What the World Needs Now...
Introduction
“The sweetest sounds to mortals given are heard in Mother, Home and Heaven” (William Goldsmith Brown). No one can possibly mistake the connection between motherhood, love and God. God certainly hasn’t missed that connection. In the Bible He is compares Himself to a mother who cannot forget her child: “Can a woman forget her nursing child, And not have compassion on the son of her womb? Surely they may forget, Yet I will not forget you” (Isaiah 49.15). Mothers, in many ways bring us close to an understanding of God’s love.
Yet the world still struggles to find love. In the 1960s Americans sang the song “What the world needs now is love, sweet love. That’s the only thing that there’s just too little of.” Before that time and since, many, many songs have been written appealing for love. Why does love so often fall apart in this world? Why do marriages decay into bitterness and families disintegrate into spite and separation. Why do friends stop talking to one another and colleagues hold grudges?
Today we are going to look at the Easter life in terms of love from the teaching of the Apostle Peter. He will not look for improvement in this part of life with psychological evaluations, improved education, or genetic advances. No, Peter will direct us to something far greater than all of those. He will direct us to the love of God in Christ.
Goal: “Love one another earnestly...”
One of the greatest examples of love in the Bible comes to us from a mother named Jochobed. She was the mother of Moses, who was born at a time when the Egyptians were killing all newborn Israelite boys. Jochobed loved her son and was determined to do anything she could to save him even if it meant one of the greatest acts of love... giving him up! She put him in a basket and floated him down the Nile River. The childless daughter of Pharaoh found him and adopted him. Love, ultimately is giving up for another. In this case Jochobed gave up the pleasures of being a mother in order to save her son.
The world’s love is selfish and self-centered. It says, “I will give as long as I am getting something in return.” But God’s love is sacrificial. It says, “I will give as God has given to me.” Peter urges us to practice this kind of sacrificial love. “Love one another earnestly,” he says in chapter one of his first letter. In the third chapter he says, “have compassion for one another, love as brothers...” (3.8). In the fourth chapter again he says, “Above all things have fervent love for one another...” (4.10).
What opportunities do you have to love “earnestly” and “fervently”? What opportunities do you have to love by giving up and by sacrificing for others? Is your husband or wife mean to you? Are your children disrespectful? Are your parents unfair? What will you do? Will you get angry? Will you repay evil for evil? Will you try to ignore them and avoid them? One of the biggest sacrifices of love that we can make is to endure the bad behavior of one another. Peter says in the fourth chapter: “Love covers a multitude of sins” (4.8). This doesn’t mean we should be doormats for people to wipe their feet on us. But it does mean that we won’t slam the door in their faces. We will talk. We will try. We will turn to Jesus.
Malady: Impure and dying hearts
John Elder Robinson wrote the book “Look Me in the Eye: My Life with Asperger’s.” Asperger’s is a form of Autism in which a person struggles with social interaction. People with this condition have a difficult time establishing relationship but an especially difficult time when they end. Speaking about his own divorce, Robinson aptly describes the death of human love: “Relationships end, and we don’t know why... Logic tells us that it started out real. Love grows, and goes astray. Life intrudes. Other options appear. At some point, what was real became false. And looking back, we cannot know the precise time and place that it all went wrong... I believe most people are good, but life presents them hard choices. Sometimes the paths they choose are not the best. As much as we hope otherwise, we cannot control where another life leads... Sometimes, all the roads hurt.” (Blog by John Elder Robinson, November 22, 2010)
This is such a sad description of human love. It is a realistic description... Except in one very critical point. I have to disagree with John when he says, “I believe most people are good.” I know this is not a culturally popular thing to say. But it is the truth to say that people are not good. If they were, most marriages would be good. The world would be good. The problems would be few. But the reality is just the opposite. One of the worst errors you can make is to think that you are by nature a good and loving person with no need to grow. We are all born from love... The love of our parents. But this love is a perishable kind of love. Peter is right when he says that we are created from perishable seed. Human love grows beautifully like a flower at first. But eventually it dies and withers. No matter how hard we try to keep ourselves alive and our love alive, all things human are in the process of dying.
Means: Rebirth From Imperishable Seed, the Word of God-The Good News
A number of years ago I had the opportunity to tour the Villeroy and Boch porcelain factory in Torgau, Germany. Porcelain is one of the most beautiful and enduring things that human beings can make. Even today much of what we know about ancient cultures comes from what they made from clay. I was presented with a beautiful gift of a flower vase that is painted with these letters: V D M I Ae. They stand for the Latin words, “Verbum Dei manet in Aeternum.” “The Word of God endures forever.” What a beautiful inscription for a flower vase! The flowers are constantly being removed and thrown away. Their beauty only lasts for a while, but the beauty and love of God in His word lasts forever. With this truth, Peter shows us what we need.
Peter says that we are “born again” by the imperishable, living, and abiding word of God. How? What does that really mean? The word of God is the truth. It is the truth about our sins and the truth about God’s forgiving love. That word is the Gospel truth of Jesus Christ. When Jesus obeyed as no one had ever done before and when He died innocently as no one had ever done before, He took the love-killing, death-dealing sin of this world away from us to give us a new life. When we repent of our sin and believe in God’s word - His love in Jesus Christ, a dramatic transformation begins. It is so dramatic that it can only be called a “rebirth.”
When I exercise, I measure my heart rate to see if I’m doing any good. I’ve tried to figure out what influences my heart rate. When did I eat last? How much caffeine have I had, etc.? But I have found that the most influential thing is what I’m thinking about while I’m exercising. I’ve found that when I’m listening to the word of God and thinking about that, my heart rate is usually the greatest. At the end of the Gospel of Luke we read about the Emmaus Disciples. Luke tells us how discouraged they were at the death of Jesus. A man came and walked with them and explained from the Scriptures how it was necessary for the Christ to suffer. Later, the men realized that that man was the risen Lord Jesus. Notice that it was not the physical appearance of Jesus that lit the fire of faith in their hearts. It was the word of God that Jesus explained to them. We also have that word of God to purify our hearts and to give us a new life.
Conclusion
I mentioned at the beginning of this sermon that God’s love is sometimes compared to the love of a mother. One of my favorite comparisons between God and mothers is captured not in a story or in a verse but in a single word that is often used in the Bible. This word is translated by the English words “tender mercies.” But the original Hebrew word is simply “womb.” This is the word David uses when he had committed a number of terrible sins, and his human love was dead. He realized what was happening, and he returned to God in repentance: “Have mercy on me O God according to your lovingkindness, according to the multitude of your tender mercies, that is, according to your mother-like love/womb, blot out my transgressions” (Psalm 51.2). This is one of the deepest ways God can express His desire to forgive and to love us patiently and persistently.
