Word of Salvation – Vol. 22 No. 01 – October 1975

 

The Text With Three Miracles

 

Sermon by Rev. J. J. C Westera, B.D. on 1John 4:7

Scripture Readings: 1Cor.13; 1John 4:1-9

Psalter Hymnal: 278; 251 (law); 310 (faith); 394; 481; 487

 

Beloved congregation in our Lord Jesus Christ.

You will agree with me, I am sure, that this is a wonderful text.

It speaks of love, and what is greater or stronger than love?

Recently I noticed written on the side of a removalist's van, these words: "Love moves all things".

No doubt Mr.Love was the owner of that truck!

But how true it is.  "Love" may be a very small word, with only four letters, but love is really big and strong, and moves all things.

Love is also indispensable.

Even orthodoxy, without love, is very unattractive and bitter.

We may be very true and correct, but without love we are nothing.  That is what Paul is saying in 1Cor.13.

There are three things which must be known by all the children of God, namely faith, hope and love, but love is the greatest, and if it is not there in what I do, I am nothing.

There may be some value in the THINGS I do, but I myself am nothing.  There may even be some value in being able to speak in tongues, but if love is lacking, you are worthless.

– You may have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge;
– You may be a good preacher, and have much insight, and know the Bible from cover to cover; you may be able to be a great help to others as a teacher....
– You may have all faith so as to perform miracles; people may admire you as one of the "great ones";
– You may be very generous in giving: in fact you may give away all you have;
– You may even be willing to suffer for your faith; to be burned alive as a martyr, as is happening these days in Russia and China...
BUT... if you lack love, you are useless!  Your deeds may have some value, but YOU are nothing!

Yes, love is the greatest, but it is also the hardest.

Do YOU know what love is?  Can you define it?

And what kind of love is it that we are talking about here?

The love our text speaks of is not the same as the love of a boy for his girl.

Paul is at pains here in this chapter to tell the Corinthians exactly what this love is, and what it does.

Do we know this love that Paul is speaking about?

When we say we love one another as husband and wife, or as boyfriend and girlfriend, we may not be talking of the same love.

Because our love sometimes can be so selfish and egocentric that it is certainly not the same as the love here in our text.

Even though I have been married for many years, I still have to ask myself, "What is love?"

Love is a very great and mysterious thing.

I have come to the conclusion that the love mentioned in our text is not known by us.  We did know it when God created us – there is no doubt about that – but we lost it.  There may be some left-overs of it in our natural relationships of love, but that is not what is meant here.

I don't know whether you have noticed it, but our text starts with the word BELOVED.

Now I am very happy about that.  Because the first and main thing is not that WE love, but that we ARE loved.  We may not see that straight away, but this text is full of miracles, just as there are many miracles in our own lives and in the world.

I would like to stress that!  If a miracle had been performed here last Sunday with the promise that there would be another one today, this building would be packed!

Well, the miracles ARE here!  Miracles galore, and great ones at that.  We could say that this is the text with the three miracles.

Here is the first one: THAT YOU ARE LOVED, and that this world is loved.

The greatest miracle of all is that God loves this world so much that he gave his only begotten Son that WHOSOEVER believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.

Or as it is said by John in his first letter:

"For God is love.  In this the love of God was made manifest among us that God sent His only Son into the world so that we might live through Him.  In this is love, not that WE loved GOD, but that HE loved US and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.'

Have we seen this miracle?  Has it been performed on us?

Johns says that it is MANIFESTED!  It has been DEMONSTRATED on every street corner all around the world.

We live in the year of our Lord Jesus Christ 1975 – 1975 ANNO DOMINI...!  The trouble is we are so used to the gospel of the miracle of God working in His Son, that we just do not see it anymore.

How is the birth of Jesus any different to the birth of any other child?  Who still believes in the virgin birth of Jesus; in His holy conception?

What nonsense!

Indeed it is!  It is the nonsense of God.

It is the unbelievable love of God to a lost world.

There was, according to Him, no other way than that He Himself should come to us and take our place – the place of death and hell to which our sins have brought us.

Talking about love, and about miracles: do you want to see another one?  Do you want to see it performed on you?

For this one too has enormous blessings which you will never be able to comprehend, and which you will never be able to exhaust.

What has happened to us that we long for miracles and yet do not see that we live 1975 years after the birth of Jesus?

We have had 1975 years of opportunity to see it, and yet we haven't.  And we still don't.  We rather deny it.

As a matter of fact John is writing in the time of the so-called "gnostics" who taught such strange ideas.

They said it was impossible for God to become man.

They saw a great contrast between spirit and matter.

Matter, including the human body, was altogether evil, they said, and so the incarnation, the Christian teaching that the Word became flesh, was impossible.

Well, that impossibility is the message of our text.

That impossibility is our first miracle: that God loves us God loves this world.  God loves us who are sinners.  God loves this rotten world.  He loves it so much that he gave his Son, and that his Son gave Himself.

"Beloved" is the first word of our text.

It is also the first word of our world and of our life.

May God open our eyes that we may see it.

We may live in a world where people kill each other; where there is persecution, torture and hatred; but still, God loves!

We live as sheep among the wolves.

We are dying because we have no food, or water, or shelter.

We are prisoners, refugees, displaced persons and orphans.

We don't know what to do, or where to go, or how to get help.

And yet, GOD IS LOVE!  Really!

It is very hard to see it but it is true.

And it is true even though WE do all these things, and though the world IS as rotten as it is.

