Love
Notes
Transcript
Introduction
Introduction
So I thought I would begin this Christmas Eve morning sermon on the advent Sunday of love by talking about idolatry. Obviously.
Now in the time when God gave Moses His Law there were people all over the place worshipping other gods. Frequently this worship took the form of worshipping idols. Sometimes these idols were made of wood, sometimes precious metals, but they all served the same purpose. They stood as a representation of a god that you could not see with your eyes. Now we know that all of the idols were just hunks of wood and metal, and God says multiple times through His prophets, but to the people who worshipped them they were the representation of their god. They were to treat their little idols as if they were their gods. They would bow to them, give them offerings and treat them with care and respect.
When the true God called the Israelites and gave them His law He forbade them from making idols of wood, stone or metal or anything else. Deuteronomy 5:8-10
Do not make an idol for yourself in the shape of anything in the heavens above or on the earth below or in the waters under the earth. Do not bow in worship to them, and do not serve them, because I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, bringing the consequences of the fathers’ iniquity on the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate me, but showing faithful love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commands.
Not only were they not to worship other gods this way, but they weren’t even allowed to make an idol to represent their true god. Why is that? Why doesn’t God want to be worshipped this way? Is it because any idol made by human hands isn’t dignified enough? Is it because they wouldn’t truly capture his majesty and beauty?
Maybe those things are a small part of the reason why, but the biggest reason is this; because God already made something similar. Another word for idol is image. What did God say was his image?
So God created man in his own image;
he created him in the image of God;
he created them male and female.
Now remember in pagan worship the image or idol wasn’t the god, it was just a representation of the god. In the same way we are not little gods, but god wants us to treat each other with the same love that we would treat him. He is perfect love in Himself and created us to love Him and one another in a beautiful eternal relationship.
But we messed it up. Instead mankind sinned and fell short of the glory of God and so we have distorted the image of God that we were created with. Now we have a long legacy of hurting and killing one another and not showing the love we ought, and when we truly understand what the image of God means we understand why God takes it so personally when we mistreat each other. It’s like we’re mistreating God when we do.
So what is God to do? Well in order to redeem the broken image of God in mankind He sent His Son to take on human flesh while still being God to redeem the image that was broken and restore us to the way that we were supposed to be. Christmas is the celebration of Jesus Christ finally realizing the perfect image of God in man that was always supposed to be.
He is the image of the invisible God,
the firstborn over all creation.
So with His birth comes the rebirth of real love. There are three aspects of love I want to focus on today:
God loves First
We Love God
We Love Others
God Loves First
God Loves First
Now to illustrate my first point I’m going to need a helper. What I’d like you to do is to give everyone in the church a candy cane...
A bit of a silly illustration, but the point is this: you can’t give out what you don’t have. So before I start talking about how this Christmas season should inspire us to love God and love others, we’re going to talk first about where we get this love to give out. The simplest and most direct place to find this in Scripture is in:
We love because he first loved us.
In other words the reason we are able to love God and love others is because God loved us first. He filled up our love tank to overflowing so that we would have enough love to spare. On our own we have nothing of true value to give to others. It is God who gives us what we need to live lives faithfully as disciples.
This is what Christmas is all about really, because Christmas is the celebration of the greatest gift that God ever gave to mankind: His Son Jesus. That baby in the manger is a representation of the great love of God for all of us, as John says in John 3:16-17
For God loved the world in this way: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.
Remember that the birth of Jesus was just the beginning. The gift took 33 years to fully open in this case. Jesus went on to teach us amazing truths, to heal the sick and feed the hungry, and then finally to express the greatest love anyone can, as Jesus Himself said to His disciples:
No one has greater love than this: to lay down his life for his friends.
Jesus wasn’t just talking a hypothetical here. In context this is what Jesus tells His twelve disciples at the last meal they shared together before He was betrayed and handed over to the Romans to be crucified, proving just how great a love that God has for us as Paul says in:
For while we were still helpless, at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. For rarely will someone die for a just person—though for a good person perhaps someone might even dare to die. But God proves his own love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
And this was no quick and easy death. Jesus was beaten multiple times, whipped and hung on a cross. A punishment so cruel and painful that for a long time the Romans wouldn’t punish citizens with it because it was too barbaric. That’s the death Jesus died for you, and you, and you, and you, and all of us. That’s the purpose for which that cute baby in the manger was born. A shadow on that hay-filled manger and yet the hope for every fallen man. It’s out of this love that we find our own love. But where do we direct this love?
