All We Need is Love
Your eyes are beautiful. Shall I compare them to a summer’s day? No, even more. Your eyes are like 2 supper dishes, writes Snoopy in Charles Shultz’s Peanut’s cartoon strip.
-Pretty good definition as to how the world sees love but is it correct?
-What is Love? Is it oopie-goopie feelie-weelies or is it something else entirely?
Considering that feb just passed not a bad idea to speak on love
Proverbs does surprisingly speak on love
Titling this sermon All We Need is Love or the attribute of love as found in Proverbs
King James Version Chapter 10
12 Hatred stirreth up strifes:
But love covereth all sins.
Review
-looking at the attributes of God in proverbs
-sovereignty,holiness, the 3 omni’s omnipresent omnipotent omniscience
-mercy, righteousness and justice.
-work and its necessity,
-rest and its necessity
-looked at an outworking of joy
-looked at the definition of joy and who is the source of all joy.
-looked at only through Christ can you experience any joy
-looked at the various actions of joy through creation redemption and glorification.
Exegeting the verse
Let us return to our text this morning. Proverbs 10:12 Hatred stirreth up strifes:
But love covereth all sins. Seems simple enough, but like so many of Solomon’s proverbs the deeper you go into them the more complex they become. Our proverb this morning is no exception. As we look deeper into our proverb this morning, the first thing we discover is that is that it falls under the antithetical parallelism type of proverb. Let’s face it we don’t get much more extreme opposite than love and hate. The only one that I can think of that is as extreme in being opposite would be light and darkness. Apparently, Solomon never wrote a proverb on light and darkness surprisingly enough. If he had it may have gone something like this. “Light delighteth the eyes but darkness bruiseth thy nose” Well if you noticed I’m definitely not Solomon so take that saying with a grain of salt. However, he did write one on love and hate which is our proverb today.
The second thing we need to do is to tease out the complete meaning of our text. We do this by taking a closer look at each of the words in the text, or to look at it exegetically, which we normally do. We will start with our first word which is “Hate”. We all know hate. All of us have experienced it and sad to say have often felt it especially when someone has wronged us in some fashion. But what is hate? Hate is the intense emotion to wish ill upon someone or something. It can be of short duration but if it is not dislodged quickly it easily turns into a grudge and those can be very hard do dislodge Rightly does Jesus say in Matt 5:22 But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment: and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council: but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire. Granted Jesus speaks of anger here though the anger He speaks of is unrighteous anger. That unrighteous anger is the very seeds of hate and what Jesus shows us in this verse is the progression of that hate.
Hatred, in particular hatred towards God, is the very mindset of the atheist in particular and those who are outside of Christ in general. They all wish that God was dead or at least not there. They are all angry with God for not allowing them to do what they want to do. They are all angry with God for having a standard by which they are to live and therefore hate God because of it. Strange isn’t it hating something that our Creator gave us for our benefit? but we were all at that point before Christ intervened in our lives. For as Paul tells Titus in Titus 3:3
Titus 3:3
KJV 1900
For we ourselves also were sometimes foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving divers lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, and hating one another.
In other words, we all started out being haters of each other and haters of God.
The second word or in this case group of words is stirreth up . We are looking at the 2 words together since “up” is a helper word for “stir”. We all know what stir means especially those who cook or who put sugar in their coffee. In cooking and more simply putting sugar in your coffee, what you have is that you are agitating things together in order to get the ingredients to blend together. We often use this concept as a metaphor. Not so much the blending together but rather the act of agitating. We often will say he is stirred up or agitated to mean that he is not himself but rather in an emotional state of agitation most often negatively. An alternative definition of stirring up which fits in with our first definition is to start. We can us the same illustration of cooking to help us to understand the second defintion of our word. In cooking you have to start stirring in order to get things to come together which shows us that “to stir up” can also mean to start. In our proverb text this morning stir incorporates both meanings in that it means start to agitate but also continues to agitate.
So far we have hate, which means to intensely wish ill on someone or something and stir which means to start or to agitate. The question then arises what then does hate start or agitate? Our proverb tells us in the third word which is strife. Strife can be defined as bitter conflict or a heated perhaps even violent dissension. In other words fights of either of a physical or emotional nature.
If we put all the words in our proverb that we have thus far defined together what we have is an intense emotion to do ill to someone. Followed by, starts or continues to agitate a bitter conflict or a heated perhaps even violent dissension.
