Steven Furtick - It Works Both Ways (04/12/2017)
In 1 John 4:7-12, Pastor Steven Furtick preaches that God's love flows both ways: He first loved us by sending His Son as the atoning sacrifice, and we complete that love by loving one another. The cross works vertically (God's love down to us) and horizontally (our love out to others), creating true leverage for transformation that the law could never achieve. We must first receive God's love to give it effectively, making His love visible in the world.
God's Love in 1 John 4:7-12
If you have your Bible, I want you to go to 1st John chapter 4, verses 7 through 12. A really great passage on the subject of love. Which I think we can all agree is the substratum of our faith. This idea of God's love and our love. And they come together here in this passage in a way that I want to share with you.
And just a short, simple message today. 1st John chapter 4, verses 7 through 12 gives it to us very simply. Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.
This is how God showed us his love among us. He sent his one and only son into the world that we might live through him. This is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.
Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God, but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.
Yes. Yeah, that's a good scripture when you don't even have to say anything about it. And it's just so plain how he puts it. It's not theoretical. It's not abstract.
It Works Both Ways
And I want to speak specifically about one component of God's love today that will hopefully be really clear to you as I talk about it. And I want to talk about God's love from this perspective. It works both ways. It works both ways. That's my message title for today. It works both ways.
Touch the person on either side of you and tell them it works both ways. Yes, it does. It works both ways.
A good sermon works both ways. You know where the preacher is sharing the word and then the people are responsive. A good worship service works both ways. It's not just people on a stage singing to you, but it's all of us giving praise to God.
But it's got to go both ways. Any good relationship has to work both ways. I remember apologizing to Pastor Mickey Eric a few months ago that I don't call him more. You know, he was a foundational person in my life, but I don't ever talk to him anymore. And I was just feeling so horrible. I'm sorry I don't call you. I'm sorry I don't call you.
He said, hey, Bo, don't apologize to me. That phone worked both ways last time I checked it. I could have called you just as easily as you could have called me.
Now, it is a weird thing if you've ever been in a relationship that was not reciprocal. Amen. Have you ever been in a relationship that wasn't reciprocal? Do you need me to define reciprocal? Because every hand should have gone up. Especially if you are a parent. Your hand should have shot up. Like you didn't even race it. It just went up.
Oh, what was that? Somebody said before me and Holly had Elijah, he just turned 10 yesterday. Amen. Double digits, y'all. Pray. Somebody said, hey, don't worry about all the sacrifice of having kids because they give back so much more than they take. That was a lie. In case you're thinking about getting pregnant, if anybody tells you that, they're not honest. It's not true. They take way more than they give back. It's true.
In fact, it was in this very auditorium at our Blakeney campus where I was given some relationship advice just this week. The people that were in here are laughing because it was an accidental thing. I was just going back to talk to some people and I won't name them, but there's some people that might or might not serve on the staff or on the worship team or something like that.
And the idea that I was talking about to them was about the man pursuing the woman in a relationship. And I didn't start giving the advice. They asked for it. In fact, they begged for it. Somebody walked by and said, give them some advice about their relationship, some pastoral relationship advice.
And I was like, well, what seems to be the problem? I mean, tell me where it hurts. And the idea was, you know, that the girl in the relationship was trying to get the guy to want to do more stuff with her. And I'm like, you know, if you don't want to be around you during the dating phase, you'll work that out. And it's a good relationship, I found out.
But I was just trying to use it as a thing to say that reciprocation is so important in any relationship, but yet in any given relationship, there's typically one initiator. There's one initiator.
And I just believe this could be old school. I don't know. You don't have to feel this way. But I believe that in a romantic relationship, that a man, if he wants to be a real man, should initiate when it comes to romance, when it comes to love, even when it comes to service. I don't always do that, but I believe that.
There's a difference. So I'm just using it, whether you're talking about how the earth works or how relationship works, it works both ways, or it doesn't work at all. If I always do and you never say thank you, it stops working at all.
God's Love Is Initiated by Him
Yet we see John painting a picture that on the surface is very lopsided about this relationship between us and God that is anything but reciprocal, yeah? This is love. Not that we love God, but that he just flat loved us.
And it's appropriate that John would write these words. You know why? Of all the disciples that Jesus had that could have written these words to explain to us about God's love and our love, John was the perfect candidate, and there's a very specific reason. Do you know the reason? It has to do with the nickname that John gave himself.
