The Echo of Love
Intro: God’s love echoes through history like the reverberating rumble of thunder across a majestic mountain range. However, unlike the diminishing thunder, the echo of God’s love continues loud and strong for those who will listen. Just as sound waves can either be absorbed or deflected, so the waves of God’s love can also be either absorbed or deflected by the human heart. From those who welcome the love of God there emerges an echo of love that rebounds back to its source in forms of affection, praise, and gratitude. And just as the source of love continues undiminished so the response continues, resulting in a constant cycle of taking in and giving out, much like the way we breathe.
-These echoes of love are not limited, however, to a vertical dimension. The vibrations and intonations of God’s love have the ability to bounce from one human heart to another without losing volume or effect. If the echoes of love are confined to a vertical dimension, the sound will eventually grow dim and fade away. Echoes of true love begin vertically but must find both vertical and horizontal expression in order to fulfill their desired end. In plain language, God’s love enables us to love Him back and to love others. And that is the point of the message on this Valentine’s Day 2010.
-On Valentine’s Day we like to think and talk about love. Everyone loves love! We want to be loved and we want to give love. The problem is our love is often lacking, just like we are. Our love is often based upon our own mood or the actions, appearance or attitude of the one we love. When it comes to love, we all fall a bit short, don’t we? Some of us are as confused about love as the little five-year-old girl who told her teacher, “Love is when a girl puts on perfume and a boy puts on shaving cologne and they go out and smell each other.” [Scott Bayles, sermoncentral.com]
-Well, I don’t really plan to speak about dating or romance today. But I do hope that by the time we are finished that you will be stirred and changed by the amazing love God has for you! Let’s take a look at some of the phases of this amazing love that echoes throughout all time and is available to every person.
I. The Demonstration of Love (Romans 5:6-8)
Romans 5:6-8 6 You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. 7 Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. 8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
-A.W. Tozer struggled to explain God’s love: “I can no more do justice to this awesome and wonder-filled topic than a child can grasp a star. Still, by reaching toward the star the child may call attention to it and even indicate the direction one must look to see it. And so, I stretch my heart toward the high, shining love of God so that we may be encouraged to look up and have hope.”
-I fall very short today in trying to explain the love of God, but with His help we can look up and find that He is very near and that His love is very real!
-You know, God’s love is the only reason we exist. His infinite power is the how of creation and His love is the why. God so loved that He created! Love requires an object, and humans were created as the objects of God’s affection. Love flows from Him down to us without taking away from His holiness or righteousness. As we receive and experience His love, we find that it is a doorway to knowing God intimately. [Brian Bill, sermoncentral.com]
-Romans 5:6-10 gives us 4 pictures of what we were like when Jesus died for us. We were powerless (6), ungodly (6), sinners (8), and enemies of God (10). Because of our powerlessness, our ungodliness, and our sinful lives, we were considered enemies of God. ¬ Ephesians 2:3 says that we were by “nature objects of God’s wrath.” The truth about us is that we have rebelled willfully against God’s commands, broken His moral law, and acted in total defiance against Him. There is no reason that God should love us, except this: That’s the kind of God He is. He loves us because God is love - even when we are His enemies. His love is greater than our sin ¬ and He loves us in spite of our sin. [Brian Bill, sermoncentral.com]
-Make no mistake about the fact that God loves you. Think about this: If God loved you enough to give His Son to die for you when you were His enemy, surely He loves you enough to care for you when you become His friend.
-The greatest love demonstration has been given. We did not witness it in person, but we have heard the good news that Jesus died to save sinners, including us. Jesus gave us the ultimate demonstration of His open-arm love when He died on the cross for you and me. And the echoes of His love still ring loud and clear through 20 centuries of time since that day on the cross. What do we do with such a radical demonstration of unselfish, unprecedented favor and grace? That leads us to the next phase of love.
