Advent Love 2020

Advent Love 2020 Rough Draft

Please turn in your Bibles to, I John 4:7-11

Today we finish our 4th week of Advent with Love. On Christmas Eve, we will look at The Light, Who is Christ.

Read, I John 4:7-11

Pray

1ST SLIDE

When you hear the word “love” conception about what they mean, when you know who’s said it.

-When a little girls says to her daddy, “Daddy, I love you.”

-That means something a little different than when a teenage girl says to her boyfriend. “I love you.”

-When a grandmother says to her cat, “I love you.”

-That means something really different than when a minister says, “Jesus loves you.”

1. What is Love?

7 words for love used in the greek language. They all express love in a different way (family love, friendship love, erotic love, playful love, love of a child) they all mean something different. The greek gives a different word for each kind of love.

Our passage today uses 1 word, Agape Love (unconditional).

This is the “no matter what” love.

Your love is given based on nothing the other person does good or bad.

-You are so committed to this person in love that your love for them could not be stronger. If you were dying and this person gave you a kidney and saved your life - you would love them just as much as you do now.

If, this person made a terrible sin, robed a bank and shot someone - went to jail for 20 years, you would still love them (unconditionally).

Maybe you love your child or your spouse with this kind of love.

This love is the kind of love that God love His children with.

-If you are a Christ follower, you are unconditionally loved by God.

Here is the challenge, You may know this is your mind, but your heart has a hard time believing that someone, especially God, loves you unconditionally.

The challenge as a human being is that we tend to anthropomorphize God.

That’s a fancy word for, give God human characteristics.

How do we do this?

-We relate to God like He is a human. God is not like a human. He is very different than you and me.

-How do we relate to God like a human?

-You and I typically don’t love others unconditionally. We love them conditionally, based on what they do for us or how they make us feel.

Illustration - I have a dog at home named Tinkerbell. Tinerbell is a Yorkie, a terrier. Tinkerbell loves my mom. She only sees my mom a few times a year. When she sees my mom she jumps and jumps to greet her. My Yorkie loves my mom because my mom is very active and takes the dog on long fast walks. Tinkerbell loves to walk.

Tinkerbell likes my dad, but mom walks her fast and long - she loves my mom.

That is a conditional love. We love because others do something for us.

All of us do this with people in our life. We love people who make us feel good. Who do what we want.

Because we do this with people in our life we have a strong tendency to ascribe this human way of loving to God.

Apply - We think, If I am having a bad day spiritually I am disappointing God or hurting God, and God loves me less.

Here is where I get tripped up in my walk with God.

I think, If someone failed me as many times as I have failed God, I would walk away from them and never speak to them again.

If someone told me they cared for me hundreds of times and then ignored me, or sinned against me thousands of times, like I have with God, I wouldn’t have a thing to do with that person.

I would consider that person unhealthy, manipulative, relationally abusive and get away from them.

Have you ever had those times in your life where you think, “I’ve spiritually failed so many times, there is no way God could still love me.”

The Great New is this.

God is nothing like a human.

God’s love is powerful, faithful, never changing.

“The love of the Lord endures forever.”

When God saved you, he took into account your worst days.”

Despite your worst days, God chose to save you.

Transition - We see that God’s Love is faithful, God’s love is deep.

II. The Depth of God’s Love, vs 9-10

There is no greater love that God has than for His Children.

Those who have not come to faith in Jesus are loved.

Those who have come to faith in Jesus are loved in a unique way.

-If you are a Christ follower, you are forgiven, you are His Child.

In spiritual intimacy God has deposited Himself in you. His Spirit is in you.

1 John 3:1 ESV

1 See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him.

How great is God’s love for His children?

God gives us an example of this with Abraham and Isaac in Genesis 22.

Illustration of Abraham and Isaac

-The Father of faith, Abraham had a dream. This is was not just any dream. It was a clear and unmistakable encounter with the Living God.

God told Abraham to take his only son to a mountain God would show Him & sacrifice his son to God.

This was the Son of the Promise. This was the son from whom blessing of Salvation would come to countless peoples.

Remember that Abraham and Sarah were 100 years old. Could not longer have children, no replacement.

