Let the Shepherd Lead

Originally Proclaimed 6/30/19

Intro:

• In our series over the past weeks we have tried to ask the question, “How connected is too connected?”
  • We have answered in part that we are too connected any time that we care more about connections than pleasing and serving God.
  • We identified the fear of man as a perennial problem that can lead us towards caring too much about what people think of us and not enough about what God thinks of us.
  • But in these last two weeks, we have shifted to discuss reasons to connect. Last week we saw that God reforms us through connecting and connections.
  • And this week we continue that theme.
• At our house this summer the book Hidden Figures came home as a part of a school reading list, but has been the topic of many conversations.
• In particular the account of John Glenn’s orbital mission caught my attention.
  • For the first time in that mission NASA wanted to utilize electronic computers to calculate orbital trajectories.
  • The launch of the Friendship 7 mission had been delayed several times due to differing issues, so the trajectory calculations had to be re-figured as each launch window approached.
  • Perhaps it was all the delays that spooked John Glenn about the calculations. Maybe it was something that did not look correct to John Glenn when the trajectories for his February 20, 1962 mission were plotted for him to study.
  • In any case, before he ever set foot onto the launch platform and took his seat in the Mercury capsule, John Glenn asked that NASA “get the girl to check the numbers”.
  • Through his connection to Katherine Johnson, an African American female mathematician employed at Langley’s NASA Flight Research Division Glenn overcame stereotypes about other races and about women to ask for her help.
  • He valued her work so greatly that he specifically commented that if the numbers checked out with her, then he was ready to fly.
  • Over three days Katherine Johnson compiled the trajectories, finally transmitting her results to NASA which gave Glenn the confidence to proceed with the mission

Hook:

• Friends, that account relays to us the importance of connections.
• When we connect with others we have the opportunity to move past our divisions, our fears about others, and truly begin to value them as people made in God’s image.
• As we close our series of sermons on connecting today, I want to share with you three questions that will help us consider whether we are connected enough.

Message Points:

