Bread of Life Church of Fresno
Welcome to the Bread of Life Church Podcast! This podcast seeks to bring the Bible to life through teaching and sharing what God has given us in His word. The goal of these messages is to obtain a functional spirituality that is worked out on a daily basis through the love and power of God.
Bread of Life Church of Fresno
True Humanity - You Were Made to Love, Not to Hate | Tom Bedford
The search for authentic love has consumed humanity throughout history—filling our songs, movies, and stories with attempts to capture its essence. Yet despite these efforts, most people continue pursuing a broken version of love that leaves them unfulfilled.
In this profound exploration of 1 John 4:7-12, we uncover the revolutionary truth that genuine love doesn't originate within human capacity but flows from the divine realm. This transformative message challenges our fundamental understanding of love's source and purpose—revealing that we can only access authentic love when we're connected to its divine origin.
The powerful revelation at the heart of this message is simple yet profound: you were not born to hate. When we embrace God's love, we become more authentically human, reclaiming the divine image we were created to embody. Conversely, when we choose bitterness, anger, and hatred, we become something less than human—moving further from our created purpose.
What makes this teaching particularly transformative is its practical application. When we experience the "mercy seat" of God's forgiveness in our own lives, we naturally extend that same grace to others. No longer viewing people through the lens of their failures, we see them through the perspective of divine potential. This creates communities where love becomes visible not through mystical experiences but through consistent acts of forgiveness, patience, and genuine care.
The ultimate evidence that we've been transformed isn't found in supernatural displays or religious performance, but in our capacity to love authentically. When we truly love one another, we demonstrate that hell no longer rules our hearts—we've been liberated from darkness into light.
Ready to experience a love that heals your broken humanity and transforms your relationships? Listen now and discover how heaven's love can invade your earthly existence.
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All right, everybody, are you ready? You have your Bibles out or your app out and you're not looking at Facebook and Instagram, but you got your Bible software up and your app. We are starting a series of messages on love, and the primary verse we're going to be working out of for the next several weeks comes out of the New Testament letter of 1 John, and we're going to focus on chapter 4, and today we're going to cover verses 7 through 12. But in the following weeks there will be more messages coming out of this text, and the reason we're taking this approach is that we want to take a condensed passage in the Bible and dig into it and examine it carefully, carefully. This is what the Bible scholars refer to as biblical theology, when you start with a text and you examine a text, versus systematic theology, where you take a topic and look at all the scriptures that come under that topic. So we're taking the topic of love, but rather than looking at lots of verses, we're going to focus on this one section of 1 John. Now, 1 John has a lot to say about love. In fact, it's the main message of the book and before you even get to chapter 4, he's already said a lot about this. He says in 1 John 2, verse 10, the one who loves his brother abides in the light and there is no cause for stumbling in him. Chapter 3, 11 through 12 says For this is the message which you've heard from the beginning that we should love one another, not as Cain, who is the evil one, or from the evil one, or of the evil one, and slew his brother. But what reason did he slay him? Because his deeds were evil and his brothers were righteous. 1 John 3.18 says Little children, let us not love with word or tongue, but in deed and truth. And verse 23 goes on to say this is his commandment that we believe in the name of his Son, jesus Christ, and we love one another just as he commanded us. So it's safe to say and conclude that the book of 1 John has a lot to say about love and that the apostle John felt like it was the preeminent message to come out of his life.
Speaker 1:And a lot of people believe that 1 John is really a commentary on the gospel of John and that the love of God that sent the son to the world was being explained and how it comes from God and works in us. How many of you are aware of the very famous verse that comes out of the Gospel of John? That says in verse 16 of chapter 3, begotten Son ever believe in Him would perish and have eternal life? Yeah, we're all quoting some version of it. There's NIV and King James and NASB all working in that, but it's the same idea, right? God's love initiated love through the Son to us. So now we're going to go ahead and take a look at this verse.
Speaker 1:So let's turn to our Bibles, to 1 John, chapter 4, verse 7. We're going to read the whole text and then we're going to come back and explain it a little bit. He says here in verse 7, beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love. By this, the love of God was manifested in us that God has sent his only begotten son into the world so that we might live through him. And this is love. Not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins. We'll come back and cover that big word Beloved. If God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has seen God at any time. If we love one another, god abides in us and His love is perfected in us. So that's a lot of statements there and we're going to unpack them briefly.
