I invite you to pray with me. Our Lord and heavenly Father, your word is perfect in every way. It is inerrant. You have superintended its transmission to us from the days when you inspired its writing until this very day. And so, Lord, we pray that you would give us confidence in the integrity of your word Even more than that, Lord, we pray that you would pour out your spirit upon us. And Holy Spirit, I pray that you would make your word do its powerful work in our hearts and in our lives. Lord, you tell us that we cannot interact with your word without being transformed, and I pray that that is precisely what would happen to each of us this evening. So Lord, we commit ourselves to you and pray that you would be pleased in the work of your Spirit in our hearts. All this we ask in Jesus' name, amen. Our scripture reading this evening is found in your pew Bibles on page 1022. It comes from the book of 1 John chapter three, verses 18 through 24. 1 John three, verses 18 through 24, page 1022 in your pew Bibles. Let's give our attention to the reading of God's holy word. Little children, let us not love in word or talk, but in deed and in truth. By this we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our heart before him. For whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart and he knows everything. Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God, and whatever we ask, we receive from Him, because we keep His commandments and do what pleases Him. And this is His commandment, that we believe in the name of His Son, Jesus Christ, and love one another, just as He commanded us. Whoever keeps His commandments abides in God, and God in him. And by this we know that he abides in us, by the spirit whom he has given us. Amen. Please pray with me. Father, I do ask that you would guide the words of my mouth, that they would be obedient to your will, and I pray, Lord, as we prayed just a moment ago, that this word going forth would bring forth the precious gospel fruit that you intended. All this we ask in Jesus' name, amen. So we all have hobbies and things we enjoy doing with one another. One of the things that my wife Susan and I enjoy doing together is going to the theater. One of our favorite plays of all time is Fiddler on the Roof. It was started on Broadway in the mid-60s and it's had several revivals since then. As a matter of fact, I think it's the first play that Susan and I ever saw at the Valley Forge Music Theater. Things that aren't there anymore. One of those poignant moments in the play is when the husband and wife, Tevye and Golda, reflect rather on the nature of their relationship. Theirs was an arranged marriage. It was arranged in the late 19th century. It was a Jewish custom at the time. Tevye and Golda never dated. As a matter of fact, they hardly knew each other before their wedding day. And as all of their three daughters expressed that they want to choose their own husbands based on love rather than on having their parents arrange their marriages, Tevye and Golda look back on their marriage and they ask one another, Do you love me? Do you love me? It's a valid question to ask, as neither of them had the choice that their daughters now grant themselves. Tevye and Golda married because they were told to. It was a destiny decided for them by others based on cultural tradition and family economics. But have Tevye and Golda grown to love one another? As they talk it out, or rather sing it out, through the song entitled, Do You Love Me, they discover, yes, they do really love one another. And the way that they have grown to love one another over the 25 years of their married life is not through typical romance or physical attraction, but through serving one another, performing acts of personal obedience and sacrifice to demonstrate their love. And I'm not saying either that I or scripture approve of arranged marriage. But this is the question we're essentially faced with in tonight's passage. How do we know that God loves us? Do you love me? And so we'll, I won't sing anymore. We'll look at that question using two points. We are loved in deed and truth, and we are invited to love in deed and truth. The first point, we are loved in deed and truth. This evening's passage begins with a summary statement that looks back to the preceding two verses on which Pastor van der Veen preached last week. Let me read for you verses 16 and 17 in 1 John 3. And it says, by this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, meaning Jesus. And we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. But if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him? And then the beginning of tonight's passage, verse 18. Little children, let us not love in word or talk, but in deed and truth. John lays it out like this. We, you and I, are the objects of the greatest demonstration of love imaginable. That the very Son of God would lay down His life becoming for us the complete propitiation for sin for rebellious creatures. How then can we not be affected by this supreme act of love? John says that the Savior's act of love is meant to not merely save us, but to utterly transform us. That in verse 18, we would become men and women who not only talk about God's love with one another, but live it out boldly in deed and in truth. And just to note, as I encountered one commentator who talked about this, he makes the case that the Greek word, rather, aletheia, at the end, rather, of verse 18, which ordinarily means truth, should be translated genuineness, reflecting not only that our deeds of love flow from truth, but that they genuinely flow from a heart that has been transformed by the power of Christ's love for us. I don't think that the key of what John gets at here in verse 18 is, I'm sorry, I do think that it's the key of what John gets here in verse 18, that not only the deeds themselves that we do to demonstrate our love for one another