Love Completed

The Old Testament reading this morning is Psalm 63, which should be in your Bibles, page 479, if you'd

like to read along.

Oh God, you are my God.

Earnestly I seek you.

My soul thirsts for you.

My flesh faints for you as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.

So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary, beholding your power and glory, because your

steadfast love is better than life.

My lips will praise you.

So I will bless you as long as I live.

In your name, I will lift up my hands.

My soul will be satisfied as with fat and rich food.

My mouth will praise you with joyful lips.

When I remember you upon my bed and meditate on you in the watches of the night, for you have

been my help, and in the shadow of your wings, I will sing for joy.

My soul clings to you.

Your right hand upholds me.

But those who seek to destroy my life shall go down into the depths of the earth.

They shall be given over to the power of the sword.

They shall be a portion for jackals.

But the king shall rejoice in God, and all who swear by him shall exult, for the mouths of liars

will be stopped.

New Testament reading is 1 John 4, 7 through 21.

Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born

of God and knows God.

Anyone who does not love does not know God, but God is love.

And this, the love of God we made manifest among us, that God sent his

only son into the world so that we might live through him.

And this is love, not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son

to be the propitiation for our sins.

Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.

No one has ever seen God.

If we love one another, God abides in us, and his love is perfected in us.

By this, we know that we abide in him and that he is in us.

Because he gives us of his spirit, and we have seen and testify

about the father, that the father has sent his son to be the savior of the world.

Whoever confesses that Jesus is the son of God, God abides in him and he is God.

So we have come to know and to believe that the love of God

has for us, God is love,

and God abides in him.

For this is love perfected with us so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because he is

also, are we in the world.

There is no fear in love, but for perfect love casts out fear, for fear has to do with punishment,

and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.

We love because he first loved us.

If anyone says I love God and hates his brother, he is a liar.

For he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom

he has not seen.

And this commandment we have from him, whoever loves God must also love his brother.

You may be seated.

If only they'd write songs like that today.

Let's pray.

Our God, our father,.

Just ask for strength and guidance in thanking father as your scripture

encourages us and strengthens us in the love that you've shown us, father.

Be with us in this hour we ask in Christ's name.

So I was gonna be in John, but plans changed.

And Lonnie was in John, so I went to a familiar passage in 2 Corinthians

and talking about the love of God.

You know, people will say they love God, not realizing their

state, that they're still dead in their sin.

It's unable to understand who God is and the love he's shown, unless they believe in

the work of the cross.

And our thoughts go back clear to his mercy to Adam and Eve in

the garden.

Why would you sin?

Perfect paradise.

And we can't even contemplate it.

Our minds can't grasp, grasp the fullness

of his love and compassion that were given to

Adam and Eve.

And yet they fell.

Israel, God made a covenant to Israel.

They broke that covenant.

And yet in our day, in our age, we think of the love of

God.

It's not the problem that we don't love.

We love too many other things that crowd in.

The NIV in Psalm 86 says, Lord, give me an undivided

heart.

As we look through John, as Lonnie went through last week, you see these

conditions that God gave to his disciples.

Now his love towards them was unconditional.

His love, he saw fit to save a people that were objects of his wrath.

And we are in that place.

We need a heart that is fully devoted to God.

That is what pleases him.

Without faith, it's impossible to please God.

As the writer of Hebrews spoke, love is divided.

We can love our children more than we love God.

We can love our spouse more than we love God.

And you try to comprehend that, you go, no, I love God.

Well, the love the scriptures talks about is one that serves and is devoted and

sacrifices.

As we think of marriage life, it's a perfect example of true love.

I remember our marriage counseling, which was very short.

Is my wife here?

There she is.

Quit it, settle down.

The pastor said, your love will grow.

And you're like, there's no way, you know, there's no way it's gonna grow.

I mean, I love her completely, fully, but he was right.

He was right.

Because over the years, as you experience life and

you grow, you understand that love,

that love that brings us into mind what God says love is.

Love is a covenant.

He completes his covenant in Christ.

