Children of Light: Love vs. Hate

Audio Transcript

Okay, I am going to just kind of jump right in. This is a really the last part in this series that I’ve been going through called “Children of Light” and this has been a great series. I’ve enjoyed it. If you haven’t had a chance to hear any of those we’ve covered already, in talking about the two different kingdoms, talking about the Kingdom of Light, God’s Kingdom, and the Kingdom of Darkness, and the between the two, and the many contrasts that we see in Scripture, characteristics from each of these kingdoms. So we’ve looked at truth versus falsehood, life versus death, good versus evil, peace versus trouble, and now this morning we are looking at love versus hate.

So let me ask you a quick question for you to ponder, you don’t need to answer, but if God gave LifePoint Church a special mirror, and this mirror was able to reflect back to each of us whether or we are walking in the light of God’s way, or perhaps that we are deceiving ourselves and walking in darkness of our own way. Would you take the opportunity to look into that mirror?

James, in chapter 1 starting with verse 22—I’m gonna have a lot of Scriptures this morning, so I would say probably the best way is just look at them on the screen because you’ll be flipping too too quickly, and then if you want to jot some notes down on some of these that’d be awesome, but I’m gonna have them all on the screen—James says this, “But don’t just listen to God’s Word, you must do what it says, otherwise you are only fooling yourselves. For if you listen to the Word and don’t obey it, it is like glancing at your face in a mirror. You see yourself, walk away, and like. But if you look carefully into the perfect law that sets you free, and if you do what it says and don’t forget what you heard, then God will bless you for it, for doing it.” This is a reference, if you’re familiar with James, he talks about a little bit further to God’s perfect law, and it’s not talking about the law of Moses, it’s talking about the new royal law. We’re gonna look at that a little bit.

But this topic, love versus hate, and we’re gonna really be focusing on the love aspect of that, seems to bring a variety of opinions, especially since love is used, as you know, to describe many affections and feelings towards someone or something, and we use it in our speech a lot, and honestly it seems quite shallow in many cases, I think you would all agree.

For believers, that would be us here, it’s important to understand that God is love, and to understand His love for us and what that means. But this morning, we’re not going to be focusing on so much God’s love for us, but on our love for God. And so we’re going to consider the importance of our love for God and for others. So I want to do this by focusing on two important commandments God has given us, and then we’ll look at a third that’s of equal importance.

So in Mark, in chapter 12, starting in verse 29, Jesus was asked a question by a religious expert of that day. He was asked, “Which commandment is the most important of all?” And here’s what Jesus said. We’ll pick up here with His response. Jesus answered, “The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one, and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”

Now clearly, these are hugely important. According to Jesus, there is no other commandment greater than these. So we’re gonna dig into these a little bit and make sure that we understand them, because they’re just as relevant for us now, today, as part of this new covenant, as they were back then as part of the Old Covenant.

Now the first mention of love recorded in the Bible, this is the first, the very first mention of love, is in Genesis 22. It’s a significant moment, if you’re familiar with the story of Abraham. One reason it’s so significant—it’s a foreshadowing of God’s love for us. So let’s read the account real quickly. God said, “Take,” He said, “Take your son,” He’s talking to Abraham, “Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.”

Now God stopped Abraham, if you’re familiar with the story, just before he carried it out. And He provided a ram in his son’s place. But that event actually was a foreshadowing of God the Father and His beloved Son, who He actually did sacrifice and give up. So God stopped Abraham, but He did carry it out when He gave up His only Son. It was compassion. It was a compassionate love, a sacrificial love. It was His only Son, and because of it, we were able to be saved. He saved us from slavery to sin.

Now I want to move on to focusing on our love for God in response to Him first loving us. So let’s take a look at these two commandments that Jesus said are more important than all the others. Now since the first is a… It’s important to understand God’s expectation. His expectation of how we are to love Him, because it really doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks. We want to know what’s God’s thought and thoughts on the matter.

