God Shows Us How to Love

We are wrapping up our sermon series “God loves You.” We have looked at various ways that God shows his love to us and to the church. We began with grace. We next focused on the gifts he gives to each of us. Last week we focused on the church that all are welcome. Today we turn to how God showed us how to love. Our scripture comes from 1 Corinthians 13:1-13.

13 If I speak in the tongues n of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. 11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. 12 For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

Please pray with me…

Faith, hope, and love, but the greatest of these is love. We are reminded through the ending of this text that love could be considered, probably should be considered, the most important aspect of being a follower of Jesus.

It is true that it is important that we have faith that God is with us and will never leave us. While also believing that through our interactions with Him we can grow, and we can rely on him more and more, and more.

We have the hope we received through offering ourselves to God through believing in him as our creator and Jesus as our lord and Savior. This hope comes in two ways. A hope of no longer having to try to be good enough like the Jewish people before Jesus.

The Jewish people attempted to follow a set of rules that were impossible to follow completely. We also can have the hope that after our life here on earth may end but our soul lives on and we are able to reside with God in heaven forever.

These two concepts are important parts of the Christian journey. We would be no where without faith, and it is often due to the hope we receive from choosing to follow God through Jesus that leads us into a relationship with him. But Paul tells us (Pause) that the greatest of these is love.

(Transition)

Love is an important aspect to the Christian journey because it is the one part of the journey that is multifaceted. God is in love with us. We can be in love with God. And we are called to love our neighbor. It is not just us showing God that we have faith in him. It is not only God offering us hope for now and for the future.

Love is the greatest because of how complex, how intertwined it is with all aspects of the Christian journey. Paul makes this point through comparison. He brings up things that he can do that don’t compare to love.

He uses some of the gifts he has brought up before and wants us to know that these gifts are great, but love is greater. It is through using our gifts to show the love of God to those around us that matter most to God.

Without love we are a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. This would mean that we can talk the talk and make a lot of noise about God and about Jesus, but that is all it is with love. It is through love that God shows us, and we show God and those around us that the noise we make is about something greater.

(Transition)

Paul continues and brings up speaking prophecies and being knowledgeable but without love we are nothing. We can spend time learning scripture for the sake of learning but unless we have the love of God within us and are sharing the love of God with those around us it doesn’t serve the purpose God has for each one of us.

Love fills that empty feeling that we have in our heart. It is love that makes us feel worthful. It is sharing God’s love that make us believe we are useful. It is the love of God that allows us to believe that we are wonderfully made saved by grace.

Paul continues offering these analogies. He offers the analogy of giving all we have including our life for others but if we don’t do it out of love, we gain nothing. Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life.

It is through accepting God’s love for us and expressing our love for God to those around us that shows the love that we have for God. All aspects of the Christians journey should be expressed through love.

(Transition)

 Our first reading can help us focus on the importance of love to the Jewish faith. Jesus is asked the question “which commandment is the most important of all.” Judaism is a law-based society, so the scribe asks Jesus a law-based question.

Jesus answers the question with this statement: “The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 30 And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ 31 The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”

The next part of this scripture is not something we see very often within scripture. We find agreement between Jesus and a part of the Jewish religious authority. The man acknowledges that Jesus is right. Did you catch that, when it came to love agreement was able to be reached between these two groups that seemed to always disagree.

(Transition)

Do you see where this is going? We can have disagreements with fellow Christians and with those around us, but it is through love that we can lessen or remove the divide. Love can conquer all the differences we see in the world.

Some say that the words expressed by Jesus is a breakdown of the ten commandments. This would mean that the commandments given to the Jewish people by God are all about loving God and loving our neighbors.

(Transition)

We should love God because God first showed us how to love. We discover from the beginning of scripture the type of relationship that God desired to have with humanity. He walked and talked with his creation.

He allowed his creation to rule the earth. He allowed his creation to be a part of the creation process by having them name the animals. He wanted this close, personal connection with his creation.

It would have most likely remained that way if sin did not get in the way. Sin, or doing something against God, led God’s creation to no longer being able to see God and walk with God. A barrier was created. We were separated from being able to be as close to God as God wanted us to be to him.

God’s love for us never waned despite the sin that became a part of our everyday lives. We mistreat God through sin. God shows us that just because we have been mistreated by someone, or disagree with someone, does not mean that hate should invade our heart.

Jesus tells us in scripture that we should not only love those we like but we should also love our enemies. We are supposed to respond to the love that God shows to each of us. We do that when we choose to love despite an action or reaction from someone that is against us or disagrees with us.

(Transition)

Our first reading reminds us that the example offered to us by God should lead us to love God with our whole being. We are to love God with our heart, mind, soul, and strength. We have a God that has given us his all. Therefore, we should also choose to do the same.

What that means for us is that we have to turn towards God. We need to turn control of our actions and reactions over to God. We show our love for him when we desire to have all that we do and all that we say reflect his will in our lives.

We should view God as our Lord. This means that we should submit to his will over our own. We should follow his guidance without hesitation. We should believe that he has our best interest in mind in all that he asks and desires from us.

(Transition)

Part of the way that we live this out is through the second part of Jesus’ statement. We love our neighbor. This would have been someone considered Jewish and right with God in the eyes of many of the Jewish people. This would not have included the Gentiles or the Samaritans.

We know that Jesus pointed out to those that would listen that all people should be considered our neighbor. He used a story about a Samaritan choosing to take care of an injured Jewish person to make his point.

We should choose to treat all people for who they are, children of God. All of us are people loved by God who have either accepted God’s willingness to adopt them or who God is still helping know of the love that he wants to offer to them. God loves all people and so should we.

(Transition)

We are able to define how God wants us to express his love for us and those around us when we return to our main reading. We are given traits of what love is in the eyes of God.

“4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. 7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

8 Love never ends.”

These are the traits Jesus had during his time on earth and the traits we also should desire to emulate in our interaction with others. Let’s quickly go through what they should mean to us.

·                 Love is patient.

·       We can recognize Jesus’ patients with his disciples             Love is kind

·       Jesus showed kindness to those that Jewish society wanted to ignore.

·       The sick, the invalid, the leper.

·                 Love does not envy.

·       We should choose to focus on us and not envy what others may have around us.

·      Their life may seem good, but most people are struggling with something.

·                 Love does not boast and is not arrogant or rude or insist on its own way.

·       We show love by looking towards others instead of focusing on ourselves and our good qualities.

·       We need to realize that we are a sinner like everyone else who happens to be saved by the undeserved, unearned grace given to us by God.          

Love is not irritable or resentful.

·       Love involves us being able to control our emotions. Being able to overcome our desire to react in a way that would not be pleasing to God               

Love rejoices with the truth.

·       Love leads us to desire to listen and respond to God and to attempt to stay away from things that harm our relationship with God.          

Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

·       Love should lead us to carry the burdens of others.

·       Love should have us choose to live lives focused on God and to not let life’s trials get in the way of us loving God and our neighbor.

And last but certainly not least, love never ends. The journey is continuous. We aren’t to love for a little while and then decide to take a break. We are to attempt to show love each moment of each day for our entire lives.

God showed us how to be all that we can be. We have the example of Jesus. We are able to best exemplify the traits of love when we rely on the gift left for us by Jesus the Holy Spirit. Let us desire to become closer to God and show our love to him and those around us each and every day.

Let us pray…