Sermon Tone Analysis

Pray

Introduction

How many love songs are there?

All you need is love.

I want to know what love is.

Endless love.

The power of love.

Depending on where you look, more than 60% of all pop songs written are about love in some shape or form.

Love dominates the singles charts, and of course, you’ll find ‘love’ in almost every movie you watch too.

There’s at least a relationship or a love interest in almost every film you watch.

Love is all around us…and yet so often in our day to day life, the love that we see and witness around us doesn’t resemble what we hear on the radio or see on the movies we watch.

Why is that?

Pause

Today’s fruit of the spirit is love.

It’s the first on the list and it is listed first on purpose, because it is so important and critical.

But before we look at what love is, we need to look at what love ISN’T…and what love isn’t is this...

In the movies and in popular culture, love is the warm and gooey feeling that people have for each other.

It’s almost sickening.

The movies hype it up and show relationships and love that are completely unrealistic and damaging in a way - because that’s not what love is.

And anyone seeking out that kind of love will be let down after a few weeks of marriage - because marriage is hard.

Love is hard work.

Love isn’t this warm and gooey feeling but is something that we need to work at.

And love is more than what a man has for a woman or what a woman has for a man - love is bigger than that too.

Pause

We’ve looked at this before and we’re not going into it in much detail, but in the bible there are more than one word for love.

There are 4 main words for love...

Eros

Phileo

Storge

Agape

Eros is the word that is normally associated with this warm and gooey feeling that we have.

Eros love is the love that a husband and wife have for each other.

It’s a sexual love - it’s where we get the word, ‘erotic’.

Phileo love is the love that friends have between them.

Think of David and Jonathan - they had a strong brotherly love as friends.

That was phileo love.

Storge love is the love that we have for our families.

So the love I have for Bethany and Naomi is different from the love I have for Kate.

The love I have for my mum or my sister is different from the love I have for Kate.

That’s familial love - it’s storge love.

And of course, the last word is used most often - agape love.

Which is a self-sacrificial love.

A love that gives of itself - that sacrifices its own desires for the desires of the other person.

A love that sacrifices itself.

It’s most clearly demonstrated in Jesus himself who sacrificed himself (and in the Father who sacrificed his Son) in order to set the world free from the bondage to sin and give them eternal life.

That’s agape love.

That’s the love listed in our passage today - both passages, actually.

The fruit of the Spirit is agape - love.

And in 1 Corinthians, it’s the agape love that is patient and kind and so on.

And this is in stark contrast with what the world views as love.

Because the world’s view of love is a FEELING that I FEEL.

ME.... It’s about what I feel, and if I don’t FEEL what I feel anymore then I don’t love you.

That kind of love is extremely selfish - it’s NOT agape love.

It’s not really love at all.

But bring agape love into your marriage and even on those days when you don’t FEEL much love, you choose to keep going and keep loving, because agape love is not about what WE want or feel, it puts the other person first - it’s about how THEY feel.

It’s like what I said this morning…what’s in it for me?

That’s the love that the world has… and it says, ‘what’s in it for me - what do I get out of this relationship?’

Agape love says, ‘what’s in it for them - what can I PUT INTO this relationship?’

Pause

And this agape love is listed first, because love is kinda the basis of all the other fruit.

David Jeremiah points this out in his book on the fruit of the Spirit.

Let’s read those verses in 1 Corinthians 13 and see how it relates to the other Fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5...

And now look at the next slide which I’ve tried to show how each of these, in some way encompasses the fruit of the Spirit...

[show slide]

So love is patient - patience is a fruit of the Spirit.

Love is kind - kindness is a fruit of the Spirit.

Love does not delight in evil, in which case it delights in good - goodness is a fruit of the Spirit.

It rejoices in truth - there’s joy in some form.

Love perseveres - there’s the faithfulness...

And so on and so on.

So there’s a good reason why love is first on this list of the Fruit of the Spirit.

I’ve heard it likened to an orange.

It’s like the fruit of the Spirit is like an orange.

The individual segments of the orange are part of the one fruit and are the different aspects of the fruit of the Spirit - the joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness and so on… But what holds it together and is all around it is the skin, which is love.

Pause

Now, the verse in 1 Corinthians 13 is speaking about how we love each other in the church.

This verse is often used at weddings, and it’s a nice verse to use, because it’s true that even in romantic love, love is patient and kind and so on.

But that’s not the context of this verse.

In chapter 13 of 1st Corinthians, Paul has just spoken about the spiritual gifts and the fact that the church is a body with different members and therefore different gifts.

His point, very simply put, is that everyone has a gift - so use it and thrive in it, but don’t be looking at other people’s gift thinking, ‘I wish I had their gift.’

And he then writes this section on love - that it doesn’t matter how gifted you are, if you don’t love each other then your gifts are worthless.

You could be speaking the language of the angels, but if you don’t love each other then you might as well be banging a gong, because that’s as much good as it will do!

Or you could have such a prophetic gift that you can know all mysteries and all knowledge - God might be speaking words of knowledge to you about situations that could make a real difference to that situation, and you might have all the faith in the world…but if you don’t have love, it’s worthless.

Now, I was convicted here when I looked into this.

I’m using my gift in teaching as best I can - and let’s say I could preach the best sermon ever preached.

I mean, let’s say I can preach better than Tim Keller or Billy Graham…if I don’t love the people to whom I’m speaking, my sermons will be worthless.

They will fall flat on their backsides and no good will come of them.

And that struck me - because some people are hard to love.

You know that.

I know that...but we’re called to love them.

But where the media shows love as a warm and gooey feeling - the reality is that love is not a warm and gooey feeling.

In fact, love isn’t a feeling at all…love is a choice.

Agape love is a choice.

You CHOOSE to love someone, just as Jesus CHOSE the path to the cross.

Pause

So how do we do that?

Well, read with me these words from 1 John...

Now, look at verse 8 and verse 12...

God is love - GOD is love.

Remember what I said last week that the fruit of the Spirit comes from the Spirit himself.