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The Bible Breakdown
1 John 04: God Defines Love
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The More We Dig. The More We Find.
Well, everybody, welcome back to the Bible Breakdown Podcast with your host, pastor Brandon, today. 1 John, chapter 4, and today's title is God Defines Love. God Defines Love, and we're going to talk about one of the most misused and controversial scriptures in all of the New Testament. We'll get to all that in just a moment. So, if you want to open up your Bibles to 1 John, chapter 4, while we're doing that, if you're new around here, make sure you take just a moment to like, share and subscribe to the YouTube channel and the podcast. On the YouTube channel it is right under my face On the I think it's it is my left, your right you can subscribe to the podcast. You can also like it and that helps us out a lot. On the podcast, while you're listening to this, you can scroll down toward the bottom and it'll give you an opportunity to rate us and that helps us. Now, if you're gonna give us a one-star review, that doesn't help us, okay, don't do that. Pass over all this, all right, but if you're gonna leave us a five-star, please do that and then also let us. They want to connect with God's word, but they don't know if this is the right one for them. That helps them so they can dive in with us. Also, make sure you're going to the Bible Breakdown Discussion on Facebook. I'm doing an amazing job over there writing devotions every single day and the more we dig, the more we find. Well, once again, we've been talking about this idea of 1 John and the overall idea of 1 John is sharing in the fellowship of joy. And what John is doing is he is saying I want to make sure that all of you realize that God has a big idea for you and he wants you to share in that joy, and he tells us how to do it. And so in chapter 1, he talked about living in the light. Chapter 2, he talked about the idea of a lasting joy and the key to how to have that Yesterday. In chapter 3, he talked about the idea of a lasting joy and the key to how to have that Yesterday. In chapter 3, he talked about the idea of redefining God as our Heavenly Father and what it looks like when we're living in the kingdom of God. Well, now in chapter 4, he's going to talk to some little apologetics. Here he's going to defend God's Word a little bit and help us understand about God's nature so we can define who God is. And we're going to read about one of the most controversial scriptures in the entire Bible, and it's because of how it has been co-opted to say something it doesn't really say. I think if we read it in the context, it's actually not that controversial at all. It's just unhelpful for people who want to use it incorrectly. Okay, so let's read it and let's see if we even have to discuss it when we get to it. You ready?
Speaker 1:1 John 4, verse 1. Here goes John tearing up on some false prophets. Here we go, verse 1. Dear friends, do not believe everyone who claims to speak by the Spirit. You must test them to see if what they have comes from God. And there are many false prophets in the world.
Speaker 1:Pause, like I wish we could just say law, right, which means think on this. I wish we could just say law on that first verse. Can I tell you, if someone ever comes to you and says they have a word from God for you and you say, well, okay, I'm gonna, I'm to test that against God's word and they get offended, would you please allow them to be offended, because if it is God's word, it will always if they're giving you a word from God, it will always be able to identify with the word of God, to test it and to see. In the Old Testament, that's what they would do. How they would know if someone was a prophet of God or not is they would say well, you know, if you're a prophet, if your prophecy comes true which, by the way, in the Old Testament, if you were a false prophet, you were supposed to be stoned to death. I don't think that we should do that. We should never reinstitute that. But I guarantee you, if we did, there'd be a whole lot less prophets running around here, and he says a lot of false ones out there. So make sure you test to see if they're speaking for God or not.
Speaker 1:All right, verse two this is how we know if they have the Spirit of God. Here it is. This is how we know If a person is claiming to be a prophet. If they acknowledge that Jesus Christ came in a real body, that person has the Spirit of God. In other words, if they are able to claim everything that's in God's Word and they're able to claim that Jesus Christ came in a real body and they're able to ratify God's word, then you know, and the reason why that was such a big deal and there's other ways as well the reason why that was such a big deal as I was telling you in chapter 1, is there was a rise of this false teaching called Gnosticism, which tried to say that Jesus didn't come in a real body, he'd just be floating around everywhere. That's why, in 1 John 1, john was saying that's stupid. He said I done, saw him, I done, touched him. Joker was real, okay. And so he's saying if they say otherwise, don't listen to them.
Speaker 1:All right, verse three but if someone claims to be a prophet and does not acknowledge the truth about Jesus, that person is not from God. That person has the spirit of antichrist, or the spirit that is anti to Christ, which you heard is coming into the world and indeed is already here. But you belong to God, my dear children. You have already won the victory over those people, because the spirit who lives in you is greater than the spirit who lives in the world. Wow, what amazing, amazing promise. Those people belong to this world, so they speak from the world's viewpoint and the world listens to them. But we belong to God and those who know God listen to us If they do not belong to God, they do not listen to us. And this is how we know if someone has the spirit of truth or the spirit of deception. Now, obviously, what he is writing is he is writing what is now the inspired scripture. So he's saying this is how we know if someone has the spirit of truth is if they pay attention to the word of God.
Speaker 1:All right, verse seven dear friends, let us continue to love one another, for love comes from God. Now, this is all about love. Here we go. Anyone who loves is a child of God and knows God. But anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love. There's the verse God showed us how much he loved us by sending his one and only son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him. And this is real love, not that we love God, but that he loved us and sent his son as a sacrifice to take away our sins. Dear friends, since God loved us this much, we surely are to love each other. No one has ever seen God, but if we love each other, god lives in us and his love is brought into full expression in us. God has given us his spirit as proof that we live in him and he in us. Furthermore, we have seen with our own eyes, and now testify, that the father has sent his son to be a savior.
