1 John 3:11-24 The Power of Love

Church Vision, Expansion Fund, and Short-Term Facility Needs

Welcome to Recast Church in Madawan, Michigan, where we are growing in faith, community, and service. This is a message from the series called In the Light out of the book of 1 John by Pastor Don Filsack.

If you'd like more information about our church, please visit us on the web at www .recastchurch .com. Here's Pastor Don.

Good morning, welcome to Recast Church.

I'm Don Filsack, I'm the lead pastor here, and just glad that you guys have come out to worship God this morning, and also glad to be back after a couple of weeks away. I had a great conference last week, and I'm very grateful for Zach Lloyd and Michael Brown filling in so well for us in my absence.

It's awesome to just see how the ministry of the word goes forward even in my absence, and just very grateful for them being willing to step up and teach in that situation. Be sure to fill out any connection cards.

Turn those into the black box, and remember that if this is your first time with us and you fill out that connection card, we'd also ask you to please take a free coffee mug back there, just our way of saying thanks for joining us.

And then if you're willing to share an email address, that's the primary way that we communicate what activities and things are going on. And so, excuse me, you received a worship folder when you walked in, but that's just kind of scratching the surface of what's going on.

If you really wanna be in the know, you need to get that email, and if you share an email address with that, then you'll be signed up for that, but you can unsubscribe yourself from it at any time. You're in control of that.

We don't spam your inbox, but one a week with all kinds of links and activities and different things there. And then any offerings you would choose to give can go in the black box back there as well. You are provided with an envelope.

You can recycle that or use it, but we don't pass an offering plate, and so the black box is back there if you choose to give. And then remember that anything marked expansion fund on either the check or the envelope is gonna go directly into an account for our hopes to eventually build a building down the road here.

And I wanted to share an update with you on the expansion fund. I think my tendency is to not share unless something new has happened, and I think that's a little bit faulty in that you guys, how many of you are kind of wondering what's going on with the expansion fund?

You're kind of thinking like what's going on? And so I wanted to give you an update without a whole lot of movement, just some information that I have to share with you. We've been in discussions with a couple of local lending institutions and have discovered that our level of comfort and borrowing has kind of hit the wall of reality of what we're actually eligible for.

And so many of you have seen the actual plans that have been drawn up. They're pretty modest plans, not like flying buttresses and huge cathedral ceilings and stained glass and all that. It's a pretty modest facility that allows us some room to grow in our children's ministry.

Obviously, we have the benefit right now of using Kitty U down there. And so we have to make up for that space plus a little bit in order for us to be able to grow. And then also the same for our meeting space here in the sanctuary.

And so the price tag on that new building as the designers have drawn it right now is $1 .7 million. And we are currently eligible for a loan of three quarters of a million dollars. So I'm talking with others, they're pretty rock solid about that.

And our level of comfort for borrowing would be around that area anyways. And so you do the math, if it's a $1 .7 million project and we could borrow $750 ,000, then we would have a task in front of us for raising funds to even be able to borrow to build.

And so you can kind of do the math and figure that out yourself. But you know that I haven't stood up in front of you and talked about money unless the text has really encouraged us in that direction.

And I don't intend to change that because we've got this huge amount that we need to raise in front of us. We have not tried to do gimmicks or sell you bricks or sell you chairs or anything like that.

I don't really feel like it's our responsibility as elders to try to wring money out of you, especially when you have been so generous already. I have nothing but gratitude in my heart for the faithful support of this ministry over the past several years.

And I've actually been in awe many times. I think that other elders could say the same thing that we've been in awe of the generosity of this church. But at the same time, we recognize that we have a significant uphill thing ahead of us when it comes to actually breaking ground and building.

And we're just seeking the Lord's direction in that. The other thing is that we're actually seeking some short-term solutions. In the meantime, as we kind of look at the way that the growth has happened here at Recast over the past few years, we have a tendency to grow pretty much throughout the year.

So we've been growing pretty steadily. But then what we've found is that from January, February, March, really those three months end up being a huge spike in our attendance. And we've kind of grown during that period of time.

