Sermon Tone Analysis

Intro

Good Morning.

How are you all doing today?

I am so glad you are here with us today.

Chris is much better but he still is struggling with some coughing fits that we thought may get in the way of him preaching this morning.

Last week my sermon was titled “What’s Love Got to Do with it?”.

We looked at two interactions that the religious leaders had with Jesus that related to Love.

The first interaction was with an expert in the law and he asked Jesus what the greatest command is and what was Jesus’ reply?

Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.

Lets read that together.

And then he continued with the second is like it

Love your neighbor as yourself.

These are so important that all of the Law and prophets depend or hang on these two commands.

We looked at a second iteration Jesus had with another religious leader who wanted to know who his neighbor was.

We talked about how he wanted to see the list of people he had to love.

Jesus responded with the parable of the good Samaritan and then asked the religious leader who proved to be a neighbor to the man who had been beaten and robbed?

The mans response was “The one who showed Mercy to him” Jesus said Go and go the same.

After that we looked at Paul’s writing in 1 Corinthians 13 that says no matter what we do in this world if we are not motivated by love then it is worthless and of no value.

Maybe you left last week and thought that sounds supper great but how?

How do I get there?

What would it look like in my life to Love God and People they way the bible talks about.

Maybe you walked away last week and thought I don’t feel very loving right now but I want to get better.

Maybe you were just upset that I banged on the cymbals really loud.

Regardless of what you walked away with I think it is good to look at how we develop this type of love in our lives and what does it look like.

We know it comes from God as it is a fruit of the Spirit but lets be super honest.

How many of us struggle with loving people?

I would think most of us do at times.

I think we can hear sermons that reveal to us how we should be but we struggle to live them out.

We start to lack confidence, get discouraged, or ask ourselves if it is even worth it.

Where should we go when we are discouraged or questioning what is going on in our lives.

There is only one place to turn to and that is His word.

We open the bible and see what it has to say.

We are going to look at the question.

How do I love God this way?

We are going to start in 1 John chapter 2. While you are turning in your bibles a little background.

John was the last apostle alive when he wrote this letter.

He was still active in the church and there were false teachers and ideas infecting the church.

John writes this letter to fight against the heretical views that were showing up.

John will continually point to love as a test for true followers of Christ and though his writing we can see what this looks like in our lives.

This is how we know that we know him.

This means we have confidence and assurance in what we know.

This is an experiential knowledge that comes from living out our lives.

And what does it say:

Love is Obedience

If we keep his commands.

Where do his commands come from?

The scriptures.

We know we know God by our obedience to what he has written in here.

But Remember that all of the Law hangs on the two commands of love God and Love your neighbor.

How do we love God? by being obedient.

There is a dirty word in here that no one likes.

That is the word obey.

Scripture is very clear that those that Love God will obey his commands.

This is so unnatural for us.

Our sinful nature is disobedient by default.

I was talking with the youth group on Wednesday about this and I ask if there was ever a child that was born that was completely obedient.

They were a little fussy and mom asks, dear calm down its ok and they did.

Did any parent have a toddler that would do what ever you asked.

One of our students said “He left his obedience in the womb”.

Without obedience there is no love of God.

Does that mean we get it right all of the time no, but there is the desire to get it right.

When God gives a command that you do not like, what is your response?

It can be very telling.

How important is obedience?

Romans talks about the transforming of our minds.

It is through obedience that we are changed and transformed.

We live our lives in pursuit of something.

We are supposed to pursue God and we do that by obeying him.

By obeying the word of God.

That’s it.

Without this we do not know what truth is.

We must be in the word and studying the word to understand what the scriptures ask of us.

If we follow the scriptures we will be transformed and we will be changed in a way that does not conform to this world.

Obedience leads to Righteousness and is righteousness, disobedience is evil or not of God.

This is the process that the bible calls sanctification.

It is the process though steps obedience that we are transformed more and more into the likeness of christ.

this is how we love God.

In youth we talk about 4 levels of obedience.

It is just something we to help understand this.

Level 0 is straight up disobedience.

Clean the room, No

Level 1 is I do just enough to not be in trouble.

It is the absolute bare minimum.

It is a selfish love.

Clean the room in the middle.

Level 2 is what we call clean the corners.

This means I clean the room to the expectation of the the father.

Level 3 is the fathers will.

this means that now keep the room clean because I know it pleases the father and I love to please the father.

Going back to 1st John

If we say we know God and don’t follow the command of the bible what does God’s call us?

Liars but if we keep his word, the love of God is made complete.

If we say we remain in him we will walk just as he walked.

Obedience leads to Transformation

We look to Jesus as the example of what love looks like for the Christian.

Love is so hard to define in the world because sin has corrupted everything around us.

Even love.

Paul says it this way

If you take what John says that we are supposed to walk the way Jesus did and Paul says this is how we are supposed to be and there is consistency in the word of God then these are some of the characteristics of Jesus that was the example of.

Compassion: A deep awareness of and sympathy for another’s suffering