Now, the first occurrence in Scripture where God describes how we are to love Him is found in Exodus 20. The context here, if you might be familiar with, is God has just brought His chosen people Israel out of slavery from Egypt, and He is now describing to them the covenant He is making with them. This is that moment where He is, you know, the people are gathered, Moses is up there with Him on the mountain, He is describing Himself and He’s describing the covenant, and here’s what He says in Exodus 20, starting verse 1 through 6. “And God spoke all these words, saying, ‘I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before Me. You shall not make for yourself a carved image or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above or that is in the earth beneath or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them for I the Lord your God am a jealous God visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate Me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love Me and keep My commandments.'”

As a side note, if you’re interested, and I would encourage you to do this, you can jot down Exodus 34 and at around verse 6 and 7, God is doing this again, He’s describing this because the people basically, the people of Israel, felled right out of the gate, if you’re familiar with the story. And God has to, He has mercy on them and He allows this covenant to be initiated again, and He describes Himself again, and He gives a little more details, and I think it’s worth reading. That’s in Exodus 34.

So it seems that God leaves no room for neutrality in this. You either love God by obeying His commands, or you hate Him by ignoring them. It reminds me of Jesus’s words to the church in Laodicea. Listen to what He says to believers. These are believers who are in that church of Laodicea. He says this, “I know your works. You are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot. So because you are lukewarm and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of My mouth.” And then He reminds them of an indicator of His love for them and how they should respond. He says this in verse 19 just a little ways down, He says, “Those whom I love I reprove and discipline, so be zealous and repent.” Those are the words of our Lord Jesus.

So Jesus also makes it clear how we are to love Him and to love the Father. Listen to His words in these verses. This is in John, and we’ll go through these just real quickly, this is what He says, “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments. Whoever has My commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves Me, and he who loves Me will be loved by the Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him.” Jesus answered him, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My Word, and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him. Whoever does not love Me does not keep My words, and the word that you hear is not Mine, but the Father’s who sent Me.” And we’ve got two more, “If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love, just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love. And finally, you are My friends if you do what I command you.”

So I think those are pretty clear and pretty consistent with how God expects us to love Him. And unfortunately I think sometimes this gets lost in today’s churches. Oftentimes we tend to focus on what’s often described as the unconditional love of God and make that as if there’s nothing that needs to change about us. And unfortunately that’s really not the truth, and it’s not accurate. Jesus came to save us from our sins, not to be able to just continue living in them. And so all of this, of how we love God by obeying His commands. And yes, the commands of the laws of Moses, the old covenant that we often describe when we’re talking up here, is the old. The new covenant is much better and has replaced the old, but it is not without commands. Jesus has lots of them, and some we’re looking at here, but following Him means to keep His commands, loving Him means to obey what He is telling us to do.

So the other command that we saw here is about loving our neighbor. But who is our neighbor? Jesus explains this with a parable. This is in Luke in chapter 10. And by the way, the love here that we’re gonna read is agape love. It is the greatest love, the one that you hear about, the agape love, often the ones that people describe as unconditional. And there is a sense of it. It is unconditional in that God loves us without us having done anything to deserve that love. There is no condition there.

But we need to understand it in its full. So this parable, when Jesus is asked by a religious–an expert of religious law, He’s asked about this. Let’s just read the parable first, and we’ll take a look at it. So this is from Luke chapter 10 starting in verse 25. It says, “One day an expert in religious law stood up to test Jesus by asking Him this question, ‘Teacher, what should I do to inherit eternal life?’ Jesus replied, ‘What does the law of Moses say? How do you read it?’ The man answered, ‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength and all your mind, and love your neighbor as yourself.'” “Right,” Jesus told him. “Do this and you will live.”

The man wanted to justify his actions, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” Jesus replied with a story. “A Jewish man was traveling from Jerusalem down to Jericho and he was attacked by bandits. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him up, and left him half dead beside the road. By chance, a priest came along, but when he saw the man lying there, he crossed to the other side of the road and passed him by. A temple assistant walked over and looked at him, lying there, but he also passed by on the other side. Then a despised Samaritan came along and when he saw the man he felt compassion for him. Going over to him the Samaritan soothed his wounds with olive oil and wine and bandaged them. Then he put the man on his own donkey and looked him and took him to an inn where he took care of him. The next day he handed the innkeeper two silver coins telling him, ‘Take care of this man. If his bill runs higher than this, I will pay you the next time I’m here.'”