Speaker 1:First of all, we need to understand that love originates from God and in God and does not originate in you and I. I said it last week, but I'm going to say it again here the love that he's talking about originates in the divine sphere, it originates in heaven, it originates in God. It originates from God and comes into the earth, from God to us. We don't generate love here and give it back to God. If we did that, it would be flawed. Love that this book is talking about is not created by humans, derived by humans and worked out in a human plane without God's involvement.
Speaker 1:The love that he's talking about, the kind that changes the world, the kind that changes you and I, originates in heaven. It originates in God's divine holiness and then is given to the earth, and we are the gracious recipients of that love. We respond to it and then, as he puts it in us, it begins to work out of us how many of you believe that. So it bears weight on us to say that if anyone is going to operate in the love that God gives, you cannot operate in it until you yourself belong to that divine sphere. If you are going to love like God's asked you to love, let me say it this way If you are going to love and I am going to love as God has given us to love I have to belong to him where love originates. So if the love of God originates in heaven and is given to the earth, I have to be joined to heaven to have access to that love and for it to have access to me. So if I'm going to love like God gives to love, I cannot do that without God being involved and me being joined to him, him being joined to me. I have to belong to him before I can love like him. Let me say that again I have to belong to God before I can love like God. And until I belong to God I cannot love like him and I cannot love in him. And through him I will have the veiled human love. That is a love, but it is not the kind of love that God gives.
Speaker 1:And what's the difference? When man sinned and fell in the garden, he wasn't destroyed, he was just defaced, meaning he didn't lose his life and just cease to exist. And the species ended with our first parents. Something died, though their relationship with God died, and the place that was in their being to know him and be connected with him died. That's what sin does. Sin isn't just I did bad. The worst thing about sin is it separates us from God entirely and it makes us other than Him, different than Him, despondent to Him and void of Him. They became void of God when they sinned and fell, but because they were made in God's image and were created to be like Him, they still had a measure or capacity of his abilities within them, meaning they were made to love.
Speaker 1:Can I just say this too? You were not born to hate. Your creation, the creation of our humanity, our species, was not born to hate. It was born to love. We were made to love. We were made to love. Let me offer it to you this way you are your most human self when you truly love. Whenever we choose the love of God that forgives, that is merciful, that is gracious and kind and patient and does not hate people. We are our most human version. We're getting our humanity back.
Speaker 1:I want to say to you at Bread of Life, as the love of God is impacting us and changing us, we are becoming more human, us and changing us. We are becoming more human. What is it to be? Non-human? Ugly, mean, murderous, spiteful, jealous, vindictive, angry, defensive, mean-spirited, cold-hearted. The more like that we become, the less human we become and we become something else, something more like hell.
Speaker 1:Hell is not made for humans. Hell was created for the devil and his horde non--human beings. Hell was not made for humans. It was made. You're looking at me like I couldn't mean that. No, let me assure you, hell was not made for you. It was made for the devil and his angels. It was made for them. However, I can choose to go dwell there if I want to, and I can become non-human. There isn't anybody in hell that still resembles humanity. They have become the animalistic beasts of torment and anguish that that region demands.
Speaker 1:And in this world we are in the balance of. Will we become dark and non-human by not being what God made us to be, or will we return to the original image God created us to be and to be born of God and know God. And so until the divine sphere reaches you and moves into your heart, until we become born from above, until we turn to God and surrender our life and ask the miracle of salvation to enter our heart and enter our soul and transform us, we are doomed to have a defaced love at best, which is going to have a whole series of broken relationships, bitter memories, unforgiveness towards people and broken and shattered lives. Even if we go on to have families and children and grandchildren without the love that God gives coming into our lives to heal us, to restore us and to give what God created us to be back to us, we have very little ability at all to repair any of that and are doomed to live in a constant struggle of it. See, that's a strong statement.
Speaker 1:I've only been on this planet a long time. I've witnessed that. I've seen the love of God heal the unhealable. We just saw this beautiful family up here. The love of God entered their hearts and transformed them and caused them to become a family, and now children are being raised in love. Had God not got involved in that, what would that have become? What would I have become? So love starts in the divine sphere and it says that we should love one another because love is generated by God. And if you love God meaning you know God then you love a God kind of love.
