I was preaching at another church this morning, and after the service somebody said to me, well, I love really formal anglican services, and I came to all Saints and you have a rock band in the evening, he said. And then afterwards, you know, he said, I went away and I thought, but they love Jesus. And so I just want to say to you tonight, if this isn’t your style of service, wherever you might be from, we do love the Lord Jesus here as you do as well. And not all our services are like this, but we rejoice in the variety of God’s church that we are all part of. So one John 410. We’re gonna meditate on it for a few minutes this evening, and I want to start by telling you that when I was growing up, my parents did not allow me to have chewing gumdeh. I know once or twice I sneaked it from a friend, and if I’m honest, I didn’t really like it. It seemed to me like a lot of hard work for not much benefit. There was a rumour in my primary school about what would happen if you swallowed chewing gum. Do you remember that rumour? If you ate too much of it, it would be like a giant fat burg inside you. Big fat burgs in the sewers of London floating around. So I was a bit shocked a few months ago when my dentist said, it’s good to have chewing gum after you’ve eaten a meal. Apparently it’s good for your teeth, good for your health. So there we are. You leave better informed than you came, I hope, tonight. Do you know, when it comes to God’s word, chewing is a good thing. It’s good for our health. It’s good to keep chewing it over. That’s why we are having this series on Sunday nights. I’ve hidden your word in my heart. The Bible calls it meditation, meditating. Christian meditating is not about emptying our minds. It’s not about mindfulness. It’s not about re centering ourselves or anything like that. Christian meditation is filling our minds with the truth of God’s word and chewing it over, turning it over in our minds, considering it from different angles, and getting all that we can from it. Psalm one tells us there was a man who was set apart from everybody else, even though he spent time with them every day, sinners and so on. He didn’t walk in step with the wicked or stand in the way of sinners, or sit in the seat of mockers or cynics. He lived a fruitful life. He wasn’t influenced by anybody around him. In fact, he influenced them. And how did he do that? It tells us in psalm one, his delight was in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditated day and night. So this is our series. I’ve hidden your word in my heart. We’re going to look at eight verses over the next eight weeks, eight verses which really every Christian ought to know by heart. And we’re going to chew it over. Here’s our first one. One John 410. This is love. Not that we love God, but that he loved us and sent his son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. There’s lots of definitions of love out there. Maybe you’ve seen, it’s a little dated now. Maybe you’ve seen those cartoons of those two little children. Do you remember the love is cartoons? Love is. You’re all looking at me very blankly, but I’m going to continue. Love is sharing an umbrella. Love is giving somebody a last Rollo, whatever it was. Do you remember those? Good. Some of us do. Thank you. Seventies were a good decade, weren’t they? This is the Bible’s definition in a sentence. One John 410. This is love. Not that we love God, but that he loved us and sent his son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins in every relationship. For it to get off the ground, somebody has to make the first move. And our verse tells us that when it comes to our relationship with God, he didn’t wait for us to make the first move. He didn’t wait for us to love him before he loved us. This is love. Not that we loved God, but that he loved us. Ali and Sahar are going to share their story a little bit later on of how they came to know God’s love for them. First of all, outside the iranian embassy, somebody telling them, you know, God loves you as a father more than your father. Long before they knew that, though, long before they knew that God loved them, long before they loved him, he loved them. Now, you may not be a christian tonight. You may not be a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ. You might not even be interested in him. Let me tell you on the authority of his word, he is very interested in you. He loves you. He loved you before you were born. Many people spend their lives afraid of being found out. We spend our lives trying to hide who we are, ashamed and afraid that if the other person really knew what we were like, well, they wouldn’t love us. We spend our lives trying to present the best version of ourselves to those out there, afraid that we might be found out that we might lose that relationship or that friendship. We might lose the possibility of that friendship or that relationship. You know, knowing the Lord Jesus Christ delivers you from those kind of fears. Knowing Jesus Christ means you don’t have to pretend. You see, God knows everything about you and me already. We’re an open book to him. There is nothing that he will discover about you or me that he doesn’t already know. Nothing that will make him think for a second, well, if I’d known that, I wouldn’t have set my love on them. He knows it already, and he still loves you and me. It is an amazing thing to know God’s unconditional love. I wonder if you know that in your own experience, in your own heart, this is love. Not that we love God, but that he loved us. You see, in a contract, if you work in the business world, you know about contracts, the clauses and the conditions and the small print, the penalties. That kind of thinking can creep into our relationships as well if we’re not careful, can’t it? Into a marriage or between parents and children. Children can feel under pressure to perform to please their parents or to risk disappointing them. Or in a marriage. It’s hard to love him after what he’s done. I’d love her if only she were a bit more. I’d love him if he were less. Fill in the blanks. One John four tells us that God’s love doesn’t come with small printhead. It doesn’t depend on the other person. It doesn’t depend on us doing something first or being something first. Being the best version of ourselves. God says, I loved you before you loved me. I loved you before you even noticed me. I loved you before you wanted anything to do with me. This is love. Not that we love God, but that he loved us. Love makes the first move. So this is our verse. We’re chewing it over tonight. Here’s the second thing. Not only does love make the first move, but love pays the ultimate price. Here’s the next bit of our verse. Do you remember it in the song? This is love. Not that we love God, but that he loved us and sent his son. Love pays the ultimate price. We often hear people say, love is a matter of give and take. We sort of rub along together. Love is a matter of