So when you look around, you can see a couple of empty seats around here and you can kind of maybe go, well, how many of you were here last, at the beginning of 2013 when we were scrambling, every single seat was full and we were trying to add more seats and people were standing.

Do you remember that? We have no reason to believe that that's not going to be even worse come January where we don't really want the ushers and the greeters at the door to turn into bouncers. And so you kind of get where I'm going with that.

So we have some potential short-term solutions we're looking into. We're back into discussions and conversation with the school about the potential to use facilities there for a short-term intermediate period of time.

We're back in the talks with Glass and Associates, our builder and designer saying, can we cut anything out of this? Is there any way we could save some? So that's kind of where we're at. And I want to talk about how this ties in with our mission and our vision too.

If our, there'd be no problem at all with any of this, if our mission and vision could allow us to just stay here in this limited facility without any room for growth and outreach. If we just kind of said, you know what?

They don't really care to invite any more. We're comfortable, we're big enough right now. We've grown enough. And so we're not going to invite our friends. We're not going to invite our neighbors. We're just, and the ushers are going to become bouncers.

If that's kind of the, if that's the mindset. But that flies in the face of what I believe God has called us to be as a church. That flies in the face of our mission of finding worshipers for his name.

And so, I mean, we are not, how do you think of the church? I don't want you to think primarily of the church as a social club where I come and I meet with my other Christian friends and we hang out. Now, is that a component of what we do here?

It is, there's a value in that, but that's not primarily what we are doing. We are not also primarily a school that's just for educational purposes. You come in, you learn something, you leave. I want you to think of us as a hospital for hurting people, hurting people out in the world, Christians and non-Christians alike.

And we want to have a facility that can, can I say a facility that facilitates openness to our community and towards that value of community. And this facility has been great for the past few years, but I have a sense in my heart that it's beginning to hamper our mission and our vision and our ability to continue to reach out.

So I'd encourage you to please be in prayer over the direction that the Lord has for us. I have a sense, I have a sense of anticipation, a sense of enthusiasm about what God has for us. But right now, I would say that as elders, we feel somewhat like we have the ship in the water and all the sails are drawn and ready.

And all we're waiting for is for the wind of the Lord to blow on this thing. And so just be in prayer, just please be in prayer about how God might use you as a part of this. If you have any suggestions, questions, concerns, please come and talk with me or Zach or Kyle or Rob.

And we would love to talk with you further about that. And maybe you're sitting here and you're thinking, I have a potential solution to that, let us know. But moving on into the introduction to the sermon, we desire for everybody to be growing in faith, growing in community, growing in service.

That's our growth map is that everybody in all of those three spheres is growing at whatever level you come into the church at in faith, community, and service, that we all have room to grow in each of those aspects.

And particularly in the area of growing in community, our text this morning is gonna highlight love and the centrality that love is to have in our Christian community, that love is to be the center of what we do.

Jesus said this, I'm gonna quote Jesus right here, by this, all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. If you have love for one another, then the world is gonna know that you are with Jesus.

John is gonna take us on a tour of Christian love this morning and show us a bunch of different facets of it. And when we rightly understand and apply, not just understand it, not just speak it, but when we rightly apply love for others in our lives, we find the power available for life through the love of Jesus Christ.

And so I want you to open your Bibles, please, to 1 John chapter three, it's gonna be verses 11 through 24, get back into this book after a couple weeks away, and that's page 878, so if you pull out that paperback Bible in the seat back in front of you, turn clear to the back, 878, and boom, there it is.

Follow along as I read 1 John 3, 11 through 24, and if you don't own a copy of the Bible, you can take that one with you that's in the seat back. We want everybody to have a copy of the word of God. The very word of the Lord to us this morning recasts.

For this is the message that you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. We should not be like Cain, who was of the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him?

Because his own deeds were evil and his brother's righteous. Do not be surprised, brothers, that the world hates you. We know that we have passed out of death into life because we love the brothers. Whoever does not love abides in death.

Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him. By this we know, love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.

But if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or talk, but in deed and in truth.

By this we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our hearts before him. For whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything. Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God.