• 1 John comes to us as an epistle written by the beloved disciple, John during his long life and ministry as a pastor.
  • The letter almost assuredly comes before the time of John’s imprisonment and exile on Patmos.
  • It likely results from the season when John was one of the pastoral team at Ephesus.
  • While we do not know the exact audience of the book, the influence of the church at Ephesus to its surrounding area probably indicates that the letter was written to one of those churches in that sphere of influence. Perhaps it was even a congregation that John regularly visited and helped as a part of his ministry in Ephesus.
• By the time we read through to chapter 4 John has already been making the argument that Christians have a unique love for God and others.
  • 2:5 says “if anyone obeys his Word, love for God is truly made complete in them.”
  • 2:10 says “anyone who loves their brother and sister lives in the light and there is nothing in them to make them stumble.”
  • 3:11 reminds us that we should love one another while 3:16 tells us that we know what love is because “Jesus Christ laid down his life for us,” thus John encourages us to lay down our lives for others.
  • 3:18 says, “dear children, let us not love with words or speech, but with actions and truth.”
• As we come to this point in chapter 4 John again seeks to further define the purpose and results of a Christian’s love.
• John begins verse sixteen by reminding the believers he wrote to that “we have known and believed in the love God has for us.”
  • We have at least two ways of knowing something. We can know it rationally and we can know it experientially.
    • For instance I can read about how good a carrot cake tastes. They can describe the moist lightly spiced cake and the subtle sweetness of the cream cheese icing. I know that carrot cake rationally, by someone else’s intellectual description of it.
    • But I will have a whole new perception if I sit down with a piece of carrot cake that my wife bakes and taste it for myself. That knowledge is experiential.
    • While both types of knowledge prove useful in their own right, John speaks here about a knowledge that is experiential.
      • He makes the point with those believers, and with us, that we have experienced the love that God has for us in Jesus Christ.
      • Our personal experience with Christ – how he saved and converted us; of how he has not left us nor forsaken us; of how he has guided us so that we can see his hand as we look back on our lives – proves to us that He loves us.
  • Further John says that we have believed in the love God has for us. Our pew Bibles translate this word as “rely on”.
    • Certainly rely on tries to help us understand what John means when he uses this word, however I like the word entrust.
    • One lexicon utilizes this definition for the Greek word here “to entrust or commit oneself”.
    • When we go to a bank, we entrust them with our money. When we get married we entrust our spouse with our most secret hopes, dreams, and our future. And when we come to God in Christ we entrust ourselves into His love.
    • We can entrust the bank, or our spouse, and most especially God because we have knowledge about how they will treat that which we have entrusted to them.
• So we come to our first major question for today: Do we know enough about God’s love to entrust Him with all our connections?
  • John continues to point out that God is love. This word is very familiar to us, but do not let that familiarity lead you astray.
    • This is the word “Agape” described by so many as unconditional love, but we need to know that God’s love is more than unconditional.
      • That communicates that we can do as we please and that God will love us. It seems to give us permission to continue in our rebellion against God.
      • While God does meet us where we are in our fallen condition, the Bible never tells us that he wants to leave us in that condition.
    • Greek has four words for love each one with its own nuance.
      • This Greek word seems to originate from a word used to welcome all sorts of people, even strangers.
      • If this were the only sense of this Greek Word it would likely not have continued since Greek already has a word for this type of brotherly, friendship love.
    • But this Greek word came to mean by the time of the New Testament a rational, well informed love.
      • In other words, to love someone was to assign to them such a high value that one must demonstrate that love with action.
      • With this definition, any person, of any status and background, could be loved by a being as great as our God because they assign value to the person not already present.
      • This type of connection describes the way John Glenn valued Katherine Johnson. The value he assigned to her drove him to act on that value by asking for her help.
      • And John the apostle tells us that our God is constantly valuing us as more significant than the sum of our parts, than the ugliness of our sin, than the frailty of our condition, or than the plight of our suffering.
    • God’s value or love for us is communicated by the fact that He sent His Son to help us. Jesus communicates His value for us by giving His life for us.
      • How could we who have no basis for God to value us so greatly respond to Him with anything but a commitment to live differently due to that value?
      • God’s love is like the coach telling a team that they are a championship team so often that they begin to believe that narrative and play to that level.
      • Do we trust God’s love for us so greatly that our lives have changed in response to that love?
  • This is John’s point in the last portion of verse 16. There he says “whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them”.
    • Do you notice how John uses the phrase “lives in love”?
    • We see here John making it plain that if we truly understand God’s love; and if we truly entrust ourselves to Him, then we have given God all our connections – or ways to love and value others.
      • We will value what God has said in His Word and love to please Christ.
      • We will value others precisely because God has valued others so greatly.
      • We will love to serve others and encourage them to come to know the value God has placed upon their lives.
    • But again all this comes from knowing God. The NIV does not utilize the word abide in this verse, but the Greek is clear.