Speaker 1:He says in verse 8, the one who does not love does not know God, for God is love. In other words, if I don't know God, if I've not been born again, if I've not been born from above, the part of me that should be regenerated, where love could live and dwell inside of my heart. That hasn't happened. And if that hasn't happened, no matter how defaced my humanity is and my sorrowful attempt to still love is at work, because I'm still made in God's image. I was still made to love. I'm just not loving in God. I was still made to love, I'm just not loving in God. I have this defaced humanity and this broken version of love that I attempt, but it isn't God's love and it's not the kind of love that builds stability and heals people and gives us life. It's a broken love and he says here, the one that does not have that it's because they don't know God, because what God gives does not give broken, tattered, destroyed lives. You, okay, I said, man Tom, this is intense. I'm trying to explain what God did for us.
Speaker 1:I woke up this morning and I laid in the dark for a while and I just meditated on the idea and the fact that when I was walking around in this planet under the curse the curse of my generation all of us come from a generation I was lost in darkness and broken in rebellion and sin and on my way to a devil's hell. I didn't have love in my heart. Was I created in God's image? Yes, did I love my mama? I did. I didn't love her enough to tell her the truth. I didn't love her enough to be obedient to the things she told me. I didn't love her enough to act and behave like she'd want me to when I was away from her. But I loved her that. I love my friends, yeah, but not enough to not betray them, not enough to do things to them I wouldn't want done to me, to say things about them I wouldn't want people to say about me Did I love people that had served me?
Speaker 1:I did, but not enough to be loyal to their service, because I was a renegade, I was rebellious and the love of God wasn't living in me. But I did love people. I was under a curse, my generation was under a curse and most of my friends are dead, and I would have been dead too. But God reached his hand into the earth and saw me living there without love, in darkness and brokenness, and set his hand upon me and said I choose you today when you've done nothing to deserve it. This is the next verse. By this the love of God has been manifested in us, that he sent his only begotten son into the world that we might live through him and that point of my life. I did not have the son and I was not living and I didn't have love, and I was on my way to hell. And God's love acted first. That's the highest definition of grace God acts first. You wouldn't be here if God didn't act first. You cannot act first. You cannot. You cannot derive your own salvation and you cannot create this kind of love in your own heart.
Speaker 1:No matter how many Hallmark cards you buy, this is the most confusing subject in the world. Songs are written every year about love, movies are made about love, cards are written to try to express that defaced human love. Novels are written, love stories are written. They abound and the world's chasing some form of love, this defaced image that still has some pattern of God working in it, still some measure of human love working. They're clamoring for it. Whenever I read the news, there's always some celebrity that's divorcing and marrying. What are they all doing? They're all trying to find this and they're chasing for it. Looking for love in all the wrong places right, okay, I couldn't pass that up but looking for love in too many places, or something like that. Anyway, the point is I could sing a lot of those, but I'm not going to.
Speaker 1:This is not karaoke hour, but the point I'm trying to make is that everyone's looking for this and they're all looking for something that God gave when he sent his son. And I'm not going to get it at the club. I'm not going to get it online. I'm not going to get it in a chat room. I'm not going to get it on dark things in the web. I'm not going to get this like that. I'm not going to get it by changing my gender proclivities. I'm not going to get it by changing my gender proclivities. I'm not going to get it through any of these things. I'm going to get it right when I bow before God and I realize that the greatest action of love that the world ever knew is when God manifested love and sent his only begotten son.
Speaker 1:This is the greatest thing about God. God does not just have mere words, he has action. To think of this, the whole world was rebellious and hated him and wanted to kill him, which they did. You say, oh, how could they have done that, my friends? We probably would have killed them. You think we're better than those people. We're born in sin with the rest of this world. Everyone is born against God. We're not born for God, we're born against Him. This is why dedicating these children is so powerful. We're teaching them from a young age that God is good. Lean this way, turn this way and, at the right moment, the miracle of being born from above will be theirs. We don't want to confuse our children by showing them a broken human love that says one thing and does another.
Speaker 1:My father used to say to me do as I say, not as I do. That's a love with words that didn't have action. He meant the best he did and I don't hold that against him, but that was the understanding of his generation. That's not an indictment on my father. He was giving me what he understood. I'm trying to tell you the right thing, but I don't have the ability to do it. That double-mindedness or that inconsistency gave me all kinds of loopholes to do the same thing. I'm going to tell you something that I don't produce. I'm going to say words to you that I don't live, and I'm going to expect you to think that the words are enough, instead of me becoming it.
