Love - Key Ingredient For Family Series

SERMON BRIEF

Date Written: June 21, 2010

Date Preached: Jun 20, 2010;

Church: Oak Park Baptist Church

FOUNDATIONAL ELEMENTS

Series: The Importance of Family

Title: LOVE – The Key Ingredient to Family

Text: John 3:16

16 "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”

The family unit was set forth by God as the bldg block for ALL of society and within the family God has set forth roles for each member, and although the roles are different all are important and there are NO members of the family that are superior in God’s eyes…

So many times we jump to the conclusion that because God placed the man as the head of the family that God believes the man to be superior to his wife or children. This could NOT be further from the truth. It is NOT that God believes men to be superior, but it is that God has called men to be the leaders of the family unit. It is the role God has chosen for men.

Likewise, in just the opposite direction, there are many who believe that because God has chosen the woman to be in the support role and that Scripture instructs women to submit to their husbands… they jump to the conclusion that God is somehow ‘anti-woman’ and that women are somehow inferior to men in God’s eyes.

I am here to tell you that God desires us to fulfill our roles that HE has established and NOT to make any judgments on what role God assigned to what gender. This was the Creator’s choice, and He does not need our permission to designate the best role for us…

We have the tendency to think that God, somehow does not know what He has done… But God is keenly aware of His plan and God is keenly aware that there are many, many men and women who have violated the roles He established… for their own personal and selfish reasons.

This morning I want us to take a look into Paul’s 2nd letter to the Thessalonican Church. Paul writes that he rejoices and commends this church because of all “the love of every one of you for one another is increasing.”

Paul shares with them in his letter that he believes that it is the will of God that all believers are called to grow in love for each another, and that this should especially be true within our own family circle...that is the family circle of the local church. Here we find Paul sharing at least 3 different types of love should be experienced within the family unit.

The 1st type of love we can speak about is the ‘romantic type of love’ that inspires people to fall in love and to get married. In fact, in our society today, although it is not as pronounced of a stigma as it was 20 or more yrs ago… IT [falling in love and getting married] is something that is simply expected to happen to young people and when it doesn’t, many think the worst about the situation.

Now this romantic love I am speaking about is a type of love that falls within the instinctive or base nature of humanity. Science has even been able to map it out in our brains, as ‘love’ is seen by science as merely a chemical reaction within the male and female of a species that attracts them to one another.

I have heard it said that this romantic type of love is actually a state of mind by which a man sees things from a skewed perspective. He does not tend to see things as they truly ARE, but actually begins to see things just as they are NOT! Have you ever heard the phrase, “Love is BLIND!”?

Like me I am sure you have spoken with some young couple who have HUGE dreams and they are fully convinced that they can LIVE on love. However, from past experience we know that any marriage based solely on romantic love will soon fail.

A 2nd kind of love that is essential within the family is ‘respect love.’ This kind of love is brotherly love, or what the Greeks called ‘phileo’ love. We get our word Philadelphia from this word…that is why we call Philadelphia – The City of Brotherly Love.

This kind of love is based on worth and integrity. This kind of love is based on character and reliability. This is the kind of love that men or women show when they make the choice to fight and die for their country. Patriotic love is a form of this type of love.

It is the kind of love shown on the battlefield when one soldier jumps on a grenade or takes a bullet to save the life of one or more of his comrades. We have story after story of this happening on the battlefield countless times as this type of love for others is shown.