Sermon Tone Analysis

Open your Bibles back up to John 15:9, which is page 958 in the Bibles that are in the back of the pew.

I know that Valentine’s Day was a few weeks ago, but we want to talk today about love.

As challenging as it may be for some of us to face, love is at the core of who we are as Christians.

Some of the men in the room who have been raised to be more stoic may have tuned me out completely when they saw the title of the message flash onto the screen.

We sometimes see love as softness or weakness, a mushy trait reserved for softer and weaker people than we are.

The biblical picture of love is much more than sentimentality and roses.

It is about sacrifice and action, not simply emotion.

As we pick back up in John 15, we see that Jesus takes time in his last night with the disciples to remind them of the centrality of sacrificial love.

He does so by pointing back to his incredible love and then challenging the disciples to live in light of that love.

In fact, this morning, if you catch nothing else from this message, I want to challenge you to recognize and reflect God’s love, even when you are hated.

Let’s dive right in this morning in verse 9-11...

Before we can reflect God’s love to other people, we need to be clear on what Jesus is saying.

We begin by...

1) Remain in God’s love.

God’s love forms the foundation for the way we love others.

Stop and go back to verse 9 and read it more slowly.

If you have grown up in church, you have heard “God loves you” so much that you may not even bat an eye when you read this verse.

Think about what Jesus is saying here, though.

Do you remember when we talked about the Trinity the other week?

We talked about the fact that God is three persons in one, and that there is complete unity within the members of the Godhead.

We said that all three members of the Godhead are equal and eternal, even though they have different roles.

Throughout John, we have been seeing Jesus talk about the Father and their relationship.

Here are just a couple:

What must the love look like between the Father and the Son?

A love between perfect equals, a love that has existed from eternity past—a love that is so intimate that Jesus and the Father are one.

It is the highest expression of love imaginable, because the love the Father and Son share is rooted in the very fabric of who God is.

He doesn’t just act in a loving way toward the Son; he is love.

Think about the love shared between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit before anything else existed.

Authors like Michael Reeves make the case that it was this very love that overflowed into God making the universe and this world and us!

How powerful, how beautiful is that love?

It is really difficult for us to fathom that kind of love because no relationship we have on earth can measure up to the love that exists within God himself.

As good as we strive to be, and as much as we try to love our spouses or our kids or our parents well, our love will never be perfect.

The way we love each other is important, as we will see in a few minutes, but it is never perfect.

Although I can help my kids or my wife or those around me understand God’s love for them and love them in a way that makes it easy to believe that God can love them like that, I will always fall short, and so will you.

However, fix this picture in your mind…the Father loving the Son from eternity past in perfect union, without selfishness or arrogance or jealousy or anything that stains the relationships we have with other people.

Do you have that idea in mind yet?

Good.

Now, go back to verse 9 again...

Jesus loves us with the same kind of love, in a similar manner, to the way that the Father and Son love each other.

That permanent love, that union, that selflessness, that beauty that we have been talking about—that is the very same kind of love that Jesus not only shows you, but actually gives you.

Remember, he told the disciples that they had been watching this union between him and the Father.

Now, he says that he has actually loved them with that same kind of love.

Sally Lloyd Jones, in her book The Jesus Storybook Bible, has a unique way of describing God’s love.

She says:

“God would love his children — with a Never Stopping, Never Giving Up, Unbreaking, Always and Forever Love.” (Sally Lloyd Jones, The Jesus Storybook Bible)

That reminder isn’t just for children.

This is the kind of love Jesus has shown to us — Never stopping, never giving up, unbreaking, always and forever love.

However, it is worth noting that only God’s children fully experience this kind of love.

There is a general way in which God loves the world, but the full experience of God’s love, this kind of unbreaking fellowship and unity and comfort is only found when we place our faith and trust in Jesus alone and are drawn into God’s family.

We can’t earn or deserve God’s love; he loves us before we love him.

As those who have been drawn to Christ and responded to his sacrifice and leadership, we enjoy the fullness of the same kind of love that exists between Jesus and his Father!

What does Jesus tell the disciples to do with that love?

First, he simply tells them to remain in his love.

Last week, we saw that he is telling them to root their lives in his love.

This is why we said at the beginning that love is central to who we are as Christians.

Our relationship with God is based on his love that he extended to us through Christ’s sacrificial death on the cross on our behalf.

Before we talk about what else Jesus calls us to do with this love, can we just pause here for a minute?

When was the last time you stopped and rested in the fact that Jesus loves you?

Like really loves you—loves you with the same kind of love that existed between him and the Father for all eternity.

He loves you with a love that is like a good dad.

You see, when a dad is at his best, he loves his kids simply because they are his.

He doesn’t love them because they are attractive or athletic or smart or funny; he loves them and delights in them simply because they are his children.

When is the last time you realized that God loves you that way?

He loved you first, while you were still his enemy, and his love for you hasn’t changed.

That doesn’t give us an excuse to keep doing what we know is wrong.

In fact, this kind of love gives us all the more reason to do what God says.

After all, why would I want to keep hurting someone who loves me like that?

This Never Stopping, Never Giving Up, Unbreaking, Always and Forever Love frees me to live like I should because I know that no matter what else happens, there is someone out there who knows me completely and loves me fully.

Are you remaining in his love this morning?

Are you resting in the fact that no matter what happens at home or in Ukraine or in your body or anywhere else, you are loved by God?

What is keeping you from believing that he loves you like that?

Look back to the cross and settle the issue of his love for you right now.

Look back at verse 10 - are you doing what he says?

That’s part of remaining in his love—obeying the God you know has your best interest at heart.

If we are remaining in his love, resting in it and obeying him, then we are going to follow through on his next command.

We are called to...

2) Reflect that love to others.

Read verse 12 with me…Now jump to verse 17...

Here’s where it gets tricky, doesn’t it?

The proud part of us is totally fine with God loving us…I mean, after all, have you seen us?

In spite of everything we have said about God’s unconditional love that isn’t dependent on us, there is a part of many of us that still feels like that’s the thing we are somehow the exception and we deserve God’s love.

It is kinda like when the teacher told the class that “everyone’s a winner at this game,” but you were absolutely keeping score and know you did better than everyone else.

Sure…God loves everyone, but of course he loves me.

I have done this or that or don’t do this or that.

For all I have done for him, I deserve a piece of that pie.

Let me again remind you: The clear teaching of Scripture is that you and I were God’s enemies and couldn’t do a single thing to deserve God’s love on our own, which means his love is purely based off his incredible character and nothing you or I have done.

You and I never have deserved God’s love for what we have done, and we never will.

He is just that good.

If that’s true, then our perspective on other people has to change as well, doesn’t it?

If God loved me while I was his enemy, then what am I supposed to do?

We just read it...

I am supposed to love others just like Jesus has loved me, especially those who are my brothers and sisters in Christ.

Remember what we read a few minutes ago from 1 John, where John said that we love God because he loved us first?

Here’s the very next verse after that:

I cannot say that I love God and not love my brother or sister in Christ.

We may not always get along perfectly, and we may not always see eye to eye, but I should be able to love my brothers and sisters in Christ with the same kind of love that Jesus has shown me!

“Sean, that’s impossible…If you knew what they did to me, or what they said, or what happened...”

Remember several weeks ago, I gave you this statement I have heard from others: “I am a sinner first before I am sinned against?”

That doesn’t mean you deserve to have someone do mean things to you; rather, it is a call to this very reality.

You sinned against God, and he responded by loving you.