(This transcript was generated by AI. Apologies for any inacuracies)

If you are a guest with us today, you picked a great weekend to come.

Maybe it's your first time back in a long time.

And again, we're glad you're here.

We're starting a brand new teaching series today called Love Is, come on.

So yeah, and we'll be talking through love over the next several weeks.

Some of you are preparing for that lovely day we call Valentine's Day, come on.

And it's right around the corner next weekend.

So fellas, don't forget that next weekend.

It is Valentine's Day.

But today we're gonna be talking a little bit about what I refer to as contagious love.

It's a love that comes from God.

It's a love that begins to stir in our own hearts and work through our hearts into the world.

And again, it's called Love Is. If you have your Bibles with you today, I'm gonna invite you to open it up to the book of 1 John, towards the back of your Bible.

1 John chapter four, and just a moment, we'll start there in 1 John chapter four, verse seven.

But what I've discovered on my journey is we typically express what we experience.

And what we desire for you to experience when you come together with God's people, you step into this arena.

We want you to experience God's love, and because of God's love, we want to stir your faith in who God is, and then have the courage to walk out of here and be that vessel in the world to continue to build God's kingdom, bring up there, down here.

We call this an arena for a reason.

We're all in a fight, we're all in this fight of faith, and when we come in the presence of God, we believe that he is doing our battle for us, but we are having our faith stirred up from God's word each and every weekend.

That's why we think it's significant for you to come to church.

Not because God's gonna be mad at you if you don't attend, but it's simply how you can become all God's created you to be and step fully into it and really live life on purpose and with a purpose.

And so again, we're glad you joined us this weekend as we kick off this series called Love Is. We'll begin in 1 John 4, verse seven, and the writer says this.

He says, dear friends, let us continue to love one another for love comes from God.

Anyone who loves is a child of God and knows God, but anyone who does not love does not know God for God is love.

Verse nine says, God showed how much he loved us by sending his one and only son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him.

Anybody in here thankful for Jesus and the love of the cross?

Come on, the forgiveness offered on the cross?

Come on, the message that God sent through the cross of Christ?

The Bible says that God showed his love through that.

It goes on in verse 10, it says, this is real love.

Not that we love God, but that he loved us.

Pay close attention, it says, this is real love.

Not that we love God, but that he loved us and he sent his son as a sacrifice to take away our sins.

He says, dear friends, since God loved us that much, he said, we surely ought to love each other.

No one has ever seen God, the writer says, but if we love each other, God lives in us, us as a church family, us as the people of God.

And as his love is brought to full, and his love is brought to full expression in us.

His love is brought to full expression in us as we love each other and work that love out of us into the world.

So what God desires, according to this passage, is for people to experience his love, the love that can only come from him, not the type of love that just comes from another person, but he wants us to experience his love.

And as we experience his love, he wants us to come together and then begin to express that same love to the world around us.

And so I wrote in my journal this week, God desires for love to be contagious.

Love needs to be contagious because God's purpose for you and me is to come together with his amazing love and be contagious to the folks around us.

So love is contagious.

And if we're gonna be contagious with the love of God, then we can, again, look at the cross of Christ and what Christ did through the cross, and we can learn what it truly means to be contagious with God's amazing love.

So I'm gonna go to a verse today to talk about how to be contagious with God's love because love is contagious and love is meant to be contagious.

And that verse is a famous verse that you're probably gonna see in the end zone today as you watch the Super Bowl.

It's called John 3.16.

But what we're gonna do today is not just observe John 3.16 in the end zone.

We're not just gonna observe it written on some quarterback's face.

Come on.

We're going to begin to digest what God is saying through John 3.16 and we're gonna apply it to our life and we're gonna walk out of here and we're gonna change the world.

Come on, somebody.

We're gonna change the world with God's amazing love.

So John 3.16 says this.

Jesus said, for God so loved the world so much that he gave his one and only son so that everyone who believes in him, everyone who believes in him, everyone who believes in him will not perish, will not waste away, but they will have eternal life.

And so what does contagious love look like?

I wrote down in my journal, the first thing that contagious love looks like is it's generous.

Look at your neighbor and say, are you generous?

Go ahead and say, are you generous?

Look at them, ask them the question, are you generous?

You see, the Bible says that God gave.

And so contagious love looks generous.

That means we understand that all the good things that we have in our life, the good gifts we have, the abilities we have, me sucking in air right now, my heartbeat beating in my chest right now, all those good things come from God.