Notice what Solomon is saying in our text this morning. Not only does he define our terms by giving us the antithesis, but he goes further by giving us the nature of each term. So then in the beginning of our verse Solomon gives us the nature of hate. The nature of hate is, as our text says, is that it constantly stirs up strife. It constantly is trying to either start or to continue dissension and destruction. It is constantly at odds with everything and everyone that gets in its way. Hate knows nothing else nor can it know anything else. Hate does nothing else nor can it do anything else. Hate cannot change its ways; it cannot understand mercy or ask for it nor can it forgive or ask for forgiveness for those things are completely outside of hates nature. Indeed mercy and forgiveness are the complete and absolute antithesis of hate and therefore cannot meet. There can be no synthesis between hate, mercy and forgiveness if we were to try and employ Heigels Dialectic.
This is an apt description of the world around us is it not? Man raising his hand against man not only one person against another but groups of people raising their hands against other groups of people. Finally, you have nations fighting against nations in a constant tug of war for special interests fueled by hate til they are all consumed. This is our world and has been this way since Cain and Abel and will be until Christ returns. This horizontal relationship interestingly enough is a reflection of the vertical relationship that the world has with God. They hate each other because they first hate God. Paul in Rom 8:7 tells us Rom 8:7
Romans 8:7
KJV 1900
Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.
Enmity is another word for hate and the hatred that Paul speaks of in this verse is aimed directly against God. The worldly mind or all those who are of the world not only hate God but hate His law. This is what Paul is talking about when he says that the carnal mind is not subject to the law of God. It does not mean that carnal man will not be judged by the law of God or required to follow it for indeed they will be judged and are required to follow God’s law. Rather what is meant by not being subject to God’s law is that they hate God’s law so much that they do not even want to admit that it exists. Rather they want to set up their own law of morality which they claim is better. Indeed, the carnal mind of man is so darkened by hate that it cannot abide any of the law of God.
If you grasp nothing else in our exploration of hate, you need to understand this. We are all born haters of God. Every one of us and we would remain so if it were not driven out by something else which we will look at in a minute. The reason why hate must be driven out by something else is because hate in of itself cannot change. This is what Solomon is telling us in the first part of the verse by saying Hate stirreth up strife. Strife is the reason for hates existence and will continue on in strife. Therefore, since we are born haters of God, we cannot in of ourselves change that because hate cannot change itself. But you may object and say, “Well I have never hated anyone” To which I would reply “Have you ever caused strife? Have you ever insisted upon your own way? Have you ever had a temper tantrum?” All of these things, and all of us have done them, according to what our proverb is teaching us today, are things that hate does. Therefore, they are hateful acts which means at the very root of these actions is hate.
Again, you may object, I’m a reasonable man. I can reason and therefore can rise above hate reaching up to God so to speak. Ding ding ding congratulations you have just leveled up in your hate if I may use the vernacular. Just because you have reason and are able to think, to postulate and to make conclusions does not mean you are any less hateful. All you have done by adding reason is made hate into a reasonable hate or hate reasonably or give reasons for your hate, but you haven’t lessened hate one iota. If you need proof of this just look at the secular philosophers that have arisen in the last 200 yrs or so. Brilliant men all of them, God haters every single one of them and many of them very vocal about it. It isn’t just in philosophy that you see this pattern but in all walks of life. Science, economics, politics, music and the list goes on and on. In every one of them you will find brilliant men who are avowed God haters. Therefore. being smart and/or can reason, will not make you less hateful but just makes you into a smarter hater.
And yet thankfully Solomon is not yet done with us for the first part of the proverb is only half the story despite the fact that the first part of the story is a sad state of affairs. However, as we continue to look closely at our proverb we discover that once again in our proverb today we have another instance of Solomon describing the gospel to us. Solomon starts his proverb as we have already discussed the condition of humanity. He tells us that they are hateful towards God and they strive against God whenever they can. Thankfully Solomon does not stop here but rather gives us the remedy. The remedy is given to us in the second part of the proverb which is also the antithesis of the first part of the proverb if you haven’t already guessed that. Let us restate it just in case you may have forgotten it. But love covereth all sins.
Just like we did for the first part of the verse lets exegete the second part beginning with the word “but” The word “but” is a conjunction word that joins 2 thoughts together which is what we have here. The word “but” as is used in this particular case means that though these 2 thoughts are joined together, they are very different from one another. Hence the term antithetical parallelism. All of you understand the word “but” so there’s really no need to go into any great detail about it other than to say that it begins the new thought which is the opposite of the old thought.
Our next word is love which we will look at a little closer in a little bit as it is the heart of our proverb, and it is the very heart of the gospel. For now, let’s just say that love is the very opposite of hate that we discussed earlier.
