CELEBRATING AND SHARING GOD’S LOVE EVERYDAY.
1 Corinthians 13:8-13.
1. Christians are the one who have the real reason to celebrate a day of love.
Psalm 40:9-10. I have proclaimed the good news of righteousness in the great assembly; Indeed, I do not restrain my lips, O LORD, You Yourself know. I have not hidden Your righteousness within my heart; I have declared Your faithfulness and Your salvation; I have not concealed Your lovingkindness and Your truth From the great assembly.
1 Cor. 1:18 says: For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing.
Romans 1:16. For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek.
2. What are we willing to do for the salvation of our friends?
John 15:13. Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends.
1 John 3:16. By this we know love, because He laid down His life for us. And we also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.
Ephesians 5:2. And walk in love, as Christ also has loved us and given Himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma.
3. You can’t give the love of Jesus away unless you have the Love of Jesus within you life.
God gave his only SON. John 3:16. For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. 1 John 4:8-9. He who does not love does not know God, for God is love. In this the love of God was manifested toward us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him.
Psalm 126: “He that goes forth weeping, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him.
CELEBRATING AND SHARING GOD’S LOVE EVERYDAY. 1 Corinthians 13:8-13.
The word “Love” is a word used in all sorts of passionate ways. Can a person love sports the same way we love people? God has given us the best example of love in his son Jesus Christ so that we can understand what love is meant to be and how love is to be shown toward others. How do you define love? Is it a dozen roses with a box of candy or dinner and a long walk on the beach? Maybe it’s something simple like your husband finally doing the dishes and allowing his wife to rest or your wife giving you an extra 15 minutes to finish the football game.
Fulton J. Sheen wrote. The human heart is not perfect and regular in its contour. The human heart is slightly irregular in shape as if a small piece of it were missing. That missing part...may very well mean 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 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 returned to heaven where it would be reunited with the sample which God had kept. Truly in heaven our hearts will actually be the heart that would be completely whole.
For some reason we have decided that we need a day to celebrate love. Today it seem that we have to have a special day set aside in order to say that we love a very special wife, husband or family member. There are some people who will do a little for those they love, there are some people who will do a lot and there are some people who will do nothing. I heard of one guy who took his wife to wal-mart and they stood together in the Greeting cards section while he would read the Cards that talked of his love for his wife and then he would say that is how I feel about you.
1. Christians have the real reason to celebrate a day of love.
Psalm 40:9-10. I have proclaimed the good news of righteousness In the great assembly; Indeed, I do not restrain my lips, O LORD, You Yourself know. I have not hidden Your righteousness within my heart; I have declared Your faithfulness and Your salvation; I have not concealed Your lovingkindness and Your truth From the great assembly.
Sometimes it is difficult to oppose the world’s view of things. Sometimes it’s difficult to proclaim the truth of God’s Love.
1 Cor. 1:18 says: For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing.
When we tell people that we love them we can expect opposition from the unsaved! Our message is foolishness to them! It’s not always going to be easy to stand up for Jesus! It won’t always be easy to tell of His love! But that doesn’t give us an excuse for remaining silent!
A pastor once invited his congregation to come visit him in his office as he wanted to ask them three questions. One of the questions he asked them was the following. As you read about the life of Jesus in the Bible, what was it about the life of Christ that attracts you to Jesus? And almost without exception, the people talked about the way that Jesus expressed His love to others. Christ’s life was a living example of his love. Jesus took time to hold a child in His arms. The disciples felt that Jesus didn’t have time for this and they wanted to stop it but Jesus rebuked then and said that they are to allow the children to come to him. Jesus expressed love to a woman caught in the act of adultery by forgiving her. Everyone else wanted to stone her but not Jesus He loved her. Jesus expressed love to the lepers whom other people wouldn’t go near. Jesus actually reached out and touched them with His hands ministering to them healing them showing them his great love. When Jesus was hanging on the cross as he looked at the men who had just nailed him; He said, Father, forgive them, because they don’t realize what they are doing. What a profound expression of his love even to those who were being cruel to Him.