And so because God has been so generous to us as a church family, pulling us together, not only with tangible resources, but intangible resources, if we learn that generosity flows in us for a purpose, it can begin to change the world.

In other words, the Bible states from the very beginning that God blessed Father Abraham, the father of our faith.

The Bible says God called him out of a place, and he said, hey, I'm going to bless you, Abraham.

I'm going to bless you, and I believe there's no person sitting underneath the sound of my voice that wouldn't like to be blessed by God.

But he says, I'm going to bless you for a purpose.

And this is the part we miss.

I'm going to pour out my love, my blessing on you, Abraham, so that you can be a blessing to the nations of the earth.

And so there's a so that clause in that passage of scripture that begins to help you and I understand how to distribute the love that comes from God into the world around us.

And it's about being generous, understanding that God blesses us for a purpose, that God flows in so he can flow out.

And so we encourage our church to continue to be a generous church.

I don't know if you know it, but you're sitting around tremendous generosity right now.

We're a church of generosity.

We're a church that do all we can to show the love of God to the community he has placed us in, to the world he has placed us in.

We realize that the good blessings of God have come from God so that we can do the work of God and express his love to the world around us.

In other words, this building, this campus, our school, all the tangible things, the things we have are here because people are generously blessing back God's church so God's church can be a blessing in the community to do great and mighty things.

In other words, this is a come together of multitudes of people blessing and using what God has placed in their hand to be a blessing to the world around us and it's in the hearts of people here.

And again, it's in the hearts of people that are currently right now underneath physical challenges.

It's in the hearts of people who even underneath financial challenges.

It's in the hearts of people that are very sick in their body right now.

But what they understand is all the good blessing that comes from heaven is given to them for a purpose and it's to show the love of the creator, the love of the great God into the world around them and change the world.

Even if they're laying on a hospital bed, they're still expressing love to the doctors and to the nurses around them and it's the generosity in them that's flowing out of them.

See, love is contagious whenever you understand the generosity of your heavenly father first flowed to you for an amazing, amazing purpose.

God gave his love on that cross.

In other words, he took the justice I deserved I deserved, let me personalize that, I deserved.

God took that justice on his shoulders as he shed his blood on that cross.

As those nails were pierced through Jesus' hands and through Jesus' feet and that crown of thorns was shoved on his head and that spear jabbed in his side.

It was just for me, but he took the justice so I could be set free and so that you could be set free to be a blessing to the world around you no matter what the conditions are, come on.

It's understanding the justice of God has been served and it's been served on the person of Christ.

And because justice has been served on the person of Christ, I can step out and experience the love of my creator in a personal way and it's not based on how I feel and how everything else is responding around me.

I know I'm loved because of what has already been done on a cross, come on somebody.

Slap your neighbor and say you're loved.

Let the generosity flow into you.

And here's my promise, if his true generosity on that cross has flowed into your heart, the generosity of God begins to flow out of your heart.

Love is contagious.

Love is not self-seeking is what my Bible says.

And so if I'm not gonna be self-seeking because I got enough of myself that needs to be seeking a lot of stuff, come on.

But I got some love that's flowed into me that helps me continue to be generous over and over again.

I'm inviting you today to experience the love of God in your life because love is contagious.

Love is a generous and a generous love begins to spread into the world.

But what we also learn from this verse of scripture, John 3, verse 16, is love is courageous.

See, if we're gonna be contagious with the love of God, we gotta be courageous with the love of God.

You know, it took a lot of courage for Jesus to allow himself to be nailed to a cross.

But I do wanna show you here in John 3, verse 16, what it says.

It says, for God so loved the world so much that he gave his one and only son so that everyone who believes in him will not perish, but have eternal life.

Romans chapter five, verses six through eight states this.

When we were utterly helpless, it says Christ came at just the right time and he died for us as sinners.

Now, most of us would not be willing to die for an upright person, it says, though someone might perhaps be willing to die for a person who is especially good.

The Bible says, but he, he showed great love.

Not based on what someone has done, but based on who he is.

Don't forget first John chapter four says, God is love.

And the Bible says he gave his self on that cross because he is a love.

And he showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners.

And so again, there's a lot of different terminologies for love in our Bible.

But the kind of love we're talking about today, that contagious love, that courageous love is an unconditional love.

It's known as the Greek word called agape love.

And again, it's not based on the feeling I get from someone when I show love, but it's courageous enough to show love in spite of how I feel.

And we tend to live in a culture where we wanna show love as long as somebody is showing it back to us.

