Dakota Community Church
February 17, 2008
Your Love is Amazing
In keeping with the season I thought I would make the topic of today’s sermon AMORE!
How many did something special this week because of the 14th of February?
How many really wish they had done something in spite of what they were told?
From “The Times” (On-Line):
Saint Valentine was a martyr — one who endured great suffering — and, for the more cynical among us, that’s what Valentine’s Day is all about.
According to History.com, Valentine was a priest who served during the third century in Rome.
When Emperor Claudius II [The Cruel] decided that single men made better soldiers than those with wives and families, he outlawed marriage for young men — his crop of potential soldiers. Valentine, realizing the injustice of the decree, defied Claudius and continued to perform marriages for young lovers in secret. When Valentine’s actions were discovered, Claudius ordered that he be put to death.
According to another legend, Valentine actually sent the first “valentine” greeting. While in prison, it’s believed that Valentine fell in love with a young girl — who visited him during his confinement. Before his death, it’s alleged that he wrote her a letter, which he signed “From your Valentine”, an expression that is still in use today.
A few Valentine Traditions:
In Wales wooden love spoons were carved and given as gifts on February 14th. Hearts, keys and keyholes were favourite decorations on the spoons. The decoration meant, "You unlock my heart!"
In the Middle Ages, young men and women drew names from a bowl to see who their valentines would be. They would wear these names on their sleeves for one week. To wear your heart on your sleeve now means that it is easy for other people to know how you are feeling.
In some countries, a young woman may receive a gift of clothing from a young man. If she keeps the gift, it means she will marry him.
Some people used to believe that if a woman saw a robin flying overhead on Valentine’s Day; it meant she would marry a sailor. If she saw a sparrow, she would marry a poor man and be very happy. If she saw a goldfinch, she would marry a millionaire.
A love seat is a wide chair. It was first made to seat one woman and her wide dress. Later, the love seat or courting seat had two sections, often in an S-shape. In this way, a couple could sit together -- but not too closely!
Think of five or six names of boys or girls you might marry, As you twist the stem of an apple, recite the names until the stem comes off. You will marry the person whose name you were saying when the stem fell off.
Pick a dandelion that has gone to seed. Take a deep breath and blow the seeds into the wind. Count the seeds that remain on the stem. That is the number of children you will have.
I want to preface my remarks today by saying that romantic love is wonderful, for many of us it seems so central to our happiness in life that we feel compelled to pressure others into joining our state of bliss. This is not a God idea. We need to allow each other the grace and freedom to find and enjoy the life God has designed us for.
1Corinthians 7:8-9
Now to the unmarried and the widows I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried, as I am. But if they cannot control themselves, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion.
This morning I want to focus on the love that relates to all of us reguardless of our mating status. Today I am talking about the God love, the agape love, the love that we partake in through Christ.
So what is love? What is this agape we hear so much about?
1. Is to know and to be known.
John 17:25-26
Righteous Father, though the world does not know you, I know you, and they know that you have sent me. I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them."
1Corinthians 8:2-3
The man who thinks he knows something does not yet know as he ought to know. But the man who loves God is known by God.
Is it not an awesome thing to be known of God?
When I am on the way home in the evening I often will stop in at Macs or 7eleven to pick up a Pepsi and a chocolate bar for Kathy. When I hand them to her she regularly says, “It is so good to be known.”
Every year I travel to the USA Junior Hockey Championships to spend the week talking with the players of the Phoenix Polar Bears hockey team and watching the games. It is a highlight of my year. I love the hockey, I love talking to the guys one on one and as a team, (though I don’t think they really need me to help with motivation), I really love being in the coaches meetings, listening to strategy and learning about so much that goes on that I didn’t even know was happening, though I’ve been a fan for years. They actually pay money for me to be there – a place that if I had the cash, I would pay my own way to and look forward to doing so with out question.
To me this is an example of God “Knowing me”. It is a little treat He gives me because He loves me.
Philippians 3:7-11
But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.
If the National Tournament is an example of God knowing me, what is an example of me knowing him? What special things show that I know Him?
Do you have a desire to know Him?
What about our children? Joel is off on the other side of the planet getting to know Him.
Why do we try to keep young people from searching?
Why do we discourage the questioners?
Do we want church-goers, do we want children who look and act like us, who do faith exactly the same as we do, or do we want them to KNOW HIM?
2. Goes beyond knowledge.
Ephesians 3:17-19
I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.
How does one know something that surpasses knowing?
Philippians 1:9-11
And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God.
We are to so know that we discern the best action!
This is a love that goes somewhere. This is a love that results in change. This is a love that is so much more than words or cards or poems.
This is a love that moves to right wrongs, to feed hunger, to heal sickness, and to comfort mourning.
1John 4:7-8
Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.
3. Is selfless and sacrificial.
1John 13:16
This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers.
1John 4:9
This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him.
Love, agape, is giving, even to the point of death.
Is there anyone you would lay down your life for?
When Silas had his appendix burst at Christmas a few years back during the week of recovery after the operation when we didn’t know how it would turn out, he had a reaction to one of the drugs they gave him one evening. He was lying on the bed stiff and shaking and I was frantically praying and looking at the nurses … and I remember the overwhelming thought that went through my mind at that moment.
“Not him Lord, me, not him.”
Theology and doctrine go out the window!
Last August a gunman burst into a church in Missouri and shot dead a Pastor and two worshippers, early reports said that the gunman asked the congregation if anyone was willing to take the place of the pastor and when nobody responded ...he shot him. I don’t know if those details turned out to be accurate or not but I think we all need to ask the question:
Would someone take my place in this room?
Whose place would I be willing to take in this room?
If the answer is “I would save myself”, 1 John 13:16 is at worst a sad cliché, and at best an aspiration.
Let us love in truth, let us spread the agape that is so freely ours in Christ.
PowerPoint available (Free of charge) on request dcormie@mts.net