The next word in the proverb is the word cover. The word used for cover in the Hebrew means to either form a cover or to provide a cover or to forgive as in to cover an offence. Most commonly it is used as to form a cover followed at a close second of, to provide a cover. Essentially the idea is like the way a blanket covers a bed. A better definition of cover that is more fitting to our context would be the way the Mercy Seat covers the Arc of the Covenant. Within that covenant is Aaron’s staff that bloomed as a reminder of who the children of Israel were and where they came from and that there is no other god than God. Also within that covenant is manna to remind them of how God sustained them in the wilderness and the law which was to teach them in the ways they should go. But covering all of that, the covenant, the staff, the manna and the law was the mercy seat. Thus, mercy covers everything. This is the kind of cover that our text speaks of this morning.
The next word is the word “all” All is a tricky word because the meaning of all can have different meanings. Most think that “all” is a universal word that means absolutely everything all the time. However, when they are pressed. they find out that it is not necessarily so. For example. and I’ve used this example before if I say I ate all the pizza i definitely did not eat every single slice of pizza in the entire world. That would be impossible. So, when I say “all” in this example I am saying that I ate all the pizza that was in front of me. However there certainly are instances where “all” does mean absolutely everything. So, the maxium that we need to employ in order to define what “all” means in any given situation we must always define “all” according to its context. The difficulty we have here is that there really isn’t a whole lot of contexts to work with. We can go back to the Hebrew which can help us to define the “all”. The most common definition of “all” is of course “all” which doesn’t help us at all. However, some of the other Hebrew definitions do help us some. One of them is the whole of and another which helps us even more is every kind of.
There is another way in which we can discover what “all” means in this context and that would be through scripture itself. Now I’m sure some of you are sitting there wracking your brains trying to figure out where else you have heard this verse before, but you can’t quite put your finger on it. You would be quite correct for the last part of our proverb verse is quoted elsewhere. It is posted in 2 other spots in the NT. The first is James 5:20
James 5:20
KJV 1900
Let him know, that he which converteth the sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul from death, and shall hide a multitude of sins.
The second which is closer quote and that is 1 Peter 4:8
1 Peter 4:8
KJV 1900
And above all things have fervent charity among yourselves: for charity shall cover the multitude of sins.
Therefore. looking how the other passages of scripture that quote our proverbs text, it is safe to say the best way to understand the meaning of the word “all” in our text today is, the whole of or every kind of.
We haven’t gone through all of our words that are in the text since we still have one more word yet to deal with and that word is sin. The topic of sin is a rather large one and is worthy of a sermon or a few sermons all on its own. It often is a debated subject especially the definition of it. The definition can in fact range widely depending on who is defining it. Those who hold to sinless perfection have a tendency to define sin so narrowly in order for them to be sinless. Interestingly enough they define sin in a similar manor as the pharisees’ do in that they would define it as any outward breaking of the 10 commandments. They would define sin something like this. As an example, they would say “well I don’t use any bad language ever” or “I don’t steal..… except there was that pen that I stole a week ago but that doesn’t count cos after all it’s on an extended loan by the rightful owner unknowingly” Well as you can see there is some real problems with this line of thinking not in the least of which was the fact that there is a whole set of sacrifices that were required to be made in the Law that were for sins done in ignorance. If the definition of sin was simply to be defined as sins that you made knowingly then there should be no required sacrifices to be made for the sins of ignorance in the law, but there are.
Therefore, we must include sins done in ignorance into our definition of what sin is. To be brief for again we could spend much time on this especially in light of the fact that sin is mentioned over 700 times in the scriptures, so it is a very big thing. Our definition of sin is then that sin is missing the mark in the very slightest degree the full intent of God’s Law. Not just the outward appearance of the law but the inward intent of God’s law. Our definition of sin must also include shortchanging God in the honor and glory that are due unto Him, to disregard the Authority of God, and to not walk humbly before Him.
It is interesting to note that Solomon could’ve used any sin in his proverb and the proverb would’ve remained true, but he chose to use the word hate. Why? Because Solomon understood the human condition more than anyone as was already mentioned. Not only because he was the wisest man in the world, but he also had seen it with his own eyes. He saw it when he had to establish himself on the throne. He saw it whenever he had to pronounce judgments. Furthermore, he saw it just dealing with people in general. Solomon discovered as many others have discovered that there are 2 things that motivate people the most and those things are hate and its older big brother pride. I know you’ve heard it said that what motivates people is motivated self-interest and expediency, but these can be wrapped up in the definition of pride. Both hate and pride are equally destructive for they set themselves against Almighty God.
