A Love For The Ages

Valentine’s Day Service

“A Love for the Ages”

** Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNtpPrkt4kA

Introduction

For centuries, if not millenniums, people have been looking for love. And if I could borrow the lyrics and title from an old country western song, they’ve been looking for love in all the wrong places.

How else can we explain the record setting number of divorces, the increase in pornography, and a society that is replacing the traditional definition of marriage with alternative lifestyles.

So where can we go to find true and lasting love? Where can we find a love that truly works in a world determined to redefine the word itself?

We can’t go to society, because it hasn’t got a clue. We can’t go to religion, because they abuse and misinterpret love with rules and regulations. We can’t go to Hollywood, because they’ve misrepresented it. We can’t go to the authors and playwrights; they have as much trouble defining it as everyone else.

So where do we go?

• Maybe it’s time we go to the source of all love, and that is, God.

• Maybe it’s time to go back to the One who created us and put within our very DNA the need for love.

• Maybe it’s time to go back to the Bible, God’s word for His creation, and back to its basics by which life gets and receives meaning.

God loves us deeply and He longs for everyone to experience the fullness of that love. If we want real love, ideal love, perfect love, it’s only found in God’s love for us. Therefore, He lures us away from all that the world calls love, and that compete for our affection.

“Yes, I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore with lovingkindness I have drawn you.” (Jeremiah 31:3 NKJV)

And so, when it comes to this topic of love, what we can say is that love is life’s driving priority.

And this is because every minute of every day, since we heard and met with God, He’s been pursuing a love relationship with us, seeking to draw us close to Himself just as a mother draws her child close unto herself. He wants us near Him.

And please understand that there is nothing we can do, no place where we can go, where God’s love doesn’t pursue us and meet us there. God’s love knows no bounds. No matter where we are, and no matter how we may feel, whether good or bad, God is there. We can’t get away, nor can we chase away God’s unconditional love for us.

This was at the heart of what King David wrote.

“You have hedged me behind and before, and laid Your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain it. Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence? If I ascend into heaven, You are there; if I make my bed in hell, behold, You are there.” (Psalm 139:5-8 NKJV)

The Lord is saying that while He cares about what we do, and is deeply hurt when we sin, He still loves us and will always love us. And He demonstrates just how far He will go to pursue us with His love.

“But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8 NKJV)

Even when we were His enemy, living apart and separate from Him, God still loved us. God loves us even through the highest highs and the lowest lows, and that’s because nothing can separate us from His love.

The Apostle Paul said, “For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:38-39)

So, when we feel like we’ve blown it and as if God can in no way love us, know that God still loves us and in His unconditional love towards us He is pursuing a relationship with us.

Now, while last year we spent considerable time talking about love in our series, “Faith, Hope, and Love,” today I’d like to share with you about God’s incredible, unbelievable, frightening, limitless, and uncommon love.

God’s Incredible Love

The Apostle John writes of God’s incredible love for us when He calls those who have come to belief in His Son, Jesus, His children. Basically, it is through belief in Jesus that God adopts us into His family.

Look at what John said.

“Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God.” (1 John 3:1a NKJV)