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Mills River SDA Church

Cory Reeves

The Imperative of Love

I'm going to continue our study of 1 John today, and it's personally been a huge blessing for me, and I've really enjoyed diving deeper into 1 John.

Our first message was entitled, May Your Joy Be Full, and I'm just going to give a brief recap If I don't jump too many slides accidentally.

So if you remember, 1 John 1 gives us the whole plan of salvation.

John was the witness to the Word made flesh in Jesus' coming.

And then the God of light and truth came to give us light to show us the way.

Not only giving Him our sins, but believing that they are forgiven and you are clean.

All of this is the plan to put us back into fellowship with God.

This is the plan of salvation and at the top, this is what should make our joyful.

That was the whole sermon summarized very briefly.

And at the end I asked of that sermon, I asked you to commit to giving all of your sins to Jesus, putting your faith and trust in Him that not only when you give them to Him that they are forgiven, that we have to believe that, and walking with Him in His truth and light so that we could return into fellowship with God.

That's what I asked you to commit to after the first sermon.

Then, last time I was here, we discussed abiding in Him.

And we talked about how this 1 John is 1 whole letter.

It's not, wasn't by chapter, and so it's a continuation, building upon this theme of returning to fellowship with God by abiding in Him.

Now we discussed that all of these things are important.

But the key, none of this matters if we don't abide in Jesus.

That's the key, that we need to put our cares, our burdens, all at His feet.

We have to give Him our sins and allow Him to complete the good work in us.

Last time I read this statement and asked you to commit to this statement.

I know this world is full of distractions and darkness, but I want to make it my choice to accept the help of my advocate.

I want to put God's law, allowing Him in me, so that His love might shine forth, that I might love my brother, my neighbor, as myself.

I want to abide in Jesus, so that I might not be distracted.

I will abide in him by reading and memorizing his word and spending time with him in thought and prayer.

If you didn't, you can just put a little check on your paper today.

I've entitled this sermon, The Imperative of Love.

And once again, John's letter is building on itself.

When we abide in Jesus and return to fellowship in him, we have an imperative in return.

And this is the imperative we are looking at today.

And During World War II, John was in the 92nd Infantry Division and they were known as the Buffalo Soldiers.

Lieutenant Fox was a forward observer in the 598th Artillery Battalion.

And the day after Christmas, December 26, 1944, Fox was part of a small forward observer party.

And they volunteered to stay in this little Italian village that had just gotten overrun with Nazi soldiers.

The American forces had to withdraw, and he and a few others volunteered to stay behind.

He found a post in the second story of a building.

And from that post, he could kind of see through the village.

And he was calling in, I can't say that word all of a sudden, artillery, thank you Bill for helping to pass her out, he was calling in for them to strike him down.

And he was doing a good job And it was actually wreaking havoc on the Nazi soldiers.

It was allowing the rest of his army, his friends, to get out and regroup to decide what to do.

Now you're not gonna like me, but we're gonna hold that story for a little while.

So I would ask, most of the scripture is on your paper, but I would ask, we're gonna spend so much time in 1 John 3, I would ask that you go ahead and open your Bibles to 1 John 3 and leave it there.

A lot of these first sections, I'm just gonna skip over because I'm gonna review in such detail that I will be reading all of this scripture all at once as well.

And if I'm reading something and you miss a blank on your paper, you can find it in your Bible.

And you know what's interesting is, like in these prior letters, John has continued to use this calm, pastoral approach in his letter in 1 John.

And then all of a sudden, we get to 1 John 3 and he says, behold, almost forcefully, it makes you wake up.

He's telling us that there is nothing like this that we've ever seen.

No love we have ever heard of or beheld before.

Then he goes on, the Father has bestowed on us that we should be called children of God.

And you see, it's this word in Greek that I wanna talk about.

It's up there on the screen and I'm gonna slaughter pronouncing the English version of it, but it's teak on, techno on, thank you, which actually doesn't only mean children, but it actually means children from biological parents.

Jesus came that we might become brothers and sisters and not just adopted family but biological sons and daughters of God.

You know, this is something we've talked about, but it's important to dwell on this significance.

The greatest gift we have ever gotten and ever will get.

Little girls a lot of times have dreams to find out that they are princesses or marrying a prince, right?

And boys dream of being knights and kings but church there is no need for those dreams we are brothers and sisters of a king biological is what this is telling us verse 2 beloved now we are children of God It's this word now that I want to pause this another second on.

It could just read, beloved we are children of God, right?

But it throws now in there, and I think there's some significance to this.

You see, it is while we are still imperfect, still falling short, falling into sin, still not fully molded into the likeness of our Father, that we are said to be children of God.

It doesn't read, when you get there, we'll call you children of God.

I'm just so excited about this first part.

Therefore, Matthew 5 48 says, therefore you shall be perfect just as your Father in heaven is perfect." And what's amazing is God is not waiting till that time to call us His children.

Today while you are still imperfect, you are a son, you are a daughter, a biological son, a biological daughter of God.

Continuing in verse 2, and it is and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be.

It's interesting as well, Romans 8 I believe helps with this verses 18 and 19.

For I consider it that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.

For the earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God." Church, what is the glory in us?

You see, we can't understand or fathom how marvelous what God can do when he fully works in us.

Can you imagine a church filled with people willing to drop everything, give everything for God instantly?

You know, I've said a few times, I'm going off on a tangent, I apologize.

I've said a few times that I believe the Great Commission strongly.

But the Great Commission is the fruit of a church that allows the Holy Spirit into their lives fully.

When that Holy Spirit is in us fully, there is nothing that will stop this church from finishing the work.

The Imperative of Love

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