Overcoming Scarcity with Kingdom Love.

I'm excited to be preaching today. This message was the one that was meant for two weeks ago when we all got food poisoning. Apparently this is just the day that it was supposed to be preached. I don't know, like, who the Lord was like, this person needs to be here and they're not here yet. So you're all going to get food poisoning until. No, just kidding. I don't think God actually works like that. But anyways, I'm excited to preach again. It's been a minute.

We're going to be in 1 John chapter 3, reading and studying verses 11 through 24. So if you have your Bibles and you want to follow along, you can do that or we'll have the scripture on the screen.

For this is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another. Do not be like Cain who belonged to the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own actions were evil and his brother's were righteous. Do not be surprised, my brothers and sisters, if the world hates you. We know that we have passed from death to life because we love each other. Anyone who does not love remains in death. Anyone who hates a brother or sister is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life residing in him. This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person? Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth. This is how we know that we belong to the truth and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence. If our hearts condemn us, we know that God is greater than our hearts and he knows everything. So dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God and receive from him anything we ask because we keep his commands and do what pleases him. And this is his command: to believe in the name of his son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us. The one who keeps God's commands lives in him and he in them. And this is how we know that he lives in us: We know it by the spirit he gave us.

1 John 3:11-24

The lie of scarcity

Our big so what, the one thing to remember today is that you can freely love because there is more than enough. And then the now what, which we'll get to as we go on, is practice generosity, serving, giving, loving, above and beyond.

We're going to walk through this text verse by verse, going over verse 11 again, where it says this is the message that you've heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. And then in verse 12 it says, do not be like Cain. Don't be like Cain. It's important every time we see these things in the New Testament to recognize that the authors were writing to a context and an audience that when they would have read that they wouldn't need to explain everything that happened with Cain because everybody would have known. But for us sometimes we have to go back and remind ourselves of what happened with Cain.

Let me read that from Genesis chapter 4:

Adam made love to his wife Eve and she became pregnant and gave birth to Cain. She said, "With the help of the Lord, I have brought forth a man." Later, she gave birth to his brother Abel. Now Abel kept flocks and Cain worked the soil. In the course of time, Cain brought some of the fruits of the soil as an offering to the Lord. And Abel also brought an offering, fat portions from some of the firstborn of his flock. The Lord looked with favor on Abel and his offering, but on Cain and his offering, he did not look with favor. So Cain was very angry and his face was downcast. Then the Lord said to Cain, "Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door. It desires to have you, but you must rule over it." Now Cain said to his brother Abel, "Let's go out to the field." While they were in the field, Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him. So the Lord said to Cain, "Where is your brother Abel?" "I don't know," he replied. "Am I my brother's keeper?" The Lord said, "What have you done? Listen, your brother's blood cries out to me from the ground. Now you are under a curse and driven from the ground, which opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood from your hand. When you work the ground, it will no longer yield its crops for you. You will be a restless wanderer on the earth." Cain said to the Lord, "My punishment is more than I can bear. Today you are driving me from the land, and I will be hidden from your presence. I will be a restless wanderer on this earth, and whoever finds me will kill me." But the Lord said to him, "Now anyone who kills Cain will suffer vengeance seven times over." Then the Lord put a mark on Cain so that no one who found him would kill him. So Cain went out from the Lord's presence and lived in the land of Nod, east of Eden.

Genesis 4:1-16

There's not a whole lot more that we see in scripture about Cain other than we see his descendants throughout Genesis. There are some scholars that have different theories that maybe he was killed at one point by his grandson and all of these different things. But I think these stories in the Old Testament are important for us to go back and remember and start to see what God is telling us through this story of these people that lived.

One of the things that stands out to me here is that from the beginning, Cain was envious of his brother being righteous. He was envious that the Lord was showing favor on his brother. In verse 7, the Lord says to Cain, "If you do what is right, will you not too be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, Satan is crouching at the door." We see this chance, this glimpse that the Lord was saying, like, don't you know, if you do what is right, you too can be accepted. You too can be seen as righteous. But what we see starts to happen with Cain is that these lies start to creep in.