Mamie Adams always went to a certain branch post office in her town because the postal employees there were always friendly. One day, she went there to buy stamps just before Christmas and the lines were very long. Someone told her that there was no need to wait in line because there was a stamp machine in the lobby. "I know," said Mamie, ’but the machine won’t ask me about my arthritis." We are a society that needs to know that other people care about us. If people care enough to ask about us we feel they care for us.
Romans 1:16. For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek.
Not everyone we speak to about Jesus will want to hear the message! Some people may try to stop us! Some people may choose to avoid us but we should be willing to tell people about Jesus! The thing is that we should never try to ram it down their throats! Sometimes Christians may think they are doing right by quoting Bible verses trying to convince them that they are going to hell if they don’t change their ways! We should never try to lead them to Christ by being mean-spirited. The Gospel is a message of Love! God loves the sinners so much that He sent His son Jesus to die for them! But we won’t convince them that the Gospel is true, and that God really does love them if they don’t see the love of Christ working in you.
2. What are we willing to do for the salvation of our friends?
John 15:13. Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends.
I guess the question that comes to my mind is do I love my unsaved friends? Maybe a better question would be how far am I willing to go to share the gospel with them so that they won’t spend eternity in hell?
Are my actions of love toward my unsaved friends the same actions of love towards my saved friends? If they are not then I do not love my unsaved friends with the same love of Jesus Christ.? The explosion of Christianity in the Roman Empire was due to the fact that Christians preached the love of Jesus and backed it up with a practical demonstration of love for people. They had a good teacher. Jesus loved in very concrete ways, Jesus loved with a towel, and Jesus showed his love on the cross.
At his clinic in Topeka, Kansas, Dr. Carl Menninger instructed his entire staff that the most important thing they could offer any patient was love. He said, if people can learn to give and receive love, they will usually recover from their physical or mental illness. In Matthew 22:37-40, Jesus said that loving God and one another was the greatest commandment of all. And then in John 13:34, He said that people will know that we really are His disciples if we love one another. We’re to love others as He loves us. Without a doubt the greatest need in the world today is the love of God. A teacher in an adult education creative writing class told her students to write I love you in 25 words or less, without using the words, I love you. They had 15 minutes to complete this assignment. A woman in the class spent about 10 minutes looking at the ceiling. Then she began to write frantically. Later she read the results to the rest of the class. Three statements were all she needed.
Here they are: Why, I’ve seen lots worse hairdos than that. I wouldn’t say that these cookies are burned. Cuddle up to me; I’ll get your feet warm.
Jesus says that genuine love is seen in a person willing to lay down his life for his friends. We have all probably been asked if we would be willing to die for our husbands or our wives. And I believe that we would always say, Yes, We would die for the one we love. Here is the thing; I don’t see where we would actually have to do that in our lives today. Not very many people ever face a life or death situation. We may never ever get a chance to die for another person! However, we do get opportunities to share the love of Jesus Christ so that our friend and families don’t have to go through life and never be touched by the pure love of Jesus Christ.
1 John 3:16. By this we know love, because He laid down His life for us. And we also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. Now again, this doesn’t have to be confined to actually dying for another person! It can mean that we are willing to sacrifice our wants for the needs of others! The needs of the other person are that they need the Lord Jesus Christ in their lives. When we accept the Lord Jesus the Holy Spirit comes to live within us and it is his task to persuade us to think of others! The Holy Spirit will want us to share with our family and friends the Lord Jesus so they can have what we have.
Paul tells us how to do that in Ephesians 5:2. And walk in love, as Christ also has loved us and given Himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma.
We need to act towards everyone the same. We can’t treat our saved friends different from our unsaved ones.
We need to be willing to give ourselves to our unsaved friends the same was as we would our saved friends.
Take our unsaved friends for coffee, breakfast, or even buy then lunch. When they ask why you are doing this you tell then that the Lord wanted you to show your love for then.
You can not “walk in love” and be selfish at the same time! Can we sacrifice what we want for, what our loved one needs. Are we willing to do whatever we can so that we can love them into the family of the Lord?