Usually, other people nickname you. John was bold enough to give himself a nickname. He called himself something very interesting. Now, if you've never seen this before, it's going to kind of make you think that John was full of himself, but I'm going to show you why I think he felt this way about himself.
In John chapter 19, verse 25, it says that after the crowds had scattered from the cross because they realized that Jesus wasn't just going to keep feeding them fish and chips, but that he was ultimately marching toward a destination of sacrifice, that there was just a little group there, and it's some usual suspects.
You know, it says in John 19:25, that near the cross of Jesus stood his mother. Makes sense. His mother's sister, Mary, the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. Let's hear it for the women. Don't you think women are better at love? In some ways, than men are? Not too loud. At least in expressing it. I know it's a stereotype, but it's all these women.
And then, in the gospel of John, which was written by the same guy that wrote the passage I read from the book of First, he says he was there, but he doesn't say his name. Instead of his name, he says that there were all of these people, and Jesus looked at them, and he saw them, and the disciple whom he loved.
You know, me, the one he loved. Now, I have, at various times in my children's lives, told each of them, separately, that they were my favorite child. Dare you to judge me. I'll pull them aside, and I'll tell them, I'll tell them they're the smartest. I'll tell them they're the best looking. They have all three heard that they are the best at all things that you can categorize from me at different points in time. It's just the way I do it.
And if you read the scriptures, John really was kind of like in this special circle as Peter, James, and John, and I don't know this to be the case, but I just wonder if perhaps Jesus pulled each of them aside at different points in the time they were following him and said, hey, you know you're the one I love. There's other guys I love.
I wonder if Jesus told all of them that, but John was the only one who really believed it. And so when he speaks about himself, I could preach a whole sermon on this, but he calls himself, in fact, he calls himself, if you want the technical word, he calls himself John the Beloved.
Beloved – Receive to Give
It's interesting then that when you read 1 John chapter 4 verse 7, if you read it in the translation that I memorized it in the New King James, when he starts telling the church about how they are to love, he uses a word. He says, beloved, beloved, let us love one another. Beloved.
He's speaking to them, calling them according to how he sees himself, according to how he believed Jesus saw him. And this is how life is. This is how life is.
Let me see that notepad there. Thank you. I'm just going to show a visual of this. He calls himself what? The Beloved. Yeah. And he writes to the church and he calls them beloved.
And we think about this. When we talk to people about the commands that God gives, we tell them things like be holy. We tell them that they need to be better, be pure. But maybe the first command that God gives us isn't be holy or be better or be pure. But what if it's just as simple as, be loved. Be loved.
Touch three people. Tell them, be loved. Be loved. Some of us are very, very poor at receiving love. So it's no wonder when we're called upon to give it, we come up short.
And I want to explain a principle to you that applies to love, that applies to money, that applies to skills. You can't give what you never got. I mean, try it with your ATM card.
In fact, I need right now, I need $435. I need exactly $435. And I'm going to get it. I need it right now. I need it. I need $435. Joanna, I need $435. Joanna, come to the stage. I need $435. Joanna, I don't need much. I just need $435.
Joanna's awesome, y'all. Joanna, Joanna's awesome. And I need $435. And she has $435. And the reason she has $435 is because during the last song that we were singing, she was sitting behind me. And right before I came on the stage, I handed her my wallet. I didn't say anything to her, but I tapped her. She was in a worship moment. I said, and handed her my wallet.
And I came up on the stage because I knew at this point in my sermon, I would need something. But I knew that I couldn't expect from her what she never received to begin with. And so when I started talking about $435, I saw her start to reach because she realized in that moment what we didn't work out ahead of time is, Oh, the reason that he handed that to me before he went up there, the reason that he gave it to me before he went up there is the exact amount that I called for.
Let's count 50, 100, 150, 200, 220, 240, 260, 280, 320, 340, 360, 380, 390, 400, 410, 415, 420, 425, 430, 435. How could that be the exact amount that I needed? Because I knew I would need it. And that's why I gave it to you. Not to keep, but to bring to me. Thanks, Joe.
Some of y'all thought that illustration was going to end with me blessing her. No, I need that money for the next service.
But look, John says the first thing you must realize about love is where it comes from. And he said, beloved, that's you. Let us love one another. Why? Because love comes from God. That money came from me.
God will not ask you to give love that you never got. He gives it to you. How many of you have somebody in your life that is difficult to love? How many of you looked at somebody this morning while you were brushing your teeth that was difficult to love?
