Feb 3 - The Love Ethic

Thank you for bearing with me this morning in and using the YouTube video is our way to worship it something that I used in youth group because I don't I don't play an instrument so I can't play an instrument and then staying and try to do that for myself. So that's one way to get it to work through.

This morning sermon is the love at the kids commonly called in theology circles because it defines love is the divinely Define love. This is God's love any of these two passages cuz the first speaks to God as father approaching his children us. All right, we come into relationship with the father and we are adopted as Sons and Daughters of his and so that the scripture leads us into that relationship of God being our father and us being adopted as sons and daughters. I know 1st Corinthians 13 is the main focus of of defining love. I mean for all of us Wheatley, we come across the songs the songs of Love romantic songs that are that have been created alter humankind, I guess from the front of the time that we learn to like sing or make some beautiful notes with the instrument in some ways them. And when so when we have a passionate relationship when we have a relationship that we that we we want to share with people something about it with do we make up a song or we we write some poetry we do something that that's beautiful to us. About that lot of know maybe it is the same for us in the faith. We we come up with beautiful hymns beautiful song Beautiful praise songs, and and there's even a way of of of singing to God when you don't have lyrics in front of you right when there's something that that's in your heart and you're passionate for that relationship, but you don't really know what to say. And guess what the Holy Spirit comes in two of us and then do our hearts and gives us those things. I mean the Bible even and talks about you know, what having having noises that are beyond words right having had having guttural noises beyond words. And so we just begin to sing and we have these notes that come out of us and it's a beautiful thing just to just to love on God with those songs songs of love. But we we as humans tend to seal of a little differently we talk about love in our relationships. A lot of time will we start with this sort of puppy dog kind of love like this infatuation and it's an infatuation that consumes us and that infatuation. There is something that makes us happy and makes makes its joyful. We all want to do a lot of things with that person, you know, take them out places and restaurants and and do fun things with them and you know that consumes the entire beginning of our relationships and at the beginning of a relationship so when we were dating and and this is what the dating process is, like, right you're infatuated with that person they're infatuated with you. So you kind of go back and forth on what you can do or how you can please the other person. And well, it doesn't wait when you get into a marriage relationship. Eventually, some of that infatuation goes away a little bit. Aren't you start to learn a little bit more about the person you're living in the same place and you start to learn a little bit more you start leaving doors open. All right, so they see you all kinds of the day. They experience every emotion that you have throughout the day until they learn a little bit more about you and you know, it's up to us. It is seems like it's up to us and whether we're going to accept and continue to accept those those emotions and good or bad and whether we're going to accept whether we like this person leaving a door open in this situation, like some people don't care if they leave the door open and in the bathroom because it's just the two of you and your house and you just want to be comfortable and something to eat people cannot accept that they have to close the doors because they want some mystery to life.

A few years down the road either it can become burdensome because you're trying to work through these things that you might not necessarily like about the person and you're trying to figure out whether or not I want to keep doing those things keep accepting those things or not. You know, we make a covenant with each other to be together through all the stuff the good in the bad. And we can easily Define love in in different ways and let me skip your descriptions being that I already went through that. I said we Define love in different ways. We Define love in the songs that we sing. He know the Beatles song All You Need Is Love I think it was the Beatles If I got that wrong, Let me know when there's all kinds of love songs. It doesn't matter what genre of music that you're listening to their love songs and each one and he can arrange from I'm going to be with you all of your entire life and matter what happens in our lives matter if you or I have cancer no matter of you or I you know, I have fallen a little bit out of love and I'm going to stay with you because I know it will get better. 2

I love you. I'm going to leave you like you you make me feel so good. Those kinds of songs because you know, they focus only on the feeling in the feeling in the moment and we can Define love either by feeling or we can Define love as God Divine leave to find love and that's what we're talkin about today. Sometimes we confuse the things that God gives us the gifts that God gives us here in focuses on gifts and love defining love in our gifts. Sometimes we confuse the gifts that God gives us as as the actual love of God. Somehow we we confused when we get gift from another person as if that is the love of the person it might come from the love of the person but the gifts aren't the love of the person. Is Gibson where the love a person then poor people would not be able to love anyone?

