God Is Love

Intro

In our world today, love has become an ambiguous, subjective word that seems to transform in definition depending on who is using the word. If you were to go up to random people on the street and ask them what love is, you would probably hear a different answer every time. This shouldn’t be surprising to us, because it seems that everything around us is selling us different ideas of what love is. Whether its in dramatic TV shows, romantic books (if people still read), video games, social media or, especially around this time of year, Hallmark movies, everyone has a different depiction of what love is. Sometimes its an incredibly bright flame that burns brightly for only an evening, sometimes its a feeling that can’t be helped, sometimes its a day-to-day decision based on who we like most that day. The reason why nobody seems to agree about what love is is this: love has been a lost treasure among humans since the fall of man. Love is critical to who we are, we need it to survive and we long for it more than anything, but we have lost sight of what love is. In our desperation we have scrambled to put together patchwork ideas of what love is, always bearing some resemblance to the truth but always missing the mark and leaving us empty. When we make love a feeling it is because we miss the feeling that love brings us, but when that is all that love is it becomes hollow and without a foundation to stand on. It crumbles. When love is a day-to-day decision our wandering hearts bring us from person to person to thing to thing and we are never satisfied. When love is waiting for a knight in shining armor to come save us we always look to the wrong person to save us, leaving both people more broken than before. If we really want to recover the love that we have lost, we must first recover the God that we have abandoned; for it is only in God that we find a true depiction of what love really is and it is only through God that love can be true and pure.

God is the only true source of love. (verses 7,8)

The concept of love is tied strongly to God Himself, John actually claiming that God IS love. If we want to understand it and know it, we cannot avoid God. Are people love?

State: Though humans were initially created to love, they have turned towards selfishness

Jeremiah 2:20–22 ESV

“For long ago I broke your yoke and burst your bonds; but you said, ‘I will not serve.’ Yes, on every high hill and under every green tree you bowed down like a whore. Yet I planted you a choice vine, wholly of pure seed. How then have you turned degenerate and become a wild vine? Though you wash yourself with lye and use much soap, the stain of your guilt is still before me, declares the Lord God.

Doesn’t this describe us? Hasn’t God burst our bonds and caused us to be free? And what have we done with that freedom? We have used that freedom to please our sinful hearts. We have used that freedom to build up ourselves and to advance our own rebel kingdoms. We may have used this freedom to love, but only to love ourselves, our idols and nobody else. We have bowed down to our idols, we have sinned against God. In private and in public we make it clear that our idols have stolen our hearts.

Illustrate: When God freed his people from Egypt, what did they do?

When God freed the people from harsh slavery in Egypt, did the people follow after their savior? They did not, but they grumbled and complained about their freedom in the wilderness. The complained about the manna God gave them and they eventually even built a false god out of gold to bow down to. The people did not love God at all, but only loved themselves and what they decided to care about that day. They continued to do this until God judged them through Jeremiah, after watching them bow down to countless false gods for hundreds of years. The people had proven that they no longer understood or possessed true love, only lust for their passions.

Apply: We too, like sheep, have gone astray after other lovers

Apply: We too, like sheep, have gone astray after other lovers

Don’t we do the exact same? Even though God has burst our bonds from the slavery of sin, don’t we create our own false gods so that we can bow down before them? Don’t we devote our lives to the gods of popularity, sports, lust, luxury and laziness? Although we were once enslaved in harsh Egypt, we have been freed from the reign of terror that sin once had in our lives. And now we have forgotten the harshness of its leadership, and we would run back to place ourselves in chains again. We do not love God, but we hate God for saving us. The only love we possess is a love for self, and a love for instant gratification. We do not possess true love, only a lust for passions. And the message from God in Jeremiah shows us that we are doomed to our choices for lust over love, and even if we wash ourselves with lye and use much soap, if we were to bathe in chlorine and bleach our hands, there is no removing the wrongs that we have committed. We have made our beds, and now we must lay in them. Or do we? If we are our only hope to be cleaned, then we certainly would be lying in our beds.

Christ is the ultimate display of love (Verses 9,10)

Love is not from us, it is from God

Thankfully, true love is not worked up from within us. We are not generators of love. God alone generates true love, and he is the one that must pour love out upon us. We see the ultimate expression of that love in Jesus Christ and what he accomplished on our behalf. Verse 10 tells us that we see love not in what we do for God, but what God does for us.

God has freed us to life!

Do you see what God has done for you? Do you see how greatly he has loved you? Can you see you greatly he loved Israel when they were enslaved in Egypt? Here you had a group of people that were created to walk with God and enjoy him go AWOL, attempt a coup against him and stage a rebellion that ultimately wanted God gone. A people who repeatedly showed absolutely no regard for God time and time again. They ran so far from Him that they found themselves in slavery in a far away land to people who should not have owned them if they had stayed by God’s side. And that was just a shadow of God showing how he would one day love us!

We are much in the same way a rebellious people who have run so far from God that we have found ourselves in the hands of cruel slavemasters that don’t care about us at all. We are being mistreated by the whip of depression, anxiety, lust and idolatry because of the way in which we have rebelled against God. We did not love him, and yet he still loved us. He came to us, this rebellious people, in the form of Jesus Christ. The Father sent his One True Son into the world to die at the hands of the people who would show the ultimate rebellion against him so that God could show his ultimate act of love for the rebels. God has broken us out of our chains, and our captors who once enslaved us no longer have any dominion over us. We have been carried back to the Kingdom of God on the shoulder of Christ, and by his love we are made sons of the Most High God again.

Surely this is true love. Surely all of our sad attempts to redefine love pale in comparison to the true love that God has shown us through Christ. Surely this is the love that we are called to understand and express towards God and our fellow neighbors.

We ought to love like Christ loves us, because Christ loves us (Verses 11,12)

Verses 18-19 Perfect love casts out fear. We love because he first loved us. We do not love out of fear of God, but because the grace of Jesus Christ has awoken us out of our selfishness and has made us love others in the same caring, sacrificial way that Jesus loves us.

Christ cares for our souls

If you do get around to loving people, how do you do it? Are we comfortable with sending people to hell as long as they have a full belly? People like to make Jesus into this Ghandi type of person who was just a peaceful teacher who fed hungry crowds. Jesus was may more thatn that. More than physical wellbeing, Jesus had people’s souls in mind. He came to save people from hell. He came so that people might look to him and love him because of the love that he has shown them. When we are attempting to love people, are their souls our primary concern?

Christ was on mission

Christ also lived a life that was incredibly mission-focused. Are you on mission to love people? Do you care enough about them to schedule it into your days? How are you doing this specifically? It doesn’t just happen by chance, we need to be intentional about loving people if we truly care about them.

School, sports, family, friends, routines in our lives. Our whole lives are given to God for what he wishes, and he has commanded us to be on mission. Nobody is too busy to be on mission.

Christ is the ultimate display of love, and his saving us while we were still sinning against him is the greatest act of love that the world has ever seen. Spend time bathing in the sweetness of this truth and as it penetrates your heart, let your actions be shaped by the love of Christ.