Love One Another

You are listening to a message from Thrive Community Church, a church located in Southwest Florida. For more info, visit us at thrive-fl.org. It's great to be back. We are in a laid-back time of the year here in Southwest Florida. And we are in the middle of a vacation mood kind of series on the book of 1 John called Kipona Aloha, which means deep love. And let me tell you, thank you, Carl, for not only the bottle of wine, but I know you did an excellent job while I was gone. Thank you so much. Let's hear it for him. And I'm glad you were here and excited to be a part of it. And who's with you today, Mary Louise? Well, I know his wife, but the son of my niece. OK, great. It's good to have him here as well. We have learned a lot about love over the last few weeks. And it's not that it's a feeling. It's not that it's sentimental. It's not that it's just a concept. But today we're going to learn in 1 John chapter 3 how it is love in action, like that it is in word and deed, that we want to be both. And so today we're going to be reading in this section on 1 John chapter 3, verses 11 to 18, these words and then get into the message. 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 the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own deeds were evil and his brothers were 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. But this we know 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 ceases 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. First John 3. This is going to be great. I think it's fascinating. We need to love, this passage says. And love, he says, is in word and truth and deed and truth. That is not just in words, not just in ideas, but actually in truth and in deed. We're going to be looking at that. There are churches that really focus on deeds. That is, we're going to be here, we're going to love people, and they're short on truth. I don't know if you've ever been to one of those churches. They aren't sure about what the truth is and we're not quite sure, you know. They're afraid to push any of their truth on someone else. Have you ever heard, you know, this is my truth and all that? Well, what they're saying by that statement of, we're not sure, I don't want to push my truth on you. They're also admitting then that they believe that truth in general is relative. That there isn't a fixed truth of any type. And so, they will help with food and shelter and jobs and justice and society. And they can improve their working conditions, but it's just half the equation. Now, there are other churches, and probably a lot of them, that are really strong on truth. They preach truth. They talk about truth. They talk about absolute truth. They talk about doing everything just right and having it all down and the formulas and the doctrines are there all in a row. But they say, you know, all that stuff, doing these social ministry things, that's just material goods, that doesn't really matter, it's all going to burn anyways. And the real important thing is the spiritual. And they make this divide between the material world and the spiritual world, which is really stupid because they aren't. I mean, I am a spiritual material person, aren't you? Right? They think it's all about eternity, all about the next world, very little about here. And we here at Thrive want to be a church, as John talks about it, of word and deed, truth and love. He speaks about how those two go together and need to go together. And so, in this passage of 1 John 3, 11 to 18, we're going to be looking at these three things today. How this word gives us what our mission really is. And how there are signs that we're on the right track. And finally, the power to accomplish it. So, mission, sign and power today. So, what John reports here, by the way, under mission, is something that he says at the beginning of this passage, for this message that you have heard from the beginning. So, in other words, it's been around for a while, it's not something new, it's not something revelatory in one sense. In fact, it's something that God's people were called to be about as a mission already from the beginning. You think I preach long, just read the book of Deuteronomy sometime, because it is Moses' one long sermon, and it's not even outlined well. It's not like point by point, it's just he goes on and on and on. The entire book of Deuteronomy is one sermon. But in it, he has some great things to s...