And let's turn to 2 Corinthians 5.

So again, reminding ourselves that we need a complete, complete heart.

The hope is in Christ, we can be transformed.

Because when we were dead in our transgressions, we had no thought of God.

Oh, we might, we might, I know I weeped at the cross, you know, poor Jesus,

not seeing the glory of God that was done by wicked hands, but it

was God's will.

Let's think of the Corinthian church as they went through many, many divisions, there's sin

rampant, there's undivided hearts, holding one man above the

other.

This letter comes to the Corinthian people out of love.

Paul always, he didn't let those objects of disobedience

affect his love.

Paul was a instrument of God to guide and shape them

and realize that if God is with us, who can be against us, and

especially for the bride of Christ.

He's already stated earlier in this book of these,

the war that's going on.

In their own hearts, as God is, he says, do not lose heart, though our

outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day.

Your light and momentary afflictions is preparing for us a eternal weight of glory

beyond all comprehension, as we look not to the things that are seen, but to the things

that are unseen.

For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.

My mind wanders to a, you know, we're so comfortable in our

nation, we're so comfortable of ease, we're so comfortable in our freedom.

And my mind wanders to a young Afghan girl who's a

Christian and wonders what's gonna happen the next week or hour,

even that day, or a young man in Yemen who could suffer

death keeping this in mind.

Have we fallen in love with our freedom and our ease and our comfort in this

nation?

I think we've been seduced in a way.

I mean, God knows each and every one at heart.

And I'm speaking to people that are devoted to God and I wanna be devoted to God, but yet there is

areas in my life that I can love too much.

I cannot be as devoted as he's called me to be.

This is the love that's completed.

The church is the pinnacle of God's love.

The bride of Christ, as it's transformed and renewed, this inner working that

only God can do.

Who can transform the heart and the masses heart?

Only God can do.

His thoughts are above our thoughts.

And this love which secures us.

So let's start in verse 11 in chapter

five, second Corinthians.

Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade others, but what we are known to God,

and I hope is known also to your conscience.

We are not commending ourselves to you again, but are giving you cause to boast about us so that you

may be able to answer those who boast about outward appearances and not what is in the heart.

For as we are beside ourselves is for God.

If we are in our right mind is for you.

For the love of Christ controls us because we have concluded this, that one has

died for all, therefore, all have died.

And he died for all that those who live may no longer live for themselves, but for him

who for their sake died and was raised.

For now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh, even though we once regarded Christ

according to the flesh.

We regard him thus no longer.

Therefore, anyone who's in Christ is a new creation.

The old has passed away.

Behold, the new has come.

All this is from God who through Christ reconciled us to himself, gave us the ministry of

reconciliation.

That is in Christ, God was reconciled the world to himself, not counting their

trespasses against them and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.

Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ.

God is making his appeal through us.

We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.

For our sake, he made him to be sin who knew no sin that in him we might become the righteousness of

God.

Paul's addressing to their task at hand.

So we fear knowing the fear of the Lord.

What is the fear of the Lord?

We stand in awe of God to

just speak, you know, I love you, God.

Or you hear stupid cliches that, I'm having an affair

with God.

I hate that.

It's just a flippant way.

He is almighty.

He is our creator.

He sustains things.

All the islands are in the hand breath of his hand.

He can move mountains.

And yet he's called us to this task of reconciling others to

himself.

The significance of what the work is going on in our life.

Too often we go, what are you doing, Lord?

What are you doing?

I wouldn't do it this way.

Well, you're not God.

His ways are perfect.

He chooses the most, if we can

say it with awe, the craziest ways we see.

How would you take, just for instance, what we're gonna address here, the work of the cross?

He could have done it from heaven.

As we understand who Christ is in this work and understanding the love of God that he is this

perfect high priest.

He is one who can sympathize.

We need that, don't we?

We need one who can sympathize us in our weaknesses because we're frail.

We understand the dips and turns of life.

There's always something new.

Every week you could probably write it down.

You know, if you're faithful to flocks, you can see a prayer list this long.

