Series: “Bringing Back the Bands”
“True Love”
John 15:9-13
A sermon for 2/14/21
John 15 “9 “As the Father loved Me, I also have loved you; abide in My love. 10 If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love, just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love. 11 These things I have spoken to you, that My joy may remain in you, and that your joy may be full. 12 This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. 13 Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends.”
Today is Valentine’s Day – a day when we celebrate love. So, since I love puns…. I found a few puns for Valentine’s Day:
Q: What did the cucumber say to the pickle on Valentine's Day?
A: You mean a great DILL to me. 😊
Q: What was written in the Valentine card that one light bulb gave to another light bulb?
A: I love you a WATT! 😊
Q: What did the French chef give his wife for Valentine’s Day?
A: A hug and a QUICHE! 😊
https://www.sermoncentral.com/sermon-illustrations/100948/love-by-dr-larry-petton
What is love? Gifts and cards on Valentine’s Day? The hugs we are all missing during this ongoing pandemic? A kiss on the cheek from a small child? Taking food to the person down the road that lost their job? Jesus hanging on a cross to pay the price for your sin and my sin?
Yes – we view all of these as love, but are they all the same? Are they equal acts of love? Of course not!
https://www.gotquestions.org/types-of-love.html - Question: "What are the different types of love mentioned in the Bible?"
“Answer: There are at least four different Greek words that are used for “love,” but not all of them are found in the New Testament. (Actually, there are more than four Greek words for “love,” but usually it is these four that come up in discussions.)”
“The first Greek word for “love” is eros, which refers to romantic or sexual love. From it we get the word erotic. This specific word is not used in the New Testament.”
“The second is storge, which refers to familial love like that of a mother for her baby or of a brother and sister for each other. It is not used in the New Testament; however, the negative term astorgoi (“unloving”) is found in 1 Timothy 3:3, and a similar term, astorgous (“no love” in the NIV and “without natural affection” in the KJV), is found in Romans 1:31.”
“The third Greek word for “love,” philia, refers to friendship and comradery. This word is often translated as “friend” (one who is loved) in the New Testament.”
“Finally, agape is used to speak of God’s love that He has for the world and that Christians are supposed to emulate. This is the word for “love” that is most commonly used in the New Testament. For a while it was thought that Christians must have coined the word agape to speak of a godly kind of love that the Greek world knew nothing of. But the word agape was in fact in use in the Roman Empire, and it was not coined by Christians to communicate God’s love.”
So, let’s talk about love –
First, we receive love from above, v. 9
9 “As the Father loved Me, I also have loved you; abide in My love.”
The starting point of the Christian Journey is God loving us BEFORE we loved Him.
Romans 5 “6 For when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. 7 For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die. 8 But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
You and me and every Believer responds to the loving out reach of God. We call that reaching out before we respond “prevenient grace.” I’ve talked about the different movements of God’s grace – three movements of one amazing grace. Then, when we respond with “YES”, the work of “justifying grace” restores the connection to God lost in the Fall of Humanity. We can feel His love for us. It’s a real experience for the Believer. Unfortunately, it is often not an ongoing experience. Many, if not most, Believers do no avail themselves of the full out reach of God’s “sanctifying grace.” Why?
Let me share a quote from the “Field guide” for Discipleship Bands that you can get for free at https://discipleshipbands.com/
“While we are justified alone before God, we will only be sanctified together. Christian maturity is not a solo journey, but a community process. This is the reason for so much arrested development in our faith—we think we can go it alone. We cannot. That’s where this guide comes into play. Small groups are helpful and provide a great context for fellowship and study, but they lack the capacity to lead us into the fullness of the life God has for us. We need something smaller with the capacity for more depth and growth. For discipleship to reach its full potential, we need something deeper than small groups, something richer than an accountability group, and something beyond another study group. We need a band, which is a group of three to five people who read together, pray together, and meet together to become the love of God for one another and the world. We must band together with a few other people to help one another to persist in the journey of the second half of the gospel.” (pg. 10)
One of the major hurdles in my Christian Journey was learning that it’s ok to want to be loved. I knew that’s how I was originally designed by God – all of us are made for loving relationships. Then, I had to learn to abide in that love – the love of God AND the love of others. There was a time in my life when I kept other people at arm’s length to protect myself. It was safer that way. There was a time in my ministry when I denied even wanting my congregation to love me. I was not growing in my Christian Journey during that time – it’s what arrested development looked like for me.
