Someone is carrying the Olympic torch. It should be a glorious event, but it's not without its dark side. We've all seen it on TV news reports: the police form a human barrier around the person carrying the torch. Some people are on the sidelines watching; they’re curious, but not involved. Many people cheer the carrier on, and there are others who are protesting human rights violations in China and demonstrate wherever the torch is carried. The torch has been snuffed out, tempers are high, scuffles occur, and arrests are made. No matter what you think about the Olympics, the fact is that those images show the messy side of people trying to live with other people.

In a sense, we’re all trying to carry the torches of our own lives. We feel that some people come beside us and help us. Others don’t cheer for us, but neither do they hinder us; they're just there. We feel that other people are trying to put out our flames; maybe they’re well-intentioned, but they're hurting us. People: you can't live with them, and you can't live without them!

The intriguing truth that we want to grasp today is that people — the good, the bad, and the ugly — are our pathway to a closer relationship with God! This morning we continue our series of four messages on the theme “The Four P's of God's Growth Plan”. Today we’ll discuss part three, “People: the Pathway to God.”

PEOPLE MAKE GOD REAL TO US
Probably the clearest statement in the Bible showing that people make God real to us is found in the apostle John's first letter (toward the back of our New Testaments). John wrote, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, “No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.” (1 John 4:12) God is spirit, so you can't see Him, and He has chosen not to reveal Himself through audible communication with us most of the time.

How can you love someone you can't see, hear, or touch? How can such a one — in this case, God — be real to us? The fact is that we experience God's love when we treat other people the way God wants us to treat them: the way He loves them.

It's easy for a little girl to love her doll, because she sees her doll the way she wants her to be. When she plays with her human playmates, all may not go so smoothly, and it’s easier for the little girl to love her doll than to love a friend. It's fairly easy to create God in our own image, the way we'd like Him to be, and it's easy to love God like that. However, God has set up another system, as expressed by the apostle John. We show our love for God, who’s perfect but invisible, by loving people, who are very visible and very imperfect!

Throughout history there have been hermits, even holy hermits, who have attempted to go off by themselves to find God. However, the truth is that life with God is lived among people! Jesus not only called twelve people to follow Him, He called them to follow Him together! That had to be the tough part, because people make God real to us!

A classic story written by Leo Tolstoy in 1885 drives home this point. The story is about a shoemaker named Martin. Martin had lost his wife and then he lost his son. He felt distant from God, so a friend encouraged him to start reading the Bible, which he did. One day he sensed that God was telling him that He would visit his shoe shop that day.

Martin was excited; would the Lord really visit him? He waited with anticipation, but all he experienced were some ordinary things that happened throughout the day. First he noticed an old soldier standing out in the cold. He invited him in and served him some warm tea.

Still looking for Jesus, he saw a poor woman outside his shop with her son. It was obvious that they were hungry, so he invited them in and gave them a meal.

Later in the day Martin noticed an old woman selling apples in the street. A young boy came up and stole an apple, and the old woman grabbed the boy. They scuffled, and Martin quickly went outside and tried to break it up. The woman wanted to take the boy to the police, but Martin tried talking her out of it. He asked the boy to ask the woman for forgiveness, and he did. Then Martin took an apple from her basket and gave it to the boy, telling the woman that he'd pay her for it. She still thought the boy should be punished, and Martin said, “If he is to be whipped for an apple, what do we deserve for our sins?” Martin went on to talk about forgiveness, and eventually the woman relented. As she started to walk away, the boy offered to carry her basket of apples for her.

That evening Martin retired for the night, disappointed that Jesus hadn’t visited him. Then he saw movement in the shadows of the room. “It is I.” — it was the old soldier. “It is I.” — now it was the woman and her son. “It is I.” — the boy and the old woman with the apples stepped forward. Then Martin remembered some Scripture he had read, words of Jesus: “For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, . . . whatever you did for one of the least of these . . . , you did to me.” (Matthew 25:35,40) Now Martin understood: Jesus had indeed visited him!

We often call Tolstoy's story “Martin the Cobbler,” but he gave it the title “Where Love Is, There God Is Also”. People make God real to us!

BEING LIKE GOD: LOVING THE UNLOVELY
One of God's primary goals for us is to be more and more like Him and His Son Jesus. Jesus told us, “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” (Matthew 5:48) We won’t reach that goal on this side of heaven, but it should be what we aim for anyway!

Jesus was perfect, and we're called to be like Him. That's why one of the five levels of the road to spiritual maturity we're using here at Mayfair-Plymouth is level four: Becoming Like Christ. We follow Jesus, and part of following Him is emulating Him: trying to be Christ-like.