And whatever we ask, we receive from him because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him. And this is his commandment, that we believe in the name of his son, Jesus Christ, and love one another just as he commanded us.

Whoever keeps his commandments abides in God and God in him, and by this we know that he abides in us by the spirit whom he has given us.

Let's pray.

As Josh and Heidi come to lead us in worship. Father, we are in need of your presence here this morning. I believe that we've gathered together in probably a variety of different motivations and thoughts that have led us through these doors this morning.

I know that a lot of people have had rough weeks, some have had really great weeks, and some just kind of right in the middle. And it's very easy for all of the different things that have gone on this past week, the things that are going on today, the roast that's in the crock pot, or the things going on this afternoon, or whatever, to draw our attention away from the things that are happening.

And I ask that you would help us to be present here and now. Father, that in the hearing of your word, that in the singing of praises, that we would be transformed and changed in our hearts. Father, that you would accept our worship and our praise and our adoration to you out of hearts that recognize who you are, what you have done for us, how you have changed us, how you have sacrificed for us, and that we would be moved by your great love even as we have an opportunity to talk about that and define that today.

I ask that you would be with us, teach us, guide us, and give us enthusiasm and even joy as we sing praises to you in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Go ahead and make sure you have your Bibles open to 1 John chapter three. I'd love to see you guys with those open following along because really the structure of the text is the structure of my sermon.

And I really try to make, you know, kind of stick to the word as we walk through it. And then remember that at any time during the message, if you kind of feel yourself kind of starting to zone out or whatever, you can get more coffee, juice, donuts, restrooms are back here.

You can get up in the back and do some calisthenics or whatever it takes to kind of keep the focus on the word of God this morning. We come to a text. It's been a while, a couple of weeks since we've been in 1 John.

And so we're coming back in about halfway through the book. We're actually in the text. It is the halfway marker for the book of 1 John. And so far what we've seen John do pretty consistently is lift up Jesus and raise a standard of practicing righteousness for those who are in him,.

Are in Christ.

And it ultimately is all focused on how do we know we are in with God? And that's been kind of one of the main questions that we should be asking ourselves when we come to the book of 1 John, that it's working to answer for us.

We know that John is addressing a church split situation. And I think a lot of times we can look back at these texts and we kind of think of it as like just a letter or we don't really put ourselves in the shoes or in the places where these people were walking.

Now, I mean, can you imagine kind of some of the emotions that happen when a church split, when a church split goes down or a group of people and a faction within the church. And sometimes those church splits don't cut right according to your friends and your preferences and the things that you like.

And so I think that we've got to put ourselves in the shoes of those people that John is writing to and recognize that they're hurting people. The church is split really over the issue of who Christ is.

And some people have actually said they don't believe that Jesus Christ is the Messiah. And they took a group with them and even then in turn, tried to take others with them and tried to drag them down.

And they're meeting with coffee shops, trying to subvert what John is doing here. Anybody think that that would be kind of difficult? You put yourself in that life situation, two of you think that would be difficult?

I'm scared all of a sudden. If more of us don't kind of think that would be rough. And so his letter has been to a remnant of a shattered church. And he has been seeking to encourage them to remain strong in the face of false doctrine, to remain unified.

Can you imagine why a bit of a sermon on love, a section in his letter about love might matter to a church like that? We say, here's what love looks like. You who have been dissed by a huge portion of the church, here's what unity is going to be built on is based on love and you are being commanded to love one another.

And so we're going to go forward with that. And so in verse 11, John appeals to a message that they have known from the beginning. He says that they have known it from the very beginning for this is the message that you've heard from the beginning, that we should love one another.

I believe that the beginning is not like in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. I think he's referring there to the beginning of their faith. When you came to faith in Christ, you heard something and that something is that they should love one another.

Now I'm curious, and by the way, I ask for interaction and I can overdo it from time to time, but just bear with me, I'm trying to kick the habit. But I'm curious how many of you, when you came to faith in Christ, were given explicit instructions that you were supposed to love other Christians?

Were any of you given explicit instructions, you came to faith in Christ and immediately were told by the person who led you to faith in Christ, now that you're in the family of God, you should love other Christians?