See, I got a real simple solution for you. If you have somebody in your life that's difficult to love and you don't know how to do it, ask God how he does it, because he does it with you. You can clap or look confused. But it's true all the same.
But if you don't know how to be loved, you'll never know how to give love. You will act out of your frustration toward yourself and you will dismantle every relationship in your path because you don't know how to be loved. To be loved. To be loved by God. To be loved unconditionally.
Normally, some of you have never been loved like that by a person that you could see. It's kind of hard for you to believe that a God that you can't see could love you with a love that no one can take away.
It's hard for you to give to others what you never got. God, and so maybe the greatest prayer you could pray in your life right now is God, show me how to be loved. How to be loved by you. Because my dad didn't show me love like he should have. Or my mom didn't show me love. Or my first husband or my first wife didn't show me love.
So I need you to give me what you're asking for me to give to the world.
God's Love Shown by What He Sent
And this has something interesting about God's love. It says that God showed his love by what he sent. Those two words grab my attention in the passage. I'm just Bible teaching today, okay? I'm just teaching this little passage.
And it says that God showed his love. I think that's verse 9. He showed his love by what he sent. He's showed by what he sent.
When a woman is carrying a baby, we have a phrase that we use. We say, she's starting to... And the proof of what she has on the inside is the change that we start to notice on the outside. She's starting to show.
I don't know if it will offend them, but turn to your neighbor and say, you're starting to show. When you get this kind of love... I think I just started a fight. When you get this kind of love... We're talking spiritually now. When you get this kind of love, it starts to show.
I preached on Father's Day called, it's in your hands. It's in your hands. I was talking about race relations. And I was talking about the role of the church in this. That it starts in our hearts, but then it manifests in our hands.
And I knew while I was preaching this that a few weeks later, we would get the opportunity not just to hear a sermon about love, but we would be standing on the brink of love week, and we would get to show the love that we claim that we have.
That's why I love this week in the year, man. Because our love starts to show. We don't just start to sing about our love, but we start to show our love. And so it turns into something. It turns into something powerful. It turns into something strong. It turns into something effective.
Leverage of Love Over Law
I had a business class when I was in college, and the first session of the business class, the professor wrote one word on the board. He said, business comes down to one thing, ladies and gentlemen, and he wrote a word on the board, and the word he wrote was this, leverage.
Leverage. Business is all about leverage. Negotiation is all about leverage. You see all these political ads that they're starting to run already? We only have 16 months more of it, so it's going to be fine.
You see all these things that they're finding about what he did in 1972, and as an embryo, his mother was a smoker, and so he's not fit to be a president. All of this is people looking for leverage, looking for leverage, and that's the way business operates, and that's the way politics operate.
And you know what? For a lot of us, we've transferred those principles by which the world operates, and we've projected those motives onto God. And so we silently believe... you don't say this, but you silently believe that God is looking for leverage against you.
Just like you sit across the table from someone in a negotiation, and you try to find out where are their weak points. What do they really want? A lot of being a parent, I found out, is about looking for leverage to use against your kids.
You know, just... I was being honest. Like, pay attention to what they're into so you can take it away when they don't act right. Am I right about it? Oh, you like Minecraft. Great. Good to know. You know? Mm-hmm. So what's your favorite thing to do, baby? Oh, you like Frozen. Okay. I'll cut off every braid in this house the next time. You see what I'm saying? You're just looking for leverage.
God is a better father than me. The way he runs the universe is interesting because he had all the leverage. It was called the law. The law. The law that we couldn't fulfill. His perfect righteous requirement that we couldn't measure up to.
He had all the leverage in the world, but he did something so strange. He walked away from his leverage when he sent his son. Paul would say, in Romans, that what the law was powerless to do, in that it was weakened by the sinful nature.
What does that mean? The law wasn't enough leverage to change a human heart. Because try as we might, we could not keep the law. And a lot of us try to change our lives, and this is how we do it, and this is our view of religion, and this is our view of God.
We want to use the leverage of the law to change us. The leverage of what we ought to be. The leverage of what we're not. And then that produces guilt, which produces short-term change, but it's not enough leverage for lasting change.
I'm going to say that again because God is all over what I just said. The law is not enough leverage for lasting change. Not in our hearts and not in our world.
There's a lot of talk right now about how the church is going to change the world. You know, the world is going to hell, and what are we going to do about it? What's the church going to do about it?
Well, if we're taking our orders from headquarters, we won't use the leverage of the law to try to change the world because the law was powerless to do it. So you can crank on that leverage all you want to, but it's not enough leverage to change your heart. How's it going to be enough leverage to change the world?
