Woodlawn Evangelical Lutheran Church           

18 Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth. 19This then is how we know that we belong to the truth, and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence 20whenever our hearts condemn us. For God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything.21Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God 22and receive from him anything we ask, because we obey his commands and do what pleases him. 23And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us. 24Those who obey his commands live 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.

Introduction – Think about the word home. What pictures come to your mind? What emotions run through your body? “Home is where the heart is.” For some of you, home might be the nice house and yard and the enjoyment and peace your family has when they are all there together. For some of you home maybe is far away and you feel most comfortable and at peace at a getaway spot. Maybe when you think of home, you think mostly of people. On this Mother’s day weekend, maybe you think of home as the place where mom has a good meal and an open heart, always eager to love and to give. Maybe some of you automatically think of the popular hymn: I’m but a stranger here, heaven is my home.

            Home is a place where family and friends feel welcome. As Christians, we also want it to be a place where our God is welcome. We want an environment where God is worshipped and honored by the activity that goes on. But if God is going to fill our homes, we need him to make his home in our hearts first. By God’s mercy, he has and he does, but we also pray today that he would continue to do so as we wrestle and struggle through the temptations of all that would have us close our eyes to the goodness of God. We pray today:

 Dear Lord, make my heart your home!

I. Make it a place of trust in your Son

II. Make it a place of love for one another

I. Make it a place of trust in your Son

            God has commanded us: Believe in the name of my Son, Jesus Christ. It sounds so simple, and yet in only takes a quick survey of people around the world to realize that it is only by a miracle that you and I do believe in the name of Jesus Christ. John, who wrote this letter was sent out by Jesus to proclaim that Jesus was indeed the one chosen by God to be the Savior of the world. But part of his purpose in writing this letter was to clear things up about who Jesus Christ is. There were a lot of wrong ideas about Jesus then, just as there are now.

            So when he talks about believing in the name of Jesus Christ, he is talking very simply about trusting that he is the Son of God who became a man in order to sacrifice his life as payment for our sins. The mystery of Jesus is not that mysterious. It is simple fact that he was born, lived, died, and was seen by eyewitnesses after he rose from the dead and that in his name God offers us forgiveness for all our sins and eternal life in heaven.

            That simple trust in Jesus is what we ask God to instill in us day after day by the work of his Holy Spirit. As we and our world grow older, we go through constant change, but God does not change. He still demands that we obey his laws. His will does not change with the values of our culture. But praise God that his mercy in Christ does not change either.

            When our hearts condemn us, we realize that maybe our hearts have become a place where we haven’t trusted God. We have taken God out of our plans and instead chosen to follow the tricks of our sinful nature. An unhealthy conscience will not feel the sting of what we have done wrong. A healthy conscience drives the guilt into our hearts, hurting us when we offended our God in heaven, when we have betrayed the one who has given us everything.

But a healthy conscience must not stand alone. Without God’s mercy our conscience can lead us to lose hope and want to give up. Our conscience deals with us by using God’s law. But God deals with us according to his grace and his mercy. When you are feeling guilt, because you know that you have sinned, then remember that God is greater than your heart. Your failure does not weaken God’s love. His love blazed with its full heat and light when the Son of God was lifted up from the earth and condemned in our place. A healthy conscience knows that it should have been each and every one of us condemned by God, sentenced to hell.

But God is greater than your heart. He lifted the burden off your conscience, so that through Jesus you can find peace when your heart condemns you. You cannot wash the stains of your sin off your life, but God has. You were washed and sanctified by the Holy Spirit in the waters of baptism and now through faith and now you have been grafted on to the Vine, alive in Christ.

In Christ, your heart need no longer condemn you and through faith God makes your heart a place of trust in Jesus Christ. With the burden of guilt removed by Jesus, we can approach God with confident prayers, truly believing that God has what is best for us in his mine. Trusting that God’s son has made you from your condemning conscience, God says you will receive what you ask for in faith. We know that God has made his home in our hearts because the Spirit has brought us to trust in God’s Son as our Savior, so God lives in us and we live in him.