flow out of the love that we ourselves have received from God through Jesus Christ, but they are of a piece with God's love. They are a small part. of the love that we ourselves have received from God the Father. In other words, God fills us with an endless supply of love and then he calls us to share some of the love we've received from him with others. But we can only share that love if we trust that its supply is endless and that it's given freely without condition on our part. You might say, sure, that sounds like a great deal. I'd be happy to share some of what the Lord has given me in limitless supply. But we don't easily share that love, or at least not consistently. Why not? I think there are two primary reasons. One reason is that we don't think that we deserve God's love. The second reason is that we feel guilt and shame over particular sin or struggles with sin that we experience. And they both stem from what John says in verse 20, that our hearts condemn us. Now what does that verse mean, verse 20? The word that John uses for condemn once in verse 20 and again in verse 21 is unique. These are the only two occurrences of it in all of scripture. The word is katagenosko and it literally means discrediting intimate knowledge about someone or to betray what you know to be true about a person. And so what John says here in verse 20 is that when our hearts make accusations questioning God's love for us, we doubt that love. We either feel as though we don't deserve it or that God has withheld it in the first place. Here's an example. Perhaps you don't feel as though you're worthy of God's love because you're convinced that God could never love someone like you. That's an example of feeling like you don't deserve God's love based on your unworthiness. Here's another example. You feel acutely guilty and ashamed because you've fallen into a particular sin. Perhaps it's a longstanding pattern of sin that you continue falling into despite fighting against it for a long time. God could never forgive someone like me, you might say. And that's an example of feeling like you deserve to be punished for your sin rather than to be forgiven. Both of these are examples of, as John speaks here, our hearts condemning us. But in both cases, if we listen to our hearts, if we listen to that inner testimony that says that we either don't deserve God's love or God is withholding his love, we fail to grasp the magnitude and the scope of God's love for us in Christ Jesus. Even though we might know at a cognitive level that God loves us no matter what, that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, as Paul says in Romans 8.1, maybe you feel as though it doesn't, it cannot apply to you in your circumstance. But that condemnation, claim of your conscience against you is inconsistent, utterly inconsistent with what God says about himself and his relationship with his people. Here are just a few examples of what God says. He says in Isaiah 43 verse 25, I, I am he who blots out your transgressions for my own sake and I will not remember your sins. He says in Psalm 103 verses 10 through 12, He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him. As far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us. This is what Jesus says in John 8 36. He says, if the sun sets you free, you will be free indeed. And then in Hebrews 8, 12, the author says, for I will be merciful toward their iniquities and I will remember their sins no more. So these are just four examples of how God describes his affection for his people in scripture. According to one count, there are 310 times in scripture when God specifically speaks of his love for his people using the word love. 46 of those are found just in the letter of 1 John. And there are hundreds of more verses where God articulates his passion for his people using other words. If God testifies about his love for his people more than any other theological concept in scripture, shouldn't we take that to mean something? Shouldn't we understand the Lord to be communicating something of the utmost importance to us? Shouldn't we take God at his word? If he says he loves us and doesn't stop at anything, but offered up his only begotten son as a sacrifice for the sins of his people, shouldn't we believe that he is faithful to love us no matter what? But we were also created by God to be loved by him. And here's what C.S. Lewis says in The Problem of Pain. He says, we were made not primarily that we may love God, that we were made for that too, but that God may love us, that we may become objects in which the divine love may rest well-pleased. So you might say, I know that God wants to love me, but I continue to doubt. I continue to fall into sin. I know I don't deserve his love. And you would be correct. You don't deserve his love, and neither do I. But don't forget what Paul says in Romans 5, 8. He says, God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. And don't misinterpret what this says. Paul isn't saying that once Christ died for us, we became sinless. What Paul is saying is that in the midst of our sin, in the midst of our stinky, fetid unloveliness, Christ declared us lovely. He declared us to be His bride. Paul goes on in Romans 6 and 7 to say that he, even as an apostle, continues to wrestle with sin. And I have had, my friends, I have had people debate what this means with me for all of the time that I've been in ministry. Because some people say, well, Paul isn't talking about an actual struggle with sin. He's talking about other people who struggle with sin, or he's talking about some sort of theoretical argument that he's making about people who struggle with sin. There's no way that Paul, the apostle, who has seen Jesus, could continue to sin. That just doesn't make sense. Well, why then does he end chapter seven with this? He says about himself, wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh, I