There's affliction on every side.

God is working and molding his people to the bright it should be.

Paul is very patient in addressing the people of God here that's went through so much,

but yet they stand firm.

And he's addressing to the very gospel that we know, this love of Christ controls

us.

Jerry Bridges preached on this years ago and I wish I could do him credit by speaking

as he did, but the fact that the gospel and what he reminded us, the gospel

needs to be in your life every day as we understand our unbelieving

world who's dead in their sin, as we understand our own hearts

that were complete because of Christ's love.

Now we have true reconciliation.

We don't need the tabernacle.

We don't need a priest.

We come before his holy of holies and prayer and we can commune with him,

this love of God, as we contemplate our lives and our endeavors.

We've got to understand the perfect work of cross.

What John Owen says in his book in the union of

Christ, sin dying in us now at some measure, while we are alive,

these are three concernments of sin, which is our wisdom to be acquainted with.

It is hid only in Christ.

We read in Romans, when Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the father, even so we

also should walk in newness of life.

For if we have planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall also be in the likeness of his resurrection.

Knowing this, that our old man is crucified in him, that the body of sin might

be destroyed and henceforth, we should not serve sin.

We have to understand in that song, we just sang that, just talking about,

he is our righteousness.

If we don't see our sin, we have to wonder if we are truly in

Christ, if we have truly believed him, because he will reveal.

You know, I've been a Christian since 92.

I see sin every week.

And I know I must be transformed more and more in the likeness of my glorious savior.

If we could walk perfect, as Adam did before the fall, but we can't,

it awaits us.

Salvation's not yet, it's coming.

That love of Christ, it does control us because the Holy Spirit brings

glory to the son.

As we wake up the day and we see a new day, we know the mercies are new.

As Jeremiah quoted in Lamentations, we know there's mercies anew tomorrow.

And our sin's been taken care of.

The finished work of cross is taken care of.

We know that we can die to sin.

We understand and we believe that he died for all and those who live might no longer live for themselves.

We know we're selfish.

We know we used to love self more than anything.

We know a dying world outside of the church is seeking something,

which it needs to be Christ.

I was talking to a recovered addict Monday.

He was so confused.

He believed in aliens.

He believes in God.

And I said, no, no, no, no.

Jesus Christ is the son of God.

You don't, he say, I like AA meetings.

I go, find that in the church, you're a community of people who love you.

But find hope in Christ.

It's the hope that controls us.

We're driven by that hope.

Disaster may come to us like Job, and yet we can still worship God.

Did you see this Old Testament reading?

Turn back.

How beautiful, David's words.

This is the heart, a God after God's own heart.

Oh God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you.

My soul thirsts for you.

My flesh faints for you.

As in a dry and weary land where there is no water.

So I've looked upon you in the sanctuary and behold your power and glory because of your

steadfast love is better than life.

How can we make his steadfast love better than this life?

As we savor him, we adore him, and worship is so crucial in that,

that we worship God and making our lives a sacrifice, sacrifice,

oh gee, I need some water.

A sacrifice of praise.

As you go about in your work, in your schools, wherever you're going,

this is why he's called us to.

You know, as Levi is teaching 1 Peter 2,

so true.

How can we, if we're abiding in this love, John

15, Christ says, abide in my love.

Rest in me, confident in

me.

We put this into place, making love complete.

Contentment, contentment.

Oh, that we'd be a people with contentment, everything God's put in our place.

Aggravating people, trouble in your home,

you name it.

That we'd be a people that rely on the love of God to compel us to greater

service because our Redeemer did it perfectly.

This contentment, moving away from self,

enjoying God.

For one, if you contemplate, he came for

our happiness, not in leisure,

happiness in him, to be satisfied in savoring.

You know, when David speaks of that in a dry and weary land, we get rains all the time.

When you're in an arid country, I've never been overseas, but if you don't have a water bottle, you're

gonna die.

This is how he's talking about savoring God, savoring him.

My mouth is parched.

No, I savor God in the quietness as I lie my head down in my

bed at night with troubles, you name it.