And Jesus breaks out of the storytelling and He says, “Now, which of these three would you say was a neighbor to the man who was attacked by bandits?” Jesus asked. And the man replied, “The one who showed him mercy.” Then Jesus said, “Yes, now go and do the same.”

Now this expert in religious law was trying, as the Scripture says, trying to justify himself by asking the question, “Who is my neighbor?” which was likely in that day defined very narrowly. Most Jews would have excluded Samaritans and Gentiles. But Jesus corrects him by telling the parable and asking him the right question. It was not “Who is my neighbor?” but rather “Who proved to be a neighbor to him?” It was the one who showed him mercy. And Jesus told the man to go and do likewise. And so we should be asking ourselves that same question. How can I be a neighbor to others? How can I show mercy? How can I love sacrificially?

See, the love we’re talking about is agapeo. It’s a love with action. It’s not this sentimental lovey-dovey kind of love, it’s a compassionate, sacrificial love. So this story is a great example of what does that kind of love look like. This is what it looks like. It sees someone who cannot help themselves and it sacrificially helps that person. And this is why agape love, which is the kind of love that God describes, God so loved the world. He loved agapeo, He loved the world. And He loved the world in such a way that He gave His only Son. And the reason is because we could not help ourselves.

God stepped in and did something about that. He had compassion on us in our state of being enslaved to sin, and He did something about it that cost Him a great price. He sacrificially gave His only Son for us. That is agape love. That’s what agape love means. There was no condition. We did not earn that. He did it completely out of the compassionate kindness and love for us.

But there’s some type of twisted teaching today that says that this kind of love means there’s nothing we need to change about ourselves in response to God loving us. And you cannot read the Bible and come to that conclusion. You have to slice and dice and twist and pervert Scripture to try to come to a conclusion that unconditional love, agape love, means live however you want. God is fine with it. He accepts you as you are. He accepts you. Stay in that lifestyle that you want to live is totally fine. And that’s what’s taught in many churches. That’s what’s taught about God’s grace. That there’s no need for change. And it’s a shame on the church, and it’s a shame on the gift that God has given for us of His Son and His precious blood. It’s a cheap grace.

Paul states… This is in Romans chapter 13. Great, great chapter, as we know, about love. Listen to what he says. He’s writing this to the Romans, the believers. He says, “Owe no one anything except to love each other. For the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. For the commandments, ‘You shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal, you shall not covet,’ and any other commandment are summed up in this word, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ Love does no wrong to a neighbor. Therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.”

Now I want to move on to this third command, and this one is a command that Jesus gave to us. It’s a similar command, but yet it’s a new command. Near the end of His ministry, Jesus gave this to His disciples, and we’re gonna just pick up and look at when He’s doing this. This is in John chapter 13. This is what Jesus says. This is towards the very–some of His last days with them. He says, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.”

Now this command came with a new rubric, to use an educational term. What do I mean by that? A rubric is essentially a set of criteria and standards used to evaluate work, projects, or behaviors. Now the command to “love your neighbor” uses yourself as the rubric. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. Unfortunately, some people do not do a good job of loving themselves in the sense of caring for themselves, in the sense of loving themselves the way God loves them. And just in the same way you can have hatred towards another person, or you can be abusive towards another person, you can do the same towards yourself, and it’s just as offensive towards God to treat one of His children that way, yourself.

Well that’s the rubric used for the great command of loving your neighbor, but this new command, and this is kind of stacked on top of that one, it takes it to a whole nother level. This new command to love one another, and it’s talking about the body of Christ, those of us here in the body of Christ, those other believers who are in the greater body of Christ, those who you meet who also have Christ in them, and they are in Christ, this is what this is talking about by loving one another. You’re loving your Christian brothers and sisters. This new command to love one another uses Jesus as the rubric. Jesus said, “As I have loved you, so you must love one another.”

It seems Jesus wanted this command to be very clear as to what standard we use to carry it out. We even see an example of this when Jesus, in Revelation, is of the standard. In Revelation 3, Jesus says this to the church in Sardis, “I know your works. You have the reputation of being alive, but you are dead. Wake up and strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have not found your works complete in the sight of My God. Remember then what you received and heard. Keep it and repent. If you will not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what hour I will come against you.”