give and take. Well, that’s worldly wisdom. The word of the Bible is, love is a matter of give and give and give and give and give and give. Because that is what love is. This is love. Not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son. God’s love is sacrificial. God’s love cost him everything. Everything he had. In sending Jesus to die on a cross 2000 years ago, God didn’t hold anything back. He gave what was most precious to him. One of the songs we sing here has these words in it. What gift of grace is Jesus my redeemer? There is no more for heaven now to give. He has given us everything. It’s costly. Wujin was a friend of mine from South Korea. He started to follow Jesus when he was an overseas student in London. And we would meet up each week and read the Bible together and talk about what we were learning and pray for each other. And I remember one day we were out having a cup of tea and we were reading psalm 22 together. Psalm 22 is the psalm that Jesus is meditating on. On the cross begins with the words, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And we talked about how at that moment Christ was carrying the sins of the world on his shoulders and he was bearing in our place the judgement of God so that our sins could be forgiven, our sin judged and we could be forgiven. That the separation that is naturally ours because of our sins came unto Christ. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And I remember Wujin’s eyes filled with tears. And all he could stutter out was the question. God really loves me that much. Think about it. God’s love for you and for me cost him everything he had. He had hundreds of millions of angels. But he didn’t send one of them. He sent his son, his only son, who he loves and gave him up for us on the cross. And he gave Christ to us knowing what we would do to him. Love makes the first move. Love pays the ultimate price. Here’s the last one. Love mends a broken relationship. Do you remember our verse? This is love. Not that we love God, but that he loved us and sent his son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Love mends a broken relationship. When Katie and I got married, we moved into our first flat. And we lived up in the sort of attic flat in an old house. And we discovered pretty early on that there was a leak in the roof. Whenever it rained, the water would pour in through the roof. And after a few weeks there was a great big brown stain on the ceiling. So we told the landlady and she sent in the builder and he painted over the stain on the ceiling. And it looked wonderful. Looked fantastic. Good as new. Until it rained again. Of course. And then the water poured through and the carpet got wet and so it went on. You know, it’s the same in our relationships. We might be afraid to name the issues or face up to the problems. We’re afraid that the other person might not love us anymore if they knew what we were really like. So we try and paint over it. We try to avoid conflict and paint over the problems. And sometimes we try to do the same in our relationship with God. But God won’t allow us to do that. This is love. Not that we love God, but that he loved us and sent his son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Because God loves us. He won’t paint over our sin, he won’t pretend it doesn’t matter, that it’s not there, that it’s not an offence to him, that it doesn’t separate us from him. It does all those things. It attracts his anger, it attracts his judgement, it attracts an eternity without him. But because he loves us, he doesn’t paint over that. The word translated sacrifice of atonement, actually means a sacrifice to turn away God’s wrath. Jesus loved us and came into the world to take your sin and mine on himself at the cross to bear God’s judgement in our place, so that God’s judgement would be turned away from us, that our sins will be judged in Christ. At the cross, God does not paint over our sins, he drags them out into the open. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the lutheran pastor who was executed in the last war, he said the cross is God’s truth about us. It says that we are sinners under judgement and in need of forgiveness. At the cross, God exposes our sins for what they are, not to score points, not to make us feel rubbish about ourselves, not to rub our noses in it. He doesn’t do that. At the cross, God confronts us with our sin so that he can judge it and remove it and forgive it, and mend our broken relationship with him and restore us to himself because he loves us. Now thats a great model for us to follow in our relationships just on a human level, isnt it? The Bible says dont let the sin go down on your anger. If we have a problem with a brother or a sister, we shouldn’t bottle it up, we shouldn’t store it up or go quiet towards them. We should humbly, graciously, lovingly recognise we have a great plank in our own eye, go to them and bring it up so that it can be forgiven and dealt with and our relationship put right. This is love. Not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. We’ve seen three things tonight as we end that God made the first move towards us even when we weren’t interested. He paid the ultimate price in sending his own son to die on a cross for our sins. And in doing that, he opened the way to Mendez, our broken relationship with him. But, you know, all declarations of love need a response. If somebody gets down on their knee in front of you, you can’t leave them hanging there. Ali and Saha and Lawrence have responded. And in a few minutes time, we’re gonna walk down the high street and we’re gonna watch them be baptised. But I want to ask you, as I have you responded to this declaration of love that God has made to you? Tonight, Ali and Saher and Allah and Amir and Lawrence are going to receive baptism, the outward sign and seal of what Christ has done for them in washing away their sins and giving them new life by his death and resurrection. But tonight, this could be your night as well. Maybe not to be baptised, but maybe to respond to God’s love for you for the very first time. Maybe there’s somebody here tonight. God is speaking to you through his word this evening, and I’d love to talk to you afterwards, to pray with you, to help you respond to God’s declaration of love. But as I end, I’m going to pray, and I’d like to invite you to echo this prayer in your heart. Maybe it’s the hundredth time, maybe it’s the first time. So our verse one more time. This is love. Not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Heavenly Father, we thank you that you have always loved us. We thank you that in your love, you sent your son for us to die for our sins on the cross so that we might be forgiven. We thank you for relationship restored, for new life with you. Whether we’ve been christians for many years or are starting out tonight, Father, we give ourselves to you with our love and thanks and with our whole hearts. Amen. Amen. I.