My thoughts and prayers are with you at this difficult time.
I wish you well.
I hope everything is okay.
These are all very common ways of expressing that we support someone.
But I wonder if they often don't turn into action.
I see it all over social media.
Someone will express a hard time that they've been going,
and people will often respond,
my thoughts and prayers are with you.
But do people actually put any thought into a friend situation?
Is there any seeking to understand a crisis that happens?
Like in France last year,
there was a lot of people saying,
my thoughts and prayers are for France.
And when people say my thoughts and prayers,
do those people even believe in a God,
let alone actually pray to him about the situation?
I think this sentiment has become a nicer version of good luck.
It's a hope that you'll figure things out on your own.
I wish you well,
but I'm not actually going to do anything about it.
It's a message that can say,
I love you,
and I support you,
but I'm not actually going to get up and support you.
I wonder if it is because it is so much easier to actually just say words
than to be motivated to engage and to help.
We who know how much Jesus has done for us,
his love and his sacrifice shown on the cross,
we too can fall to this same temptation.
The temptation to say,
oh, look,
I know I should forgive,
but it's hard,
and so I'm just going to say those words,
I forgive you,
and then I'm going to hold a grudge for years.
Oh,
I know I should give generously,
and you know,
I'll pledge,
but I really want to hold on to my money,
just in case something happens tomorrow.
Look,
I say that I'm not a racist with my words,
but do you know what?
With my eyes,
I judge people who have different skin than me.
Can you imagine if Jesus was a thoughts and prayers savior?
If he said,
you know,
oh,
look at you guys down there on earth,
I see all of your sin,
I see your hardened hearts turned away from God,
and look,
I'm thinking about you guys,
if that helps.
We would be nowhere if Jesus was just a thoughts and prayers savior.
The challenge for us today is to turn our good intentions into actions that express God's love for us.
We are in a series called Share Hope,
and we want to share the hope that we have in Jesus.
We want to also share the hope for today with people in very practical ways.
And today,
we're going to see that our love is shaped by our hope in God.
Love in deed and action,
and not just in words.
We're going to be looking at a letter written by the apostle John,
and he outlines what this kind of love looks like.
So please have your Bibles open,
have your St.
Paul's app open.
There are notes that you can be taking for this sermon.
And the first thing that we're going to see as we have a look at 1 John,
is that we are loved.
We're going to have a look at 1 John 3 verse 1.
See what great love the Father has lavished on us,
that we should be called children of God.
God has shown his wonderful love through his adoption.
He has taken a lost and hopeless people and brought them into his family.
Now all those who love Jesus are in God's family,
and are to be on about God's mission,
to do the same thing as God,
to love others.
What we love is shaped by the one who has loved us.
Verse 11,
For this is the message that we heard from the beginning,
we should love one another.
Love one another.
John contrasts this with an illustration of Cain and Abel,
Adam and Eve's first two sons.
Have a look at verse 12 with me.
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 brothers were righteous.
Cain murdered his brother,
proof that he was influenced and shaped by Satan.
Our actions,
the things we do,
point to the one who shapes us.
They can either show that we're being shaped by Satan,
or that we are being shaped by God.
Verse 14,
We know that we have passed from death to life,
because we love each other.
Anyone who does not love remains in death.
John is saying that hate and murder is a marker that we don't know Christ.
But love is a mark that we have died with Christ,
and we have been raised with him.
Growing up in Sydney,
I am very much a product of this culture.
The things that this culture here in Sydney loves,
I have found myself loving as well.
I can't help but find that when I take my kids to McDonald's,
I get a little bit excited about a Happy Meal,
because it's got the good food,
but it's also got a toy.
And that still excites me,
even though that's just for my kids.
But I continue to love the things my culture loves.
I love the movies that my culture tells me to love.
I love the TV shows.
I love the food.
I love what my culture has shaped me to love.
And to a large degree,
it's consuming capitalistic products and being entertained.
But when we become children of God,
our culture changes.
The most influential culture changes.
We go from being something called ethnocentric.
Ethnocentric means that our ethnicity,
our culture is our center, ethnocentric.
So we go from thinking that everything that our culture loves
is good to love.
Everything our culture does is right.
And everything every other culture chooses to love is wrong.