      • The NIV translates this verb as “lives”, but a more literal translation would be remain or abide.
      • This word perfectly describes God, as the one who remains, unchanging from generation to generation; steadfast in His love and character.
      • On the other hand this word proves to be the opposite of our existence, since we seem to change day by day.
      • We cannot “live in love” or “live in God” without God’s supernatural help.
        • God assigns to us a value in Christ that does not change no matter how much we might disappoint Him or fail Him.
        • We abide in God’s love not only when we choose to respond to His value of us with obedience, but when we choose to come back to Him in our failures and seek forgiveness.
        • We entrust ourselves fully to God.
      • And this proves true with our connecting as well. God’s value of us helps us to connect with others in a right way.
        • We do not get on social media or make friends merely to have someone to follow and make into our idol.
        • Nor do we connect to compare ourselves with others ridiculing those we see as inferior and pining after those we see as superior.
        • We connect with others so that we can communicate the value God places on every human life.
        • By doing this we abide in God’s love.
• John now moves on in verse 17 to tell us how God’s value for us, His love perfects us for the day of judgement.
  • The whole discussion draws from the concept of abiding or living in the love of God.
    • When we know that God values us that love is perfected in us or made complete as the NIV renders it.
    • The way that love is perfected has everything to do with our confidence on judgement day.
      • In other words the purpose of God’s love for us is fulfilled when we know that we will stand secure on judgement day because of the value God places in us.
      • That word confidence in the text connects closely with the earlies ideas of knowledge and belief.
        • Notice that John says “in this world we are like Jesus”.
        • In the same way the we look forward to the day of judgement and know that God will withstand that day, and even conquer that day we can entrust ourselves to Him in Christ.
        • That is exactly how Jesus was able to leave heaven on a rescue mission, make connections with humanity, and endure the suffering of the cross.
        • He had full confidence in His connection to God the Father, and the Holy Spirit that their relationship would conquer the day of judgment and wrath upon the cross and resurrect Him unto life.
      • Confidence that places nothing on the line is cowardice. Confidence that places everything on the line is courageous.
• This leads us to our second question: Do we have enough confidence in God to place our lives in His hands?
  • John Glenn hade enough confidence in Katherine Johnson to place his life and future in her calculations. He did not have enough confidence in the IBM computers to do place his life in its calculations.
  • In a similar way do you see God as the impersonal force you cannot trust; or the person in whose hands you will place your life?
  • The answer to this question is never more apparent than when we connect with others.
    • When we come to Christ and profess faith before a church congregation, we make that connection because Christ said that we should confess him before men. But we must have a great deal of confidence in Christ to risk rejection by a whole church full of people..
    • When we connect with a small group in the Sunday School Hour and really open up our lives to them, we do so because Christ said that we should confess our sins one to another and bear one another’s burdens. But we must have a great deal of confidence in Christ to risk the shame and ridicule that can come from honestly sharing about ourselves.
    • When we share the gospel with another person or go on mission to the lost we do so because Christ said to go and make disciples. But we must have a great deal of confidence in Christ to risk the rejection by others and potential persecution that may follow.
  • If we have not connected with others, even amid the risks and threats from them;  the question really is do we have confidence in Christ?
  • How can we trust a Savior with our eternity and with judgement day that we cannot trust to help us make God-honoring connections day by day?
• That leads us finally to verse 18 in which John tells us that there is no fear in love.
  • Here the word fear is different than in 2 Timothy 1:7. 2 Timothy’s word for fear related a sense of dread or angst that resulted in a rational and emotional incapacitation.
  • But John’s word relates to the sense of a rational avoidance or respect for a particular person, place or thing.
    • For instance we might have a healthy fear of power tools, having grown up hearing that a circular saw is a “tool not a toy”. After seeing the saw cut through thick wooden boards, or even more sturdy materials with the right blade, our respect might grow. We may even have known someone who had a finger injured or cut off in an accident with a power tool. Thus we have a healthy fear of these things.
    • But a rational avoidance can also be an unhealthy fear, such as the response of person who has been beaten by an abuser for no reason. The fear of further harm, or punishment, elicits a rational, but instinctual fight or flight response.
  • This is the word John utilizes to communicate to us that these rational fears have no place in love.
• Thus we have our 3rd question. Do we know God well enough to give Him our fears?
  • The fear of man is a rational fear because we fear the consequence or “punishments” others can inflict upon us.
    • We connect with others because we fear being ostracized for not keeping up with the culture.
    • We limit our connections because we fear the ridicule and shame of showing ourselves to others.\
    • But Christ says we do not have to live this way.
  • Christ promises to love us and give us a value that he alone can assign.
    • We do not have to fear that people’s ostracism or ridicule will be the final word on our existence.
    • No punishment of people can negate the love and value God has placed upon us.

Conclusion:

• So in reality the questions all boil down to this central question. Do we know Christ and His love well enough to connect with Him?
• If we do, we can connect to others without fear.
• If we do, our eternity connection is secure.