Be Loved

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. Welcome. It's good to have you here this day on what they call the High Feast of Super Bowl. I always think that's a joke. And, Vicki, you're wearing your red. That's not for Valentine's Day, by the way. It's for the Chiefs. Yay or boo? Okay, I know. Things that can divide us. If that's the only thing that divided us, I'd be happy with that, right? Well, welcome. It's good to have you here today. This has been a really enjoyable series to preach and to also have someone else be preaching in. Carl, you did an amazing job with it as well. This Be series. As I said at the beginning of January, when we started the series for the new year, often we make to-do lists. And I think the Bible focuses on the to-be lists. How we are to be. We're human beings, not human doings. And today, I think we cap it off. And in some ways, if we get this one down, I think the rest of them follow. And that today, we're going to focus on be loved. Be loved. See what kind of love the Father has given to us that we should be called children of God. And so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know Him. Beloved, we are God's children now. And what we will be has not yet appeared, but we know that when He appears, we shall be like Him. Because we shall see Him as He is. And everyone who thus hopes in Him, purifies himself as he is pure. From this text, we're going to focus on three points. Very easy. That is, behold, be loved, and become. Two of those words we don't use too often. Behold. When's the last time you said behold? Behold! Sounds a little pompous, doesn't it? I guess. But actually, that's the first word in our text. Now, the translation we had was see. But it's really the word to behold, to open up, to see what's going on. So what does John mean when he says behold? He's not saying search intently. Find that little needle in the haystack somewhere. Try to figure out what's going on. Maybe if you figure out what that secret sauce is, or that special little nuance here or there, you might just find it. No, behold is the fact that it's so obvious. Just amazingly obvious. All you can do is go like, wow, there it is. Behold is the word that you might use if you lead someone, a friend of yours, outside. Maybe, or if, I need to do this probably soon because of Lisa's automobile situation. 165,000 miles. Okay. Parts are falling off. It needs a continual anointing with oil. You know what I mean. Hey, it's been a faithful little Kia soul, I mean, right? It's a lot of miles that she puts on. So I lead her outside, tell her to close her eyes. And then when she gets to the driveway, I ask her to open them and say, behold, and there sits a new car. Wouldn't that be a Volkswagen Buzz? That's what she wants, an electric. They are not out yet, so it's going to be a while. But that's a behold. Or the fact that maybe somebody would lead you in a kind of surprise. It's kind of like surprise party. Behold. And you've got friends there you haven't seen in a long time. That's what behold means. It's the wow, the amazement, the joy, the just cherishing the moment. Or maybe somebody says, hey, I've got, just follow me. And they lead you down this path. And you're just wondering why in the world are you going through this path and through the thick and thick it until you get to this beautiful vista. Behold. And you get to see the sunset and just be amazed at it. That's all that John is asking for here. Behold. So Georg Strecker, when he commented on this verse, he says to call the call to see implies the admonition to entrust oneself unconditionally to the gift of agape. And the word agape there is this unconditional love of God. We could go down that path of the four different words for love in Greek. This one means the love of God that is just given because you need that love. Not because of anything you deserve. Not because of anything you've done. Not because of any way that you're attractive. But just the fact that God loves that God is this love. That's what John gets at. And behold, that means to just embrace it. Be embraced by that love to allow yourself to be loved. Hmm. And we'll find out what we behold, what we focus on, what we allow to see, to actually see is what we become. It changes us. It transforms us. But we'll get there. Our second point is simply beloved or beloved. How once the last time you said beloved, it would be a good word to use. We just don't use it. It sounds kind of old English-y these days. But it's a great word to describe what John says is the Christian life. In fact, John who wrote this text, 1 John chapter 3, this letter, we believe is the same John who wrote the gospel of John. Now, his name does not appear in the gospel as, you know, hi, this is John writing the gospel. In fact, none of the four gospels do the writers of those gospel, the evan...