II. The Reception of Love (John 1:12)
John 1:12 Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God
-Have you ever heard a sound that echoed through the forest? If you like to hunt, hike, camp, or cut firewood you may have heard coyotes howling, elk bugling, the wind whistling through the trees, or of course the annoying hum of a 4-wheeler (unless it’s yours). Maybe you remember the old science question, “If a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” I say if nobody is there then nobody cares. The sound falls on deaf ears or no ears, if you will.
-If God demonstrated His love but the echo of His love fell on deaf ears, does that mean His love did not exist? Of course not. However, His love is seeking out a recipient. The echo of His love is seeking a heart in which it can resonate, bringing life and restoration. The key, of course, is listening and responding.
-How do we respond to the echo of God’s love within us? We respond with faith and confess that Jesus is the Lord, the Son of God who paid the price for our sins to bring us close to God’s heart.
Romans 10:8-9 8 But what does it say? "The word is near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart," that is, the word of faith we are proclaiming: 9 That if you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
-What will we be saved from? We will be saved from eternal separation from the love of God. We were designed for relationship with God.
-As one man said, "The human heart is not shaped like a valentine heart, perfect and regular in contour; it is slightly irregular in shape as if a small piece of it were missing out of its side. That missing part ... may very well man that when God created each human heart, he kept a small sample of it in heaven, and sent the rest of it into the world of time where it would each day learn the lesson that it could never be really happy, never be wholly in love, and never be really wholehearted until it went back again to the timeless to recover the sample which God had kept for it for all eternity." [Alan Stokes quoting Fulton J. Sheen, sermoncentral.com]
-So, for divine love to have its intended effect, it requires acceptance. It is not enough to just hear about it. It’s not even enough to admire it and mentally agree with it. The echo of God’s love must be embraced and acted upon or it will not bring the transformation or life it is capable of. Receive God’s love. It is intended for you!
-After we receive God’s love and are changed by knowing Him, we will want to reciprocate that love and pass it on to others. That leads us to the 3rd phase of love.
III. The Expression of Love (1 John 4:19)
1 John 4:19 We love because he first loved us.
-God’s love enables us to love. A person who receives God’s love cannot be controlled by selfishness or hatred because that is contrary to the nature of God’s love. We take on a new capacity we did not have before that will enable us to love the Lord with all our heart and with all our soul and with all our mind. We will have the ability to love other people unconditionally, regardless of how deserving they seem to be of our love. We won’t withhold our love from our spouse or kids until they are “good enough” to deserve it! That is performance-based conditional love with strings attached. God’s love echoes total acceptance and grace just the way we are, and it carries the power to change us into the man or woman of God He intends for us to be!
-Is this how we love? If not, then perhaps we need to ask God to help us. Maybe there are offenses or inner wounds from the past that are blocking the flow of God’s love. His love is powerful enough to overcome any barrier that stands in the way. But we will need to put ourselves in a position to receive His help. We will need to humble ourselves and allow ourselves to become broken before Him. It may be uncomfortable, but oh so necessary!
-C.S. Lewis described God’s work in us in his novel The Dawn Treader. Eustace had turned into a dragon as a result of being selfish and stubborn. Aslan had prepared the purest water for him to bathe in, but told him he needed to undress first. Eustace discovered that this meant peeling away his dragon skin with all its scales. However, after stripping it away twice, it kept coming back. Eustace says, “Well, exactly the same thing happened again. And I thought to myself, oh dear, how ever many skins have I got to take off? For I was longing to bathe my leg. So I scratched away for the third time and got off a third skin, just like the two others, and stepped out of it. But as soon as I looked at myself in the water I knew it had been no good.
Then the lion said – but I don’t know if it spoke – ‘You will have to let me undress you.’ I was afraid of his claws, I can tell you, but I was pretty nearly desperate now. So I just lay flat down on my back to let him do it.
The very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart. And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I’ve ever felt. The only thing that made me able to bear it was just the pleasure of feeling the stuff peel off. You know – if you’ve ever picked the scab of a sore place. It hurts like billy-oh but it is such fun to see it coming away.
