Visible Love

Introduction

This is one of the more challenging sermons I’ve ever wrote for two reasons:

First, the first part is unlike my normal preaching in that it’s a word study and not looking at an entire passage.

Second, in a few minutes I’m going to tell a very personal story about a very challenging time in my life and ministry.

In sharing this story, I’m not looking for sympathy or anything like that. I’m telling it to illustrate a truth about how easy it is for us to lose sight of who we are in Christ and how He loves us, often in spite of us.

We are going to jump right into things, in Ephesians 5:28-30, continuing our series on being the bride of Christ.

Body

Verses 28-30

Last week we looked at verse 29 and saw that Christ nourishes His bride because we are members of His body.

The bride is nourished by Christ through the Gospel.

The bride is nourished by Christ through fellowship with Christ.

The bride is nourished by Christ unto eternal life.

The second part of verse 29 tell us that:

Christ cherishes His bride because we are members of His body.

Word Study: Cherish

θάλπω (thal po)

“to treat with tenderness and affection; conceived of as warming something up.”

The other place this is used in the NT is 1 Thessalonians 2:7.

1 Thessalonians 2:7 ESV

But we were gentle among you, like a nursing mother taking care of her own children.

“taking care” is the same idea here.

Thus, it’s often translated as: “care for”; “takes care of”; “tenderly cares for”

We cherish something that is precious to us.

Contextually, the command is for husbands to treat their wives as precious, doing what is necessary to care for her.

But wait, some people do hate their own flesh in that they have a low self-esteem, harm themselves, or the like.

But, Paul would probably point out that it isn’t rational to think like that. Yes, there are people with psychological issue or what we would call depression, but Paul’s focus here is generally speaking.

Paul is saying that like a rational person cares for his own body, so a husband should love his wife in the same way because they have become one body.

The example of this is Christ’s love for His church, who cherishes His church enough to sacrificially love the church, thus providing everything the church needs.

So What?

Christ cherishes His bride because we are members of His body.

Why is it so important that we know this?

The fact that we are cherished by Jesus should motivate us to fall deeper in love with Him.

Last week parts of the US got to experience the thrill of a solar eclipse…(last one we saw was in 2017…next one isn’t expected for more than 20 years!)

A solar eclipse is a astrological phenomena when the Moon passes between the Earth and the Sun, causing the Moon’s shadow to sweep over the Earth’s surface, temporarily blocking out the Sun’s light on earth.

The Sun is still there, but something is hindering our ability to fully see it during the eclipse.

I had a realization a number of years back that shook me to my core: my love for the church too often eclipsed my love for Jesus...

I loved Jesus, but in many ways I was more concerned about showing my love for the church I was in than my love for Jesus.

I had no idea this was the case at the time…if asked, I would have said…but then a number of crisis’s happened at the church and I was forced to admit that I was spending the majority of my energy trying to please people and gave very little though to pleasing God.

Here’s why that was such a disaster for me: once some of the people I was trying so hard to please (i.e. to get to love me) started to attack me I felt betrayed by God, unloved and unlovable, and that I’d failed so completely that I was now damaged goods.

Every Monday I’d peruse help wanted ads, looking for any rescue from the overwhelming feeling that I’d failed God and that God had failed me.

At my lowest point, a friend and mentor told me a hard truth from Galatians:

Galatians 1:10 ESV

For am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ.

He also turned me on to a book titled When People are Big and God is Small. The verse in Galatians and that book were catalysts for me changing the way I related to Christ Jesus.

If I as going to be a pastor who made a real impact in the lives of people, I needed to love Jesus more than I loved my church. That my love for my church needed to flow from my love for Jesus, not the other way around.

And, loving my church didn’t mean setting out to please everyone in my church. It called for me to please God, not man.

It was eye-opening that I realized most of my people pleasing stemmed from self-centeredness, not Christ-centeredness. I wanted to feel loved and valued. I wanted to be perceived as good pastor. I wanted to kudos. I didn’t want to screw things up at the church and have people think less of me. It was always about me. Christ Jesus mattered to me, but my behavior showed that the church and myself mattered more, practically speaking.

This was one of the more painful experiences of my life…one that I’m still working through today! (The self-centered, people pleaser doesn’t die easily!)

I tell you this story not to direct the attention onto myself, but as a cautionary tale.

I may have been sparred a lot of pain and been the pastor I wanted to be if would have started by truly understanding that I’m cherished by Jesus because I’m part of His body. And that being cherished has nothing to do with my performance, but because of His love and His provision for me.

That, in fact, His love is such that He saved me even though He knows my tendencies; my past, present and future failures; and the areas where I would still struggle even many years after coming to a saving knowledge of Christ Jesus.

That me, and you, and all who know Christ Jesus as Savior and Lord, are cherished by Him.

John 15:13 ESV

Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.

1 John 3:16 ESV

By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.

Romans 5:5 ESV

and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

John 13:1 ESV

Now before the Feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.

Galatians 2:20 ESV

I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

1 John 4:19 ESV

We love because he first loved us.

I could go on, but hopefully we all see that we are cherished by Christ Jesus. You are cherished by Christ Jesus.

And because of this, we need to set our minds and hearts to loving Jesus deeper and deeper each and every day.

To spending time with Him in the Word and in prayer; to preach the Gospel to ourselves daily; to considering the love that is freely given to us, weak, wounded, and fallible though we are.

1 John 3:1 (ESV)

See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are.

The fact that we are cherished by Jesus is the driving force behind our response to Him.

In John 13 we have one of the great demonstrations of Jesus love for His people:

Read John 13:1-5

Explain why this is such a big deal...

Read John 13:12-15

Washing the disciple’s feet was a demonstration of the kind of love Jesus was looking for from anyone who would call himself or herself a follower of Christ.

Not necessarily the physical act of foot washing (though there is certainly nothing wrong with that), but the willingness to humble ourselves and do whatever is necessary to show the love of Christ Jesus to others.

Unfortunately, this is too often hindered within the church today:

We’ve been taught that church is a place to have your felt needs met...

We are good at creating lists of things we can’t and won’t do...

We hope that a big hand will write God’s will on the wall as it did for King Belshazzar in the book of Daniel, forgetting that Daniel informed the king that his days were numbered (to 1), his life was found wanting, and is kingdom was about to be divided! The point, don’t wait for a big hand to write God’s will on a wall…it probably won’t be something you want to hear!

Because Christ Jesus cherishes me, I need to be willing to respond in obedience and love to Him.

The next four weeks we are going to dig into our response to the love of Christ in our lives.

This is where is starts. We must understand that we are cherished by Jesus and that fact should motivate us to show Christ’s love to others and to obey Him.