Speaker 1:God didn't just say I loved you. He came to your rebellious self, your villainous darkness, darkness, and said I am going to allow you to kill me and I'm going to shed my blood, and I'm going to give my life as a ransom to pay for your sin and to give the open door of love to come into your heart that you desperately need, that you will never generate in your own power, and to do it I have to die for you. The greatest act of love that the world ever saw was when God gave himself as the sacrifice for the sin of mankind, so that we could be redeemed from our rebellious death, we could be redeemed from a devil's hell, and that the love we were made to have in the first place could come back into our hearts and into our lives and not only redeem our own soul but through our lives, begin to be expressed in holiness and in righteousness, in a way that begins to impact our family and friends, where the love of God is not just now, words, but action. That says I love you in words and love is speaking to you like it spoke to me. And this is love. In verse 10. He says, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins. Propitiation, that's atonement Now, this word. I don't have time to go through it all today, but this word appears several times in the New Testament. Propitiation, you say. What does that mean? I'm just going to give you a few references here. Romans 3.25 says God displayed His Son publicly as the propitiation in his blood, through faith, to demonstrate his righteousness. Hebrews 2.12 says he had to be made like his brethren in all things so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest to things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. You didn't know that word was in the Bible, that much did you. It appears twice in 1 John, in chapter 2, verse 2, and in here, verse 10 of chapter 4. I'm just going to give you a quick history lesson.
Speaker 1:In the Old Testament, in the tabernacle and then in the temple, in the holy place, there was the holy of holies. There was this thing called the ark of the covenant and there was a lid on the top of the ark of the covenant and it was called the mercy seat and moses went in there and then after that, yearly the high priest would go in and they would come in with the blood of animals and they would apply blood to the mercy seat in front of God and in front of heaven. And when God saw the blood of the animals on the mercy seat, he forgave the nation of Israel and their sin was atoned for through sacrifice by blood applied to a mercy seat. What does that mean? Jesus didn't just go in with the blood of animals, but he went into the heavenly holy of holies and offered the blood of his own life, the blood of the son. And in effect Jesus himself is our mercy seat. Meaning I come and I bring my broken, rebellious and dodgy life that's full of mistakes and pain, and instead of God cracking me with judgment and throwing me out, he says I am your mercy seat and when you come to me, your atonement is full. And then God looks upon you, no longer with judgment, but through the blood of a son, and says all is forgiven, all is forgotten. This is love.
Speaker 1:We can have a debate about what we think about this, but when you leave this planet and stand before God, if there's going to be anything you're grateful for, it's going to be that God sent his mercy seat to your pitiful life. And then when you yeah, this is what happened to me as a teenager I was on my way, hell, bound under the curse, and the mercy seat came to my life and said you know what I'm going to do for you, son. You don't deserve it. You cannot generate any love for me at all. The love you have is a defaced humanity carrying some broken pattern that you still have. But I'm going to give you what you cannot create, and how I'm going to do it is I'm going to bring the mercy seat to your life and I'm going to walk into it as mercy, and I'm going to pour it on you so much that you're going to be overwhelmed by it and you're going to collapse under the weight of it and you're going to be overwhelmed by it and you're going to collapse under the weight of it and you're going to thank me forever that I didn't leave you in your sin and I didn't leave you in your death, but I received you into my heart and my presence will abide with you and my love will live in you and I will begin to heal you and I will cause you to love in ways that you wish you could but never could, because the love will not come from your broken, defaced version, but it will come from heaven itself heaven itself.
Speaker 1:The church then becomes the culture where everyone here has that. Are we perfect at it? No, but this is the next verse. Just give me a few more minutes.
Speaker 1:Beloved, if God so loved us, brought mercy to us, in other words, and brought the mercy seat, we also ought to love one another. What does that mean? We also ought to love one another. What does that mean? When the mercy seat came to me, when Jesus' atonement and love came to me and forgave me of all things and cleansed me of all of my evil and resurrected my dead life and set his love in me. Now, when I turn to you, you know what I bring to you A measure of the mercy seat. Now, when I turn to you, you know what I bring to you A measure of the mercy seat. Okay, I just lost you right there.
Speaker 1:Let's just go through this again. When the mercy, I don't become your atonement, but I work with you on the basis of his atonement. So if mercy has transformed my life, why am I still in judgment on yours? The mercy seat has changed my idea of judgment, and now when I see everybody you know what I see everybody as it's people that are in need of the mercy seat, and the last thing I want to do is cause you to stumble and not see it, and I want you to see that's work in my life so that I offer it to you. So you know what I come to you with Guess what Forgiveness and mercy. If the mercy seat has changed my soul and released me from everything all evil, then why am I still bitter at you? God's forgiving us of all of that?
