Love – I Don't Want To Preach About It
Intro.: I don't want to preach today's sermon.
It's about love – one of the fruit of the spirit.
You will remember the list from last week: But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.
But when I preach about love, I am preaching to myself as well.
Read: I John 4:7-12
Pray
Trans: As I looked at love this week, I was surprised to learn that there is one major thing we are not to love - the world. (I John 2:15)
But there were lots of instruction on loving.
I want to look at three of those today.
God requires that I love Him
Matt 22:34-38 - But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment.
It sounds easy – I mean
I never have to face Him face to face
The thing I hear the most about Him is His love
Should be easy to love someone like that.
But sometimes life gets in the way
I had no control over the destruction caused by Katrina in New Orleans or the Tsunami in Japan -
Or the Tornadoes that hit the midwest this week.
I don't always know why God sends or allows these tragedies
I do know that some of these are the results of own selfishness – building cheaply, lack of the concern for the consequences for our actions.
I don't always understand – but God calls me to love Him none-the-less.
If anyone has the right to expect to be loved, it is God – He created this world. He sustains this world, he sustains me.
(Ill.) A number of years ago I learned a lesson – to the adolescent, love seems to be more of a feeling – the hormones that flow when near that someone special. But that is just chemistry – it is not love. Chemical reactions only last so long, they run out of energy, they run out of reactants. They hardly serve as the basis for love.
Two books were written back in the mid-90's and they helped me understand what love truly is. The two books were Love Is A Choice and Love Is A Decision.
I may not understand all God has said, I may not understand all God is doing, but I can choose to love Him. I will commit my all to Him, to serve Him with everything I have, with everything I am.
(Appl.) One more point. As we move through today's message, it will be important to remember that “Love is a choice” I need to make – regardless of how difficult it may be.
God calls on me to love my neighbor.
Matt 22:39-40 - This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”
This same God who calls on me to love Him, also asks me to love my neighbor.
That is easy – all my neighbors are kind and generous, they share equal responsibility for the neighborhood. You have all have neighbors like this, right.
There may be no dealingghbors all like our dog – he does not bark too much. And they like our pool – and the non-paint job that we are getting on our house.
(Ill.) But, the truth is, we all have neighbors like those Samaritans. The woman from Samaria told Jesus, “Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans.” Neighbors we don't want to associate with. That was the fact as Jesus began telling the story of The Good Samaritan to illustrate the principle of a neighbor. Here was a Samaritan who finds an injured Jew – yet he, that Samaritan, unlike the Priest or the church leader who saw the Jew, took time to care for him and made sure he would be cared for.
(Ill) Gordon McDonald tells the story of a family trip. My wife, Gail, and I were flying to Boston. We were seated near the back of the airliner in the two aisle seats across from each other. As the plane loaded up, a woman with two small children took the row of seats in front of us. Another woman took a seat across the aisle next to one of the kids, and the mom held the other child on her lap. I hoped the kids wouldn’t be noisy.
My prayer wasn’t answered. The two children had a tough time. The air was turbulent, the children cried a lot—their ears hurt—and it was a miserable flight. The two women kept trying to help and comfort these children. The woman at the window played with the child in the middle seat, trying to make her feel good and paying her a lot of attention.
Things went downhill from there. As we got toward the last part of the flight, the child in the middle seat got sick. The next thing I knew she was losing everything from every part of her body. The diaper wasn’t on tight, and before long a stench began to rise through the cabin. It was unbearable.
I watched as the woman next to the window patiently comforted the child and tried her best to clean up the mess and make something good out of a bad situation. The plane landed, and when we pulled up to the gate, all of us were ready to exit that plane as fast as we could. The flight attendant came up with paper towels and handed them to the woman in the window seat and said, “Here, ma’am, these are for your little girl.”
The woman said, “This isn’t my little girl.”
“Aren’t you traveling together?”
“No, I’ve never met this woman and these children before in my life.”
Suddenly I realized this woman had found the opportunity to give mercy. She was, in the words of Christ, the person who was “a neighbor.”1
We each have opportunities to be a neighbor – whether it be as a Good Samaritan or as showing grace to someone who least deserves it.
God expects me to love my enemy
Now God has gone too far – asking me to love my enemies – those who are trying to persecute me.
Maybe it does not make sense to me – but a little over 200 years ago one pastor made sense of it.
That's what love for an enemy is all about. Going the extra mile for them – even if it makes no sense.
I don't know if you have enemies – but there is a wide range between neighbor and enemy. And I don't think Jesus intends to exclude any of them.
- I need to love God
- I need to love my neighbor
- I need to love my enemy
- And none of that is easy for me or for you
Matt 5:43-44 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,"
(Ill.) Ephrata is a small town in Pennsylvania just south of where my son lives. In the early days of our country, a well-known church made its home. Peter Miller was the pastor. Pastor Miller was known for his knowledge of foreign languages and was asked to translate the Declaration of Independence into seven languages by the Congress of the United States.
In Ephrata lived a man by the name of Wildman who took it upon himself to ruin the reputation of Pastor Miller. But Wildman was also scheming against the United States and was arrested for treason. He eventually was arrested and sentenced to be hanged.
The preacher started out on foot and walked the all seventy miles to Philadelphia to plead for the man’s life. Washington heard his plea, but responded by sayings, “No, your plea for your friend cannot be granted.”
“My friend!” said the preacher. “He is the worst enemy I have.”
“What!” said Washington, “you have walked nearly seventy miles to save the life of an enemy? That puts the matter in a different light. I will grant the pardon.”2
(Appl.) Take a minute. Sit back, eyes closed. Think for a minute – who is the hardest person you know to love. Maybe it is a neighbor. Maybe its a social worker. Maybe it is someone you thought was a friend – who is the most unlovable person you know.
Now imagine that Jesus is sitting over here – and he tells you, “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,”
Today, make the decision to begin to pray for that person.
Conclusion: I did not want to preach this sermon
Pray
1Larson, Craig Brian and Phyllis Ten Elshof. 1001 Illustrations That Connect. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 2008.
2AMG Bible Illustrations. Bible Illustrations Series. Chattanooga: AMG Publishers, 2007.
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