And I think these are lies that maybe some of us today can relate to. This lie of scarcity mentality. This lie that only some of us can be seen as holy or favored by God. This lie that only some of us can receive that type of love and that type of blessing. Cain believed that lie, and he let that lie start to lead his life. What would happen if we didn't let that lie lead our life? What would happen if we lived in a way where we truly believe that God has more than enough love and mercy and grace for all of us? That we don't have to fight each other for it. That we don't have to be bitter when we see somebody else succeeding or become jealous or envious.

What if we truly believed that the God that provided manna from heaven for all of the people of Israel at that time, day after day after day, and the same God that came in the form of a human, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who fed the 5,000 and there was more than enough, what if we believed that that God was still the God that we get to serve today, the God of more than enough? How would that change the way that we live and then the way that we are able to love others because of that? You see, we are lucky that we live in a period of time, unlike Cain, who he didn't have the scriptures to go and learn from people's mistakes of the past. But we can look at these stories and we can be reminded that we do serve a God of more than enough.

But envy and believing those lies starts small. So the first point today, if you're taking notes, is just don't be like Cain. Don't be like Cain, but kill that lie before that lie kills you. Maybe it's that same type of lie of those little things of being envious and this scarcity mentality. Kill it before it kills you.

Living by kingdom law

Going back into 1 John 3, verse 13 says, do not be surprised, my brothers and sisters, if the world hates you. We know that we have passed from death to life because we love each other. Anyone who does not love remains in death. Anyone who hates a brother or sister is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life residing in him.

What I see here is that the author is starting to continue to paint for us this picture that we should not be surprised by. Because we are not living by the ways of the past, we're not living by the ways of our flesh. But we are living under kingdom law now. And kingdom law, the law of the kingdom is love above anything else. Love above anything else.

We see that in the Old Testament there was this moral code, this moral conduct, these all these Old Testament laws you had to follow in order to continue to stay close to God and be seen as righteous and holy. But knowing that none of us would ever do that on our own, be able to do that on our own, God sent Jesus to come and to pay that ultimate price. Jesus, who did follow that moral code perfectly, he lived a perfect, sinless, blameless life. And because of that, his death paid the penalty on behalf of all of humanity. And now, what is that invitation for us? That we get to receive the love and the grace of Jesus, and we get to love him for all of eternity.

But with this, we need to recognize as followers of Jesus that the present age and the age that is to come are constantly fighting against each other. Someday we will fully surrender to this idea that the kingdom is all about love and laying down our lives for one another. Someday we'll be able to fully live in that reality, that age to come, that we don't need to earn our salvation through works, but rather just surrender and have that belief and that complete faith and trust in God. But for now, we're competing with this culture that we live in in the current present age.

The original audience here, they would have been conflicted hearing this idea that, hey, the thing I'm asking for you is to love and lay down your life for one another above all else. Because they would have been living in this context where everything was about following the law. Everything was about following the world, the rules of the world. At this present moment, that's not quite the case for us anymore.

However, the thing as I was reading this text that stood out to me is that we are in a present moment that is still grinding against the age to come. And that's in our Western, our American context that we live in today. You see, we have grown up in this democracy. And so it's easy for us then to take that and put that in context when we're following Jesus, to think that this too is a democracy. But the kingdom of heaven is a kingdom, and we do have a king, and we do have a ruler, and we do have a way that we are asked to live and to surrender to and submit to.

And this can be hard for a lot of us because maybe you have had some times where authority has not always been the best in your life. We have seen kings fall. We have seen rulers and presidents and even personalized teachers and bosses and parents and people fail us that we're supposed to lead us and that we're supposed to support us and we're supposed to provide for us. And so it can be hard for us sometimes to hear those words like we have to submit to the authority of Jesus Christ. Because sometimes that word holds a lot of pain and a lot of harm with it. And even there that's when the enemy continues to creep in with those lies, of wanting us to think that it was Jesus that was harmful and not how people twisted his words and his teaching that was harmful.