 II. Make it a place of love for one another

            God has also commanded us to love one another. The Bible says that love is the fulfillment of God’s law. See what type of love is mentioned here. It is love with actions and in truth, not just words. You might ask someone, What is love? You might get many different answers. In chapter 2, John describes the love of the world in terms of what satisfies our desires and he immediately dismisses it as kind of a false love. “If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For everything in the world—the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does—comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever.” (1 John 2:15-17)

            In contrast, we see the example of Jesus Christ earlier in chapter 3: “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.” (1 John 3:16) True, godly love, is our actions, guided by the truth of who God is and what God has done for us through Jesus Christ. When God dwells in our hearts by faith it becomes a place of love for one another.

            The Bible does not mean to say that loving words are unimportant. How often we fail to use loving words when we relate to each other. Loving words should be used to encourage and to confront one another with our sin. But we miss the mark when those words are empty and meaningless. We may say, “I love you. I want to help. I want what is best for you,” but what will those mean if they are not accompanied by actions that demonstrates that those words are true?

We have an example of love from Lydia in our lesson, a true Old Testament believer who heard the message of Jesus Christ through the Apostle Paul. She became a believer and a disciple of Christ and her faith moved her to invite Paul and his friends to her home, giving him a place to stay while he shared the good news about Jesus in the city of Philippi. Maybe some of you would be moved to show the same kind of love.

            Why would John even need to address the issue of love to Christians? Isn’t Christian love as natural as a mother’s love for a child? Are we not branches connected to the Vine and so bear fruit? By God’s grace, we are that, but there is also a warning. Just as we sadly know that a mother does not always love her child, because her sinful nature has gotten hold of her mind and her will, so we also know that the love we should have for one another can lose its passion if not fed with the truth of the gospel.

            When you and I lose the awareness of how truly lost and hopeless we are without Christ, we lose our motivation to love each other. If we do not appreciate God’s forgiveness that eases our guilty conscience, how eager will we be to love others with the type of self-sacrificing love that we see in our Savior? How eager will we be to think about what is best for others instead of what is most convenient for us.

            Can you think right now to a time when maybe your love was really just empty words and your actions did not match and you were not guided by the truth of God’s love for you in Christ? For every time we can think of where we should have loved and didn’t, there are probably a dozen others that we can’t remember.

            Remember today, once again, that God is greater than your heart. Your guilt and my guilt is real. We don’t love as we should, whether we are a mother, father, or child; whether we are a fellow member of this congregation or a loyal citizen. But know and trust that Jesus Christ has loved you, his brothers and sisters. Let his loving sacrifice for your sins that brought us peace with God be your peace. Let his life be your strength for a new and hope-filled day. Understand that you are alive by the power of the Holy Spirit and you are a new person. Pray confidently that God would use the love of Jesus Christ to make you eager to consider those around you today, as you sit here and as you go out those doors. Consider the needs of others, what they need from you and what they need from our God.

            It doesn’t hurt to take a couple of extra minutes to introduce yourself to someone you have never met and say, “Hello! God bless your day!” It doesn’t hurt to see someone who looks upset or lost or sad and ask, “How are you doing?” On second thought, it might “hurt” because it is a sacrifice of your time and maybe it means you have to stretch past what you are comfortable with. But remember John’s words: “Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.” The truth is that you have been rescued by you Savior. May his love guide you in your loving actions. May God make your heart a place of love for one another.

 Conclusion – I know some of you pretty well and have an idea of your home life. Many of you I know very little about your home life. What do you think of as home? When we talk about home, do you have good feelings or bad feelings? God comes and he makes his home in your heart. He sweeps out the dirt and straightens out the mess of your life. I hope you feel that you have a “home” church, where you can feel loved and give your love – where you can feel loved by God and by fellow believers in Christ and you can give your love to God and to fellow believers in Christ.

            Do you want others to have what you have through the blessing of the Holy Spirit? Consider inviting someone to church. Let them hear the message of forgiveness and hope through Jesus. Remember the great lengths your Savior went to in order to rescue you. He did that for other people who have no idea that they have already been forgiven by God. Pray for them, that God would use you and me and Christians around the world to deliver them the message of life, so that God may make his home in their hearts as well. Amen.