When we become children of God,
we become shaped by Christ.
We join a Christ culture
instead of thinking that our culture is right.
And so before anything else,
I am a Christian.
My loves and the things I dislike
are to be shaped by Christ.
They trump what my culture says.
One example of this is that
in the Australian culture,
an Australian male wants to show that they are strong.
They don't want to show weakness.
They don't want to show emotions.
And definitely don't cry.
Unless it's at the football, that's okay.
Whenever the football goes back.
But Christ shows his own weakness
when he died on the cross.
And I can be upfront about my own weakness
and how much I need his salvation
and how flawed I am.
The hope we share
is shaped by the one who has loved us.
John encourages us to love
because we have been loved.
This is a new culture that we are to be part of.
And so the second thing that we see this morning
is that we have been loved to love.
Have a look at verse 16.
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.
He, Jesus, laid down his life for us.
And John pushes this to be a principle for us.
It is not just that Christians are saved by his generosity,
even to death,
but we are to show the same generosity,
the same love.
We should also lay down our lives for people.
I don't think I've ever actually had the chance
to lay down my life for someone else.
I say to my kids, you know,
I would jump in front of a bus for you.
And I think I would,
but I've never actually had that opportunity.
So it's really easy to have this thought up in the cloud,
up in the back of my brain somewhere that,
you know, I'd lay down my life for someone,
in particular my kids.
But John immediately grounds this love for us.
Verse 17.
If anyone has material possessions
and sees a brother or sister in need.
John makes this hope that we have
incredibly simple and practical.
If we have a material possession
and a brother or sister is in need of it,
we share it with them.
Let's not make it more difficult than that.
We see a need,
we have that material possession,
we meet that need.
But if we see a need that we can meet
and instead we close our hearts,
we turn away and only offer,
say, thoughts and prayers,
well, John questions us.
Let me read verse 17 again.
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?
How can the love of God be in that person?
Have they heard the gospel?
Are they actually following Jesus?
If we can't love with the love that we've been shown,
do we know God's love?
If there is a person in front of us
and they need something that we have
and we don't share it,
do we know God's love for us?
Are we still operating like our own culture dictates
instead of operating by a Christ-shaped culture?
John knows the importance and difficulty of the reality of this.
And so to encourage and also challenge us,
he writes in verse 18,
Dear children,
let us not love with words or speech,
but with actions and in truth.
He starts with dear children.
This is a recurring phrase that comes up in John's letters.
It's an expression of closeness and love and affection.
It's the parent that says to a child,
little child, share with your brother.
Little child, I forgive you and I love you,
but don't disobey.
Little child, it's okay.
Dear children,
let us not love with words or speech,
but with actions and in truth.
Love with actions and in truth,
not just with words.
Let's not just be thoughts and prayers type Christians
in just words or some words we've typed on the computer,
but let's love with actions and in truth.
Loving in action is truth
because when it's just words,
it can show to be false and hollow.
And so to be able to love other people,
we have to know God's love for us.
We have to know how loved we are to love.
Romans 3 is a great place to be reminded
of how amazing God's love is for us.
It paints a picture of our sin and our rebellion,
and yet God chooses to show his love.
He chooses to show his righteousness.
Let me encourage you,
go and spend some time meditating on God's love for us.
Because when we are reminded of all that God has done,
sharing his love is so much easier.
A couple of weeks ago,
as I was preparing for this series on sharing hope,
thinking about what it means to love others
and to show mercy,
it was just as isolation was starting to ease.
And my family, we went out,
we went through Chatswood for the first time in a while,
and we went down the road and we bought ice cream.
And as we were walking down through the Chatswood shops area,
I noticed somebody on the side who was homeless,
and they were clearly in need.
But my heart and my eyes have built up a callus
against people and their needs.
I've gotten used to ignoring people's needs.
But as we walked past,
I noticed the eyes of one of my children
watched this person,
and I could see the compassion they had on them.
And so as we walked back up,
I said to this child,
do you think we should help out this person?
Do you think we should help them with their needs?
And thankfully at that time,
I actually had some cash in my pocket,
which I don't often do.
And I said, I have some money.
Do you think we should give it to them?
And my child said, yes, I think we should help them.
And so we walked over,
and we shared what we had with them.
Now, I know that that was a very small thing.