Any of you given, I think I saw one hand in the room. I didn't receive that exhortation. As an eight-year-old in an Iwana program in the basement of the First Baptist Church in Middleville, Michigan, my Iwana leader walked me through a prayer of salvation.

I said, I want to go to heaven someday, and they told me I was a sinner, and we walked through all of that, and I prayed and believed in my heart that Jesus was the Savior. But there was no instruction that, it wasn't like, well, now you're in, so you need to love others.

You need to love people. And I'm guessing that most of us didn't receive that exhortation. And that leads me to believe that there may be something lacking in our communication of the gospel and what we are saved to.

Now, many of us can communicate what we're saved from, right, maybe that was a big motivator, saved from hell. And if you were saved as a child, maybe you had the fear of hell, or maybe it was at a bonfire where they were illustrating it for you, or whatever.

I mean, I don't know what it was for you, but I mean, so we know what we're saved from, but do we understand and have a good grasp of what we are saved to?

What is it?

And I fear that often our discipleship programs, and I'm saying this, our, I mean, recast, I think any church can struggle with this, particularly in the West, do we have a, do we maybe have a problem with independence as Americans?

Like, just kind of like, we are independent, isolated, we can do it, go it alone, that rough, rugged isolationism and things like that. I fear that often we take new believers and we teach them to take care of number one,.

Take care of numero uno.

So what do we do in discipleship? We teach everybody to have a quiet time, alone in isolation, right? That's step one, get alone, okay? And is that not often one of our first injunctions to new believers?

Get alone with God. What about community? What about connectedness? What about love? Do we communicate that aspect of this? We act like salvation and then sanctification is a self-help program that's centered on the individual rather than a called-into-community program, where we demonstrate love to one another and where we depend on one another and where we need each other and where we offer up the gifts that God has given to us in community.

Is there a difference? Are you hearing that? Something about this whole idea of love. And he says, John is confident that the believers in his church had heard from the very beginning the call to community, had heard from the beginning of their faith, you are called into community to love one another.

Maybe we all need to be reminded that love is not optional in the Christian life. As a matter of fact, I would suggest that to you because God has me preaching this this morning, so we need to hear it because it's what God has directed our attention to.

All love is expressed in relationship with others and love cannot be expressed in isolation. It cannot be expressed. You cannot express love and act on love in isolation. Even the love of God is expressed in our relationships with others.

Love the Lord, your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, how? By loving your neighbor as yourself in connection and community with others. And so the structure of our text this morning has four parts.

Has that been up for a while? Have you guys already seen that? You had a chance to write that down? This is an example. I just want to let you know, if this is your first time here, I do not do this very often, so those of you that have been around for a while, I just want you to just take a moment to appreciate that.

Alliteration, four points, you know where we're going, which you don't usually have a clue where we're going, so you're being tricked if this is your first time here. I don't usually do that, but I can.

I can. So we're gonna go through this first part. The first part is gonna be the contrast of love, and Gavin, you can advance that to the next one. The contrast of love. John begins by telling us what love isn't.

Great, great definition. And he's going to refer directly to a character in the Old Testament. I love it that he's willing to give us a word picture both for what love isn't and for what love is, and he's gonna reference the Old Testament character Cain.

How many of you are familiar with the story of Cain and Abel? Quite a few of us are familiar with Cain and Abel. Did you realize this? He was the first person, at least as far as what's recorded in scripture, he is the first person born.

Did you realize that?

Cain, the first person born at all. And certainly at least the first born male child on the planet. Maybe they weren't recording female births and someone was born, but the text tells us as far as we know, he's the first born child of Adam and Eve.

And we know him also, maybe more famously, as the first murderer, right? First one born is also the first murderer. And do you think then that it's a little bit of an overstatement, a little bit of an overstatement for John to tell us, don't be like Cain.

Do you think, I mean, he's the murderer, the one who took his own brother's life, don't act like that, people, okay? That's not setting the bar, that's not setting the bar super high for us to just say, don't murder.