God says, I want to use a different kind of leverage. I want to use the leverage of love. because love will take you way further than the law ever could.
I'll prove it to you. Let's say your child is in a horrible accident. Let's say they bust their head wide open on the monkey bars and they fall off the monkey bars and monkey bars are like 30 feet high. I'm making this an extreme example and they fall down and they bust their head wide open and you scoop them up and put them in the car to get them to the emergency room.
And on the way to the emergency room, every sign you see says, uh, speed limit. How much attention do you pay to the numbers beneath the speed limit in that moment? Those numbers mean nothing to you.
Why? Because somebody that you love is in trouble. And in that moment, any parent will break the law for the sake of love. Any human parent will break the law for the sake of love.
And what will really turn your heart to God is not when you hear his laws, which were given for our good, by the way, but they were powerless because there wasn't enough leverage in our action to keep the law.
So what God did when he sent his son, and this is why we get excited in church. And this is why tears fill our eyes when we think about Jesus. And this is why the gospel is still good news in the world today because God broke the law for love.
I said to every sinner, God broke the law for love. I mean that he scooped you up in his arms. I mean that he's carrying you in his grace. I mean that what the law was powerless to do, and that it was weakened by the sinful nature God did by sending his son in the likeness of a sinful man.
All that leverage and yet God knows the truth that the only real leverage is love. You sign legal documents to get married, but if the love dies, the legal documents don't keep you in the same house.
Love Completes the Cross
When I first started learning to play guitar, I was learning music theory, scales, chords. I was nine years old when Harold Staley picked up an electric guitar and he noticed that I wasn't very interested in doing my lessons.
So he taught me the power chord, the power chord. That's the one in the five. And he plugged a Fender Stratocaster into a Fender Twin. And he hit a pedal called a distortion pedal. And he showed me a power chord. And he turned it up to nine. His parents weren't home. And he turned it up to nine. And he shook the windows.
And he played the riff from the song by Poison called Talk Dirty to Me. Probably not the best spiritual influence on a nine-year-old, but that was the song. And when I heard the sound of those chords through that amp, I fell in love with the guitar.
And from that moment on, I wanted to learn. Because now the guitar was something I loved. I didn't want to learn it when I didn't love it. I said, I didn't want to learn it when I didn't love it. I didn't want to learn it till I loved it.
And if we as a church are going to make a difference in the world, it's not going to be through getting them to learn about a God that they don't love. And they can't love a God that they don't see. That's what John said.
Yeah, I'm trying. This is how God showed his love. He sent. He sent. He sent. And the disciple who stood near the cross, the only one who stayed near, he wasn't the loudest, but he was the most loved.
Peter was the loudest. Peter was loud, but John was loved. I noticed at sporting events, sometimes the people who are the loudest are the first to leave.
I sat beside a woman one time at a Panthers game. She didn't even know the players' names, but she was yelling at all of them. She'd say, Receiver! Receiver! Just pounding on the seat. Receiver, catch the ball! Coaches! Coaches! Didn't know anybody's name. Third corner, we were down 17. She left. Came back and won the game too, but serves her right.
The loudest ones, I noticed it at a football game and I noticed it in church. That sometimes the loudest ones are the first to leave.
Yeah. The ones that say, I love my church. But I could find out how much you loved your church, not by how you say it. But if I got a good look at your giving statement. Because you've never loved anything in your life that you didn't support. Come on!
And so John stood at that cross and... I don't have any record of what he said, but... That he was there. And that he was loved. And he stood with the family.
And Jesus told him something kind of crazy to mention in here. Like in a moment that's this dramatic. He said, to the disciple whom he loved. Woman, here is your son.
It's weird. It's theologically problematic. Nobody can figure out... You know, Jesus had brothers. So why did John have to take care of Mary? Nobody knows. There's a lot of theories out there.
But it's something interesting about what he was doing. And it relates to the cross, which of course is the ultimate symbol of God's love. Can we agree that the cross is the place where he proved his love once and for all?
So if he doesn't give me a job when I ask for it, he still loves me because I saw it at the cross. If he doesn't give me a spouse when I ask for it, I know he loves me because he showed it at the cross. That's the place where his love came down.
It said that God sent his love. He showed his love. It says that love comes from God. It came down. And I believe it still flows down today. I believe it flows down to the vilest heart. I believe it flows down to the most broken addict. I believe it flows down to the lowest situation. I believe it flows down to the most hopeless aspects of our humanity.