It was not much help in the long run.
But I had a chance to share this part of the Bible with my kids,
to show that we have been loved by God so much,
that we are called to love others.
He has been so generous to us.
We are called to be generous to others.
And the reality is, we can do it.
We need to have that connection between
how awesome God is and how much He has loved us.
And when we do,
it is so much easier to share His love with other people.
So we have seen that we have been loved.
We have seen that we have been loved,
and now we are to love other people.
And now we are told to do that.
Go and do that.
Don't just do that in words or speech.
Actually love with actions.
But the third thing this morning,
well, what does this look like?
How do we love?
Earlier, I was putting down the idea
of being a thoughts and prayers Christian.
But I think it's actually a good place to start.
When we look at the world right now,
the problems seem so big.
They seem insurmountable.
How are we supposed to meet all the needs of the bushfires,
let alone the needs of all those people impacted by coronavirus?
There's a number of cafes around here
who are all doing it particularly tough
because their businesses just disappeared.
And even if I went to four different cafes
and bought two coffees a day,
the reality is it's not going to help them that much.
And I'll just be buzzing from caffeine.
Now, I pushed hard against the idea
of being a thoughts and prayers Christian.
But if we start with those two,
it's actually a really wonderful thing
to think about an issue,
to actually spend time investigating
and researching a friend's problem,
an issue overseas,
a problem in our country,
we might realise we actually can help out.
We can serve somebody.
Maybe something we give will actually make a difference.
And if we can't,
just understanding, seeking to understand,
helps us to empathise with others
and love them more.
And so the first thing we can start with
is thinking deeply about an issue.
And the second thing is prayer.
Prayer is a good and wonderful thing to do
because we have a God
who is in control of all things.
There are plenty of problems in our world right now,
in our country as well,
that seem too big for us.
But they are not too big for our God
because He is sovereign
and in control of all things.
Prayer is an effective way
to love people who are in need.
And so the next time
you're tempted to just type,
oh, you know,
my thoughts and prayers are with you,
well, do those things.
Take a moment to investigate
and to spend some time in prayer to God.
But the call and the challenge for us today
is that deep thinking and understanding
and real prayer to God
is not where it should end.
I found it really difficult
watching what's been happening in the US
with the protests and the riots
after the death of George Floyd
almost two weeks ago in police custody.
I've been horrified by both the rioters
and by some of the politicians.
With an issue like widespread racism,
it is just one of those big things
that I don't even know how to start dealing with.
And I don't just want to support in words
and not in actions.
Tuesday week that just passed in the week,
it was branded as Black Out Tuesday
to show that Black Lives Matter.
And many people change their image
on Facebook or Twitter
to just a blank image of black
to show that Black Lives Matter
and to show their support.
I thought about doing the same thing
because I believe that black lives do matter.
But I stopped
because I thought
that it almost would have been too simple
because for me,
if I had done that,
that would have been the only action that I took.
I would have just changed a picture
on the internet
and that's where my action would have ended.
For me, that's all it would have done.
Now, there's nothing wrong with doing that.
There's nothing wrong with supporting
our African brothers and sisters
and people of African descent in that way.
But for me,
I think it would have been a problem
because that's all I would have done.
It's easy to think that racism
is just a problem overseas
and it's easy to support in that way
because it's far away.
But the reality is,
is that racism is alive and well
in Australia too.
We only have to think of our
indigenous community.
People from an indigenous background
are put in jail
at rates far higher
than the rest of the population.
In 2015,
an indigenous man died in jail
in very similar circumstances
to George Floyd.
We only have to go back
to the start of the coronavirus spread
in Australia a couple of months ago
to be reminded of the racism
that came out
to people from an Asian background.
There was abuse
and beatings
on the streets of Sydney
that just stemmed from racism
because people
looked different.
Part of the action
that we are called to do
means calling out racism
when we see it.
We are all raised
to think in an ethnocentric way,
to think that our culture
is right,
but Christians should seek
to bring Christ to bear
on all that we do,
what we love
and what we allow
to influence us.
The love that we share
is to be shaped
by the love God has had for us
and to love in action.
I want to encourage you
to do two things
if you are in the same place
that I have been concerned
about what has been happening
in Australia,
Australia,
let alone overseas.
