The Way it Ought to Be: All you need is love

Advent: The Way it Ought to be  •  Sermon  •  Submitted
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Love is one of the main themes of Christmas time. Commercials aim at Christmas shoppers looking for love. Every Christmas movie is about Santa or a lovestory, or both. The truth of Christmas is that all love is defined by God giving of Himself in Jesus Christ. This is an opportunity for us to receive this love again.

Notes
Transcript

Scripture

1 John 4:7–21 NIV
Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us. This is how we know that we live in him and he in us: He has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God. And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus. There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. We love because he first loved us. Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister.
1 John 4:

Introduction: All you need is love

I am a sucker for a good love story. It is not uncommon for me to get caught watching the latest Nicholas Sparks movie… they will never beat the notebook but still. I knew I had a problem the other day when I was giving the overview of a Nicholas Sparks movie to Lauren and she had never heard of it. Guys do not look at me like that....I thought this was a safe space.
This week’s advent theme on love got me thinking about the best love songs out there… I love Spotify because they have all these lists, greatest love songs of all time....
“I want to know what love is - foreigner
(pic) You’ve lost that loving feeling - Righteous Brothers, Top Gun
I Can’t stop loving you - Ray Charles
Frank Sinatra
Whitney Houston
(Pic) One of my favorite Beetles songs is “All you need is love”
“Nothing you can do that can’t be done
Nothing you can sing that cant be sung
Nothing you can say, but you can learn how to play the game
It’s easy...
All you need is love X3
Love is all you need.
I did a little digging into the history of this song. It was written specifically for a live broadcast called “Our World” that would be shown in 17 countries around the world on July 25, 1967. This was going to be the first international live broadcast with new fancy satellite technology. John Lennon came up with the song and supposedly he did because love is something that translates into every language. Every people, every country, every language understood love.
I guess that is true to some extent. All you need is love is a scary half truth as is all of the songs and all of the movies. Love is something I think we are all looking for in the holidays. As we give gifts and receive them. Every Christmas movie on right now that is not about Santa, is about some romance. Jewelry commercials start falling out of the woodwork. Truth is Christmas time can be the most dangerous time because honestly, it is the time we try to manufacture it. and we tell ourselves these half truths.

Love is all you need

is all about love.
It is one of my favorite texts in all of the bible. It is swirling and confusing but it is powerful and layered. Using a literary style called amplification. It is a way of swirling around points and adding emphasis. But I think the foundation of the whole section is found in the first few verses and the rest is his way of amplifying the meaning, lets read them again:
It is one of my favorite texts in all of the bible. It is swirling and confusing but it is powerful and layered. Using a literary style called amplification. It is a way of swirling around points and adding emphasis. But I think the foundation of the whole section is found in the first few verses and the rest is his way of amplifying the meaning, lets read them again:
1 John 4:7–12 NIV
Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.
1 John 4:7-
3 main points here:
God is the source of love
God models genuine love
God has a plan for this love

God is the source of love

First lesson from 1 John and for our advent journey....God is the source of love. This is important for us today. It is something we conceptualize but I am not sure we live like this is true. God is the source of love because he is love....check it out.
1 John 4:7–8 NIV
Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.
God is love means that all of his characteristics, all of his actions, his grace and his judgement, his sovereignty and his presence it is all love.
Listen we need to have a little talk about love:
If God is the source of love then it is not in some relationship. We have defined love success in our culture at best as finding your soul mate and at worst as some lustful pursuit stolen from the Christmas rom coms.
To reduce love to romance is reductionistic and too small. Single people in the room, if you live a life pursuing the source of love, God, then you have lived a highest calling. You are not less than because you are single, do you hear me. If marriage is in front of you then spend this time of singleness as the great gift that it is. If marriage is not in front of you then run harder with the source…the Church will be blessed by you. Church, we have to quit idolizing marriage in this way. Marriage should be a reflection of this truth that God is love and if its not then it is just more baggage.
2. Married people: God is the source, not your spouse. Marriage is not the source of love, sex is not the source of love, your computer screen is not the source of love, God is the source. All you need is love, yes the real thing…not the manufactured kind.
2. Married people: God is the source, not your spouse. Marriage is not the source of love, sex is not the source of love, your computer screen is not the source of love, God is the source. All you need is love, yes the real thing…not the manufactured kind.
Lauren and I story.

