Love that Belongs to God

Love that Belongs to God
1 John 4:712

Sunday Afternoon Service
7 Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. 10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. 11 Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.

We can often find the people who are blessed as Christians around us. One of those people is one of my best friend, who is a pastor now and whom I studied with at the Goryeo Seminary. And his daughter is going to be getting married on the coming August 15. The thing is, her husband, or the pastor’s son-in-law, is from a very rich family compare to his.

What do I want to say? Her husband’s father is holding a hospital at Pyeong’taek, Gyeong’gi-do. Husband’s mother is also holding a hospital at Gang’nam in Seoul. Two sisters of that husband are doctors, and the husband himself is also a doctor.Moreover, the husband, who graduated from Seoul National University, is going to go to the US to study next year. Also, his grandfather was so much influential person in Jin’hae, Gyeong-nam, that at his funeral, memorial flowers from the high government officials were filling the funeral site.

What do I want to say? I wondered how come my best friend could have this good family as his new family. One thing in my mind was that he was a pastor who really loved his church.When he started his ministry 17 years ago, the church was in a very bad situation. The believers were divided into groups fighting with one another. Once a pastor started his ministry, he barely endured 2 years. The church was not growing; actually, when a new person come, it just gave pain to the church. The church got worse and worse day by day.

But after my friend started his ministry, the church began to be calmed down smoothly. Then, it started growing steadily, overcoming the division among the believers. Praise the Lord!After the 1st year of his ministry, a policy coordination meeting was held. Every year, the yearly budget is set at that meeting. The payment of a pastor is also to be decided at that meeting. Whether someone is a pastor or not, it is a custom to set a salary according to the price rise rate.
But the payment of a pastor itself is quite a sensitive thing. So sometimes, it becomes the main point of the meeting. After ministering at the church in hard time for a year, my friend opened his mouth and said about his own payment.
Everyone were surprised since the pastor mentioned such a sensitive topic. Moreover, there were some who even worried of the pastor asking too much of the payment.

However, my friend insisted not to raise the payment. It was because he was feeling uncomfortable raising his payment when the church was going through a hard time. He said he didn’t need to worry about his life, because his wife is working as a missionary, too, at a school.The reason that his wife could work was that one of the requirement of a pastor of that church was for his wife not to work in that church. That was because the previous pastor’s wife caused some problems and conflicting. That’s how the wife of my friend could work normally.

Anyway, thinking of the church, my friend decided to raise up that church, and as a part of that decision, he decided to freeze his salary.He wanted to raise up that church. When we look at the people who are not blessed, we can find out the common point: they are always at the center of the problems. They keep on make conflict with other believers, starting to envy them, and then eventually leave the church.Church! We should live on this Earth getting the blessings from God. God raised Church as a pathway of His blessings to the believers. God blesses the believers through His Church.

What we really should not forget attending church is that there should never, never be conflict among the believers. If there happen to be any conflict, we should resolve right away. That is the secret of getting blessed.
This story is not just about my friend, but also the father of his daughter’s husband. He is an elder, and his family was the foundation member of the church he is attending. Serving the church with love, if it was about the church, he didn’t hesitate to serve and obey.

Moreover, when it was revealed that a pastor had done a serious crime, he guided the pastor to move to another church naturally, avoiding the possibility of the confusion in that church, so that the church could remain stable.
Yes. The believers are chosen to be blessed by God. That’s why it is written in Numbers, “I have received a command to bless; he has blessed, and I cannot change it.”

What does it mean by, the commend to bless? What God is interested in is the church. Church, in the Old Testament notion, is tabernacle. And Psalm 11:4 says,
The Lord is in his holy temple;
He observes everyone on earth;
If we want to be blessed, the church should be the center of our life. Church is where the believers become one body, glorifying God together. Therefore,the believers should help and guide the first comers to adjust.
Praise the Lord!

And God made pastors in charge of the Church. It’s important part; unless, you might misunderstand. In the Revelation, it says that there are seven churches, and the seven messengers are in charge of those. Each church has its own pastor, and that pastor is in charge of that church.

What is the role of a pastor? It is to guide the believers who came to the church into the Truth. It is to guide, raise, and take care of the believer so that they might live according to the Word of God and according to the Will of God.
If a believer does not listen to his pastor, there is something wrong. Moreover, it is to kick away the blessing from God. Galatians 6:6 says, “The one who receives instruction in the word should share all good things with their instructor.” When you respect a pastor and live according to his teaching, you can live blessed life as a believer.
When the believer listen to the pastor and get lessons from the Bible, they can live the blessed life as the children of God. For example, in my office, there is a tree like this in the hall here. Do you know who made that? I, and our brother Gabriel and Sugadth (수갓드) made it together.