Speaker 1:Here we go, verse 16. And all who live in love live in God. God lives in them. Pause for just a second and we'll explain it deeper in a moment. But what is controversial about that? Nothing he is saying. Let me tell you what true love is is what Jesus did for all of us by dying on the cross for us. And then we show that love for others by laying our lives down for one another as well. That's what he's saying. The problem becomes with what people do with it, and we'll get into that in just a moment.
Speaker 1:Verse 17,. As we live in God, our love grows more perfect as we live in God. So we will not be afraid on the day of judgment, but we can face him with confidence because we live like Jesus here in this world. Such love has no fear, but perfect love, because perfect love expels all fear. If we are afraid, it is for fear of punishment, and this shows we have not fully experienced his perfect love. We love each other because he loved us first. If someone says I love God but hates their fellow believer, that person is a liar, for if we don't love people that we can see, how can we love God whom we cannot see? And he has given us this command those who love God must also love their fellow believers.
Speaker 1:Now, what I want to do for just a second is I want to break this down and to be honest with you. In the future, when someone asks me my opinion about this, I want to send them this podcast. So I'm going to take just a second to explain why some people take God is love as being so stinking controversial, when it's really not All right. Now what we have done is we just got through reading this and, from verse seven down to the end, the Apostle John is talking about what true love actually looks like, and he spends the first several verses talking about real love, because real love is defined as God's character, how God acted toward us, and he's saying God loved us so much that he gave his life for us, and he's saying God loved us so much that he gave him his life for us. Therefore, in acting toward what love is, we should love one another. So, in other words. God defined love by how he acted toward us. Therefore, it is not saying that the feeling of love is God.
Speaker 1:There's a couple of things that people will do that if they would listen to the whole thing, they would realize they can't use his verse. Now I'm going to tell you where I've seen this in my life, when I've been talking to people who have talked about different things and they have tried to tell me that, you know, I can do what I want, I can have what I want, because God is love. You know, god is love, god is love, and so what they're saying is that God is the feeling of love. Therefore, whatever I want, whatever I love, is what God wants for me, and so it's the idea of God is love. Being God is a feeling, god is an emotion. And they would even use this idea of when I would talk to people who are the LGBTQ world, you know, and I would say hey, listen, you know, the LGBTQ Lifestyle is a sexual brokenness, just like fornication, just like adultery, just like anything that's outside God's realm of holy sexuality, and and we, god's word says it's a sin. And they would say how can you tell me it's a sin? Because I love this person.
Speaker 1:The Bible says God is love and it's okay. Y'all understand. So the way around that because you love them doesn't mean God is part of it. God is not a feeling or an emotion. It is saying that God has defined love. What was love? He defined love is what Jesus did for all of us. And then actually he said right down below that he said as we live in God, our love grows more perfect. Therefore, he's doubling down on telling us that love has got nothing to do with an emotion. It's got to do with our actions. Love is shown by our actions. Therefore, god gets to define love and we find out what love means.
Speaker 1:What love is is the truest expression of love is what Jesus did for all of us on the cross. And as we grow in his love, then we are able to understand more perfectly what he did. Because the idea is, when we first think about that Jesus died on the cross for our sins, we're like man. That's awesome. I want that. But then, as we grow to know who God is, we realize that he is Yahweh, the one who sits outside of time and space, and that he was willing to condescend to us, to step into time and space, wrap himself in human flesh, be born of a virgin, grow up and live among us for 33 years, die on a cross and rise again the more we understand what Jesus did just to get to the cross and then to die and then to rise. As he said, the more we grow in him, the more we go. Wow, jesus did that for me. He's awesome. So, therefore, what John is saying is that God defines what love is, and so, based on that, what can we apply today? What can we apply about God's word? And that is this I want to encourage you, over the next day, to take a moment and to reflect on what God has done for us.
Speaker 1:Reflect on what Jesus went through on the cross. You can read Hebrews, chapter 12, verse 1. It says since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses and it was from Hebrews 11, talking about all the people who were looking forward to the day of Jesus he said let us lay aside every weight and sin that will so easily distract us and let us run with patience the race that is set before us. And how do we do it? By looking unto Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who, for the joy set before him, endured the cross, though despising its shame, and he said when you do that Eugene Peterson says in the message paraphrase that that will shoot some adrenaline into your soul. So what I would encourage you to do is to look at what the most pure expression of love is, and that is that God came to this earth, died on the cross for us so that we could receive that salvation and, as we know that more and more, that love according to God's word will begin to get rid of all of our fear, begin to quiet all of our anxiety, as we realize that's how loved we are. Try it and let me know in the comments how it goes.
Speaker 1:Let's pray, god. Thank you so much for today. Thank you, god, that you're with us and that you're for us in every way. My prayer today, god, is that as we take a moment and reflect on your goodness, my prayer is that you will show us who you are, you'll help us to get a better glimpse, and that that will give us the courage to walk in your newness every day. Thank you, god for all things. In Jesus' name, we pray, amen and remember. God's word says in 1 John, chapter four, chapter one, verse four, that we are writing these things to you so that you may fully share our joy. My hope is that the more we understand God's word, the more the joy of the Lord overflows in us. I love you. I'll see you tomorrow for 1 John, chapter 5.