But this passage here in Romans makes it clear that, you know what, that that's natural, but a supernatural love that comes from God, this love we're talking about here today, it's a courageous love because what it does is it continues to love in spite of the other person's response.

And it takes a lot of courage to do that.

I need you to know today it took a lot of courage for Jesus to get on that cross, to die for people down through the ages who had never ever responded to his love in the first place.

And the Bible says Jesus did it anyway.

And here's the reason why, is because Jesus did not come into this world to judge the world, to condemn the world, to tell you all the bad things you have ever done in this world.

He came to give you a hope and he came to give you a future and he expressed love for every sin on that cross.

And it took courage to do it because he don't know how you're gonna respond to it.

And the reality of it is this, is this love is what he wants to exhibit to every single one of us in this room.

Cause God's love wants to get in you, it wants to stir faith in you and it wants to be expressed through you.

And so God wants us to have courage when it comes to love.

And a great story in our Bible that shows us this amazing love that Jesus exhibited and the courage.

You know, it's amazing because if you study all the encounters Jesus had with people, they're not passive encounters.

They're courageous encounters because of his love.

He had the courage to step into situations and circumstances and have courageous love because it needed to be contagious to the people around him.

An example of it is found in John chapter eight.

And the Bible says there were some religious leaders that were wanting to trap Jesus, get him to being a trap to basically, because Jesus was talking all about loving people and all of these kinds of things, but they wanted to trap Jesus.

And so they brought this notorious woman to Jesus' feet.

And the Bible says there were religious leaders and they had rocks in their hand.

They come and they throw this woman at Jesus' feet who had been caught in the act of adultery.

And they said, Jesus, the law of Moses says when you catch someone in the act of adultery, not just assume she was committing adultery, the Bible says they caught her.

And he said, the law of Moses says when someone is caught in the act of adultery, that the law of Moses says in this particular instant, that person could be stoned and put to death.

And they said, so Jesus, what should we do?

Should we stone her to death or what?

And Jesus's act of courage is remarkable to me.

Because Jesus doesn't respond and say anything about the law of adultery or anything about where that lady was caught and talk about the instant.

What Jesus does is the Bible says in John eight, he bends over and he begins to draw in the dirt.

As these onlookers and these accusers were standing, trying to trap him into saying something that would go against the love of who he is representing.

They're trying to trap him in this particular spot.

Jesus draws him in the dirt and then he looks up and he says to the accusers, that's a key word, because you always have an accuser.

The Bible says that our enemy is the accuser of the brethren.

So what that means is we have an accuser that's always gonna remind us of the mistakes we've made, the screw ups that's happened in our life and everything that surrounds our life.

The Bible says the accusers are standing there and Jesus looks up at the accusers and said, the one of you without sin, missing the mark of God's glorious standard in your life, go ahead and start throwing rocks.

What I need us to know today is that took courage.

Because Jesus is standing in the face of an elite group of people who knew the law of Moses inside and out, but he had the courage to speak to them in such a way it would begin to convict their own hearts.

And so when we begin to think about the love of Christ and the accusations, because I do it, and the accusations I wanna make against somebody else because of their screw up, I'm always taken back to this story to remind me that I'm a screw up my own self.

And the reality of it is, is you know what?

I don't stand in the place to accuse the brethren.

There is one that stands on high who will make all things right in the end.

But my job and my place is to stand and hold the brethren accountable.

Come on, to hold people accountable, but to help them have a hope and a future, not to keep looking back at yesterday, what happened last month, last year, and living in that spot.

And the Bible says in Romans chapter eight, in case you're wondering, it says that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

So the question is, well, does that just free everybody to go and run in their own direction and do their own thing and begin to live a life of sin in not allegiance to God?

Absolutely not, the writer in Romans says.

Paul, he says, no, it is for freedom that Christ set you free, says in the book of Galatians.

It's not common underneath the law of Moses, but it's understanding the love of God in your heart.

Here's what I wanna tell you today, is when you learn the love of God in your heart, you will have the courage because the spirit of God lives in you to step up and begin to exhibit the fruit of God.

You wanna know what the fruit of God is?

It's called love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

And the fruit of the spirit living in you, my brother, is love.

Come on, somebody, love.

Tell your neighbor, it's love.

Love is contagious when it's courageous and it stands up and it reminds anybody and everybody that we all need a savior and his name is Jesus.

But let me be crystal clear.

