Love’s Action – 1 Cor. 13:4-8

22 07 2008

 Love shows actions that care.

  • We love you so much we care about your child, we care about your marriage, we care about you.  It is easy to say those things, but it is another thing to act on a statement like that. 

  • If we cannot love other people, how can we truly love God, which is the first commandment. If we are failing to love others we are failing to love God as we ought.

The positive actions.

  • Love acts patiently, kindly, and rejoices with the truth.

 

Love is not selfish.

  • Selfishness is the poison that kills any attempt at love.

1. boasting is selfish

  • Not talking about yourself, but being concerned and wanting to know about others is love.

  • We have no room to boast. God has gaven us everything we have.

2. arrogance is selfish.

  • Love does not say “I have my rights.” Love says, “I am going to lay down what is rightfully mine so that you can benefit by seeing Jesus more clearly.”

  • This is what Paul did with the Corinthians.

3. rudeness is selfish.

  • Sometimes the rudest thing we can do is complain about somebody else’s rudeness.

  • Love does not say, “He didn’t even say hi to me.” I wonder how many times when we are thinking “He did even say hi,” is the other person thinking the same thing about us?

4. insisting on our own way is selfish.

  • Love does not say, “My way or the highway.”  Love say, “Whatever you want to do.”

5. Being irritable is selfish.

6. Being resentful is selfish.

7. rejoice in wrongdoing is selfish.

  • It is not love to be happy when something bad happens to someone else.

  • Christians sometimes do this after a natural disaster.  Some will say, “Well they deserved it.”

  • We can do this with people we have never met like politicians or business owners.

Steps toward Christlike love

1. Pray for God to make you more loving

  • Love looks at people the way God sees them. If we are praying for God to make us more loving, then we should be praying for God to give us his eyes to see them the way he sees them.

  • Let this be our prayer. Lord give me your eyes for the unborn baby. Give me Your eyes for the those controlled by addiction. Give me Your eyes for the homeless; for the lonely, for those who have fallen in sin. Give me your eyes for the hurting people. Give me your eyes for those without Jesus as their Savior. Like Brandon Heath’s song “Give me Your Eyes.”

2. Meditate on God’s love for you

3. Think about what you would be without God.

  • Col. 3:5-7 Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. 6 On account of these the wrath of God is coming. 7 In these you too once walked, when you were living in them.


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The Priority of Love. – 1 Cor. 13:1-3

22 07 2008

Far too often churches are not seen as loving places.

A church that show loves grows. Any group that loves is going to grow. Regardless of what they believe. It is a shame to the true church when a false church shows more love. One reason churches with bad theology or no theology grow is because they at least show love. Part of the reason some churches don’t grow is because they do not love. When we do not love like Jesus we are not loving God as we ought.

 

Love should be the priority of all great gifts and abilities.

1. The ability to speak in multiple languages, but not have love is nothing.

2. Prophecy without love is nothing.

  • You can be the greatest preacher in the world but if you have not love then it is meaningless.

  • You can be a doctrinally sound preacher, but it you teach without loving then, it is nothing.

3. Knowledge without love is nothing.

  • You can know all that God knows but if you don’t love you are nothing.

  • The people who are the most knowledgeable are sometimes the ones who are the least loving.

  • A church can have perfect theology and it will die without love running through its veins.

  • You can never win anyone over by arguing with them. Arguing does not convey love.

  • Sometimes people with knowledge on a subject want to display their knowledge by getting in an argument so they can show how much they know. They should use their knowledge to love others by teaching them patiently rather than showing what they know.

4. Faith without love is nothing.

  • Matt. 17:20 faith to move mountains

5. Giving away all you have without love is nothing.

  • Love makes giving away everything worth something.

  • When we surrender all it must be in love.

  • Obedience not rooted in love is not obedience.

6. Martyrdom without love is useless.

We should not say that prophecy, faith, benevolence, and martyrdom are nothing. They are great things, but without love they are nothing. This tells us how important love is. It is like making a cake and leaving out one ingredient.  Leaving out one ingredient can make the cake not worth eating.  Love should never be left out of the equation. If Jesus would have died without love for believers and his death would not have been for us, then it would be nothing to us. I wonder how many of our actions are nothing to others around us? Is it anything? Is it something or nothing?

We cannot love like this without a relationship with God.

  • Love is a fruit of the spirit. Gal. 5

  • Paul is telling this to believers who have a relationship with God.

  • Once we know the God of love then we can demonstrate the love of God.

  • The more we drawn to God the more loving we ought to become.

  • The way we love others ought to be a good way to evaluate our own spiritual condition.


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Sermon Summary 2-17-08

18 02 2008

The Gospel is True Love – Rom. 5:6-11

The Gospel is true love because God showed love.

True love is connected to what we do.

  • God’s love for us was demonstrated by what He did. We would not know if God loved us, if he had not sent Jesus to die for us. We would not know the depth of God’s love for us if Jesus had not have loved us.

  • We assume that other people’s love for us is connected to what they do.

  • Jesus tells us that our love for Him is connected to what we do. – John 14:21

The Gospel is true love because of the depth of his sacrifice.

  • John 3:16 For God so loved the world that he gave…

  • We are forgiven because he was forsaken. Would you forgive others if it took you being forsaken?

The Gospel is true love because of who it showed love to.

  1. Weak – Helpless

  2. Ungodly – Living like God does not exist.

  3. Sinners – people who like sin more than God

  4. His Enemies – people who are against him.  – Matt. 12:30 

What effect does this have on us?

1. It makes us love God.

  • Knowing the true love of God in the Gospel makes of love God more. Knowing that He loved us when we did not love him, makes us love him more.

2. Those who understand this love show this kind of love.

  • That is why, We ought to love one another

  • 1 John 4:7-12 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. 10 In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.

3. Those who don’t understand this love don’t show this kind of love.

  • Those who don’t understand don’t love enemies.

  • Matt. 5:43-46 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. 46 For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same?

  • Those who don’t understand don’t forgive.

  • Matt. 6:14-15 For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

What do we learn from this?

  • If we will love others this way they will be more likely to see God’s love clearly and be saved.
  • If we will love our spouses this way our marriages would last longer and be more joyous.
  • If we will love others this way they will treat us better in the long run.

Some may say… (I have even said before)

  • “I can’t love like this” – Then you don’t get Christ love.
  • “I will never forgive them for what they did to me.”
  • “I forgive them I just can’t stand them” – What if Jesus would have said these things?

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