I cannot stress enough, this is Jesus talking to the church, talking to believers. This is not Jesus talking to the lost, talking to those who do not care about Him, know Him, or possibly hate Him. This is Jesus talking to the church in Sardis. Earlier we saw Jesus talking to the church in Laodicea. Seven letters that Jesus wrote. Oftentimes we don’t give them the attention they deserve. In Revelations, if you want to read a letter written directly from Jesus, that’s where you go to read. And He has a lot to say. Some of it is good, some of it is sobering, and it’s a rebuke. And this is for us. You relevant for us as we especially get closer and closer in these last days. We need to pay attention to the deception and the things that are going to come into the church and deceive us. Or in this case with the believers in Sardis, the ways that we are going to drift away from God’s standard.

And in this, in Jesus’ words, when we see how much He emphasizes to love one another, us here loving one another, like this was huge for Jesus. He spent some of His last hours with His disciples, honing in on this one command. This new command He’s leaving with them. This was hugely important for Him. And this is something we have to really pay attention to. It’s interesting that sometimes we pay attention to a lot of these other commands, and we overlooked this one that Jesus spent so much time emphasizing and stressing to His closest followers before He left. He made sure they understood this command, and He made it clear the standard, which is to love as I have loved you. And I feel like the church, oftentimes, we miss that. We don’t give it the attention and the care that it deserves. That Jesus wants us to give it.

And I do not want us, LifePoint Church, to be that church, that church like Sardis. Where Jesus is having to rebuke us. Because we, our works, are failing. They’re not living up to the standard of what He has called us to do. But remember, Jesus says He disciplines those He loves. And when we find ourselves under His loving hand of discipline, He says to us, “Be zealous and repent.” Respond accordingly, appropriately to Him who loves us and is disciplining us for our own good.

Well, let’s move on to look at a few more passages. Sorry guys, I’m trying to go digital in today’s world and I end up losing my place on this. I’m getting better. Phil is excellent at doing this. I usually have pieces of paper and I’m trying to modernize here. Okay.

Now this command was not only to serve as an identifier for the world to know who is truly a disciple, who is truly a follower of Christ, who belongs to Him. It’s not only for the world to be able to see who that is, but it’s also to serve as a mirror. As I open this talking about, it’s actually to serve as a mirror for the community of believers that those who claim to be a child of God can look into this mirror to either validate or invalidate our claim.

John, when John writes in his letters, he’s got the gospel that he wrote, he’s got the letters that he wrote. First John is full of this truth. I implore you to read First John and read it often. I’m just going to read just a small portion of what John writes to give you an idea. Now this is John the disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, the one who took care of His mother. John, the last disciple to live. And when he wrote these letters, he was probably around 80 years old. He’s more like a grandfather to the faith. And these are some of the words he penned in his letters. And in 1 John, we’re going to pick up in this is chapter 3, starting around verse 10.

John writes and he’s writing to the church, he’s writing to, these are to be circulated to the church, especially his first letter. The second and third letter were more specific to people or individuals. This one was more to the church as a whole, to believers. He was concerned about them. “So now we can tell who are children of God and who are children of the devil. Anyone who does not live righteously and does not love other believers does not belong to God. This is the message you have heard from the beginning. We should love one another.” Now he’s saying the beginning as in the beginning when Jesus came and began teaching them. And he was told this the first time by the Lord Jesus Christ. He’s now–I mean, this was years and years later.

Continuing from verse 14, “If we love our brothers and sisters who are believers, it proves that we have passed from death to life. But a person who has no love is still dead. Anyone who hates another brother or sister, meaning another believer, is really a murderer at heart. And you know that murderers don’t have eternal life within them. We know what real love is because Jesus gave up His life for us. So, and listen to this, church, so we also ought to give up our lives for our brothers and sisters. If someone has enough money to live well and sees a brother or sister in need but shows no compassion, how can God’s love be in that person? Dear children, let’s not merely say that we love each other, let us show the truth by our actions.” And this goes right back to how we started what James was saying. This goes right back to the question about the mirror, and often we see this truth being emphasized in Scripture that we must be doers of the Word, not just hearers, not just speak about love. Those are sobering words.

