1 John 4:20-21 — You can praise God in the sanctuary and give the cold shoulder

in the parking lot. John says only one of those things tells the truth about you.

⛪ Preached at Pilgrim Baptist Church • Cookeville, TN • June 25, 2026.

📚 Part of our verse-by-verse expository series through 1 John

If you've ever struggled to love a difficult person in your church — someone who

hurt you, disappointed you, or just costs you too much — this sermon from

1 John 4:20-21 goes straight at it. John doesn't call that man a weak Christian.

He calls him a liar. And he means it. This message tackles the hardest command in

the Christian life: loving people you don't feel like loving, inside the church,

after they've already cost you something.

This expository preaching message through 1 John 4:20-21 walks through one of

the most uncomfortable tests in the New Testament. John has been building a case

about love all through chapter 4 — God is love, we love because He first loved us —

and now he applies the test. If you claim to love God but hate your brother,

you're not confused. You're not a young believer who needs time. God calls you

a liar. The same word John used in chapter 1 for the man who denied his sin.

The same word for the man who says he knows God but doesn't keep His commandments.

That's the word on the table in verse 20.

This sermon also addresses what loving difficult people actually looks like in

practice — including the Matthew 18 process, when biblical separation is the loving

thing, and how to know when you've done as much as lies in you. This is not a

sermon telling you to absorb abuse. It's a sermon telling you that the distance

can't be hate.

This message walks through:

- Why John calls the man who claims to love God but hates his brother a liar — not mistaken, not weak, a liar

- The three times John uses that word in 1 John and what they have in common

- Why not loving someone is the same as hating them — there is no middle ground

- What dead religion looks like: sings well, quotes Scripture well, and shuts out the brother sitting next to it

- Why it's easier to love a God who has never wronged you than the brother whose face you know

- How your brother or sister in Christ is the closest visible thing to an invisible God — and what that means for how you treat them

- The Matthew 18 process: go alone, bring witnesses, bring it to the church — and when Jesus names the end point

- Why the distance is sometimes the biblical command, not a failure of love

- What Romans 12:18 means when it says "if it be possible" — and what to do when you've done as much as lies in you

- Why you can't manufacture this love — and what it means to get out of the way and let the Holy Spirit source it through you

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