I can be satisfied in Christ.

Whatever happens tomorrow, I can be satisfied in his perfect love

because he loved us first.

He loved us first.

He didn't have to, there's no change in

his demeanor, his love is everlasting.

Being secure in our faith as we understand that

if anyone isn't in Christ, he's a new creation.

Look at Hebrews 12 with me.

Hebrews 12, four through

six.

Sins talked about a lot in the Bible, isn't it?

Because it's a big deal.

It's a big deal before a holy God.

Listen to how the writer of Hebrews says, in your struggle against sin, you have not

yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.

And have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons?

My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by

him.

For the Lord's discipline is the one he loves and chastens every son whom receives.

There may be hardship in your life because of sin.

As a believer, God may bring hardship in molding you and shaping you

and seeing your sin.

See the promise back in 2 Corinthians 17.

If anyone who is in Christ is a new creation, it's

brand new.

By the blood of Christ, you were born again by the Spirit of God.

The old has passed away.

Well, not in my life.

There's still some of it still lingering around.

We've got to fight it off, don't we?

He's given them great encouragement here.

He says, the old has passed away.

Behold the new, it's forgiven.

All this is from God who through Christ is reconciling us to himself

and gave us the ministry of reconciliation.

And in Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses

against him and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.

Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ.

We are ones who have been called out

for this ministry.

What's your ministry in life?

You have a ministry in your workplace, in your family.

I commend Smith for bringing other lovely children into their homes.

That ministry, you can pray about that.

This love of God to us that never can be turned to Romans 8

to affirm this

after he just has displayed the

working out of God's purposes in your life.

A common verse, we know that those who love God, all things work together for good.

For those who are called according to his purpose.

Those he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son

in order that we might be the firstborn among many brothers.

And those whom he predestined, he also called.

And those whom he called, he also justified.

And those whom he justified, he also glorified.

The most daunting task to young people in this day and age who do not know

Christ, they have no purpose.

They're still dead in their sin and they think, getting a job,

making money, having a family.

Those are all fine things, but that's it.

We've been brought into this ministry.

Now you think, well, that's up to you elders and pastor and the

deacons.

They minister and the deaconess.

No, this is everybody.

You all have ministries.

If you're in Christ, your ministry is significant.

That the purpose in life is to minister Christ.

Not in what you do, not in where you work.

That's just a part where God's putting you, purpose.

And here's his love.

What shall we say?

These things, that God is for us, who could be against us?

He who did not spare his own son, but gave him up for us.

And how we not also with him graciously gave us all things.

Who shall bring any charge against God's elect?

That's us.

Is it God who justifies?

Who is it condemned?

Christ Jesus is the one who died.

More than that, who is raised, who is at the right hand of God, who is indeed is interceding for

us.

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?

Shall turbulation or distress, persecution or famine

or nakedness or danger or sword?

As it is written, for your sake, we are being killed all day long.

We're regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.

Knowing all these things, we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.

For we are sure that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor

things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else

in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of Christ

Jesus and our Lord.

Nothing, nothing.

Loved ones who go home in Christ are with Christ.

Shouldn't this pursue us on to ministry to know that those who are still dead in their

sin have life eternal in judgment?

They have no hope.

Hope is the key in Christ.

As we minister alongside people that do not know him,.

They have no hope.

So the love of God should drive us to that and our confidence

in this eternal.

Turn to 1 John,

Christ himself told his disciples in John 14 and 15,

he keeps continually back, love one another, love one another,

love one another.

It's how the love of God is made perfect.

It's complete.

The love of God is made complete when we minister along people who are

undeserving because our love towards them can be like Christ in

a human perspective.

Our love will never be like God's.

His love so surpasses us, we give up on people.

We're impatient.

His love is perfected in this passage.

And John repeats himself as he's making a point.

As we look at in John four, starting in verse seven, 1 John 4, verse

seven.

Beloved, let us love one another for love is from God.

And whoever loves have been born of God knows God.

Anyone does not love does not know God because God is love.

