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Bible college professor Yohanna Katanacho, who pastors a small church in Jerusalem, is subjected to much persecution.
Israeli soldiers who patrol the city looking for potential terrorists impose spontaneous curfews on Palestinians and have the legal right to shoot at a Palestinian who does not respond quickly enough to their summons.
Yohanna tried and failed in his attempts to love his enemies.
The Israeli soldiers’ random daily checks for Palestinian identification cards—sometimes stopping them for hours—fed Yohanna’s fear and anger.
As he confessed his inability to God, Yohanna realized something significant.
The radical love of Christ is not an emotion, but a decision.
He decided to show love, however reluctantly, by sharing the gospel message with the soldiers on the street.
With new resolution, Yohanna began to carry copies of a flyer with him, written in Hebrew and English, with a quotation from Isaiah 53 and the words “Real Love” printed across the top.
Every time a soldier stopped him, he handed him his ID card and the flyer.
Because the quote came from the Hebrew Scriptures, the soldier usually asked him about it before letting him go.
After several months, Yohanna realized his feelings toward the soldiers had changed.
“I was surprised, you know?” he says.
“It was a process, but I didn’t pay attention to that process.
My older feelings were not there anymore.
I would pass in the same street, see the same soldiers as before, but now find myself praying, ‘Lord, let them stop me so that I can share with them the love of Christ.’
”
—“When Love Is Impossible,” Trinity Magazine (Fall 2005)
This morning I hope I can give you a taste of what it means to love God and love others.
Truthfully I have been working on this for nearly a year and half and I still believe I have much more to learn about Love.
The likelihood that I will be able to condense all there is to know about practically living out love in a 30 minute sermon is nil.
If I were to preach on the what the Bible teaches about love every Sunday it would take nearly 4 years to deal with every passage that the Bible mentions love.
There is no way possible to accomplish that task in a few sermons.
So my hope is to highlight a few things and then encourage you to do some exploring on your own.
God’s Faithful Love
In God’s word we read that God is love.
God is love.
We look to the life of Christ as the manifestation of God with us.
He is our Emmanuel which means God with us.
In this passage I just read Jesus demonstrates His love by pursuing us and ultimately sacrificing His life for our salvation.
He was willing to give all for you and for me for our ultimate well being.
That we might be able to be saved from sin and destruction.
In the Old Testament we learn about “Faithful Love.”
The Hebrew word is hesed (Hay-sayd).
This word is most often translated “faithful love.”
It also is translated “Kindness” “Loyalty” “Gracious” “Faithfulness” and “Constant Love.”
When we say God is love it is this love that we are referencing.
God’s love is faithful, God’s love is kindness, God’s love is gracious, God’s love is constant!
The first time this word is used in the Bible it is in a prayer by a servant of Abraham while seeking a bride for Abraham’s son Issac.
Genesis 24:12-14
As he finishes the prayer Rebekah arrives.
She is beautiful and full of hospitality and grace.
She invites the servant of Abraham back to her father’s house.
She was a perfect match for Issac.
So the Servant praises God saying: Genesis 24:27 “Blessed be the Lord, the God of my master Abraham, who has not withheld his kindness (hesed) and faithfulness from my master.”
Prayer as it relates to love
Prayer as it Relates to Love
Know something about God’s Faithful Love
Pray that God’s Faithful Love will be made Reality
When it comes to pass Praise God for His faithful love
Before moving on I want to note something about prayer as it relates to love.
This servant knew something about God’s faithful love.
He prayed that God’s faithful love would be made reality.
When it came to pass then He worshiped and praised God for His faithful love.
This seems to me a good pattern for us to follow.
We seek to learn about God’s faithful love, we pray that God’s faithful love be a reality in our lives, and praise God when His faithful love is manifest in our lives.
There are many other occasions that God’s people praise God’s faithful love.
One such instance is in the song the Israelites sang after crossing the Red Sea on Dry land.
The whole event was evidence of God’s mighty hand at work.
The protection from the Egyptians pursuing them, the parting of waters, the crossing all of it was God’s hand.
They sang a song of praise.
One stanza of this song says
You have a magnifying glass and hold it up before the sun until you focus the rays on a piece of dry wood and set it on fire.
Now, while you see the wood burning to ashes, will you tell me what it is that burns?
Does the heat of the sun burn the wood or does the wood burn?
The heat that you feel while the wood is burning, is it due to the sun or to the wood?
Of course at first the fire is purely and simply the flame of the sun, but afterwards the wood itself begins to burn; the sun burns the wood and then the wood itself burns.
Even so the love of God comes into our heart, and then our heart loves too, and in both cases “love is from God” (1 John 4:7).
No man is a Christian unless he himself loves God with his own heart, but yet our love to God is nothing more or less than the reflection of God’s love to us: so that it comes to the same thing.
The point I think is to understand how to love God we must first learn to understand God’s faithful love for us, seek to have that love manifest in our lives, and praise Him for his faithful love.
The foundation of our love for God is not something that we find in ourselves ultimately.
It is a manifestation of God’s faithful love flowing through us back to God and toward others.
God’s faithful love in us.
God’s Love Is Faithful
Our affections can ebb and flow.
The things I loved as a young adult seem quite trivial to me now.
And the things that seemed trivial back then have become more important to me now.
Love expressed in this way is not really the type of love we are seeking to understand here.
God’s love is faithful.
If we are to represent and manifest God’s love then our love ought to be faithful as well.
What does faithful love look like?
As a Christian we know that God highest love is the atoning work of Jesus Christ.
What does that mean?
Jesus said before He died on a cross that
We also read that:
When we look at these words of Christ and John, Christ’s sacrifice is central to the love we are discussing here today.
You see our sin separates us from the faithful love that God wants to show us.
So much so that left to our own ends we remain separated and unable to obey the command to love others.
So is Jesus asking us to do something that is impossible then?
Well yes and no.
It is impossible to love as God has commanded us without some supernatural change in our hearts and lives.
Jesus is more than an example of how to love others.
He is the very substance of Love that enables us to love God and Love others.
It is the Gospel that is the source of ultimate love that flows into our lives and redeems our souls so that we can love God and love others empowered ultimately by God’s Holy Spirit.
Now if you have obeyed the Gospel then you already know what I am talking about.
However, if you are here this morning and you have never recieved the message of salvation for your soul then the rest of this sermon is unlikely to do you any good.
You must settle in your heart today whether you will surrender your life to Jesus Christ and make him savior and Lord of your life.
Jesus’ death on the cross and resurrection from the dead is the most supreme and loving act of all history.
He wants you to respond and follow in his loving sacrifice.
That is the obedience Jesus and John are proclaiming here.
To Love God is to respond favorably to this Gospel call.
This is the first step of obedience that grows and matures into the fullness of loving God and loving others.
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