Speaker 1:Love covers a multitude of sins. The mercy seat covers all of yours. So when I turn to you in love, I don't think about yours anymore. You say what if you're still committing them? My love towards you is to help you get out of them, not to browbeat you for being stuck in them. Can you see? This Love originates in the divine sphere. It comes down into the earth through the son, the son of action. He dies on the cross, he raises from the dead. God's spirit moves into your heart and causes love to be lit on fire. And that love and that fire lives in you because Jesus atoned for your sin that blocked your ability to love God and have that fire. And now that the mercy seat is front and center and present in your life, all you have left to offer the earth is mercy, forgiveness, love, kindness, patience, and the church becomes a manifestation of all that. That is, how about we're attempting to?
Speaker 1:Finally, he says in verse 12, no one has seen God at any time. This is going to be hard for us to accept, but bear with me. This is going to be hard for us to accept, but bear with me. Visions and trips to heaven, dreams, those things encourage us, but we don't build our life out of that. Your life is not built off a dream and some supernatural vision. It's built off knowing God in his presence and in his word. But he's going to add something here. We've not seen God and have some special deal with God. Nobody in here has some special track to God that the others don't have and we're just a little bit elevated above you. That's nonsense. People who preach that stuff do it for sordid gain, to get money and position nonsense. People who preach that stuff do it for sordid gain, to get money and position. None of us live in some elevated space above one another. None of us have seen God like that. Here's what we do have. We love one another because God is here. He's going to go on to say that when God abides in us, his love is perfected in us, meaning we become mature, the mature version of God.
Speaker 1:The greatest way to see the love of God is not in some supernatural, mystical experience. The greatest way brace yourselves. The greatest way to see the love of God is a transformed society and a transformed community that lives in mercy and forgiveness and patience, because God has moved in all of our hearts and the transformation is not my story. My transformation is our people. Did that translate? Yet when we all have been born from above and realize the mercy seat came to all of us, we will all become so transformed by that love and by that power and by that mercy that we will give it to one another profusely. We will give it to one another over and over again and we will be merciful, tender and patient.
Speaker 1:And when the world walks through the doors and sees that before you've preached a word, they've already been impacted by the love itself, their defaced version is contrasted with this merciful, tender, god kind of love. How many of you want the God kind of love? God kind of love? Let me close with this. I want to repeat something I said last week.
Speaker 1:When you walk in this kind of love, it's the evidence that hell no longer rules you. It's the evidence and it's the manifestation that you've been separated from the demonic. When we walk in love, it's the sign that we've overcome evil, because everything that's evil hates love. This hates this love and loves to trigger the defaced version and make that this pseudo love that competes with God's love and it never works. When God's love has transformed me, your sins will be covered in my eyes, because I don't look at you through your sin. I look at you and your potential and what God could do if we could just love you through it.
Speaker 1:When a community of people loves each other this much. It'll be the sign that we as a people, as a body, have overcome hell in our region. And that's how you see God. You see God on what he's demonstrated, not through mystical stories. It's hard to translate mystical stories. It's easy to be served, it's easy to be received, it's easy to be loved. And can I tell you something? Supernatural power works there because, remember, love is action, love serves, love gives, love abides, love walks with, love endures with, love lives, life with. And somehow that living life and walking together, the power of God is present to do miracles among us.
Speaker 1:The idea that I'm going to stand on a stage and show off supernatural gifts so I can get offerings and brand image on Facebook and Instagram does not resonate that I love people.
Speaker 1:Does not resonate that I love people Means I love my ministry and I have a form of love that I offer people, but I don't take the time to live with them.
Speaker 1:I don't take the time to share my life with them and give my heart to them so that they see whether this love is authentic or not. Doing acts of ministry are not the highest order is telling the world I've overcome evil. That's why so many scandals abide through people who do acts of ministry. The greatest manifestation of the love of God is when I live in actions, not just words towards you and with you, not just words towards you and with you. It's something holy, forgiving, merciful, patient, transformative. It's at work and we all live in the glory of it and, instead of finding fault with God and one another, we are grateful we even have it at all and we look to our brother and our sister, to the left and right, and we say thank God for you, that I love you and that you love me and that we can all be healed in the presence of God.