recognize us by our love for each other.  “And we'll guard each one's dignity and save each one's pride, and they will know we are Christians by our love.” No matter how difficult it is, we must remember that God loves us and we are called to love each other.  
Amen. 

Loving Each Other -- A Message for July 7, 2024

 

Scripture 1 John 3:16-24 

This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters.  

If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person?  

Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth. 

This is how we know that we belong to the truth and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence:  

If our hearts condemn us, we know that God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before. God  

and receive from him anything we ask, because we keep his commands and do what pleases him.  

And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us.  

The one who keeps God’s commands lives in him, and he in them. And this is how we know that he lives in us: We know it by the Spirit he gave us. 

Here ends this reading of the Word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God. Amen 

Let us pray.... 

Sermon                                           Loving Each Other 

Over the past few weeks in our worship services, we have been working our way through the First letter of John from the New Testament. This letter is not a part of the Bible that most of us are uber-familiar-with – in our worship services, we are more likely to hear stories from Jesus’ life or the stories from the Old Testament about Abraham and Sarah’s travels, David’s trials, or the prophesies of Isaiah. Each week, most of us only set-aside one hour to worship God and we are more likely to read the lesser-known stories and letters in the Bible on our own time. 

The first letter of John is attributed to an author Biblical scholars call “The Elder.” Their letters were intended to be passed from little church congregation to little church congregation in the Roman region of Asia – modern day Türkiye. So, the letters were not written to a specific group of people but were intended to be a more general letters of encouragement to many little groups of people. 

The Elder was concerned that the stresses of being little groups of Christians living amongst a larger population of people with other beliefs and religious practices would cause so much stress to the Christians their churches would break apart. He or she cautioned them against falling away from their shared faith. They worried about the people within the churches having good relationships with each other – she was afraid that conflict would lead to church members feeling demoralized and discouraged. The people within the churches needed to remain united because they had to support each other against the outside pressure on their group...the governing authorities and their neighbors were becoming more and more hostile to Christians. Christians were being arrested and killed by the Roman authorities who ruled over this region. 

The portion of the letter we are focusing on this morning encourages Christians to look out for each other. The Elder writes that all Christians are adopted into the family of God – men or women, wealthy people & slaves, Greek or Turkish or Israeli or Egyptian -- no matter our backgrounds, we are all brothers and sisters in the family of God.  

The Elder writes it is our responsibility to care for one another. We are supposed to share our resources with brothers and sisters who are struggling. The Elder was focused on cohesion and unity within the group.... if people within the group were in need, it was the responsibility of the others in the group to help alleviate those needs. 

When this letter was written, Christians were a little group living surrounded by neighbors who were not Christians. Fast-forward 19 hundred years or so, Christians are a bigger group living surrounded by neighbors who are a variety of faiths or not. We have churches and Christian communities scattered throughout the world. In our country, most churches are like ours – a smaller group of people who worship together in a place that was designed for a bigger crowd. We are becoming more and more like the churches the First Letter of John was written for – small congregations that are under stress from the outside world and from within. 

Therefore, we need to listen to the advice of the Elder. It is important for us to remember we are all brothers and sisters and who have been adopted by God. We must strive to have unity among ourselves – just as biological brothers and sisters disagree, so do Christian brothers and sisters. As much as possible, we must work to have a good relationship with each other and remember we are in this together. When people within our congregation suffer, we must join together to support each other. I have witnessed members of Trinity excel at this. If someone is struggling to find a new job or is looking for a new home to rent, we are called to put our personal feelers out among our social networks and help. When one of us is recovering from surgery or undergoing cancer treatments, we are called to bring them soup and good books to read. When our young people are applying for college or volunteer jobs, it is our work to write them letters of recommendation.  Whatever struggles we face, we are called to work together on behalf of each other.  

Each day, we are called to work to be faithful Christians in the world. In this portion of 1^st John, the Elder reminds us that we are called to believe in Jesus and to love one another as Jesus loved us. Let us strive to be loving in our thoughts, words and deeds towards each other and as we live our lives out in the world.  

Amen.