The first thing
is to write a letter.
Earlier in the week,
I wrote a letter
to those who can make change
in our state.
I wrote to two members
of our state parliament,
to the Minister for Corrections
and the Minister for Police,
the Honourable David Elliott
and the Honourable Anthony Roberts,
employing them
to make a change
because they have
significant influence
and power.
You can get a template
for the letter
that I wrote.
You can go to a website
called
commongrace.org.au.
It has a lot of information
there for Christians
about supporting
indigenous people
in our country.
Or you can even contact me,
contact the church.
I can send you my letter
and you can send that as well.
The second thing
that you can do
is be aware
of your ethnocentric bias
and change what you do.
Be aware
that we are all ethnocentric.
We all,
just the way we are brought up,
are raised to think
that our cultural way
of doing things
is right.
And we need to be aware
of that
and move away from that.
Because it is very easy
to go from thinking
our culture is right
to being racist
and saying that people
who are different
are wrong.
There is no one race
or culture
that is more Christian
than all the others.
This is one of the reasons
why we speak
of being a trans-cultural church.
We don't just want to be
an Australian culture church.
We don't want to be
a Chinese culture church.
We want to be
a church
that is shaped
by a Christ culture.
One that is united
in our diversity.
And this is really difficult.
One of the small ways
I've noticed
that I need to change
my ethnocentric preference
is just in the way
I give people nicknames.
If you've ever met me,
I have probably given you
four different nicknames
in the space of four minutes.
It is one of my favourite
things to do.
And we have
a dear colleague at work,
Adrian,
our missions pastor.
His last name is Wong
and
I call him
Wongi sometimes.
And I did that
with another brother,
another Christian brother
of
Chinese background
and he was shocked
because it is not
a respectful thing
to do.
And
I had this moment
where I just went,
ah yeah,
but I'm Australian
and this is what I do
and this is fine.
And Adrian's okay with it
but I realised
that my preference
was not actually
loving my brother.
Not actually
loving people
who are from
a different culture
who don't,
who understand
that it is not
respecting people.
We need to be aware
of our own biases
and to instead
be shaped by Christ
and to change
our behaviour.
to love
in action
and not just
in words.
Verse 18,
Dear children,
let us love
with words,
let us not love
with words or speech
but with actions
and in truth.
So,
we should first of all
be thoughts
and prayers Christians.
We should be thinking
deeply about
other people's problems
and bringing them
to our Lord.
And we should also
be prepared
to help those
around us
in need.
seeking to bring
real healing
to people's lives
who are damaged
from sin,
who are damaged
from their own sin
and other people's sin.
Their needs could be
from psychological trauma,
from social instability,
from economic
or physical pain.
I want to encourage you
to come
and drop off food
for the Anglicare Food Drive.
That is a really
wonderful thing to do.
Be supporting
Sam and Sally
financially
as they seek
to plant their church
and see many people
on the Gold Coast
come to know
and love Jesus.
Give money
to support
the people
in Narrabri
who are continuing
to find life difficult
after the floods
and bushfires.
These are all
great things to do.
I commend them
to you
and I will be
financially supporting
all of them.
But let's not think
that when we do
those things
we have met
the call
for the Christian
to love
in action.
God has called us
to meet the needs
of the people
that are around us.
Brothers and sisters,
we can give
to every worthy cause
but we can also
ignore
the people
God puts
in front of us.
Let's not only
love with words
or speech
but love
like we have been loved
in actions
by God himself.
Let me pray.
Dear Heavenly Father,
I thank you so much
for your love
to us.
I thank you
that you
did not leave
us alone
but that you
sent your Son
and that he
acted to die
on the cross
the greatest
expression
of love ever.
Heavenly Father,
help us
to love
like you have loved.
To love
when it is difficult,
to love
when we see
people's needs
in front of us
and not just
give loving
words
but to love
in physical
needs,
Lord.
Father,
help us
to be able
to support
the many
things that we
are seeking
to support
this month.
Father,
continue to be
with Sam
and Sally.
Help us
to support
Anglicare
as they support
many people
and Narrabri
as well.
But Lord,
open our eyes
to the people
who are in front
of us
who have
needs.
Change our
hearts
that we
would love
like you
love us,
Lord.
Amen.