Sermon: Love Received, Love Given

Well, good evening. And if you would, turn with me in your Bibles to the Gospel according to John, or you could use your worship guide. The text is there for you. Tonight we are going to hear from John chapter

in verses 31 through 35. But tonight we're just going to really mainly focus on one verse. That's verse 34. Before we hear God's word read and preached, let's ask for God's blessing upon it.

Our Father in heaven, you whose strength is made perfect in weakness, bless now the words that are read and spoken, and make them seeds of eternal life in the minds and souls of all who hear. We ask you in the name of Jesus, and by the power of the Holy Spirit. Amen. John chapter 13, verses 31 through 35: When he, that is Judas, had gone out, Jesus said, "Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him. If God is glorified in him, God will at once

glorify him in himself, and glorify him at once. Little children, yet a little while I am with you. You will seek me. And just as I said to the Jews, so now I also say to you, 'Where I am going, you cannot come.'

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."

Well, dear friends, one of the sweet privileges that I have as a pastor, and that Sarah has as the wife of a pastor, is to be involved with young people in their premarital counseling. It's a sweet time over a number of weeks when we spend time speaking with this young, happy couple about God's purposes for marriage. And we're helping them think about some of the principles that will help them to build a strong and sturdy and lasting marriage.

So we talk about good patterns and good habits to work out in your marriage. And we also will identify with them some potential pressure points, where if those pressure points are hit could become a problem. One of the sweetest things, and sometimes maybe the most fun times in premarital counseling is that very first session. The very first session, we will ask that young couple, "Tell us your love story. Tell us how you met one another.

Tell us how you came to date. Tell us what it's been like to get to know one another, and how you got to this point of wanting to enter marriage with one another." Usually, the best love stories include kind of all of the twists and the turns. The stumbling, and the bumbling, and the fumbling of the guy, and the girl patiently waiting upon him. But it's sweet. It's very sweet. Get to hear about the first date. You hear about who said, "I love you" first,

and you get to hear about the proposal. Occasionally, there will be, with these young couples, a discrepancy in the love story. And that is this: Who made the first move?

Was it you or was it me? And did that count or not? Who made the first move? In Christianity, in the gospel, we can speak about who made the first move between God and man, God and all of mankind. And there's only one who always initiates a relationship, always and only one who makes the first move in love, and that is God. God makes the first move toward man in love. We gather tonight on Maundy Thursday. And we're gathered tonight to remember and to celebrate

what Jesus did and what he said on the night before his death.

On that night, Jesus celebrated the Passover meal with his disciples. He gathered them up in the upper room to celebrate that feast. There he instituted the Lord's Supper. He washed his disciples' feet, and he gave them a new commandmentFor some of you, this might be the first time you're learning this. That's where we get the name Maundy from. It's a Latin word for mandatum, mandate, command, Jesus's command here in the upper room.

If we're not careful on Maundy Thursday, and we're putting too much of our attention upon that name, that title for this night, Maundy Thursday, we will miss the greatness and the grandeur and the glory and the love that we celebrate on this night.

Jesus's command is a real command. It's a command that he expects his disciples to keep. But there's more to Maundy Thursday than the mandate to Christ's disciples to love one another, and that's to see this, that Christ loves his disciples. His commandment is rooted in his own love.

There's a pattern that we find time and time again throughout the scriptures and time and time again in the gospel, and it's this: God always is the first one who moves in love, initiates in love. Anything that we do for God or for one another is to be the response, the response to what God has done for us in love. We read it earlier in 1 John 4. Says simply, "We love because he first loved us." God loves and we respond.

And that's the pattern here in Jesus's new commandment in verse 34. Do you see it? "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." I want us to consider both parts of that pattern, how the disciples first receive his love before they are to give love. So first, how has Jesus loved his disciples? Well, Jesus's entire life, his entire ministry was one of love, motivated

by love and shaped by love. That's how John describes Jesus's life and ministry in the first verse of chapter 13. John says, "Now before the Feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father," his death is imminent. His departure to the Father is imminent. Here's what John describes Jesus's life and ministry as, "having loved his own who were in the world." Jesus has loved them

all the way up until now. "Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end." Everything else that Jesus is going to do from here on out is love, motivated by love, shaped by love.

How has Jesus loved his disciples? He called them to follow him. He taught them. He provided for their material needs. He fed the 5,000. He gave his disciples food to eat. He raised Lazarus from the dead. He prayed for his disciples. And we'll even see that Jesus forgave one of his disciples at the end of John. Forgives Peter and restores him. John gives us also a lengthy illustration to show us how Jesus's life and ministry is one

of love, and that's in the foot washing earlier in the chapter of chapter 13. In the foot washing, John wants to illustrate for us love in action, Jesus's love in action. As Jesus humbly serves his disciples, he leaves no details out. Jesus rose from his place at the table. He took off his outward garments. He took to himself the servant's towel, and he wrapped it around his waist, found water in a basin, and he filled it, and then he

knelt and began to wash the feet of his disciples. He serves them in love, and it's a great act of humility and a great act of love.

But it was only a foreshadowing.

It was only a foreshadowing to a greater demonstration of love and service and humility, and that is by demonstrating his great love for us by giving himself for us on the cross. That is the great demonstration of God's love and Christ's love for us. Listen to how a few of these passages of scripture speak about the demonstration of God's love, of Christ's love for his own. Romans chapter 5For while we were still weak,

at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. One will scarcely die for a righteous person, though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die. But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Jesus himself says in John chapter 15, just across the page, "Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends." Jesus was, of course, speaking about himself.

"Just as I have loved you." And this is why Jesus calls his command a new commandment. Did you begin to maybe scratch your head a little bit when Jesus said a new commandment? New commandment? You've said this one before. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.