I really encourage you to read all of 1 John. It’s a powerful and hard book to read, but we need to read it. The reason that…and we should be blessed by it, honestly, that we have this book. And the reason is because it gives us an opportunity to test ourselves. And we should test ourselves. We should test ourselves to be sure we are not deceived in thinking we are in the light when we are actually still in darkness. And it’s packed with that kind of stuff. “Let’s not merely say that we love one another. Let us show the truth by our actions.” And the other New Testament writers have similar things to say as well. We’ll include Paul when he says that without love for others we are nothing. We’re just making useless noise.

In 1st Corinthians chapter 13 starting in verse 1 he says this, he’s talking to believers, “If I speak all the languages and of angels, but didn’t love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I understood all of God’s secret plans and possessed all knowledge, and if I had such faith that I could move mountains, but didn’t love others, I would be nothing. If I gave everything I had to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it, but if I didn’t love others, I would have gained nothing.” And he goes on in this chapter to describe what love is.

So if you’re unsure what it should look like to love one another, please read verses 4 through 7 again and again and again. I need to read it again and again and again to understand what love is. Let each description in those verses sink into your heart and mind, and where your love for others falls short, where my love for others falls short, then let’s do something about it. Make changes to start loving others better, as Jesus has commanded us to do. Use His standard and not your own.

And I want to mention this because I think sometimes, especially men, us men, have a harder time with this command of loving others. It shouldn’t be the case, especially when you understand the type of love we’re commanded to love others with. It’s this sacrificial love. Men know how to be sacrificial. They know how to give their lives for a cause. And Paul says in chapter 16 and verse 13, he says, “Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong, let all that you do be done in love.” Yours might say instead of “act like men, be courageous,” it goes either way. Some translations have “be courageous,” some translations have “act like men.” They’re synonymous. To act like a man is to be courageous. So Paul says, “Come on, act like men. Stand firm in the faith. Be watchful. Be strong. And let all that you do be done in love.” Man, he’s talking to us. We should be able to love in this way, a compassionate way, a sacrificial way. And of course, women, you know that this includes you as well.

I’m gonna read one passage about hate, because I don’t like talking about hate as much as I do talking about love. This is from Matthew 24, starting in verse 9. Jesus is talking and He says this. He’s talking about the last days, the end time, what is yet to come. He’s telling His followers about what is coming. “Then you will be arrested, persecuted, and killed. You will be hated all over the world because you are My followers. And many will turn away from Me and betray and hate each other. And many false prophets will appear and will deceive many people. Sin will be rampant everywhere and the– listen to this– the love of many will grow cold. But the one who endures to the end will be saved.”

Now this command was to not only, sorry, when Jesus was talking here, He was giving us a glimpse of what’s coming and basically what’s part of this in days. And it has a lot to do with love and hate. There was no neutrality. You either are loving God or you are not. And what does it mean? Like, how does one endure to the end? Well, we’ve read all about it already. We do that by first loving God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength, and then secondly by loving others. In doing so, you will walk as Jesus walked. We will walk righteously as Jesus walked.

Look, it doesn’t mean you’ve… You do understand it doesn’t mean we’re going to be perfect, but we should see a progression in our lives. If you think that getting saved means that just that’s it, nothing else really matters, you don’t understand salvation. You don’t understand why Jesus even came to begin with. God is not going to simply overlook and dismiss and wink at our sins. He paid a great price so that we could be free from them. So there should be a progression in our lives. We should be able to see that. We should be able to look in a mirror and see I don’t look like I did. And that’s going to look differently with different people. That’s going to, at times, it’s going to seem to really be progressing really well and strongly. At other times, it’s going to almost seem like you’re taking steps backwards.

And this is why the new covenant is so significant, because we have a sacrifice, a perfect Lamb whose blood was worthy enough to cleanse us of our sins, when we take that blood and we apply it in our lives, when we confess our sins to Him, when we acknowledge our waywardness, when we acknowledge our rebellion, when we acknowledge how we’ve ignored His commands and we confess, we come into agreement with God about them. He says He will forgive us and cleanse us. Why? Because we deserve it? No, because His Son deserves it. And His Son exchanged His life for ours. What was due to us, the wages of our sin, which is death, was put onto Him. He willingly gave His life and accepted that onto Him. And God allowed Him to do that, His only Son.