In this, the love of God was made manifest among us that God sent his only son into the world

so we might live through him.

In this love, not that we love God, that he loved us and sent his son to be a

propitiation for our sins.

Beloved, as God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.

No one has ever seen God.

If we love one another, God's abides in us and his love perfected in us.

By this, we know we abide in him and he in us because he has given us his spirit.

We have seen and testified the father has sent his son the savior of the world.

And whoever confesses that Jesus is the son of God, God abides in him and he in

God.

And we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us.

God is love and whoever abides in love abides in God and God abides in him.

By this, love is perfected with us so that we may be confident on the day of judgment

because as he is so also we are in the world.

There's no fear in love, but perfected love casts out fear for love has been

done with punishment, has to do with punishment.

Whoever fears had not been perfected in love.

We love because he first loved us.

If anyone says I love God and hates his brother, he is a liar and he does not love his brother whom he

has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen.

In this command I have from him, whoever loves God must also love his brother.

How do we do that?

What's the application in this?

Well, you know, we can have Bible studies, we can have prayer partners,

maybe just calling somebody up, writing Joyce Mitchell this week,

being before the throne of grace, pleading to God

for the church and Christ to be manifested in this country, this country where there's

so much false, people don't know what to believe because it's so, everything's

out there.

The greater is he in us,.

Than in the world.

It gives us confidence when we truly love God and believe in what he's done at

the cross.

We know he sits at the right hand of the father.

We know he intercedes on our behalf.

We know he's put us in a workplace or a family that needs to know and love

God.

I enjoyed the BB boys the other day, as they were singing hymns.

I was trying to teach them a new song.

Everybody's heard six things, even seven, the Lord hates things he cannot stand.

They didn't know that song.

I get that to you, Andrew.

But it's so good for the young people to sing hymns

and worship God, be praying for our children.

They are the church of tomorrow.

That the church of Christ, as we come before the throne of grace, we know God

because he has shown his love towards us.

What would it be like that day when we will see him face to face?

We just have a glimpse of heaven now, and it's great and glorious.

You that are outside of Christ, I wanna speak to you.

You're empty, you're hollow.

I know because I was empty and hollow once.

There's nothing, nothing that will satisfy that thirst.

You can get the best paying job, have the nicest wife on the earth, beautiful

children.

It's empty.

You need Christ Jesus as Lord and Savior.

Not as a distant deity, but as one who

you can call out and say, I'm hurting.

And know the promises of God that he is close to the brokenhearted.

As David said in Psalm 34, he is close to the brokenhearted.

Well, everybody misunderstands me.

That's a common thing with youth.

God knows you.

He knits you together in your mother's womb.

You have a heavenly father that loves you.

I love that in John where he's abiding me and I in you,

and he's connecting us to the father all through that because we need to

call out to the father and say, ah, the father, thank you for the

love that you instilled to me in Christ Jesus.

May I be an ambassador of yours wherever I go.

May I will speak those words of grace that people need to hear.

May I be loving and kind.

And as he said in 2 Corinthians 6, I put no stumbling block before me.

It is, we're throwing a red carpet out for Jesus Christ to say, the king's here.

They're going, where's he at?

Let me tell you about it.

He's here.

Christ has arrived.

And he sits at the right hand of the father and he is real.

How?

Well, he transformed my life to being a hater to a lover.

We let envy, strife, and malice just run rampant in our

life when we were unbelievers.

We were never satisfied.

When Christ Jesus and the kindness came as Paul wrote to Titus,

it's when we realized that love of God that made us

lovers of people.

That's what we need to be trademarked at.

May God do that.

Let's pray.

Father, help us to do the things you show in scripture.

Help us to be ambassadors for your name.

We thank you for a great interceder, your son.

I pray for those that are still dead in their sin, father.

Awaken them and make them alive in you.

For your glory.

May we live our lives for your glory, father.

Put off our selfish ways.

Renew us day by day.

Give us the faith that is so needed in a dark and dreary world.

In Christ's name we pray, amen.