Don't murder your brother, okay? But sometimes if you're in a family, you got kids, you know that sometimes that's just enough to get you by today. Don't murder your brother, and that's good, you're satisfied with that.

But we're told to not be like Cain. He's declared to be a son of, a child of the devil, in essence, verse 12, we should not be like Cain who was of the evil one, as if the evil one was the one who originated Cain.

We know that he's using a figure of speech there, he wasn't literally born of Satan, but he acted like it. And we find insight into the reason he murdered his brother, again, verse 12, John asked the question, and why did he murder him, and then proceeds to give us an answer, above and beyond what's recorded for us in the book of Genesis.

John here is saying, by the revelation of the Holy Spirit, he had some insight given to him by the Spirit in what motivated Cain, and look at what it was. What motivated Cain to murder Abel? Because his own deeds were evil, and his brother's were righteous.

It's not that Cain murdered, and that made him evil. He was already practicing evil deeds beforehand, and something about his brother's righteous deeds moved him to envy. What was the motivation of Cain?

And he saw his brother's righteous deeds, and loathed them, and he himself was practicing evil along the way. And so, Cain practiced evil, and murder was the result of his practice of evil. Are you getting what I'm saying there?

It's not that the murder made him evil, he already was before that ever took place. And so, John explains that those who practice righteousness should not be surprised that the world hates them. As he's here giving us a contrast to love, he's saying, those of us who love, those of us who act in righteousness, those of us who are seeking to love as brothers and sisters in Christ, should not be surprised when the world hates us.

Those who practice evil will always be in conflict with those who practice righteousness. How many of you would say that you've been the recipient of either subtle or overt persecution for your faith?

Raise your hand if you feel like. And so, let me back up and just ask this question. How many of you have ever listened to the radio and felt like someone was laughing or mocking at your faith? Have you experienced that?

So, you have a sense at least in that, that the world doesn't see things the way that you see things. Many of us can point to interactions we've had with coworkers, neighbors, other people, maybe family members or extended family members who would laugh at us for the things that we believe or the things that we would speak as true.

And so, I think we can relate to that. To give you an illustration of this, the way that maybe sometimes in overt ways we might receive persecution. I was, it was between my freshman and sophomore year of college, I went to Bible College in South Carolina for my first two years.

And so, I just wrapped up my freshman year of Bible College in Columbia, South Carolina. Super excited, jazzed, studying Old Testament Survey, New Testament Study, Bible doctrine, all kinds of, you know, and so, can you picture kind of like a young man on fire for God, gonna take my summer for Jesus, okay?

So, where do I take the summer? I go to work at Kraft Containers, Kraft Packaging up in Grand Rapids,.

Living in Middleville,.

Moved back with my family for the summer, and I'm gonna, man, am I just gonna share my faith with the people at this factory? And how many of you know where this is going, okay? It was, I mean, the whole summer was like one big like nightmare.

I took my Bible in, I'd read over the lunch break, lunch break in the middle of the night, third shift, and how many of you know that it became a game? You can picture this game. Some of you live this game Monday to Friday, and it's a game called Make the Religious Guy Blush, or Make the Religious Guy Get Angry, and maybe some of your workplaces is like that with, they're like that with you, but that was my summer, was people just speaking vile, obnoxious things, what happened last night, and what they're gonna do tonight, and this, that, and the other, and it just got to be like a real attempt to get under my skin.

It was pretty obnoxious, but it got worse. About halfway through the summer, there was an individual who was hired onto my shift and ended up working on the same machine as me, and we worked on kind of a little bit of an assembly line, putting nesting packages for mirrors to go into, so that's what we were doing all summer.

Same thing day in and night in and night out. But he ended up working on my same machine, and he proceeded to basically tell me he was a self-professed Satan worshiper. I don't believe that he really was.

I think he just said that to get under my skin. I don't think he went out and sacrificed goats and stuff, but you can just kind of see that he might have wanted to say that just to get at me. One particular night, we were working on the line, and he said something that was particularly vile, directed to me, and then asked me, got really close to me, and asked for my response.