I believe that love flows down on the cross, because of what Jesus did on the cross. But I was talking this week about the cross, and Amy, you reminded me of something that I knew, but I had forgotten it.
That when Jesus was carrying his cross, from an historical perspective, we have a picture of him carrying the whole cross. But the way that they would crucify people in Jesus' day was a very efficient process. And if you were to carry the whole cross, it would have been too heavy for you to make the journey.
What they would do, then, is that they would, in antiquity, they would put the stake in the ground, which made the vertical beam of the cross. And the criminal, or the accused in this case, the innocent, in the case of Jesus, would carry the cross beam.
So, again, I don't mean to insult your intelligence, and I know that my art skills are lacking, but I just want to draw this out for you the way I saw it. That when Jesus was going to the cross, this part was already in place. And what he was carrying was this part. This part.
Why is that significant? Because in our world today, I believe that God has already done this part by the death of Jesus Christ for anyone that will believe on him. God's got that part covered. For anyone who will call on his name, you can be made right with God.
I know this is simple preaching, but it's strong preaching. To know that no other person has to bring you to God. You can come to God when you call on him. You can be saved in Jesus' name. The moment that you turn, a connection happens.
A connection happened at the cross where humanity was made right with heaven on the cross. But Jesus makes a connection going the other way. And John says, John the Beloved, he says, that until you love one another, the cross is not complete.
It's strong. It's the kind of strong where people shudder a little bit. Because I was taught that Jesus paid it all. And he did. And I was taught that everything I need is in the cross. And it is.
But John brings up a dynamic that we need to discuss. Because he says that people can't see God but they see us. They can't see God but they see us.
And look at verse 12. It's a statement so strong that theologians try to water it down because the implications of what it might suggest have such a gravitational pull.
He said that no one has seen God but if we everybody say we say it loud say we but if we love one another. God lives in us and his love is complete in us. In us.
Without our love for one another the love of God just looks like this. But it takes this to make a cross and that's what Jesus was carrying and that's why he turned to his mother and he turned to John and he said I'm taking care of this but I'm leaving you to take care of this.
And that's what he says to the church in 2015 in Charlotte North Carolina and Roanoke Virginia and Raleigh Durham And Toronto, Canada, God says, I'm taking care of this. But now you've got to carry this. You've got to carry this.
Jesus said, take up your cross and follow me. What's he talking about? This part. This part. This part. The cross is only effective when it works. It works both ways.
It works both ways. Touch everybody you can reach and say, it works both ways. It's got to come down. The love of God has to come down. But what comes down must go out.
You feel the power of what I'm proclaiming today? I'm telling you that God has done his part and sent his son and given his love. And he's driven the stake. But he's given us this to carry.
And what we do when we love others, when we love our world, when we serve our cities, we make the love of God complete. We take this. We take this. And we turn it into this.
It's got to work both ways. You can't give me what you haven't got. So you got to be loved. Give back. I pay you enough. She watches our kids.
Martha was so busy trying to show her love to Jesus while Mary was receiving love that Jesus taught a lesson about it. This is a little story that's in the Bible that contrast how some of us are really poor at this.
Like Martha. We don't connect. And so we're always giving out. Giving out. Giving out. Giving out. Giving out. And then we give out. And now I gave out. Giving out.
What goes down must go out. But it can't go out if it doesn't come down. Got to come down to go out. They say what goes up. Well, what comes down must go out. Or the cross is not complete.
We get to be a part of completing the the cross in our communities this week.
The Power of Love's Leverage
Stand to your feet if you're with me. Because I believe what the world needs to see right now is this. This. This. This. This. This. This.
That it works both ways. And when both are working together. Ooh, that's some powerful leverage right there. I mean you talk about leverage. When the cross is working both ways.
When you have the love of God coming down to humanity. And the love of humanity going out to the world. That cross. That love has enough leverage to open a tomb.
Man, you talk about leverage. God said, watch this. What the law couldn't do because the tablets didn't have enough leverage. I'm going to do with love.
And I believe love can make dead things come alive. I really do. I've been preaching this for 10 years. And I've seen that when God does this. And the church does this.
Come on. How many know there's power in the cross? How many know there's power in the cross? How many believe in the power of the cross? Give him praise if you believe it.
How many believe in the cross? Give him praise if you believe it. How many believe in the cross? Give him praise if you believe it. How many believe in the cross? Give him praise if you believe in the cross? How many believe in the cross? Give him praise if you believe in the cross?