So and me if we confuse the gifts that we get for God as at the actual love of God, we are actually confusing those two things. So that's what Paul Point Fountain this particular passage. He's talking about prophecy and prophesy will fall away and you can prophesy is no good without love because in knowing the person you want them to be better you want them to have something beneficial you want to give them gifts are God wants us to give me give us gifts and let him let us know that he is there and that he cares for us and he has a plan for us. And that's why I prophesy exists, right because he wants the best for us and has a plan for us. That's why it didn't exist and God we have prayer and we can come before God and we can boldly ask God for the things that we need to because God loves us. God wants us to come to him. God wants us to ask for those things.

So I have the gifts are there because God loves us.

The Relentless love of God is from the beginning to the end. It is like it says in the word God is love entirely and that goes from like the Bible says Everlasting to Everlasting. So everything you turn off that existed before even the Earth or humans ever existed all the way until the end when it won't exist on Earth no longer exists when our bodies in this physical form are changed to something else. I'm eternally from Everlasting to everlasting God is the same. So his love doesn't change to his once and for ice to be whole people doesn't change and never stopped and so God gives gifts so that we can be in his love and show other people love.

Seether the greatest love that but God defines is it caused us to do things that we feel in on adequate to do because what I mean? What is God only asked us to do what we know that we can do right then. It's all about us. It's all about what efforts and we can take. It's all about the skills that we develop. But if God calls us to do something that's beyond ourselves. You have to leave some of that behind you have to say I cannot rely on myself anymore God I need to rely on you. That's when the Holy Spirit comes to us and empowers us to be able to do those things. It has to be something Beyond us because if it's only about us and what we can develop then it can be a science Rite Aid Canby. I'm just developing my profession. I'm just developing myself. I'm just doing the skill for myself and we no longer need God. We no longer need something be honest. We can do all things through Christ Jesus, right? We can do all things through Christ Jesus. but we forget that it's Christ Jesus that doesn't in us has not we to do it of ourselves, right so we can do all things through the strength that God gives us through his Empower God strengthens us and gives us courage to be able to persevere when hard things come. When Trials come in our life when we lose somebody and when we get to the end of ourselves can because we will get to the end of ourselves like we can we can only go so far before we start and we start burning out we start losing patience with people we start losing losing some love I'll people because we're trying to do it all of our own strength and our own skin and outside of the boy God wants us to do. God enables us to speak words of truth when questioning and even hostile things come. This world can be very high Stout us.

No matter who you are or what you think or what you believe or what environment you're in? At some point the questioning has to come at some point. Somebody's going to ask you. What do you believe? At some point somebody is going to challenge you. Okay. You said you believe that God exists. You said you believe that prayer actually makes a difference. But I haven't seen you pray.

But I haven't seen you say anything about God. So I'm wondering if you actually believe what you told me. Yeah, sometimes the questioning becomes but sometimes this is just hostile. sometimes we just have people coming at us and against us and say there cannot be a God who exists because there is evil in the world and I'm saying that God exists because there is evil in the world. Because there is evil in the world God must exist because there is evil in the world. There has to be love there has to be Joy there has to be patience and peace and there has to be hope because there is evil in the world. Something has to come against that. My face has to come against doubt. Good things must exist and good things will bring us to eternal life with God. I have to believe that the importance they they had debates and controversies. They were it was ripping apart the church and this is what Paul was sending this letter to Corinth about I actually sent two letters. Maybe you sending you two letters. There's a problem to letters to all the churches that he is been apart of with and set up through the area. So there's a there's a problem here people are backbiting. They're talking they're angry with each other here yelling at each other. They're challenging each others face and and saying this is the way we think getting the Jesus is Jesus was only human and only a profit and there's only one God and then you have another set that thing well know Jesus was more than that in Jesus. We got and human and in this particular example of some people in the church were being prideful over the gifts the spiritual gifts. God had to give them They started thinking that they were better than other people simply because of the gifts. They were given.

And this was eating into the relationships. This was eating into the values that they held. And so what they said when they were together was we are together in love. And so Paul is saying Well, that might not be true because this is what love is.

So I know they were they were having these disputes over secondary issues in and these secondary issues were were reeling having them examined themselves on how they responded to truth. How they responded to the truth of Jesus to real love reaches Beyond selfishness and brings healing and wholeness into the lives of others if truth if Real Love and Truth together are being presented to someone they result and healing and wholeness. If truth is presented in any other way, it was result and hurt pain anguish splitting dividing.

That's what happens. till when we come to dispute them things when we when we coming have arguments over things if we don't have a relationship established at the beginning of things, we will fall into the error of Having useless arguments that will divide us.