3. You can’t give the love of Jesus away unless you have the Love of Jesus within you life.
There is a story in Acts Chapter 3. What makes this story so interesting is that Peter and John were asked for some money but Peter answer was Silver and gold I don’t have but what I do have I will give. Peter understood that this man needed to have Jesus Christ more than he needed to be able to walk.
God gave his only SON. John 3:16. For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. 1 John 4:8-9. He who does not love does not know God, for God is love. In this the love of God was manifested toward us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him.
In Stockholm, Sweden, a woman was injured as she rushed to catch a streetcar. She stumbled in front of the moving car and was caught beneath it. The police sent for a crane to lift the car off her body. While waiting for the crane people gathered out of curiosity. One man pushed through the crowd, crawled beneath the car, and said to her, Take my hand.” As she took his hand she felt warmth and courage. This calmed her and prevented her from going into shock. After the crane arrived and the woman was released, she said, “I never thought an outstretched hand could mean so much. God has stretched His hands to help us. They have nail prints in them. We, in turn, should be willing to help others and offer our outstretched hand to them.
One of the signs that we have accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as our Saviour is that we have the Love of God flowing into our lives and out through our lives to touch other people.
A woman went to her pastor and said, “I’ve been a Christian for 20 years. I’ve read books on how to win souls. I’ve memorized scripture. I’ve taken courses on how to win the lost. And yet I haven’t won one person to the Lord. Why? The pastor’s answer surprised her. He said it’s because you don’t love them enough to weep for them. Then he went on to explain; you have failed not for want of knowledge, but for lack of love. When you really love someone’s soul, you will care enough to weep for them.
Psalm 126: “He that goes forth weeping, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him. Well, that lady went home to read the Bible and pray. As time went on the Holy Spirit gave her a heart for souls. One day as she prayed the Holy Spirit spoke to her heart. Her unbelieving sister came to her mind. She got up from her knees and went to find her sister. When she found her sister she began to share with her sister what has been going on in her life. With eyes full of tears she shared her great love for her sister and that she way praying that her sister would come to know Jesus. Her sister was suddenly aware just how much her sister really cared for her and that very night she came to know Christ. If we think about the Lord Jesus for a moment we can see and know that love can’t be beaten!
When the Risen Christ interviewed Peter on the beach, what question did He ask? Did He ask, Peter, do you believe in Me? No, of course not. The burning issue was LOVE. Jesus asked Peter if he loved Him. Jesus asked this question three times.
There are many stories in the Word of God about people loving each other. The one that I want to close with today is found in 1 Samuel 18, it is the story about two men David and Jonathan. What I find interesting about this story is that David is just a shepherd boy while Jonathan is the son of the King. Yet even though there are probably a great many differences these two men become totally committed to each other to the point that they even look to each other welfare.
Jonathan shows his love for David by giving David his Royal robe, his armour, his sword, his bow and belt. Now to you and I this may not seem like very much but Jonathan is saying that he is willing to put his life in David hands knowing that David will take care of him. They even go so far as to make a covenant that each other would look after the others families if anything happen to one of them. Beloved how Jonathan and David acted towards each other is how Christians should be acting toward each other. Christians shouldn’t need to have a day set aside to show how the Love of Christ can work through their lives and touch people lives.
There was a teenager who didn’t want to be seen in public with her mother, because her mother’s arms were terribly disfigured. One day when her mother took her shopping and reached out her hand, a clerk looked horrified. Later, crying, the girl told her how embarrassed she was. Understandably hurt, the mother waited an hour before going to her daughter’s room to tell her, for the first time, what happened. When you were a baby, I woke up to a burning house. Your room was an inferno. Flames were everywhere. I could have gotten out the front door, but I decided I’d rather die with you than leave you to die alone. I ran through the fire and wrapped my arms around you. Then I went back through the flames, my arms on fire. When I got outside on the lawn, the pain was agonizing but when I looked at you, all I could do was rejoice that the flames hadn’t touched you. Stunned, the girl looked at her mother through new eyes. Weeping in shame and gratitude, she kissed her mother’s marred hands and arms.