The other reason why Solomon would use hate instead of any other sin is because hate is the exact opposite of love and since Solomon likes using exact opposites in his proverbs, he therefore would use hate as his starting point. Did you notice that point though. Hate is a sin. Love covers all kinds of sins. Therefore love covers the sin of hate. Just like the light scatters the darkness so love covers hate. Light always triumphs over darkness so love always triumphs over hate.
Let’s turn our attention back to what we briefly touched on earlier and that is the word love. We will be spending the rest of our time this morning on love since after all, leaving with just discussing hate is going to leave a bad taste in everyone’s mouth which isn’t good before a fellowship meal.
So, what is love? That’s a very good question, isn’t it? It’s interesting to note however of all the things that humanity seems to want most is love yet they are so addicted to their hate that they cannot nor want to give hate up. So, then, what is love? That’s a very good question, isn’t it? The dictionary describes love as either a noun or a verb. The secular definitions of love basically amount to having an intense good feeling towards someone or something, like Snoopy’s 2 supper dishes. This renders the meaning of the word love to be rather transient, here today and gone tomorrow if you’re fortunate. More likely it is here one minute and gone the next depending on how long the feeling lasts. But before we entirely throw out the secular dictionary definition there are a couple of definitions that are helpful and not so transient. 1 is that love involves dedication, and the other is that love looks out for the good for another. In other words, I would be showing you love if I kept my sermon on love short so that we can all have a taste of the tasty nourishment that is at this moment in the kitchen. Or you are all showing me love by indulging me as I am rambling on, on the subject of love. The definition of love as stated seems to be rather incomplete does it not? Thankfully we have a better source for the definition of love
So, what is love? That’s a very good question, isn’t it? Our better source for a definition of love is the bible. We have a whole chapter of the bible given soley to the definition of love namely the well-known, and well beloved 1 Cor 13. We have a whole book of the bible written for the sole purpose of the subject of love and that book is the Song of Solomon. It’s been debated whether the book is to be taken literally or whether it is allegorical in nature but that is outside the purview of our study this morning. Which is short for saying I don’t really know though I lean towards a “both” explanation. In fact, many have stated that the bible is God’s love letter to His people for much of the bible is written about the subject of love. Indeed, the whole focus of the bible is on Christ and His love for His bride the Church.
So, what is love? Love boils down to this. Love is an attribute of God so its definition and its action stem from the fact that God is love. How do we know that God is love? Unlike many of the other attributes of God that we have studied in proverbs we are blessed with the fact that we actually have a verse that states the God is love 1John 4:8
1 John 4:8
KJV 1900
He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love
There it is folks. God is love. You can’t get any clearer than love is an attribute of God than God is love. Not only is it listed here that God is love but a few verses down John states it again in 1 John 4:16
1 John 4:16
KJV 1900
And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.
The very fact that John tells us that God is love twice must mean that we need to pay special attention to especially in light of the fact that it is within the same chapter. It is indeed very important as this is a key way in which we know whether someone is in Christ or not. If a person shows God defined love then it shows that he knows God and that God dwells in him.
There is a danger in thinking that because the bible seems to give a greater emphasis on love over and above the other attributes of God that love is the overarching attribute by which all other attributes are defined by. This type of thinking leads us into the error that Love is God and not God is love as John has stated it. No all attributes of God are in fact equal in importance so we can say that God is equally loving as He is just. He is equally loving as He is righteous. He is equally loving as He is truth and so on and so forth. Therefore, we can safely say God is lovingly just and justly loving; He is righteously loving and lovingly righteous. He is lovingly truthful and truthfully loving.
Since all the attributes of God are of equal importance then why does the bible seem to focus more on love rather than spending equal time on each. In a lot of cases the bible does spend much time on each of the attributes but they tend to be a little more hidden then, perhaps love is. However, the fact remains that the bible does spend a lot of time on love and there are a couple of reasons for this.
One of the main reasons why the bible spends so much time on love is because we need to be constantly reminded that God is love more so than, perhaps we need to be reminded of God’s other attributes. There are a couple of reasons why we need to be reminded. 1st reason is because of the affore mentioned hate. Even though we are swimming in the love of God who has washed away our sins, speaking of those who are in Christ, we still struggle with hate that always threatens to come back in. Much like the darkness is always lurking on the edge of the light so hate is always lurking on the edge of love but never able to conquer it. 2nd reason is because we are finite and God is infinite and with our finite minds we do not understand what God is doing.