And by God's grace, I just kind of stepped back, tried to keep doing my job. He was in my way, and the next thing I know, he hauled off and punched me in the chest, okay? I don't even know if I'd said something or if I'd done something, but he actually punched me in the workplace because I wouldn't respond to this vile statement that he made.

Now, to put a little context on that, I'm not a big guy. Like, you can look at me, skinny wrists and all that business, but I want to let you know that in all honesty, and I say this to just kind of explain the story a little bit more in depth, and this is a confession.

This is not boasting at all, but I was suspended two times in high school for fighting. I would never start a fight, but I would never refuse it. I mean, and it didn't matter if they were bigger than me.

I was either gonna get knocked out or somebody was gonna pull me off of somebody, but I wasn't gonna back down if somebody threw the first punch. And so, this was God's grace. It was a supernatural grace that I didn't respond and retaliate to this guy who punched me.

And the bottom line, he ended up losing his job within the hour, and people kind of backed off a little bit until, you know, getting close to the end of the summer or whatever. But I say that to say, we don't have to go out and seek trouble.

Trouble will find us. Just sometimes standing for Christ or just letting people know that you're with Christ will bring the pain, and I know some of you live there. Some of you live in those places, and yet, simultaneously, are we called to spread the light?

Are we called to live that way? I mean, so now some of you might be listening to that story and going, okay, well now, you've given me a cause for fear because I don't wanna get punched at work, so I'm gonna just not tell anybody that I'm a Christian.

No, just go out and be bold about it and let the chips fall where they may. I don't think I did anything wrong that summer in an enthusiasm and in a zeal to bring Christ into my workplace. But sometimes it's just our identification with Christ that brings hatred in our direction.

We don't need to go out and confront evil head-on in order to warrant those attacks. In a more local setting and more current, I've several times had conversations with complete strangers at the coffee shop.

Didn't know them before they walked into the coffee shop, and in the conversation, they find out I'm a pastor, and boom, they just begin to ignite an attack against the church. Any of you ever been in that context?

Oh, a Christian, oh, you're one of those, and boom, they're just like ready to roll and go with their thoughts and opinions, and animosity and anger towards the church. Thank you, I appreciate your opinion.

I am grateful to be having this conversation. But loving people and expressing biblical truth is often just enough to get into it with the world. We shouldn't be surprised, John says, when the world responds without love toward us, but our call is something different.

In verse 14, John declares that our love is a sign that we are truly alive. Those who do not love are living in the realm of death, but those who truly love others are living in the realm of life. Without love, we have no reason to believe that we belong to the one who called himself love.

And so love is a sign of spiritual life within us. And now John takes it, mines just a smidge deeper into the church and into us by saying, everyone who hates someone else is a murderer like Cain was a murderer.

He makes that connection. How many of you think that's a pretty dramatic connection for John to make here? He says, if you hate somebody, you're liable to murder. You're guilty of murder. Does that seem, at face value, does that seem a little bit strong?

And yet, those are the very words, he didn't originate this, this didn't start with John. Jesus is the one who said this, and John is just the messenger. In Matthew 5, 21 through 26, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, anyone who has been angry enough to curse someone is liable to murder.

Anyone who has said, you fool, to another individual has had murder in their hearts. Pretty dramatic, but yet the words of Jesus Christ, our Lord. And John goes on to say, murder is not consistent with the eternal life found in Jesus Christ.

John is not here technically spelling out salvation as if to say, if you've murdered somebody, you can never get to heaven, you forfeit it, or there's no way to get eternal life if murder has happened, there's not an unforgivable sin in that sense.

If your mind turns there, I think you're stretching what John is trying to accomplish by this text. He's providing a contrast to love and saying, this kind of life is not consistent with Jesus. If you're walking as Jesus walked, then murder and hatred are not going to be on the playlist of your life.

Does that make sense? Tracking with that? And so now we shift from the contrast of love as Cain to the character of love, and he's going to also give us another person to identify with. So if you want the contrast of love, you think of Cain.

If you want to understand what love is, you think of Jesus. He is the model for us. And John gives us a working definition of love through an illustration. Look with me at verse 16 for just a moment. Look down at the text, but by this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.