Response to Material Needs

In this part of the sermon: John anticipates the question 'How can I tell if I have that love?' and answers it by pointing to God's tangible, sacrificial love in Christ. He argues that if God's love is in…

Martin uses the analogies of scales for weight, measurement for height, and X-rays for TB to illustrate the desire for a tangible 'love-ometer' to discern if one truly loves the brethren, setting up John's answer.

But how can I know if I have love? If I want to know if I've gained weight, I get on the scales. Whether I like it or not, the scales don't buy if they're anywhere near accurate. If I want to know if I'm six feet tall, I get by an accurate measurement.

9:14 - 9:25 Read in full sermon

Driving home: Love is discerned not by putting it on the table, putting some kind of a love-ometer upon the heart, but by the willingness to respond at great cost to tangible need by tangible deeds of love.

A story of a man who brags about lifting an elephant but cannot pick up a dog from a ditch illustrates John's argument: if one claims to have love that would make the supreme sacrifice (life), but won't make a lesser sacrifice (material goods), that claim is hollow.

If you have some material substance which will meet your brother's evident need and you shut up your heart, John's question is, how does God's love abide in you? The very love which, if abiding in you, will move you to give your most precious possession, life itself, if it doesn't move you to open up your hand a little bit, how can it be in you? It's like some guy coming into town, bragging that he's the strongest man on the East Coast. He says, you put an elephant on the platform and put some chains around it and get a neck brace and I can lift it 18 inches off.

13:01 - 13:35 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: Martin explains John's exhortation not to love in word only, but in deed and in truth, clarifying that this does not forbid verbal expressions of love but prioritizes tangible…

The example of a husband and wife needing to verbalize their love, beyond just acts of service, clarifies that John is not forbidding verbal expressions of love but prioritizing deeds over words alone.

And no amount of the acts of love will substitute for those whisperings of those little sweet nothings. And if you don't think that's so, some of you husbands ought to ask your wife. Some of them would just feel that, well, I don't know what they'd feel if you just sat down, looked them in the eye, and took them by the cheeks and said you loved them. You love them for washing all your dirty underwear, day after day, week after week, and stuffing them back in your drawer, with dirty socks of yours, and cleaning up the shaving cream that you leave all over the kitchen, and all over the bathroom ...

17:01 - 17:39 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: Martin explains John's exhortation not to love in word only, but in deed and in truth, clarifying that this does not forbid verbal expressions of love but prioritizes tangible…

The example of hungry tummies not being filled with words but with food, and cold bodies not warmed by breath but by clothing, illustrates James' point about the emptiness of faith without works and John's call for love in deed.

But let our love be, and he says two things. Indeed, that is, in the tangible response to tangible need. Hungry tummies are not filled with words, but with food. James chapter 2, where James is showing the emptiness of faith without works, he uses an illustration that underscores that point.

18:51 - 19:13 Read in full sermon

The point: Invest an evening to visit and spend time with lonely widows for companionship's sake.

Martin uses the example of lonely widows and believers watching television to illustrate how Christ might be sitting lonely in the person of a widow, challenging believers to invest their time in companionship rather than leisure.

Could it be that Christ often sits lonely in the person of some of the widows amongst us while some of you sit home watching your television two or three nights a week and never take one of those evenings to go out and spend it with one of these widows just for companionship's sake?

39:51 - 40:09 Read in full sermon

The point: Invest an evening to visit and spend time with lonely widows for companionship's sake.

The metaphor of a widow's 'prison' being the haunting of four walls stripped of a husband's voice illustrates the profound loneliness and need that Christ identifies with in His people.

You just come through the door and sit down and you'd make a little bit of heaven. Could it be that Christ has come to you and some of these widows and their prison is the haunting of those four walls now stripped of the echo of a husband's voice, the sound of a husband's feet?

40:31 - 40:52 Read in full sermon