If we go all the way back to Leviticus, to the Pentateuch, we find there the same commandment, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." Jesus, what do you mean by a new commandment? It does not mean novel, the first time this has ever been said. Jesus is speaking of a new commandment, meaning he has given it new meaning, new significance. His example, a new example and demonstration of love increases the significance.

And he roots it in his love for his own. "Just as I have loved you."

God is always the first mover, the one who loves us first, and in Christ, he has loved us by giving himself for us, even to death on the cross. So first, we receive love, then we give love. "You also are to love one another," Jesus says.

I wonder if you have already received this love.

Jesus's love demands a response. You may reject it, or you may accept it.

If you accept it by faith, your response ought to be wholehearted appreciation and thanksgiving and love for God, motivated by what Christ has done for you. I think of that hymn, "When I survey the wondrous cross, on which the Prince of glory died.

My richest gain I count but loss, pour contempt on all my pride." He gets to the final verse. "Were the whole realm of nature mine," if I owned everything, absolutely everything in the world, it all belonged to me, and I were to give it as a present to God, it would be far too small. "Love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all." That's the sort of response that Jesus's love demands. Wholehearted appreciation

and thanksgiving to him, motivated by his love for us.

You also are to love one another, respond to his love, and then reflect his love. That's what Jesus is telling us. "Just as I have loved you, so you should love one another." I've given you an example, not just in my foot washing, but in my cross, to reflect my love to others, and that's Jesus' command.

Sarah and I and our kids were driving home the other night. One of those beautiful spring sunsets was setting over the fields of MSU and over the farms. On our way home, on Hagedorn, heading for Jolly, there's a marshy swamp area, and it fills up with water from time to time. It's filled up right now because of the spring rains.

It's rather gross, honestly. It's a swamp.

But you wouldn't have known it on this night, because as we were driving by, the beautiful shades of yellow and pink and orange and purple from the sky were reflecting off of this swampy water, and that was all you could see. All you could see was the beautiful colors of the sunset upon the waters. It was reflecting the sunset. Believers, you are like that pond.

Maybe not so ugly, not so swampy, but you're like that pond, reflecting the love of Christ to the world, so that what people see in you is Christ. What they see in you is his loveWe mirror Christ's love to others, and then to the world. How do we do this? I want to give you a few thoughts from 1 John 3. A few thoughts on how we do this, how we reflect Christ's love to others.

In 1 John 3:16, John says, "By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us." So again, here we have this pattern. Christ lays down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.

So how do we love the brothers? We sacrifice like Christ. You can sacrifice your preferences in favor of others. Your time is not just for you. You can sacrifice it for the good of others. And your resources, the things that you have, can be sacrificed for the benefit of others. We serve like Christ, and Christ knelt down at the disciples' feet, and when he hung upon the cross, what spot did Christ take but the place of a servant?

He fulfilled the roles that were lowly and menial, and we can serve like him. Serve one another like him. Sign up for the church work day that's coming up, and you pick some weeds, a lowly task, done in love for Christ and for your brother and sister in Christ. You serve the least among you by signing up to serve in nursery, or to be a buddy with a kid in need, or to be a volunteer at VBS in the summer. We sacrifice and we serve like Christ.

1 John 3:17, "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?"

Brothers and sisters, it is so easy to be closed-hearted to your brothers and sisters, and even to those who are in need. All it takes is this: Somebody else can do it. Somebody else will do it. I don't need to.

We see our brothers and sisters in physical need and material need, so we make them a meal, or give them a seat at your table in your home and provide them a meal. Somebody needs a place to stay, you give them a room and a pillow to lay their head. Someone needs rides to and from church or to and from treatments. You offer to give them a ride. There are those with emotional needs. Lend a listening ear or befriend a lonely brother or sister,

those who might be forgotten by the majority of the church.

And there are those with spiritual needs as well. Someone who needs to be forgiven for the way that they have offended you,

and so you forgive. You keep no record of wrongs. It shouldn't be that there are enemies in the church between brothers and sisters in Christ, but sometimes we act like it, that we're at enmity, at odds one with another. How can you love your enemies in the church? You forgive them. And you can pray. Pray for the spiritual needs of others alongside of them. That's how we can mirror Christ's love to others and to the world.

And then 1 John 3:18, "Let us not love in word or talk, but in deed and in truth." Love is not something we merely say, "I love you." It is something we live. It's something we demonstrate. It's something we act. Love is an action. And here we follow Christ's example again. Jesus humbled himself. He washed feet. He died on the cross. He is our pattern, our example. And did you notice what happens when we do this, brothers and

sisters? When we love just as Christ has loved us.

Verse 35 says that we will show Christ's love for us to the world. All people will know us by our love.

This happened in the early church with the first disciples. The early church Tertullian, he was an early theologian in the early church. Tertullian was his name. He appealed to the testimony of pagans for a defense of the gospel. It's not something you see every day. Appeal to the pagans, those who don't know the love of Christ or love Christ, appealing to them, and here's why. Here was his great appeal, his defense for the truth of the gospel.

The pagans were saying of Christians, "See how these Christians love one another. Is there something to it?"

Christ's love mirrored, reflected in his people, in the church. That is Christ's commandment. Love one another, rooted in his love for you, just as I have loved you. Let's pray. Our Father in heaven, we thank you for your great love for us and your great love for us in Christ. We thank you that in love you have sent him into the world to be the savior for sinners. We look to him not only as our example, but as our savior.

We need his blood to cover all of our sins, and we also want to follow his example. And so, by the help of your Holy Spirit, we ask, oh Lord, that you would help us to love one another just as we have been loved. We ask this in the name of Christ and for the glory of Christ. Amen.