The enemy wants us to believe that it wasn't the people, but it was Jesus that was harmful. But when we look at the life of Jesus and we sing about that even today, that his love was devoted to us, that his love is faithful, that his love is pure. You see, Jesus was someone that always left everybody around him better. Jesus is someone that can always be trusted for all of eternity. Jesus is a worthy king for us to follow.

And we need to continue to remind ourselves of that. Although in this country right now we operate in this democracy where we get to vote in leaders and we get to change laws and we get to change different things, that when we're talking about the kingdom of heaven, that there is a king, he's on the throne. And we're not changing the ways, but he's telling us how to live. And we can trust that because his ways are better. And we have seen that all throughout scripture.

Give generously

He continues to lay this out for us and say, this is what I'm talking about, the kingdom of heaven. In verse 16, we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person? Dear children, let us not love with words or speech, but with actions and in truth.

So essentially what is being said here is don't be stingy. Our actions speak louder than our words. Christ didn't just say, hey, I'm the king. I came to save you. I love you. But he demonstrated that every single step of the way.

And this is what I want to point out here because I think a lot of times when we think about the idea of Christ laying down his life and we think about the invitation that we have to follow his example to lay down our lives, sometimes we just think of the crucifixion and we think it was like this one and done thing. And that was Christ laying down his life for us. But Jesus laid down his life from the moment that he was born. He laid down his right to be understood by people. He laid down his pride. He laid down his right to receive his reward on this side of eternity. He laid down his life every single day leading up to the ultimate day where he paid the price on the cross for us.

He understood that the age to come was so much greater than this present moment that we currently dwell in. He understood that what he was a part of and the kingdom that he came to usher in was the one that would bring wholeness and fullness and completion for all of eternity. You see, we have this temptation as followers of Jesus sometimes to hold tight to what we have. To not give to those who are lacking around us. To withhold of love. To withhold of forgiveness. To withhold of grace. And why is this? Why do we struggle with these things?

I want you to personalize that for you for a moment. Why is it hard for you to give? Why is it hard for you to love in the type of way that Jesus loved? When it comes to forgiveness, when it comes to showing grace and mercy, why is it hard for you to give? Verse 17 says, if anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person? Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and truth.

This is a big bold statement here in scripture. If anyone has material possessions and sees someone and does not have pity on them. In the NASB translation, it says, if whoever has worldly goods and sees a brother or sister and closes his heart. That's that translation of pity there. So if you close your heart to them, how does the love of God remain in you? That's a bold statement because God is a God of love. And he so generously, freely gave us love. Love that is more than enough for all of humanity to have.

And so he's saying, if you are truly my follower, if you are truly someone that is walking in the way of love and you are living by this kingdom law of love, then love will flow from you because that's who I am. So if you have been adopted into my family, that's now your identity. If you are a person of love, you are a person that can give that more than enough. Yet we still struggle. We struggle with our earthly possessions. We struggle to give of things like our finances. We struggle when it comes to giving and laying down our pride for people. We struggle with these things. Why is it?

When COVID hit in 2020, the first week of March, I'm not proud of it, but my true colors kind of showed a little bit. Looking back, I have moments when I'm like, okay, I have to give myself grace because I really did think the world might, like, we wouldn't be here today. Okay, I really did have a moment where I'm like, we're all going to die by tomorrow. And now knowing what we know, I probably would have acted differently. But I'll never forget that first weekend where all of a sudden it was like, oh no, I think this is actually serious. And some of you that were around then, you know I was supposed to be going to Thailand the end of March. I was like, oh yeah, it'll be fine. I'm still going to go. And I'm like, oh, I'm not getting on that plane. This is not happening. This is serious.

So my brother Nathan and I did what most people did, and we went to the store one last time. And I still remember being like, it's cool, it's fine, like we're probably gonna be fine. But you know, I'm just gonna buy like a few cans of rice and beans. Like just in case. But not like too many as if I'm like, you know, this really, the world is really gonna end. But just like eight cans and a couple bags of rice. Like just in case we're not gonna ever go to a grocery store again. And the other thing that I bought was two boxes of ho-hos. That was what I thought that I would need if the world was going to end.