Well, he peeled the beastly stuff right off – just as I thought I’d done it myself the other three times, only they hadn’t hurt – and there it was lying on the grass: only ever so much thicker, and darker, and more knobbly-looking than the others had been. And there was I was smooth and soft as a peeled switch and smaller than I had been. Then he caught hold of me – I didn’t like that much for I was very tender underneath now that I’d no skin on – and threw me into the water. It smarted like anything but only for a moment. After that it became perfectly delicious and as soon as I started swimming and splashing I found that all the pain had gone from my arm. And then I saw why. I’d turned into a boy again.” [C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader]
-We gain the ability to love when we receive God’s love, but we may need to go through a difficult process in which we allow Jesus to peel away the layers of hurt and anger and bitterness and disappointment that have accumulated over the years. It will hurt, but it will bring the healing we need so we can learn to love the way He loves and see other people through His eyes of love. Finally…
IV. The Motivation of Love (2 Corinthians 5:13-15)
2 Corinthians 5:13-15 13 If we are out of our mind, it is for the sake of God; if we are in our right mind, it is for you. 14 For Christ's love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. 15 And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.
-The echo of love reminds us that we no longer live only to please ourselves. What we do and how considerate we are to others is guided by the love of Jesus. Christ’s love compels us to give up our own rights and privileges for the sake of others. His love compels us to die to our own way of doing things and go all out for Him. His love compels us to do things in such a way that we might appear to be out of our minds in our pursuit of and devotion to God! His love also compels us to be considerate of others who need us to be in our right minds so we can relate the love of Jesus to them personally.
-We find our motivation to love in the same love that echoed into our hearts and changed us. Christ’s love compels us to share our faith with others so they too can receive the love of God. The echo of God’s love compels us to persuade others (11) to be reconciled to God (20).
-When is the last time God’s love compelled you to overcome your fear and try to persuade someone to receive God’s love? If His love is not compelling us or motivating us to look beyond ourselves, then we have to ask ourselves if we’ve missed something somewhere along the line. If the echo of God’s love is not ringing within us then it will never impact those around us! Lord, help us to be receivers and givers of Your love!
Conclusion: As we close, we’ve talked about the demonstration of God’s love in sending His Son Jesus to die for us while we were still powerless, ungodly, sinners, and enemies of God. We talked about receiving God’s love by faith and confessing that Jesus is Lord of all. We also talked about expressing God’s love by offering praise to Him and by loving those around us unconditionally. Finally, we saw that Christ’s love motivates us to share it with others who have not yet received it.
-Where are you at in your journey? The demonstration of God’s love is ever before us. What effect is it having on you? Have you received His love by calling on God, asking Him to forgive you and lead your life? Are you expressing His love through worship to God and how you treat others? Are you motivated enough to move beyond your fear of embarrassment and tell someone how much God loves them?
-God knows you and He knows what steps you need to take to be in tune with Him. The echoes of His love continue to come your way. I urge you to receive His love today. Maybe you need to allow him to strip away layers that have wrapped themselves around your heart, hindering your ability to give and receive love. He wants you to be free to love! I’m going to ask you to take a step of faith today. If you sense that God wants to do something in your heart today (healing, forgiveness, whatever), would you be willing to raise your hand just to let me know that you want to receive from God?
-Now, I don’t want to embarrass you, but in a loving atmosphere where you are safe to respond to God, would you be willing to come to the front and let me pray with you? There is something about taking action as we respond to God’s love that helps us receive whatever He wants to do. We will close in prayer in a few moments, but I felt I should give an opportunity for you to step out and respond to God. Maybe you’ve been a Christian for a long time, but you need to hear the echo of God’s love resonating in your heart again. Maybe you’ve never really experienced God in that way and you want to. If it is in your heart to respond, please come and let’s pray together.