serve the law of sin. And he goes on in the very next breath to proclaim that glorious truth in Romans 8.1, There is therefore no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Friends, if you put your trust in Christ, that is reality for you now regardless of your track record. Regardless of your track record over the last day or over your entire life. And if you've never put your trust in Christ, then this is a gracious invitation to trust in Him, to forgive your sins, and to make yourself right with God the Father. This is the confidence that we have before God, that because of the work of Jesus on our behalf, nothing can ever make Romans 8.1 become untrue. Nothing can undo that confidence that we have. in God's love through Christ Jesus. If God has said that he will always love us, then that is a true statement that will never come undone. And if Jesus died in order to make us his precious bride forever, then he will never turn away from us, even if we continually forsake him. And friends, let me offer this to you at the exhortation of my wife when she and I were talking about this sermon earlier. It is so difficult to believe what I'm saying, because the condemnation of our own hearts is so loud, it drones out everything else. It is the most compelling thing that you will listen to, because on the one hand, you don't want to believe that you are worthy of God's love, and on the other, Satan doesn't want you to believe that you are loved by God. It is so difficult to believe what I am telling you and yet it is our only hope individually and as a church. And so if you are someone who is struggling right now to believe these things in a particular way, don't struggle by yourself. Scripture tells us that we are unable to believe these things on our own. We need the help of other people in the body. That's why Christ has saved us in this body. He didn't save us as individuals. He saved us as a church. Because we're supposed to build one another up. We're supposed to speak the truth in love to one another. We're supposed to exhort one another to the truth daily. That's the only way that you and I will actually believe what's being told here. If you feel defeated because you've tried to believe this over and over and over again, and you feel as though you failed, don't rely on yourself anymore. Turn to the person next to you. Ask them to help. Call someone when you get home tonight, another member of this church, ask them to help. Come to me or one of the other elders, ask us to help. We will help you grasp the truth and dwell in it. That's the first point. The second is we are invited to live in deed and truth. So why does God show us his love in the first place? He does it so that we would not be the same people that we were, but that we would be utterly transformed into people who love him, and by loving him, we would then love one another. This is what John says in verses 23 and 24. He says three things. that we would believe in the name of His Son, Jesus Christ, that we would love one another, and that we would abide in Him, and He in us. Let's look at each one of these three ideas quickly. What does John mean by saying that God wants us to believe in the name of His Son, Jesus Christ? Well, simply put, it means that God wants us to trust in the efficacy of the atoning work of His Son, Jesus, on our behalf. that we would be adopted into His family and would, as the Westminster Shorter Catechism puts it, glorify God and enjoy Him forever. It means to use our redeemed free will to choose to live in the covenant that God the Father made with us, not because we have to, but because we have experienced God's faithful love And we want, we want to be with Him and to love Him in return. Despite what you might think about arranged marriages from the introduction to the sermon, God has put us in an arranged marriage with His Son Jesus. And just like Tevye and Golda in Fiddler on the Roof, He invites us to explore and deepen and rest in our love for Jesus through living in covenant relationship with Him. What does it mean that God invites us to love one another? We might think this is Christianity 101. After all, aren't Christians supposed to show love for everyone else? Isn't this kind of the short definition of being a Christian? That you love. It's not that simple. Have you ever seriously tried to love someone else? How about loving someone else when they're pushing your buttons or not loving you in return? It's a lot easier to kick someone to the curb than to show them faithful, other-focused love, the kind of chesed love, the faithful covenant love that God the Father shows His people. And that's because the kind of love that God invites us to show to other people, particularly to other Christians, has nothing at all to do with their performance. It has nothing to do with how well they love us. Cornelius Van Til, a Dutch-American theologian who taught apologetics at Westminster Seminary in the mid-20th century, used an illustration to describe this kind of love, and it's appropriate for Father's Day. He said, imagine a father sitting and holding his young child on his lap. The child twists around and does a remarkable thing. He slaps his father in his face. In response, Not only does the father not let the child go, but he fully realizes that the only way the child could have slapped him in the first place was that he was holding him on his lap. That's the kind of love that the father has for us. He holds us in a position where we can try to reject his love, and yet he doesn't let go. He doesn't punish us because of our lack of love or our rebelliousness. He holds on to us with the expectation that we will become increasingly tender to His love in order that we would turn and repent. One of my favorite Books in the Bible is the book of Ezekiel. I love the prophets in general, but Ezekiel has a special place in my heart because it is a hard book