I was like, I need rice and beans and I need ho-hos. And I was even processing this week. I was like, why was that my purchase? Why did I want ho-hos of all things? Like that's not even like my go-to. Like, oh, if I'm craving a treat, that's what I want. And I was thinking. I was like, I think that this has some like deep childhood core memories attached to it. Of growing up, I had three brothers. And so like that would be a treat for us to get like a package of ho-hos. But you know, they come like two in a package. So then they would be cut in half and we would each get like a bite of a ho-ho and it would be like the greatest moment of all time.

Until I remember we had this one friend that he would come over sometimes in the summer and his mom would pack his lunch and he would get to eat the whole package of ho-hos all by himself. And I think as a kid I'm just like, someday that's gonna be me. I'm gonna be eating both of the ho-hos. So that was what I decided as a grown adult. Like, if the world's gonna end this is what I want to purchase. But thinking about those things that we go to, those things that we're holding tight to. Why was I stocking up on those? Because of that scarcity mentality. I thought, I'm never gonna see a ho-ho again. This is gonna be it. I'm going to ration these for the last days of my life. This idea of I'm gonna run out. There's not enough. So I'm gonna get what I have and you better believe I'm not sharing with anyone.

We hold tight to things when we fear they will run out. Or when we fear that they're going to be taken away for good. Your earthly possessions are only a small representation of the glory and the reward that is to come when we are living in the kingdom of heaven for all of eternity. And when we can remind ourselves of that. When I can remind myself of that. I can live way more generous in my everyday life. When I recognize that even the things that I have, even the moments when I think this is it, I can afford to not only buy the whole package. But I can eat it all on my own. There's so much more to come than those things.

But we hold tight and we don't give generously when we are believing this lie of lack, this lie of not enough. But we serve a God of more than enough.

So as followers of Jesus, whether it's our earthly possessions or it's forgiveness or it's grace or it's second chances, we should be people that give generously and lay down our lives like Jesus did. But loving like Jesus asks us to love, it's not an easy thing. And the reason that it's important to think of love through a kingdom lens is also because our present moment does not do a great job of defining love for us like that.

But this type of love, this agape love, this sacrificial love that Jesus is talking about. It's not like the phileo love, the friendship love. Those things you could probably do without God. Like you could probably like have a good friendship with someone for a while or be kind for a little bit on your own. But this idea of this agape love, this sacrificial love is something you cannot do on your own. But the more that you allow the Holy Spirit to come and to flow through you and you allow him to give you the strength to love in that way, the more that it's just going to become who you are.

I love in Matthew 5:44, it talks about loving your enemies. But here John is saying, okay, that's one thing for you to love your enemies. But let's take a step back and first say, can you love your brothers and sisters in Christ? Because I think a lot of times we can come here on Sundays and we can think, okay, like I'm ready. Like we can see that there's people around us that need the love of Jesus. But are we going to be ready to lay down our lives for strangers if we can't even do it for our brothers and sisters as a part of the body of Christ?

Lay down our lives. John is reminding us that this involves sacrifice. And if we take this analogy from Jesus and his love for us, and we think about that, sometimes the cost of love will make us feel like we are dying at times. That that is what it's meant to lay down your life. Philippians 2:3-4 says:

Let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit, but in lowliness of mind, let each esteem others better than himself. Let each of you look out not only for his own interest, but also for the interest of others.

Philippians 2:3-4

This is the kingdom of God. This is the invitation that we have. To look out not only for our own interest, but the interest of others. Because we serve and we submit to a God that is more than enough.

The heart of generosity

And some of the questions that I want to invite you to start to process is: am I living to create a comfortable life where if I'm able to I'm going to help and I'm going to give to others? Or is the starting point for how I live sacrifice? Is the starting point storing up treasures in heaven and not on earth?

And if these are things already to think of, are there areas that I struggle with love? Even now I invite you, ask the Holy Spirit to show you. Why is this? Could one be, is there healing that needs to take place because you have received love from another human that was not love the way that Jesus intended it? And so you need to even take a moment today and say, God, would you begin to show me again and heal my heart and remind me that the people that maybe they misrepresented your love, that that's not you and that's not your heart. So will you show me your love again? Your faithful, devoted, pure love?