And in exchange, we who really deserved to die, to be on that cross, we now have the privilege of all the blessings and things that were due to Jesus, who fulfilled the law perfectly, who lived righteously, who did what God required for us. Now all the blessings that are due to Him can come onto us. This is why this is such good news. This is why this whole new covenant is so mind-blowing that God would do this for us. That His agape love is so great and so incredible that He allowed us to be rescued from our sins and to be forgiven and to be cleansed and to now have opportunity to have the blessing of life. Not to go on wallowing in our filth for the rest of our lives. That’s ridiculous. Makes no sense whatsoever. Why would God allow His Son to die? If God could say sin’s not a problem, why would He have done that? He wouldn’t have, and He couldn’t have, because God is a holy God. We cannot understand that. We are not like Him. He is way above us. We don’t even need to try to understand that. We just need to trust God. And He has a very high standard.

But He’s also a loving God who wanted a big family. And He’s made a way for Himself to have one, even though the first plan failed because of man and our weaknesses, but He made another way. And this way is the way of the new covenant, the way of Jesus Christ. Through Him we can access the Father again. Through Him we can be accepted. When we are in Him we are beloved. That’s why this, all of this is so significant. That’s why when we are living like, when we are following the way, it should look a certain way. There’s of our slavery to sin. We shouldn’t be staying in Egypt. The whole Exodus is a foreshadowing of what salvation is. He has delivered us. He has delivered us out of the dominion of slavery to sin.

But it does not mean that we’re not going to have a struggle. We’re not going to have a temptation or we’re not going to fail again, but He’s made a way for us to be cleansed from that, to be made new, to be forgiven along that path of salvation. As we are continuing on with Him guiding us, leading us, there’s a Promised Land that’s coming. You understand the whole story is an incredible foreshadowing of what this life is all about. There’s a Promised Land coming. But to think that we can live however we want on the way to this Promised Land is like you’re in denial. The Scripture is full of warnings, full of admonishments, full of examples, full of telling you to remember what has happened here. Remember to repent, to wake up.

But listen, this way of salvation, Jesus describes it as light. He describes it as much different from that old covenant, because He gives us everything that we need to live this out. This, all that I’m talking about right here, and love. One thing that’s so important about this, 1 Peter 1 and 22, Peter says this, “Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for each other, love one another deeply from the heart.” Now according to Peter in Acts 5:32, it’s not on the screen, but in Acts 5:32, Peter states that God responds to this obedience to the truth by giving us the Holy Spirit. And that is key. That is key. Because it is the Spirit of God being poured into our hearts that allows us to truly experience and know the love of God.

We cannot love others without the love of God being poured into us. And God does this through His Holy Spirit, also known as living water. It’s a flow of living water. And it must begin from the source, which is the fountain of living water, who is God. Jeremiah writes this rebuke to God’s people in his day, and it is just as relevant to us sitting right here in this day. It’s Jeremiah 2:13. It says this, “For My people,” this is God talking, “For My people have done two evil things. They have abandoned Me, the fountain of living water, and they have dug for themselves cracked cisterns that can hold no water at all.”

It’s because they’re going to the wrong source. The people have abandoned the very thing that gives us life. It’s the living water. It’s the gift that the Lord Jesus Christ promised was coming. It’s what God promised He was going to give. And it’s actually Him. It’s His divine nature. It’s His Spirit. It’s His being. It’s His presence coming into us. That changes us from the inside. That does something. That love, that being poured into our hearts, Paul talks about this, His love being poured into our hearts is done through the Holy Spirit pouring into us. But it’s not to be damned up. It’s not to be contained, especially in a cracked cistern like what we have that’s just going to leak.