to read. It is a book that is written at the absolute low point of Judah's existence in the land. As a matter of fact, part of what happens in the book takes place after Judah is carried off into exile. And yet in the midst of all of the hard realities and all of the judgments that are described in the book of Ezekiel, there are six particular times when God breaks through into this chorus of love for his people and a promise of restoration. And he uses almost precisely the same words in each one of these six instances. And he says, I am going to take my people, I am going to remove their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh, that they will be my people and I will be their God. And what he means by that is he's taking away this stony, dead heart that is incapable of being moved by love. He's going to remove it. and he's going to do a heart transplant and give us a new heart, a heart of flesh, a heart that is pliable, a heart that can receive and respond to love, and a heart that can love in return. And friends, that is what, that is what the Lord invites us to embrace. It's not easy to let that heart of stone go. It's hard to accept that heart of flesh because in accepting that heart of flesh, we also accept the possibility that we're going to be hurt. We're going to be disappointed. And yet God doesn't disappoint. He is faithful. He is more faithful than any spouse, any friend will ever be. I have to say it's not easy to love this way when someone wounds you. My first instinct when I'm wounded by someone else is to wound and return. And sometimes I do. I remember four years ago at this point, I was working for a Christian ministry and was forced out of my leadership role there. And there were some hard things that happened. There was sin that occurred not on my part, but on the part of others, ones who were forcing me out. These were brothers and sisters whom I trusted. And it was so difficult to not fight back in the moment, to not demand my right for justice. But it felt like the right thing to do. to just go quietly. And in the four years that have passed, it has been so difficult to forgive those men and women, men and women who I believe love the Lord, and yet who I believe sinned grievously against Him and against me. It has been so difficult to go out of my way and pursue them and sit down with them and try to reconcile with them and tell them, I forgive you. Even if you don't realize the extent of what you've done, I forgive you because I don't want there to be a breach in our relationship. And I do that not because I'm a great lover of people. In my flesh, I just want to take those people and make them pay. I do that because I am convicted by God's Spirit that if I have been loved that way by God, how can I withhold that kind of forgiveness, that kind of redemption from others? Friends, this is the kind of love that you can share with other people only to the extent that you have received it and rest in it yourself. And again, if you are someone who has suffered at the hands of another, if you're someone who bears the wounds of neglect or outright sin, I encourage you to cry out to the Lord and ask for an awareness, an experience of the kind of love that John talks about here in order that you would then be able, after resting in that love, to share it with the person who has offended you. And I realize this day is a hard day to reckon with some of that. Many of us had fathers who sinned against us in many ways. Those sins can be hard to forgive. Those of us who are fathers or mothers have sinned against our children in many ways. And it's hard to ask for forgiveness. But we can do that. We can move toward reconciliation as the transformed people whom we have been redeemed to be. because this love is now what defines us. Finally, what does it mean that God invites us to abide in him? In verse 24. Where else do we see that term abide? Jesus uses that term abide 10 times in six verses at the beginning of John chapter 15, where he says abide in me. It means to willingly remain where you are to find strength and identity, safety and shelter under the care of another. When Jesus says, abide in me in John 15, he isn't saying, hey, we're peers, come stand next to me. Or you're tired, hang out here for a while until you can get your strength back and get back in the fight. No. Abide with me means something utterly different. It means you and I are that bratty little kid sitting on the father's lap who deserves to be thrown off for his rebelliousness. You and I are the adulterous wife who deserves to be divorced by the faithful husband. And yet, we don't receive the treatment that we deserve. The Father, instead of punishing us, embraces us even more tightly. The husband professes his love to us with greater passion and concern. To abide in God and for God to abide in us through His Spirit is that we would submit to His love in trust and in faith. It's to allow Him in into our hearts to define us, to reign over us, to shape and mold us, to utterly transform us so that we look and think and act more and more like His Son, Jesus. Will you accept that invitation from the Lord this evening to submit to Him as He works out His plan of redemption and sanctification in your life? We can trust Him to be faithful and good, because He is the one who has loved us, not merely with word and talk, but in deed and truth. Let's pray. Our Lord and Heavenly Father, we thank you for this love that we confess we don't understand, and even though we crave it deeply, We run from it, Lord, because of the accountability that it brings with it. Lord, I pray that you would so convict us in our spirits that we would pursue you until we rest in this love. Lord, don't let our hunger or thirst be quenched by anything else. Father, I pray that we would know how to love one another as you have loved us in Christ Jesus our Lord. All this we ask in his name. Amen.