Because we do not understand what God is doing we often ask the question, and it is a difficult one to answer is “How could a loving God do this or that?” All of us will face that question in one form or another and the answer is multifaceted which we won’t have time to look at fully today. However one thought to consider is that without those hard situations or circumstances you would not feel the presence of God as uniquely without those experiences. Case in point. The disciples struggling to get across the Sea of Galilee going nowhere fast, which is recorded in Mark 6:45-52. At this point Jesus while He was on shore could’ve commanded the storm to cease but instead walks on the water to meet up with the disciples and tell them Fear not for it is I. By this experience the disciples learn and understand Jesus on a much deeper level and in a much more meaningful way. If we extrapolate this out, we find that the reason for all of our experiences and struggles we go through, even the sin we struggle with, and even this very evil world that we live in is to learn and understand Jesus and His love for us in a much fuller and more meaningful way than we otherwise would have. Think back to one of our secular definitions in which it states that love looks out for the good of another. This is precisely what God is doing for us His children through those hard situations we experience. Often it doesn’t feel like it at the time but at some point, and it may not be til we get to heaven we will see the how’s and why’s of it all.
We have, therefore, established that God is love and since God is love God is the one who defines what love is. We don’t. Our oopy-goopy feelie-weelie thoughts of how love is, is not the definition of the love of God and therefore we cannot ascribe them as being of God. We must conform our definition of love to Him rather than defining God by our definition of love.
. We could explore a myriad of trails that explain what the love of God is and all the actions and avenues that the love of God takes but for our purposes this morning we will stick with the route that Solomon takes us which gives us the gospel in one short little sentence otherwise known as a proverb. So far we have separated the entire verse into its little parts like spokes of a wheel. Now let us tie them all together to make the wheel whole again. We have discovered that as our proverb states hate stirs up strife, hate instigates and keeps going all things malicious and hurtful and can do nothing else. Since these things are contrary to God’s law and shortchanges the honor and glory that are due Him means that hate is a sin and it is a sin that affects us all. None of us are immune to it. Rather we are all infected with it. Hate renders us wholly incapacitated to reach out and choose God because of the very nature of what hate is as we have stated before. If we may let us take another look at our light and darkness illustration. Because of hate as well as other sins, we are darkness, and we are in the darkness entirely incapable of being anything other than darkness. Without Christ that is how black your soul is, that is how dark your soul is. I realize we are covering ground that we have already covered but it is necessary to do so so that we can see the very stark contrast that appears in the second part of the text. The one that says but, but love, but love covers, but love covers all sins.
This is what Solomon is trying to show us, He, in that one little sentence has shared with us once again in its very basic form the gospel. We are all living in darkness as God haters striving against Him. But God, but God in His love decimates our darkness, by the light of God’s love our darkness vanishes, our hate vanishes, and we become new creatures. This is precisely what Paul tells us in Eph 2:1-3
Ephesians 2:1–3
KJV 1900
And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins; Wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience: Among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind; and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others.
This is us in our darkness and hate but Paul continues Ephesians 2:4-5
Ephesians 2:4–5
KJV 1900
But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;)
This is precisely the love that Solomon was talking about. The love that God is shatters the hate that we are to which we can only reply what a great and wonderful Savior is Christ Jesus our Lord who has covered all of our sins.-Love covers, like the mercy seat covered the arc of the covenant, all; all kinds, all types of missing the mark of the very slightest degree the full intent of God’s Law. Love covers the shortchanging God in the honor and glory that are due to Him, to disregard God’s authority and not walking humbly before Him. Love covers every single one of those sins not just the hate, for those who believe.
Does Snoopy give us the correct definition of love? Maybe if you’ve been married a long time and can still say those words to your spouse and even that misses the mark entirely. No God is love and He defines love, and He demonstrates His love in many multifaceted ways in which we only touch on one way this morning.
As we close this morning let me ask you one question. Which side of Solomon’s proverb are you on? Are you on the love of God covering all of your sins or are you still on the hatred towards God that stirs up strife part of the proverb? If you are still on the hatred towards God part of the proverb, then do not tally for the Lord will not strive with you forever. There will come a day when His entire wrath will be poured upon you for all eternity. Flee from the wrath to come by repenting and believing on the One who’s Name is Love namely Christ Jesus.
For those of us who are in Christ Jesus who’s name is Love let us remember with gratefulness of heart that His love has covered all of our sins. Let us also remember that since Jesus has covered our sins with His love, we ought to also cover each other’s sins with the love that God has given us. There is a lot to unpack here that would require an entire sermon to do so. Therefore, since we have been shown so great a love then we need show that great love to others