Don't think I'm gonna stand one minute as a pastor and continue to say, just keep going down your lifestyle of sin.

What I do a lot of times is let somebody go down their lifestyle of sin until they find themselves in a place where they recognize, you know what, I screwed up and I need Jesus.

But I'm not gonna let you continue down that road.

I will do all I can to speak into your life and say, why don't you repent and why don't you turn and why don't you come in a new direction?

Because God wants you to live a full life.

He wants you to live a purposeful life.

He wants you to live a great life and I'm not here to condemn you today.

I'm here to present good news to you and his name is Jesus.

There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

It's courageous, it's courageous.

Jesus demonstrated courage when he stepped into that situation with that woman.

But what we learn from John chapter three verse 16 is contagious love is courageous.

It's generous, but it also is purposeful.

That's purpose and how it's directed.

And look what it says here again in John chapter three verse 16, it says, for God loved the world so much that he gave his one and only son so that, everybody say so that.

It's purpose, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish.

That doesn't just mean we'll not go to hell.

That literally means we'll not dry up and waste away.

It says, we'll not perish, but they will have eternal life.

Eternal life and abundant life.

A full life, a life that has a purpose to it.

It's remarkable when you look at this story of Jesus in John eight, having this encounter with this adulterous woman and these accusers, what Jesus does in John chapter eight, verses 10 and 11.

I wanna read it to you.

The Bible says as his accusers began to drop the rocks that they had in their hand and they began to go away, that Jesus kneels down again and he draws in the dirt again.

And the woman standing there, Jesus basically again just kneeling, waiting for the accusers just to go away.

This is a woman in a desperate situation.

This is a woman that had never experienced the love of God, the mercy of God.

And the Bible says this woman in this particular case that Jesus doesn't condemn her, but he stands to his feet again is what it says in John 8 verse 10.

And he said to the woman, where are your accusers?

Didn't even one of them condemn you?

No, Lord, she said.

And Jesus said, neither do I, pay close attention.

I don't condemn you, but here's what I need you to do, lady.

Go and sin no more.

So Jesus wasn't condoning her lifestyle of sin, what Jesus was doing was rescuing her from her lifestyle of sin.

And he was putting her accusers to the street so that she could have a hope and she could have a future and begin to move forward with purpose and with life.

And what I'm here to declare to you as we kick off this Love Is series, is Jesus is love, he has demonstrated that love, he has demonstrated the power of God as he rose from a grave because he don't want you to live under self-condemnation, he don't want you to live underneath someone else's condemnation, he wants to set you free from a lifestyle of sin and you to live underneath his leadership and his lordship and you march forward and you let that love get in and you let that love stir in your heart and you let that love get through you into the world around you and change the world.

Come on, somebody.

Love is purposeful.

God's love come to me for a purpose and I really believe it's to be wherever he's planted me in difficult moments, in circumstances and in challenges and say, I choose love anyway.

Come on, because God first loved me.

You know, it's remarkable, Jesus said, love your enemies.

Why would he say such a thing?

Not because he just needs your enemy being loved.

Because he knows whenever you have experienced his love, you can express his love.

And you can love those who don't deserve it anyway.

Come on, have you experienced the love of God in your life?

And whenever you have, you'll become a courageous vessel, we'll be a courageous church, and this world will not be the same because of the love that's expressed.

Let me pray for you today.

God, I thank you so much for your amazing love.

God, the unconditional love that you offer each and every one of us.

God, I know that every one of us wanna be loved back whenever we show love.

And God, I hope that we can get that respect and that love from those around us.

But God, whenever the world around us is not even loving us back, let us recognize your amazing love through Christ Jesus as he gave his life on that cross to carry our justice and forgive us of our sins so we could be set free to run after the great things that you would have us to run after.

And God, if there's a woman here today, a man here today, a boy or a girl, no matter what age they are, God, I pray they could start this courageous life of faith, begin to experience your love by putting faith in you, Jesus, and beginning to move forward.

My friend, if that is you here today and you've been toting condemnation, you've been toting guilt, you've been toting shame, I need you to know today, God sent his one and only son into this world to forgive you, restore you in a right relationship, and move your life forward.

Just repent of your sin, turn your heart towards God's amazing love, and let him come in, change you, rearrange you, so you can move forward, and just simply say something like this, God, I need you, I need your forgiveness, I need your love, I turn away from my sin, I receive your love, let me experience it to the fullest, so I can live life on purpose, and be an expression of your love.

It's in Jesus's name, we pray this prayer, amen.