We Love God
We Love God
It’s important to get your priorities straight. Imagine a person who gives tons and tons of money to charity. Your first thought in this hypothetical scenario is that this is a good person (relatively speaking.) Now what if I tell you that this same person has children at home who are starving, and their house is soon to be foreclosed on because they haven’t paid their mortgage, and they are constantly hounded by collections for a mass of unpaid debt.
Suddenly their charity seems like less of a good thing. Surely their money would be better spent trying to get control of their own financial situation. Why is it that the same act is in one case a good thing and another case a bad thing? In this instance it’s a matter of priorities. It’s important to get your priorities straight. Before you give to others you have to make sure you’re providing for your own family.
It’s for this reason that we can understand why Jewish scholars were putting a lot of thought and effort into prioritizing the law that God gave them. According to one prominent count there are 614 commands in the Law of Moses. That’s quite a few. So it makes sense to try and determine which are the most important. It’s in this backdrop that one Jewish scribe approached Jesus with a question.
One of the scribes approached. When he heard them debating and saw that Jesus answered them well, he asked him, “Which command is the most important of all?”
Jesus answered, “The most important is Listen, Israel! The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.
Now don’t get too ahead of me, I know Jesus gives a second one, but I want to just pause right there for a minute. This is our priority. Our number one priority. Greater than our obligation to our own family, our friends, strangers, and ourselves, is our obligation to love God. And not just to love God but to love God with some of our heart, some of our soul, some of our mind and some of our strength. Oh, wait a minute, that’s not right. It’s most of our heart, soul, mind and strength… no that’s not it. It’s ALL our heart, soul, mind and strength. With everything that we have.
We could talk about the Greek words for heart, soul, mind and strength and the Hebrew words and what those each represent, but that would be missing the point. The point is that we love God with our entire being.
Crucially the Bible’s definition of love is not restricted to a feeling or a frame of mind. The Bible’s definition of love is intensely practical. When the Bible explains how to love it does so with verbs, with commands to particular actions that are expressions of our love. After all if love were a feeling we cannot control than how could God command us to love? Instead love is in what we do. In the case of loving God there is one primary way that we love God according to the Scriptures, and it’s found in
“As the Father has loved me, I have also loved you. Remain in my love. If you keep my commands you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love.
There it is. To love God is to keep His commandments. Not just in the gospel but in John’s letter he expresses this same idea that Jesus taught Him in
Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the Father also loves the one born of him. This is how we know that we love God’s children: when we love God and obey his commands. For this is what love for God is: to keep his commands. And his commands are not a burden, because everyone who has been born of God conquers the world. This is the victory that has conquered the world: our faith.
Now let’s not forget the first point of this sermon and a critically important part of our understanding of how salvation works. God takes the initiative. Any love we show towards God comes from the love that God first gave us. We don’t earn our abiding in God because we do the things He commanded, we do the things He commanded because we love Him. It is out of a grateful heart that has been filled with the Holy Spirit that we are able to do the things of God at all. Jesus enables us to live Holy Lives in the first place. In fact just before He tells His disciples that they are to remain in His love by keeping His commandments He says John 15:4-5
Remain in me, and I in you. Just as a branch is unable to produce fruit by itself unless it remains on the vine, neither can you unless you remain in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. The one who remains in me and I in him produces much fruit, because you can do nothing without me.
We can’t do it on our own. If we try to love God without first repenting and coming to Christ and receiving the Holy Spirit than we are doomed to fail. That’s why Israel failed time and time again before God went first and sent His son to live, teach, die, and live again as the ultimate demonstration of His love.
But Jesus’ answer to the Scribe doesn’t end there, because it’s impossible to separate the most important commandment from the second most important commandment.
We Love Others
We Love Others
This Christmas season Katie and I have been rereading Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol.” If you’ve never read the original novel, I highly recommend it. Though some of the references he makes go over my head on the whole it is an amazing work filled with humor, frightening moments, and a celebration of the humanitarian heart of Christmas time. In the first chapter Ebenezer Scrooge is visited by the ghost of his former business partner Robert Marley, who for the seven years he has been dead has been suffering torment for the life of selfish material gain that he had lived.
