“Expressing Our Love” September 19, 2010
Well I imagine after seeing this weeks sermon title you probably relieved to know I wasn’t going to preach the same message again.
After stepping on toes for the last couple of weeks you can put your feet on the floor, sit back, and hopefully enjoy what I have to say today.
It is a subject that we take for granted and I just want us to be aware of this at all times.
This morning I want us to have a deeper understanding of God’s Love.
Before I get started I want everyone to turn to someone other than a member of your family and simply say to them, I Love You!
Some of you might have found this difficult to do, some of you might have said it with a chuckle, some of you might have done it just to go along with the preacher.
If that was the case then just sit tight you will have another opportunity to say it and really mean it.
I’m a loving kind of person, I enjoy giving and receiving hugs, I cherish the thought when my wife tells me she loves me, and it makes me feel good when the kids & grandkids say it.
It is said so often around our house that the foster kids say it.
I once had a male member of this church end our telephone conversation with, “I love you brother”, and I knew it was heart felt.
If we were to meet on the street and give each other a hug and tell each other I love you that could start some real gossip couldn’t it.
In biblical days men would actually greet each other with a kiss on the cheek.
You do that in today’s society, if the other guy doesn’t punch you a bystander might.
Now the purpose of my message this morning isn’t to start a 60’s love fest but to make everyone aware of what God’s Love really is.
The fact is sometimes people find it difficult to express their love for each other.
Hallmark has some beautiful cards but none of them can express my love for my wife so when I buy one I still feel like I have not given her a complete description of my love for her.
So to do that I simply need to show her and since we cannot possibly understand just how much God loves us, He simply shows us.
If you were to ask someone, especially a Christian, “Ho much does God love you?”, their response would probably be, “He loved me so much that He sent His Son to die for me!”
And that is where most people end it, but that is just the beginning.
God loves the thief when he steals, he loves the murderer when he kills, he loves the couple when they commit adultery, He even loves the person who doesn’t believe in Him.
He doesn’t like what they are doing but He still loves them, that is unconditional love, that is agape love.
Do we love like that? Can we look at someone who has wronged us, someone we don’t like, someone who hates us and say I love you?
Illustration: Handling road rage with love instead of hate.
1 John 4:7-21
John was known as the love disciple but he wasn’t always like that, he had to grow in his love.
For example, in the Gospel of Luke Jesus sent messengers ahead of Him to get things ready for Him.
Those messengers went into a Samaritan village but the people there did not welcome Him. When the disciples James and John saw this, they asked, Lord, do you want us to call fire down from Heaven to destroy them?
This is where the transformation takes place from the John of old to the John of new.
Because in this verse that I just told you about was a John that was on fire for the Lord, and that is great but there was something that John was missing.
The love. Jesus said, I come unto this world not to condemn it but to save it.
And I believe by the time John wrote 1st John chapter four he had a better understanding and practiced this love.
This morning I want to talk about 3 ways God expresses His Love, Proof, Prayer, & Promise.
First of all God proved He loved us by sending Jesus to die for us.
In the Old Testament people sacrificed animals for the forgiveness of sin and when God decided that there needed to be a one time sacrifice Jesus said, “Send Me.”
Jesus knew what He had to do and what He was going to go through.
Illustration: Del’s Sunday school class.
God proved His love through Jesus because while the Roman soldiers were beating Him, He still loved them, He loved the ones who stuck the crown of thorns on His head, He loved the men that drove the nails into His hands and feet, and He loved the soldier that pierced His side with the sword.
God looked down from heaven with a broken heart watching his Son suffer for every one of us.
That is total proof the God loves us.
Secondly God loves us through prayer.
When we pray to God we praise Him, we thank Him, and we ask Him for things, and the one thing we ask for is forgiveness of our sins.
1 John 1:9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.
That means the sins that I committed 20 years ago, the sins that I committed last month, and any sin that I might have committed today.
All I have to do is truly be sorry and ask for forgiveness and He will wipe the slate clean.
If our children do something wrong and later tell us they are sorry we will forgive them but there usually is an attachment to it. OK but don’t do it again or I’ll forgive you this time.
Isn’t it nice to know that when God forgives us He forgets the sin completely with no attachments.
It is up to us to try and not commit the sin again but God simply says I forgive you.
So God shows us His love through prayer.
And finally He shows us His love for us by His promises.
Hebrews 6:13-15 When God made his promise to Abraham, since there was no one greater for him to swear by, he swore by himself, saying, "I will surely bless you and give you many descendants." And so after waiting patiently, Abraham received what was promised.
Now the key word here is patiently. We must be patient in waiting on God because He knows what is best for us.
Some people get frustrated when they pray and their prayer is not answered immediately.
Illustration: My grandson Cole when he sometimes ask for something gets the response, “We’ll see”, and he now says, “I hate we’ll see”, because he knows that it means he will have to wait for the answer and he wants it right now.
Actually God may be answering our prayers immediately, maybe He is telling us no and maybe it is we’ll see.
Abraham waited a long time before God delivered His promise to him.
In the Old Testament God told the prophets that He was sending the Messiah to save the world and He did just that.
He came through with His promise but again the people had to wait with patience.
He promised the Israelites to deliver them to the Promised Land and He did, they just had to wait until God was ready.
Each time God has made promises He has kept them which shows His love for us.
The best promise of all is Heaven for the righteous.
Now this proof of love requires faith on our part because we won’t receive this promise while we are in this world, and God has kept all His promises and we have to believe He will keep this one.
So God has shown us His love by Proof, Prayer, & Promise, how are we showing our love to Him and to one another? Now turn the person again and tell them you love them, hopefully with more meaning.
Another promise God made is one that I pray none of us will ever receive and that is to those who will not follow Him.
Matthew :21 Not everyone who says to me, “Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.”
If you are living your life under this promise you can change it right here today.
INVITATION:
