Jesus Is Love (2)

Welcome and Invitation to Worship God

Psalm 95:1–2 “1 Come, let us sing to the Lord! Let us shout joyfully to the Rock of our salvation. 2 Let us come to him with thanksgiving. Let us sing psalms of praise to him.”

Prayer

*Hymn Jesus Loves Even Me #495

*Salutation & Time of Greeting

Prayer of Confession

A - Adoration, acknowledging God’s Presence and Power

C - Confession of our Sins, seeking forgiveness

T - Thanksgiving

S - Supplication

Words of Assurance

Romans 8:38–39 “38 And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. 39 No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

John 3:16 “16 “For this is how God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.”

Hymn - If that isn’t Love #72

Scripture 1 John 4:9-10

(The Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.)

Message Jesus is Love

Introduction

As I was planning my sermon for this week and not knowing what sermons you have enjoyed I chose to perhaps stick with some basics. It seems as of late that I have this attitude that church needs to get back to the basics. We at times seem to get to deep into the weeds of church and we loose people. I think that people want to hear the truths from scripture but in a way that they can understand.

So this morning I want to look at Love, where do we look for love. I want to explore the greatest example of love and that is through Jesus’ death, resurrection and ascension.

You may ask why on mothers day but I would say why not. When I think of love one of the first people that come to mind would be my mother and grandmother.

It is through Christ’s death and resurrection that Jesus unveils to us God’s love for us.

When we look at the cross and the empty tomb the power of His love is on full display. Its the foundation on which our christian faith is built that God loved us so much that he sent his only son to die on the cross for our sins.

So, why then if we know of God’s love do we spend so much time looking for love in all the wrong places? Where do you search for love? Where do you find love? I think that often times we search in worldly places, we search in wordly things for love. Places, people, things in our lives that we strive to find love in but its the world that lets us down time after time.

We try to find love in the things that we own, the amount of friends we have on facebook or the number of likes we have on TikTok. We try to find love in the bar with our friends rather than being home with our families. We try to find love in our careers and often times use that as an excuse for not spending time with loved ones.

On occasion we do find love in a husband or a wife but too often that proves to not be lasting love. No longer do wedding vows and promises mean what they say. Often times bride and grooms use words like I promise before God and these witnesses, for better for worse, in sickness and in health to love and to cherish as long as we both shall live. The world just cant handle that and a little three letter word gets put in “but”, but you weren’t the same person 30 years ago, but I don’t think we are made for each other.

In 2022 according to the CDC for every 1,000 people there were 6.2 marriages, just over 2 million people got married in 2022. Sadly though in 2022 for every 1,000 people there were 2.4 divorces, 673,989 couples got a divorce in 2022. No longer able to find love in their relationship.

We at times try to hide our emotions in the things of this world when we know full well that they wont bring us happiness, they wont bring us joy or contentment. To the contrary they will let us down. Seems like there are plenty of country music songs written about finding love in the places of the world and hitting rock bottom with the love is not sustained.

In the book of John, the apostle records a prayer that Jesus offered to his disciples just after they celebrated the last supper in the upper rooms. In that prayer he mentions that He and us do not belong to the world but that we are in the world and that the world hates Jesus and us for that.

John 17:14–16 “14 I have given them your word. And the world hates them because they do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. 15 I’m not asking you to take them out of the world, but to keep them safe from the evil one. 16 They do not belong to this world any more than I do.”

So, if the world is the wrong place for us to look for love, where should we look? When we look to Jesus for Love we find the perfect love that only He can give us. A love that is unconditional, a love with no strings attached.

When we look to the cross we see the mysteries of God’s love unveiled for us to see in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Here is a question to ponder and I wonder what your answer will be this morning.

Would you say that your life is shaped by the world and the law of God or by the wonder of God’s love and grace? Is your life shaped by the things of this world or by the unconditional love of God?

Prayer

1 John 4:9–10 NLT

9 God showed how much he loved us by sending his one and only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him. 10 This is real love—not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins.

World Full of Love

The world around us does an amazing job driving home the message of love, wouldnt you agree? I mean every where you look the world wants you to find love. Young girls are shown that they have to dress in a certain way to be loved by a boy and boys have to act a certain way or own certain things or at least make it appear that they own certain things to be loved by a girl.

There was a young woman that so desperatly wanted to find love, she wanted a husband in the worst way. While taking a walk through a park she was prayer fervently that God would reveal the Mr Right to her. She was praying so hard that when she heard an owl in the trees “who, who, who”, she replied I dont care God anyone.

The lyrics to the song Child of Love hit the nail on the head.