When we know that we know that we know… God’s love for us is secure. When we rest in the assurance that there’s nothing we can do to make God love us more and nothing we do will make God love us less. Then, we can move on.
Second, we love others v. 12
12 “This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.”
This is my fourth week sharing about Discipleship Bands. Why should we bother to even consider such and odd practice? I understand. I really do. I guess I should explain my reasoning. You see, we don’t need to do anything different here if we want to keep heading in the direction we are heading. We can keep providing a weekly GOD-SPA for the saved to enjoy a time of “sit-and-soak.” I know that’s not all we do, but from the outside it may appear that’s the main thing.
Let me ask you a question – what are we selling? What’s our product that we want folks to buy from us? We want them to buy from us – not the church down the road – right?
Each morning, I get an email devotion from seedbed ministries and at 8am the author – Rev. J.D Walt - hosts a zoom call to share it with pastors and pray with us. This week he shared with us a devotion entitled “The Gospel of Multi-Level Marketing” based on Philippians 2:22-24. It focused on making disciples by creating Believers who are disciple-makers. He asked what are we selling?
This is a little part of that devotion: “If our goal was to get chocolate chip cookies to every person in the world what would be better—to make as many chocolate chip cookies as we could make or to make as many chocolate chip cookie makers as we could make? Though seemingly similar, they are quite different missions.”
We aren’t selling cookies – our product is LOVE. Do you agree? We don’t need to make love cookies😊
We need to be making LOVERS – those who can give away the love of God in them to others.
There’s an old sermon illustration, you may have heard before: “If you compare the Dead Sea and the Sea of Galilee, you will surely see great differences. The Dead Sea is so full of minerals and deposits all life is completely snuffed out. No fish, plants or anything else. However, the Sea of Galilee is thriving with life. What is the difference? There are many channels of water feeding into the Dead Sea, yet there is no channels funneling out. It keeps it all to itself. Yet, the Sea of Galilee is not only receiving water from rivers and creeks, it is also flowing water out to other places.”
https://www.sermoncentral.com/sermon-illustrations/9218/giving-yourself-by-tony-klinedinst
We need to receive love… and give love. If not, that loved stagnates and becomes a kind of love for self that leaves no room for more to flow in. If we keep the flow open, more can come in. So, we need ways to give the most love we can possibly give.
Third, we sacrifice self for others v. 13
13 “Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends.”
I want to thank everyone for not calling me or emailing me to let me know that you are too busy to be in a Discipleship Band. That’s usually what I hear when there is a new class or a project that needs to be completed. I can only imagine how much worse it is to hear from the preacher that band meetings are every week… taking a WHOLE HOUR! I get tired just describing it!
Listen to the sacrificial nature of agape love: 1 John 4 “7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. 8 He who does not love does not know God, for God is love. 9 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. 10 In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.”
There is a strange word in there – propitiation. It is also translated as “atoning sacrifice.” You see, it should be you and me on the cross paying the penalty for your sin and my sin. Instead, the perfect Lamb of God, Jesus Christ, died for you and me. How can I love somebody like that?
If you have ever swung a hammer in the heat and humidity of a place like Honduras to help folks you didn’t even know… you have some idea of that kind of love. If you have ever sat around a table in a prison with a resident on each side and a big bowl of homemade cookies while a precious child of God awakens to love… you may have some idea of that kind of love. Sitting at the bedside of a dying family member or raising a child when you finally got the house to yourselves or a hundred other self-sacrificing acts of love – we know they come and go. What if we can make those sacrifices of love with two or three other people week after week? What if you can be there for someone who is just awakening to the love of God? What if it’s you that slumbers and needs to be awakened to the moving of the Holy Spirit that only comes when we experience Christian community in the way that was described long ago in Ecc. 4:
9 Two are better than one,
Because they have a good reward for their labor.
10 For if they fall, one will lift up his companion.
But woe to him who is alone when he falls,
For he has no one to help him up.
11 Again, if two lie down together, they will keep warm;
But how can one be warm alone?
12 Though one may be overpowered by another, two can withstand him.
And a threefold cord is not quickly broken.
Our banding together can form threefold cords of agape love – will you try? Amen