Two times in the passage from 1 John the author used the phrase, “God is love.” (1 John 4:8,16) God’s nature is supremely loving. In fact, God doesn’t fulfill the perfect definition of love; He’s what defines love! Love is simply the way God is! We know what love is in this world because God is like that. “Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. . . .” (1 John 4:7) It’s God's nature to love and to seek the best for others. Later John stated, “We love because he first loved us.” (1 John 4:19)

Children copy their parents; it's how they learn to be human. We’re meant to copy our divine parent, our Heavenly Father. We’re supposed to love others as He loves us and loves others. We’re to be chips off the old block: our eternal, infinite, perfectly loving Heavenly Father!

There's a story about a soldier in the army of Alexander the Great. He got into trouble and was brought before a superior officer. When he was asked his name, he said, “It's Alexander, the same as Alexander the Great.” The superior officer replied, “Change your name or change your behavior.” As God's children, we need to change our names or our behavior!

IT'S NOT EASY TO LOVE
We have to be realistic: it's not easy to love other people. Love is essentially unselfishly looking out for another person's best interests. That's hard to do; even those we’re close to, whom we have a genuine affection for, aren’t always easy to love. Those who irritate us, who don't have our best interests at heart, or who may actually try to do us harm are even harder to love.

What would you think is one of the major problems, or causes of stress, for godly, self-sacrificing missionaries serving the Lord in other countries and cultures? It's the other missionaries they work with!

Even in a monastery life isn’t easy, because each monk has to live with the other monks. A young, new monk had to report to his superior once a month. In this particular monastery the young monk could only say two words every month for the first year. After the first month he met with his superior, and when he was asked how things were, he said, “Food bad.” The next month, when he was asked how things were, he said, “Bed hard.” The next month his answer was, “Room cold.” When it was reported later that the young monk had quit the monastery, his superior said, “It's just as well. All he did was complain.”

We shouldn’t expect that people will never hurt us, misunderstand us, ignore our needs, or annoy us. We're all imperfect, fallen people. Even as followers of Jesus, we’re all works in progress. When people act badly we shouldn’t be surprised. We should simply get over it and be realistic: no one's perfect!

The apostle Paul wrote, “If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.” (Romans 12:18) That verse is very realistic. Get along with everyone, as much as you can. Remember that you can't control the way someone else acts! Any truly close, fulfilling relationship is two-way. You can only do so much, only your part. However, you must do your part; it's a command of God!

CALLED BY GOD TO LOVE
Three times in today’s passage we have the command, “love one another.” (1 John 3:7,11,12) It's not a suggestion; it’s a command. Jesus Himself put it this way: “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” (John 13:34-35) What identifies us as true followers of Jesus is that we’re able to love when on a human level we couldn’t do it.

Jesus said there are two great commands: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'” (Matthew 22:37-38) We have no option! The two commands go hand-in-hand. John, in our text for today, wrote, “If anyone says, 'I love God,' yet hates his brother, he is a liar.” (1 John 4:20) We can’t claim to love God and to put His interests first if we don't also seek to love the people He's put around us, seeking their best interests. John concluded, “And he has given us this command: Whoever loves God must also love his brother.” (1 John 4:21)

It will be very difficult for most of us to love, help, forgive, or even just put up with some people. The fact is that we can't do it on our own: we need the Lord's help.

HELPED BY GOD TO LOVE
We have the impetus to love others even though they're unlovely because God loves us even though we're unlovely. “This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.” (1 John 4:9-11) One of the best ways to regain our moral equilibrium when it’s hard to love, accept, forgive, or help someone who’s unlovely is to remember how much Christ has loved us!

By the way, if you’ve never recognized in a deep way just how much you’ve hurt God and that you need His forgiveness, you need to do that first! God loves you, but you have to accept His love and forgiveness. He sent His Son Jesus to the cross so that Jesus could pay the price for your sin, maintaining His perfect holiness yet still able to love and accept you. Let Him love you completely by forgiving you. Then, bolstered by His love for you, He’ll give you the love to deal with your “people pain.”

John wrote, “And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.” (1 John 4:16) We have to rely on God's love for us in order to act in a loving way to the people He's put around us, because we can't do it on our own. When you’re faced with the challenge of loving the unlovely, just pray, “Jesus, help me love this person with the love with which You love me. Let Your love flow through me.”

The best way to experience the reality of God's love is to experience it flowing through you into the life of someone else! Let me show you a practical illustration of how that works. Plug an extension cord into an electrical outlet. Is there current in the extension cord? Not really; the extension cord only has electrical current when the current is flowing through it, and the current only flows through it when there's something plugged into the other end of the cord. We experience God's love at its best when His love is flowing through us into the lives of others! “No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.” (1 John 4:12)