I was walking the wayside Lost on a lonely road I was chasing the high life Tryna satisfy my soul

All the lies I believed in Left me crying like the rain Then I saw lightning from Heaven And I've never been the same

I've felt the sting of the fire But I saw You in the flames Just when I thought it was over You broke me out of the grave

When we look at what the world has to offer us it will not be a lasting love, nothing close to it for that matter. You might as well go with the owl in the tree.

But see that is where we find ourselves this morning. God is showing us a lasting love. God has defined his love to us.

Divine Love Defined

God has given us His divine definition of love. We have often heard in the church the different types of love. Today the love that God is displaying is an Agape style of love. A love that is selfless, without condition but John has much more in these 2 verses to unpack than just to say the love God is displaying is an Agape type of love.

Love is Visible - In verse 9 we read that “God showed” his love, God’s love became visible to us. If you cant see love, or cant see the results of love then the question becomes is it really love or is it just words on a page?

If you happen to work in the public sector of police, fire or EMS or even nurses or doctors you have a lot of paperwork to do, you write a report about everything you do and why you did it. Documentation is the key to legal survival. The rule of thumb is if you didnt write it down then it didnt happen. Every few years we would conduct a report writing training where we would bring in the city attorney and we would hold a sort of mock courtroom trial with the attorney questioning the fire fighters. He would be given a choice of some medical reports and he would quiz you on those reports. Often times we would not write down some of the most basic things in medical treatment and the attorney would have a hay day with that. Often times he would get under your skin and you would feel the heat of the moment. It was all to try and get you to be a better report writer but the first law of report writing was always if it wasn’t written down it didn’t happen.

Gods love is not an invisible love. To the crowds on that Good Friday God made it painfully visible for all to see. He made it visible for the whole world to see from that day forward until the end of time we see God’s love for us.

Love is an Act of the Will - God made his love visible to us by his act of sending his son. You dont just wake up some morning and say to someone, I guess I love you. No it takes time, it takes a deliberate act of your will. I mentioned earlier that my son got married just 2 weeks ago and that I was privilaged to marry my daughter just 7 months ago, and Lord willing my wife and I will celebrate 30 years of marriage this December. All three relationships have taken time and deliberate acts of will.

Love was not and will not be easy all the time. Sure there are the happy moments but with those happy moments come some difficult ones.

God acted out of his own will to love us and he showed us that his love was visible when he sent his son.

Love is Sacrificial - Not only did God act out of his will be he sent his only son. Love is going to cost you something along the way. For God he sent his one and only son. He gave us his best. Sure God could have sent anyone to do the work.

God had already told Abraham that he would be blessed and that his descendants would be more than the stars in the sky, surely God could have used Abraham and saved his son. Moses had already led God’s people out of Egypt, certainly God could have used Moses and saved his one son Jesus. The problem is as good as Abraham and Moses were they were not good enough. God needed to sacrifice the best, the one without blemish free from sin. There is only one person that fit those requirements and that was Jesus.

2 Corinthians 5:21 “21 For God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin, so that we could be made right with God through Christ.”

Throughout the Old Testament we read many accounts of God commanding his people to offer sacrifices on the alter and every time his command is to find the best ram or bull, whatever the animal is and it must be without blemish. We dont get very far in Genesis when we first read about giving our best to God.

Genesis 4:3–5 “3 When it was time for the harvest, Cain presented some of his crops as a gift to the Lord. 4 Abel also brought a gift—the best portions of the firstborn lambs from his flock. The Lord accepted Abel and his gift, 5 but he did not accept Cain and his gift. This made Cain very angry, and he looked dejected.”

Where in your life have you perhaps not sacrificed the best that you have to offer to someone you love? When have you just said “I love you” in passing just to say it but without meaning in your heart. We are not sure why God did not accept Cains sacrifices but most likely it was either because they were not the first crops or not the best crops but also he might have not had love in his heart and his intent was simply to get the blessing he felt he deserved from God.

God showed his love for us through the sending of his one and only son and why, so that you and I may have eternal life.

Love Serves the Unlovable - God’s love came before ours. God’s love is for everyone that will accept it. He loved us first. We actually hated him and that hatred had been festering throughout Jerusalem for some time. We saw in Judas perhaps the perfect example of someone giving lip service to Jesus but in the end betraying him for money. A hatred so severe and so in rage that the people were willing to let a convicted criminal, a man convicted of murder to go free in order to crucify Jesus.

John 15:18–19 “18 “If the world hates you, remember that it hated me first. 19 The world would love you as one of its own if you belonged to it, but you are no longer part of the world. I chose you to come out of the world, so it hates you.”