God models genuine love

Not only is God the source but He also gives us the perfect picture of it.
1 John
1 John 4:9–10 NIV
This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.
This is the greatest act of love there ever was and ever will be. The God of the universe sacrificed himself for us.
This is the measuring stick. This is how we understand love. This is what we base our own love in. This is the launching point for any conversation of love. Anything that we love or call love in this life is measure by degrees from this love. Does that make sense? There is no other religion, there is no other faith that has this truth. This should challenge how we love and what we love....
Bonhoeffer about this love....
“God travels wonderful ways with human beings, but he does not comply with the views and opinions of people. God does not go the way that people want to prescribe for him; rather, his way is beyond all comprehension, free and self-determined beyond all proof. Where reason is indignant, where our nature rebels, where our piety anxiously keeps us away: that is precisely where God loves to be. There he confounds the reason of the reasonable; there he aggravates our nature, our piety—that is where he wants to be, and no one can keep him from it. Only the humble believe him and rejoice that God is so free and so marvelous that he does wonders where people despair, that he takes what is little and lowly and makes it marvelous. And that is the wonder of all wonders, that God loves the lowly…. God is not ashamed of the lowliness of human beings. God marches right in. He chooses people as his instruments and performs his wonders where one would least expect them. God is near to lowliness; he loves the lost, the neglected, the unseemly, the excluded, the weak and broken.” 
― Dietrich BonhoefferGod Is in the Manger: Reflections on Advent and Christmas
Growing up my brothers and I always had a little fun with a gift we would get every year.
Growing up my brothers and I always had a little fun with a gift we would get every year.
This is not that gift. This is the gift that allows us to give at all.
2. Love sacrifices. This is the foundation of love. Not romance, not desire, not lust, not some emotion…it is sacrifice. Jesus said it in John’s gospel this way....
John 15:13 NIV
Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.
Look at your relationships, your friendships, your marriage....is there any sacrifice? Or is it just fair-weather, if it does not inconvenience me, kind of love.

God has a plan for this love

Finally, God’s love for you is not just for you. Our story about God and Jesus and forgiveness of sins, sometimes is reduced to this me-centered story. Yes God loves you, but he loves the world. God is redeeming the world in Jesus and the love given to you is not so that you can go home and feel good about yourself. This love also sends you out...
Look at what it says here....
1 John
1 John 4:11–12 NIV
Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.
All of this is building on itself. I want you to see this. The scripture is not love others because I said so. It is not religion in that sense, some weird moral standard. It’s not love others because that is what you are supposed to do or love others or else....no look at what he does, he points back up stream. Love others because God is love and God has loved you.
Oswald Chambers
“The Springs of love are in God, not in us. It is absurd to look for the love of God in our hearts naturally. It is only when it has been shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit. – Oswald Chambers
For some of us, we have trouble loving because we do not believe we are loved. Maybe you do not believe that He is the source. Maybe you do not believe in the weight of the gift he has given....
the book has the noun or verb of love 46 times. And it is here in these 14 verses love is found 31 times.
The bottom line, you are loved.
Preach this out....
Ok last thought here....what does it look like?

Marks of Love

John describes what it looks like to know this love. First he says they are fearless....
1. Marked by Fearlessness
For those that love God and God is in them there is no fear. Perfect love casts out fear.
Sadie…when we first got her
Luke…playing superman yesterday
2. Radical love for others
Those that are secure in this love have radical love for others. That is why one of Jesus parting words in John’s gospel is this. He says I am leaving soon and I am giving you this command...
John 13:35 NIV
By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
John 13:34–35 NIV
“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
Those that know the love of Christ forgive when it does not make sense. They sacrifice deeply. These are the people that walk away from careers. These are the people that dedicate their life as a missionary, or to orphan care, or sacrifices their career for their children. This is the one who puts the golf clubs away for a season because they have other more important things to focus on. This is the person who can be inconvenienced in the middle of their schedule. This is the person who is ok being taken advantage of, because their reward is not in reciprocity, but their reward is already given…its their motivation.
Love embraced is love extended.
Today, know that you are loved deeply...
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