The dream encounter with God was so clearly God (not a typical night time dream) that Abraham did just what God instructed.

He got up the next morning and obeyed immediately.

He took his only son Isaac up the mountain.

Had Isaac carry the wood.

Bound Isaac & placed him on that alter.

What would be going through your mind if you bound your child - knowing that your full intention was to thrust a knife into his chest?

Abraham laid his son on the alter with the fire nearby.

Abraham raised his knife with full intention of obeying this strange command of God.

What would be going on in your heart with the knife fulling extended above your head? Ready to thrust into the chest of your child?

Their was Abraham - in Trembling, Fear, in Faith.

Before Abraham thrust the knife through Isaac an angel of the Lord called Abraham’s name and stoped him.

Hebrews 11:19, Abraham reasoned that since Isaac was the child of the promise that God would raise him back from the dead.

Like Abraham, God offered up His one and only Son out of love for His people.

How do we know that it was God who offered up His Son to be sacrificed?

(Show these scriptures on the slides)

Romans 8:32 ESV

32 He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?

Acts 2:23 ESV

23 this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men.

Isaiah 53:10 ESV

10 Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him; he has put him to grief; when his soul makes an offering for guilt, he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days; the will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.

Jesus was put to grief and killed by Father God.

Let me ask you this horrible question, Would you kill your own child?

The situation with Jesus gets even worse - It wasn’t just a physical death the Father gave His son over to.

Jesus took your sin and shame on His shoulders.

Sin and shame that were not His to bear. Sin and shame on the innocent God/Man.

Even more - I John 4: 10 - uses a big word called propitiation.

Jesus was the, “Propitiation for our sins.”

Propitiation means - to settle God’s wrath.

The smoldering furry that God had for you, because you were his enemy, Jesus took on Himself.

We see in these verses the great complexity of God. We see the Love of God in full action appeasing the righteous wrath of God at the same time.

We see a wrathful Father who demands a payment for sin lovingly offer His own Son as that very payment.

What motivated God the Father to sacrifice His one and only Son was a powerful love, an unstoppable love, an eternal love, an unconditional love.

-To make you a child of His.

-God’s love is deep.

-Whether you not you feel it. Whether or not you love yourself or like yourself.

-Even on your worst day - GOD LOVES YOU! Pause

Transition - and I must respond.

III. I must give this love away, vs. 7-8, 11

-When you have a faith encounter with the great love of God, you will be transformed by His love.

-What you have received you will desire to give away to others.

Illustration - For children at Christmas many times there is a final gift. One that mom saves and protects from opening until the very end. It is the greatest gift, the most impacting gift.

The love of God is this gift.

-Not only is it the greatest gift that you can receive, but it is the greatest gift to give away.

-You must give away this gift.

-To give it, you must receive it.

How do I give this love away?

3 quick ways:

-Mental love, Intentionally think loving thoughts.

-Colossians 3:2, Set your mind on things above.

Think about and love what God loves.

-How is God asking you to love others with your thoughts?

-Feeling love, Assessing the affection of your heart. Ask God to renew your affection.

-The Bible says, Out of the heart the mouth speaks. When your heart is effected by the love of God, your words will begin to be more loving.

-God desires to fill your heart for those that He loves. Will you ask Him to help you have a heart love for those He loves.

-Acting love, Loving in action whether or not I feel it or think it. I love in action just because it is right and it pleases God.

What happens when I don’t feel love? You choose love.

-What has God called you to do for another, whether or not you feel love or not?

-Pause

Closing

-To give the love of God you must receive the love of God.

Christ Follower - You receive this love when you spend time with Him. Are you everyday filling yourself up with the love of God in our private time with Him?

For those who have not received His love in the forgiveness of sin. Now is the time to receive God’s unconditional forgiving love for you.

-He knows the failures of the past. He still loves you.

-He is calling you to right now say, YES to Jesus.

-To receive His gift of paying for your sins on the cross.

-To say Yes to follow Him as King.

-Will you in your hear and mind right now make a decision to trust God, to give your life to Him and follow Him as King, and to trust what Jesus did for you paying for your sin on the Cross.