And I have to be honest, you know, I'm the pastor in this denomination the United Methodist Church. And we've had this discussion dispute argument. for nearly 60 years

over human sexuality and that's why we're coming to the point we are now. and in conferences There are either there is there is a large portion of people who would have the denomination Stay Together. They remain in love with each other. To resolve the disputes and arguments that are had but there are elements on either wing. that that are okay with Division and disagreement and discourse that is angry and hurtful.

And so in the church, we have this we we have this from the beginning it as Paul was talking recorded. They had disputes even then now they had to decide whether or not in Jerusalem. They got together and decided whether or not the gospel was going to go from just the Jews out to the Gentiles. Brighten later on they had other disagreements and disputes obviously in Corinth with whether or not there was a level 2 how spiritual someone was based on the gifts that they were given. I had to dispute about whether Jesus was fully human or whether he was gone or whether he was both. It's all throughout the Christian history. There has been no disagreement here has been being held discussions on what we believe.

But all throughout the history of do the two thousand years that we have been been together.

You will always have people who decide and no longer they can they can travel with you. They're not going along with you and and that's fine. Our relationships need to come to end when they're no longer beneficial to us.

But we can still love them. Are you still love our brothers and sisters even when they're not right? Beside us even when they're not coming to the same church on a Sunday morning. We can still love them who you still talk to him. But I have to have you don't know how hard difficult discussion and yelling at each other over whether or not this aspect of God or this aspect of God is the most important bit. How can we but we can agree on that God is love. That Jesus is our Lord and that he saves. Tera temporary Gaines pailwan to comparison with their Eternal Rewards the gifts were given temporarily. A good for now. I'm waiting. Absolutely need to encourage everyone to use our gifts to to bring it along each other to hold each other up and they entirely depend on the attitude. of our hearts and we're going to use our gifts and entirely depends on our attitude. I mean I can I can build computer software right? I can write computer code and so I can write computer code that you wouldn't either be beneficial for the people that are around me right now and helping to like get loans or scholarships from the United Methodist Church, you know so that they can go to school things like that or I can use my software for other purposes for hurtful things for, you know, calculating the amount of damage a bomb does

So what we do with our gifts matters?

I am so this is how scripture defines the good things of love right love is patient love is kind and rejoices in the truth always protects always trusts, always hopes always perseveres. That defines love is an orientation and an activity. So it's not just like how your heart is affected and how you affect those things but it's also what do you do? to protect and preserve their summer activities love is not every boastful proud. It does not dishonor. It's not self-seeking. It's not easily angered keeps no record of wrongs are grudges. The lights it does not Delight in evil and does not fail.

That's what love is and sometimes we we we make up the songs that we make up the phone. Then we try to integrate feel like some of this stuff like Envy seems to be like right there at the top. I'm envious of the relationship of of my best friend. And so I want a relationship when I like them. And so I try to like for the relationship that happened because I see that their relationship is good doesn't work out that way.

And trying to be proud dishonoring people. I mean, you're not into your no longer seeking their benefit. Are you no longer sleeping the benefit of the people that are in a relationship with

In other words, there is who Christ is or what Christ has done? And what price is never done? If you don't see that Christ have done that in scripture, it's a clear indication on that's not love. If you have seen Christ doing in scripture to clear indication that it is. And even things like we talked about Jesus going in the temple and making a with and and pushing people out of the temple. Yes, but Christ was pushing people and animals at the temple so that people can come into the temple to worship God. It was actually loving thing that that Christ was doing and pushing these people out there doing something where they should not have.

It also helps us to admit our limitations. Right, if we're going to go around affirming all the laws and and things as of the Old Testament, we need to admit our limitations on being able to do all those things.

Because when we don't admit to our limitations then then we are laughing stock. We are made a laughingstock. We're not taking seriously. Where humans are going to have a fallen nature and we only have so much a limit as God does the rest?

So hum, so mature disciples humbly. Wait for the day when perfect Ruth Camino.

And love triumphs over arrogant as we walk United in humility and respect. Can we have our discussions and disagreements as long as we walk in the humility of Christ? As long as we can thank Christ can would stay this to me if he was here in my presence across the table is table from me and I need to hear this from Christ and know those are the words that are coming out of my mouth good.

Let her actions speak as loud as our words. And let people find the faith in the hope that they are seeking because this is the greatest virtue.