It’s meant to flow. It’s meant to flow in and flow out. John describes this as rivers of living water are to flow out of us, but they can only flow if they’re flowing in from the source, the fountain of living water. God, the living water, His Holy Spirit flowing into us and then overflowing out of us onto others. That’s why the church is described in the New Testament, in the early church, as being so powerful. That’s how they were able to change the world, as they were able to do it because of this living water flowing in and through them. That’s how we’re going to love others. That’s how we’re going to love one another the way Jesus loved us. There’s no way we can do this on our own. Listen, I know many of you, yeah it ain’t gonna happen and it didn’t happen and doesn’t happen with me. It does not happen with me in and of myself. You understand that? And I’m old, I’m older than a lot of you. When you’re young, you’re cocky, you’re arrogant, you think you know it all, but listen, I’m a little bit older and I still cannot do this without the Spirit’s help.

It is the Holy Spirit being poured into our hearts that gives us the love of God, helps us to understand not only His love but His truth. It gives us the very nature of God. It changes our heart from within and it allows us to then flow, the living waters to flow out of us onto others. But if we dam it this up, if we don’t go to the source, the fountain of living water, we are going to have nothing to flow out of us and we’re gonna stink because that’s what happens to water that gets dammed up. It starts turning green. It gets nasty. Bacteria grows. Listen, that’s exactly what happens if we don’t continue to go to the source. Paul says, “Be filled and keep on being filled with the Spirit, the source, the living water that’s to flow into us and out of us.”

God invites us to thirst for this living water. He invites us to thirst for it. He even tells us to ask, keep on asking, seek, keep on seeking, knock, keep on knocking, ask Him for it because He’s a good Father and what good Father would not want to give a good gift to His children? And He says those who ask and keep on asking, He will give this good gift. And it’s what we must have if we’re going to be the church, if we’re going to follow Jesus’ command to love one another. We have to start here. We have to start with coming before God humbly and thirsting and asking for more of Him in us. Not more of us. Lord knows we don’t want more of us. We need more of Him in us, changing us from within, flowing through us to impact those around us, starting right here with our church body, with one another, loving one another the way Jesus expects us to love one another.

Do you thirst for this? Do you want God’s love to fill you to overflowing so you can love others the way Jesus wants them to be loved? If this is you, and I hope this is all of us, then I encourage you to make this known to God. Matter of fact, I’m going to give us an opportunity to do that. If you want to come up and grab your guitar, because we’re going to just give an opportunity. Because I think it’s very important that when God is speaking to us about something, that we respond appropriately.

So is He speaking to you about something? I cannot imagine anyone not needing living water. I cannot imagine anyone, including myself, having enough. I don’t need any more. Got all I need. Listen, pick up the mirror and look at it. Don’t walk away, set it down, and forget what it shows you. Think about that. We can’t afford to be one of those people that’s described in Scripture, that we just look in the mirror and we go on about our way and we got these flaws all over our face. Look, Jesus says, do something about it. Wake up. Remember how it started. Get back to that and complete it. Finish it.

We’ve got more work to do. We’re never going to be done until He takes us to be in that Promised Land. We’ve got so much work to do and we cannot do it in our own strength. We cannot do it in our own love. We must have Him pouring into us to enable us to do this. So that’s what this response is about. And so we’ll dim the lights, we’re not going to rush, but this is what I want you to think about. Do you thirst for this?

If God is speaking to you about some aspect of this message, then I invite you to respond by simply coming to the front and kneeling. If you are unable to kneel, then you can stand. But if you’re able to and feel it is right to respond, then I simply ask you to do it in a way that’s humbly asking God, acknowledging that you are, you hear His truth and you’re not going to be just a hearer of it, but you’re going to be a doer. You’re going to be a person who actually does something and you know that you can’t do this without Him and His living water and therefore you’re asking for help. So if this is something that you feel like you can do, then this time is for you.

So I’m just opening up. This is find a spot. This is between you and God. Between you and God. Look I get in front of people, I kneel down, I’ll lay on my face if I need to. I don’t care what you think and this is how we need to be. We get so prim and proper in churches these days. Nobody wants to be looked at funny or think that they’re… Can you just put that aside? Really? Come on. If any of this speaks to you, I invite you to come up, respond to God, say what you need to say to Him, humbly ask for His help. And we’ll give a little time for this, and then we’ll come up and have a closing song.