GOD LOVES and He is the only refuge for all the refugees of the whole world.

Do we see it?  Do we accept it?

Do we accept it by faith in Jesus; by faith in the Word Who became flesh?

*  *  *  *  *

Now we can see the second miracle of our text and of our life and of our world.

For if we believe, then we are BORN OF GOD.

If we love God then we are his children and he is our Father.

That is what happens to us when we accept the first miracle, when we accept Jesus.

In his gospel, John says that to all who received him (Jesus), who believed in His Name, He gave power to become children of God, who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God (Jn.1:12,13) That is indeed a great miracle which has been performed by God and by His Holy Spirit.

Peter in his first letter says that we have been born anew, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding Word of God.

To be born is a very natural thing for us.

We are born of our parents in the normal, natural way.

But it is a miracle nevertheless, and it is a mighty work of God.

Being born of God is another thing.

It is not natural, but supernatural.

It is of God, not of men at all.

God was not born.  He was not created.

There was no beginning and there is no end with Him.

Some say that God is dead but that is not so.

God IS.

When Moses asked Him who he should say was sending him, God answered: "I am who I am.”

Jesus repeats this word of God in John 8 where he says to the Jews, "I told you, you would die in your sins, for you will die in your sins unless you believe that I AM HE.  When you have lifted up the Son of Man then you will know that I AM HE".

To be born of God means sharing in that eternal life that he has.

It means sharing his world, and his kingdom of love.

God's world is a completely different world.

It is not a world of sin and hatred and murder.

All that comes from sinful and wicked men.

No, God's world is one of peace and mercy and love.

When you enter this world you start to love God, and you begin to experience more and more of that love which is a gift and fruit of the Holy Spirit.

It is all worked by Him.

None of us, by nature, knows what love is.

If we know what love is we do so because we know God and are born of Him.  The only source of love is God Himself, and then the knowledge of Him.

When we know God in that way a church is formed, which is a new people.  This is a holy nation where renewed people are loving one another.

*  *  *  *  *

There is also a third miracle in our text which must be noted.

The first is that God loves us.

The second is that we love Him and know Him by being born of Him

The third miracle is that we love one another as children of the same Father.

Here again we are not talking of a natural love whereby we merely like one another or get along well together.

This love is that we love one another in Jesus Christ through the love of God.  That is what makes us one.

It is the love that comes from faith in Jesus.

It is a love that unites us, because we are one in Him.

This is a miracle.

It doesn't happen automatically.

It is rather a great gift of God to us by which we are richly blessed.  Moreover this is a gift which will never be taken away from us.

This love moves all things!

There may be many obstacles, some as big as mountains, but love will remove them.

We are urged to such love.

Let us love one another, John says, for love is of God.

And he who does not love does not know God.

These two go hand in hand.

If the one is missing then the other cannot be there either.

We cannot say we love God when we do not love our neighbour, our sister or our brother.

When we say we love God, and when we confess he loves us, it may only be a doctrine or a theoretical concept.

But if we say we love our neighbour then we have to DO something.  He or she may be living in the same street, or next door, or even in the same pew.

He or she may be a very nasty creature whom we cannot stand, and yet we must love one another, and not only with words, but with deeds.

There is a hopeless shortage of this love in our world.

It seems we become greedier and greedier every day.

I know we have our collections for needy people and for world relief, and the response is very good.

Yet why is it that so many people still feel lonely and cold, even among us?

Why is it that we do not feel safe anymore?

Why do we feel continually threatened by hatred, murder and passion, and almost expect it on every street corner at night.

Do we – and I mean all of us, including those who complain – do we know the love OF God and TO God?

If so we will also know that third miracle in our lives, as a family, as a church, as a nation, and in the world.

We will love one another.

It is, after all, a commandment, an order!

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

We have to seek it though it may be costly to ourselves, for it will mean denying our own will and our own desires.

We will have to pray for this, for it does not come automatically.  We cannot love without prayer.

The wisdom and the strength which we need comes from God, and it is only by keeping in constant fellowship with him that we receive it.

Perhaps we think a lot of ourselves.

Are we not blessed in many ways?

Have we not the pure doctrine?

Certainly in comparison with so many others God has given us many, many things.  As a church we are rich, very rich.

But all these things do not necessarily make us anything.

We can have all of this and yet be nothing.

So many marriages have gone on the rocks because there was no love, or if the love was there at first it was not kept alive by faith in God and by prayer.

It was taken for granted and not seen as a fruit of God's love in Jesus Christ.  Even churches have disappeared or become weaker and weaker because of lack of love: because the great commandment was not obeyed.

"Love God and your neighbour!"

See as well how terribly divided Christians are!

The influence and power of the church; of the people of God; here on earth, is diminishing.

And this is because the church of God has not seen the great task of loving the world for which God has given his only Son.

That is how some see it anyway.

But whatever the reason for the decline of the church, our text clearly says that where the love OF God is found, there the love TO God and to one another is to be found also.

We believe in the first miracle, and we know the second.  That means we must believe in the third as well.  This is so in spite of all our shortcomings and our divisions, and in spite of all that we see all around us.

It is a gift of God, so we must pray for it,
  that ours may be the love which knows no ending... and...
            O perfect life be Thou our full assurance.
            And, grant us the joy which brightens earthly sorrow
            Grant us the peace which calms all earthly strife,
             And to life's day the glorious unknown morrow,
            That dawns upon eternal LOVE and LIFE.

Amen.