As you might thought, last week was the hottest week ever since Korea has started measuring the weather. Especially, on Saturday, which was 31st, it was unbelievably hot, and the discomfort index was the highest. In that weather, I explained slowly to those brothers why we should make a tree in the office.
I explained them that our church, unlike others, is which serves foreign workers, marriage immigrants, and centers in difficulty. And I explained them the reason why they are visiting here: to solve the problems they have and also to get help.

I mentioned that if we offer them who come here to get helped a better environment, then they would get more peaceful. Then I asked if they could help me with that: “I can’t do it by myself. And could you help me since you are staying at the shalrt It must be an opportunity to serve the church, and an opportunity to the blessing from God.”

They agreed pleasantly. So we could make the tree together. It was not an easy work. But the reason they could say ‘yes’ was that they have experienced the love of God staying here at the  sharat, and also that they thought it was a chance to repay that love.It was by their own decision that they could agree with that and make the tree together. So we can say they are blessed. However, if they refused even after that explanation, it couldn’t be the blessing. Praise the Lord!

Let’s think about it together with the story of my friend and his new family in-law. What is God’s interest? That is the Church. God said that God’s people is going to be the blessing, through the Church.So God blesses us through Church. My friend knew that; he knew what God wants to do through the Church.Let’s read the verse 7 and 8 from today’s scripture altogether.7 Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.

The reason that my friend and the elder could be blessed that much is because they raised the church, and also because they understood that the love of God is the source of the church. When we look at the church members around, while some have no problem with business or health, there are not so few people who come to the church because they have lots of problem.Then, let’s say they come to the church, to solve that problem. The goal of them is to solve the problem.They come to the church to solve the problem. But the thing is, that problem is what God has allowed, so that they could be get saved, not just their problems but more of that.

In the story of Jesus, lots of people came to Jesus to solve their problems. But the thing is, a lot of them became the blessing through those problems, even to the saving grace.Although at first they came to God to get their problem solved, in that process they met God.How did they meet God? Although they came to Jesus to get their problem solved, they met God in the process of that.By someone, God shined on them, and they met God thanks to that.

Let’s look at the verse 11 and 12.
11 Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.
Amen.

People want to meet and see God with their own eyes. That is common not only in the Christianity, but also in other religions. However, since God is Spirit, we can’t see Him by our eyes. Nevertheless, doesn’t God know that the people want to see and meet God? Doesn’t He, the almighty God, know it?If God says He does not know, it is against His own characteristics. Therefore, it is right to conclude that God knows people desire to see Him.
And God, who knew it, came to this Earth with a body. That was Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ was God who came on this Earth.

In the Gospels and other books of the Bible, there are several reasons why Jesus came to the Earth. One of those reasons is that God is love. Jesus, to show that God is love, acted love.He showed us by Himself what the love of God is by taking care of the poor and the neglected, curing the weak and the sick, feeding the hungry, and caring the jailed.
And that love came to here, across the time, region, and nations, through apostles and disciples, and their disciples, and so on. If I ask you, ‘where is God,’ how would you answer?

Let’s read verse 12 once again.
12 No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.
Amen.
No one has seen God; however, just as Jesus came to this Earth and acted out how we should act in love by Himself, if we live acting the love Jesus did, we can find and see God.
The verse 11 says this in more detail.
11 Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
Amen.

It is said, “since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.” Let’s read it now in the English translation.
11 Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
Amen.

We also ought to love one another. It is said we ought to love another. What does ought to mean? It means,
1. must do something, it is natural to do something
2. is to do something
3. (without wonder) somebody will do something
4. something must be something
In other words, ought to imposes obligation. It might sound harsh to you, but the mature understanding of the obligation is to have one’s view on the existence correct.
What does it mean? It being obligation for the believers to act love by loving other is that one of the reason God created man was to reveal God Himself.

God is spiritual being, who cannot be seen. But was He invisible from the beginning? No. Right after the Creation, we could see God in the Garden of Eden. It is said that Adam and Eve roamed around the Garden of Eden together with God. They were face to face.

However, after the Sin came in, Adam couldn’t see God directly anymore. Nevertheless, beyond expelling Adam from the Garden because of his Sin, God gave Adam the opportunity to see God who cannot be seen; God gave Adam the opportunity to see God who is Spirit.

Adam sinned. God had said, “You surely will die.” But to give Adam to live forever, He expelled Adam from the Garden of Eden. Why? Unless, Adam was to live forever, in the state of Sin.God expelled Adam so that Adam could live forever. By expelling Adam, God was keeping that promise. And Adam realized that love of God.
Yes. Church, how do you show the invisible God to the people? That is by acting love in your life. If you act love, then it itself is the evidence that God is love.

And also it becomes the evidence for your own existence. To act love is to agree with God’s Creation. I pray in Jesus’ name so that you might realize this precious truth.