My big correction to Dickens’ idea of eternal salvation and damnation would be that the primary basis on which we are judged is on our response to Jesus’ gospel and not on whether we did enough good while we were alive, but I have a certain appreciation for his picture of what awaits a sinful person who dies. In Marley’s own words:
“It is required of every man,’ the ghost returned, ‘that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow men, and travel far and wide; and if that spirit goes not forth in life, it is condemned to do so after death. It is doomed to wander through the world - oh woe is me! - and witness what it cannot share, but might have shared on earth, and turned to happiness!”
Later in the chapter Scrooge witnesses a terrible sight out the window that Marley departs through:
“The air was filled with pantoms, wandering hither and thither in restless haste, and moaning as they went. Every one of them wore chains like Marley’s Ghost; some few (they might be guilty governments_ were linked together; none were free. Many had been personally known to Scrooge in their lives. He had been quite familiar with one old ghost, in a white waistcoat, with a monstrous iron safe attached to its ankle, who cried piteously at being unable to assist a wretched woman with an infant, whom it saw below, upon a doorstep. The misery of them all was, clearly, that they sought to interfere, for good, in human matters, and had lost the power for ever.”
So in Dickens’ picture of the afterlife of the damned they are forced to forever be tormented by the good that they didn’t do. See some take “A Christmas Carol” to be a criticism of capitalism, but I think at it’s heart it’s more a story about the need to show love to our fellow man.
The Bible too is filled with calls to love our fellow man, with a love that flows naturally from our love for God. This is why Jesus doesn’t stop with the first commandment but immediately gives a second. Let’s return to Mark 12:28-31
One of the scribes approached. When he heard them debating and saw that Jesus answered them well, he asked him, “Which command is the most important of all?”
Jesus answered, “The most important is Listen, Israel! The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. The second is, Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other command greater than these.”
I say that love for other people flows naturally out of love for God for two reasons. First, because it is inspired by God’s love. We don’t love people in any old way, but in the way that God loves us. And second because loving others is one of God’s commandments. You’ll remember Jesus said we show love for God by keeping His commandments. Since loving others is on that list that means that we show love to God in part by loving others. All of this Jesus expresses in John 15:9-13
“As the Father has loved me, I have also loved you. Remain in my love. If you keep my commands you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love.
“I have told you these things so that my joy may be in you and your joy may be complete.
“This is my command: Love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this: to lay down his life for his friends.
So when we are gathered together for this Christmas season we remember the greatest gift of love that God gave to us, His Son Jesus Christ, and in turn that inspires in us a love for everyone else. This is why the season of Christmas is a season of charity and love and why we share meals together and sing grateful choruses to God. It’s all about love.
And like our love for God the Bible is also very practical about how we show love to each other. James talks about the uselessness of speaking a blessing to someone but not actually helping them in James 2:15-16
If a brother or sister is without clothes and lacks daily food and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, stay warm, and be well fed,” but you don’t give them what the body needs, what good is it?
In a similar manner Jesus when talking about the judgment at the end times talks about how we will be judged by how we treat one another.
Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.
“ ‘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 took me in; I was naked and you clothed me; I was sick and you took care of me; I was in prison and you visited me.’
“Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and take you in, or without clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick, or in prison, and visit you?’
“And the King will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’
And in the most famous love passage of all Paul describes love not as a feeling but a list of things that love does or does not do. So if you want to be a person of love, than you have a to do list. Reach out and help your fellow person this Christmas season and every day of the year.
Conclusion
Conclusion
Well I won’t keep you guys too much longer. I think you get the point. Christmas is primarily about love. God loved us by sending His son, so we should love Him back and share love with one another. I will conclude with this passage that I think sums it up pretty well:
Dear friends, let us love one another, because love is from God, and everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. The one who does not love does not know God, because God is love. God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his one and only Son into the world so that we might live through him. Love consists in this: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, if God loved us in this way, we also must love one another. No one has ever seen God. If we love one another, God remains in us and his love is made complete in us. This is how we know that we remain in him and he in us: He has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and we testify that the Father has sent his Son as the world’s Savior. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God—God remains in him and he in God. And we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us.
God is love, and the one who remains in love remains in God, and God remains in him. In this, love is made complete with us so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment, because as he is, so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love; instead, perfect love drives out fear, because fear involves punishment. So the one who fears is not complete in love. We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, “I love God,” and yet hates his brother or sister, he is a liar. For the person who does not love his brother or sister whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And we have this command from him: The one who loves God must also love his brother and sister.