Verse 19 said: this is how we know that we belong to the truth and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence. If our hearts condemn us we know that God is greater than our hearts and he knows everything.

This is getting good now. Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God and receive from him anything we ask because we keep his commands and do what pleases him. John is reminding us that we belong to the truth. We belong to the truth. So we don't have to search for belonging anymore. And when our hearts start to fail us, when we start to believe some of those lies of lack, those lies of not enough, we can continue to come back and allow God to show us what love truly is so that it can flow to us and through us once again.

And the next thing that we see in this is that we can trust God. We can trust God. And this is his command: to believe in the name of his son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us. The one who keeps God's commands lives in him and he in them. And this is how we know that he lives in us. We know it by the Spirit he gave us.

He left with us his Holy Spirit to remind us that we are not alone in this. We can trust the strategy that Jesus laid out when he said, I have come. And then he came. And then he left with us his Holy Spirit. We can trust that strategy. I think of those times and those moments in life where I lay awake and I'm processing things and filled with worry and anxious thoughts and filled with fear. And I can be reminded again of his strategy. That we're not alone. That we're on a team. That we are a part of the body of Christ. Which is why there's so much emphasis in scripture to say love each other. Like not just like, hey, we see each other every once in a while and we say, hi, how's it going? Or we have our five minute greeting time.

But get in each other's lives to the point where you are laying down your life for each other. We can trust his strategy because he left us a roadmap of scripture. And this is why we have things like the rule of life where we follow and say, okay, we want to be people that are constantly in the word of God, learning the way of Jesus so that we can follow him. We can follow his kingdom and we can trust his Holy Spirit. We can trust what he's doing.

Practice generosity

So my challenge, my invitation for you this week is to think of as a formative practice to say, okay, I don't want to just hear these things and say, okay, Lord, make me more loving. We need to pray. We're going to invite him to come and to do that and to heal us. But I want you to think of ways even this week to start to have that on your mind. To be generous. To give above and beyond. To serve and to love as a way to continue to follow Jesus's footsteps and to be formed in his likelikeness. But to be reminded that you don't have to withhold because there's plenty to go around.

So if you would just close your eyes and just take a moment and say, Lord, are there any lies that are leading my life? Where am I not believing you to be a God of more than enough? Take a minute and ask the Lord, is there anything that I'm withholding from you? And if there's things that come to mind, begin to ask him to show you. Are there areas of my life that I'm withholding because maybe there's lack and I need to receive love from you there?

So Holy Spirit would you just speak for these next few moments? Amen. So God, today we thank you that you are a God of more than enough. We thank you that you sent your son Jesus to not only say those things, but to display that love on the cross. We thank you that those actions did speak so much louder than words. And because of his death and his resurrection, we can spend all of eternity receiving your love. In your love. Dwelling in your love. We thank you for that, God.

And so I just pray right now that if there are any areas in our life that we are withholding from you, things that you're saying. Maybe it's forgive this person. Maybe it's lay down your life here in this way. Would you begin to speak those things to us? Would you help us to be people that can live out of that overflow of your love? Would you help us to be people that are not believing that lie of lack or not enough, but continuing to receive you as more than enough for us?

And God, if there's ways that maybe we're struggling because we have not fully received your love in certain parts of our lives, would you just begin to show us? God, would you just pour out your grace and your mercy? Would you remind us of the ways that you have been devoted, maybe when nobody else has? Would you remind us of the ways that you continued to care for us and be with us? Would you remind us of the gift of your Holy Spirit that dwells within us, that you are not a far off God, but you are close and pulling us closer every day? That we can lean into your love.

And would your love be the thing that rules over us? Would your love be the thing that flows from us? We thank you, Lord. And I pray that this week that you would continue to help us to process these things. Would you continue to walk with us as we say, what does it look like for us to lay down our lives for the people around us? What does it look like to live and follow your kingdom law and to lay down our lives for the sake of your kingdom, trusting that you have the best strategy to bring hope of the age to come to this present moment? We thank you, Lord. We love you, Lord. We ask all of this in your name. Amen.