In the prayer I mentioned in the book of John he prays for many people and he uses the adjective “them”. He didnt pray just for the disciples or just for his followers but I think he prayed for everyone, those that loved him as well as those that did not. Its easy to say you love everyone but wait until someone does something to you that makes them unlovable, then are you going to still love them?

Jesus did, the leading priests and Pharisees had been planning this event for some time, a well orchistrated pre-meditated murder and still Jesus has love and compassion for them in some of his last words on the cross when he says “Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they are doing”. There is that prayer for “them” again.

God sent his only son as a sacrifice for you and for me. God first gives us the example of love so that we in turn may love others.

Love Addresses Sin God’s love wins over sin once and for all. Jesus’ death and resurrection rescues us from the death we deserve in our sinful nature.

Romans 6:23 “23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord.”

With the fall of man in the Garden of Eden the world was on a spiral trajectory to hell.

Romans 5:8 “8 But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners.”

Romans 8:3 “3 The law of Moses was unable to save us because of the weakness of our sinful nature. So God did what the law could not do. He sent his own Son in a body like the bodies we sinners have. And in that body God declared an end to sin’s control over us by giving his Son as a sacrifice for our sins.”

Its with God’s love that he put a rescue operation into motion.

In the fire service when you have a large what we call working fire like a house or a business you always have a rescue plan. We called that a RIT team, Rapid Intervention Team. This team did nothing but watch, observe and listen to radio traffic. The team was stationed near the chief, they had their own dedicated equipment and were standing by. They were not there to fight the fire and they were not there to rescue the home owners or business people. They were there only to rescue a downed firefighter. They had to be ready for the moment the chief needed to implement the rescue plan.

God as the chief of the world had to implement his rescue plan. He loved his people too much and so he sent his RIT team of one, Jesus in to save us.

1 Peter 2:24 “24 He personally carried our sins in his body on the cross so that we can be dead to sin and live for what is right. By his wounds you are healed.”

So, let me read the passage again to put it all together once more.

1 John 4:9–10 NLT

9 God showed how much he loved us by sending his one and only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him. 10 This is real love—not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins.

Friends the tomb is empty because He has Risen!

His Love is Complete

In the Redemptive Story of the Bible today we stand at the empty tomb with the empty cross behind us. We celebrate the good news that God loved us so much that he had a rescue plan. That he sent his only son Jesus to die on the cross, to suffer the pain of death on our behalf and for our sins. For the redemption of our sins.

Its the greatest love story of all time and nothing will ever top it until we reach that final judgement when the rescue mission is complete and heaven and earth are restored the way God has it planned.

I asked you a question at the beginning of the sermon, Would you say that your life is shaped by the world and the law of God or by the wonder of God’s love and grace? Is your life shaped by the things of this world or by the unconditional love of God?

As I was studying this text one commentary author wrote that when he was a college professor he gave his class an assignment to write a one-page essay answering that question.

To his amazement he said 90% of the class admitted to him privately that the possibility of God’s favor falling away from them and the fear of wrath from God had shaped their Christian outlook since childhood. That God’s unending love was not foremost in their minds. Instead what the worried about the most was God’s possible displeasure, to them Christianity was all about following the rules.

Friends

Whenever our perception of God is shaped by fear and anxiety, worry perhaps over losing his affection, we have not plumbed the depth of his love. We have not experienced his commitment to us.

For his students their reflex was to try and please God so that he could continue to favor them. They had not learned to please God because he already favored them.

We love God second because God has already loved us. That love that God has for us is an Agape type of love, a love unconditional that started way back in the book of Genesis when we humans failed. If God had given up because of our failures he would have done it along time ago.

We are two weeks past Easter this morning and I wonder if we have already moved on? Has Easter become an event that we celebrate once a year or is Easter a reminder that we take with us every day?

There is so much more that Jesus wants to show us, there is so much more that God has in store for us. God has given us the perfect example of unconditional love but if we dont do anything with it then its not worth a whole lot. We are called to loves others the way God loves us.

Matthew 22:37–40 “37 Jesus replied, “ ‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments.””

Its when we are able to love God first and others second then we can start to build up the body of believers, we are able to make disciples and we are able to serve in Jesus name. Why? Because God loved us first and its through his love for us that he gives us an abundance to love others.

Where do you look for love? Are you looking for love in all the right places? Friends His love is right here in plain sight for the whole world to see, we just need to accept it.

*Hymn - Isn’t the Love of Jesus Something Wonderful #31

Morning Prayer (concludes with the Lord’s Prayer)

"Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever. Amen". 

Offertory/Offering

*Doxology

*Offertory Prayer

*Benediction

*Parting Hymn Jesus Loves Even Me #501

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