Do You Love Me? Part 1
2/6/2000 Ruth 1:2-18 John 21:15-19
This question is asked by a variety of people. The nine year old girl asks it of the fourth grade boy. A dad asks it of his daughter. A woman that’s been married twenty five years asks it of her husband. A person dying of Aids asks it of a life long friend. A little boy asks it of his Mom. A young man about to propose asks it of his sweetheart. The interesting thing is that even though the same words are being used, the same question is not being asked. Even if the response was yes in each situation, the yes means something totally different each time. There is where our confusion is when it comes to love.
The Greeks had three different words for love. One word was eros which is sometimes translated lust. It means to have a strong sexual desire for something. The second word was phileo, which means a commitment of friendship to another person. The third word is agape, which means an unconditional acceptance of another person with a commitment to stand with them no matter what.
When we think about relationships, we are all hoping to find agape love where someone is going to accept us and be fully committed to us. Our secular song writers sing about it all the time. Listen to it in the titles. "I’ll Always Love You.", or "You’re My First, My Last , My Everything" . Although the song writers are good at singing about love and commitment, they do a lousy job of living it.
Part of the problem is that we are taught that sexual desire is the key to building a great relationship. So we talk about making love. There is nothing in sex itself that makes love. Some how saying, we were making love sounds more pleasing and honorable than saying we had sex.. Sex is not a key that is going to open a person’s heart to commit themselves to us. Young ladies and women, keep in mind that men and boys do not see sex as women and girls do.
Most boys and men separate sex as a distinct thing from building a healthy relationship. That’s why we as males, will tell you a lie in a minute. We will say, "Oh I love you." and all it means is "This is what I have to say to get you to have sex with me, so this is what I’m saying." We are not making any commitment beyond the next few minutes. If we used the words we should use, it would go like this. "Listen, I want to use your body, for my pleasure. Now don’t ask me for anything when I’m done cause I’m not making any commitments."
But you see women, you let us get away with it by trying to translate the word love, into what you want it to mean. You’re hearing, "you’re the most precious and beautiful woman I have ever seen. I want to commit myself to be there for you baby no matter what. I’m your puppet on a string." While you’re all caught up in this fantasy, we are about to bring untold problems into your lives simply to satisfy our lust. Give us ten minutes alone with you, and we will change your life for the next 20 years. Even if you never want to see us again, we will have already changed your destiny.
You can never build a healthy loving and lasting relationship by starting with sex. The key is found in the phileo love, whereby you begin by building a friendship. When you are friends with a person, you can honestly evaluate their strengths and their weaknesses. You know how much time you can spend around them before they get on your nerves. You know when they are beginning to impose on you. You can see what their character is truly like.
You can make a very informed decision on what kind of a husband or wife this person might be. You can then make a commitment to that person to move to the next level of love which is agape love. You can commit yourself to love each other unconditionally in marriage. At this point, the eros form of love seeks to continually bind and renew the commitment which has already been made. You’re not making love, you are celebrating the love you have already nurtured and grown. Sex brings a healing dimension to your love for each other in the agapee state.
When you start a relationship based on eros and attraction alone, you’re asking for trouble. We are quickly blindsided by the hormones in our bodies which causes us to see a person who does not exist. We are not objective at all about the other person’s faults and weaknesses. All we know is that we feel good inside when we are near them.
Our hearts go pitter patter and we know we are in love. All we really are having is a chemical reaction to something being released by our hormones. Our bodies are telling us, you have got to have this person no matter what. Yet there is no solid emotional bond with this person, there is no friendship which has been established, and there is no real commitment made. But we foolishly, decide to try to live in this state of make believe thinking, all is well because of a feeling inside.
Feelings are going to come and go. There is going to be a day, when the mere sight of that person will no longer release the same hormones inside of you and you will no longer have the same reaction. You think the person has changed, when in fact it’s the same old person, it’s just you’re having a different chemical reaction inside.
Your body does not know if you’re married or not. So it’s craving for you to have sex with this person to strengthen the relationship. But your body is not saved, so you cannot listen to it. You have to listen to your spirit and your mind which is under the control of the Holy Spirit. Otherwise sin and disaster is around the corner.
When we ask the question, "do you love me." . Most of us are asking, are you really committed to me and what’s best for me. Love as a feeling is not going to last very long. That’s why you can read in the Old Testament of men having several different wives at the same time. They had a feeling got married, and ran into someone else and had another feeling. We see the same thing happening today, only instead of getting married, we have single people with a number of boyfriends and girlfriends and married people with other boyfriends and girlfriends outside the relationship.
We put way too much stock into feelings. Nobody always feels the same about another person. Even in the best of marriages, you are going to feel like this person is about to get on your last nerve. Moving from phileo or friendship love to agape love is not about feelings. It’s about choice and commitment. Love is not something we can do once and for all. It has to be done on a day by day, moment by moment, existence. I can promise to love you forever, but I can only actually do it today.
True love is not about how good you make me feel inside, and certainly has nothing to do with simply getting you in bed with me. True love is about wanting what is truly best for this other person and committing yourself to provide it. Love is a choice that always costs something. If there is no cost, then you truly do not know if you love. All you have is a feeling.
If you’re not treating this person you’re dating in a way that’s pleasing and honorable to God by respecting the sexual boundaries God has established, then you have more lust than love for this person. Love says, "until I are ready to fully commit myself to you for life, I will not use your body either for my pleasure or for your own, because I want the best God has for us both.
Love should have its roots in friendship. We ought to be able to be a friend to our parents, a friend to our children, a friend to our sisters and brothers, a friend to our spouses, a friend to those people God sends into our lives. Until you have had the opportunity to be my friend and I yours, we do not know if love exists between us or not.
Journey with me for a moment to another country. Imagine with me for a moment a man, his wife and two sons leave the country of India and come to the United States. They end up here in Cleveland, and both of these Indian men, marry two of your good looking African American women. Well within ten years, your father in law dies, and both of your husbands die in a car accident. Now its just the three of you ladies left. Naomi the mother, and Orphah and Ruth the two daughters in law. You’ve all grown very close to each other, and the phileo love between you is very strong.
But the loss of her husband, the death of her two sons, and no other relatives but the two daughter in laws is too much for Naomi to handle. She tells the girls, "look I love you both very much, and I want the best for you. I’m going back to India to my people, because things have not worked out that well for me here in Cleveland. I want you girls to go out and make a life for yourself and find you two nice men to take my sons place. I want you to marry, have children and enjoy your lives. Don’t worry about me. She kissed them both"
Orphah and Ruth told Naomi, with tears coming out of their eyes and weeping loudly " Oh mother don’t talk like that. We are here for you no matter what. If you want to leave Cleveland, and go back to India, we got your back. We will be on that plane and stick by your side no matter what. Now don’t you ask us to leave you. If you get a ticket, we’ll get a ticket." Now to hear them talk, we’re not sure if they have phileo love or agape love. It sure sounds like they are making an unconditional commitment to Naomi. They are both saying, "yes mother, we love you."
You see they are at a fork in the road in their lives. Love will either take them to India or keep them in Cleveland, but it cannot do both. Naomi knows that sometimes people say things without thinking of the commitment involved. So she breaks down what it means for them to love her.
She said now think about this. "If you go to my country, I don’t have any more sons for you to marry. Even if I had another son, it is the custom in my country for a brother to marry his dead brother’s wife. Would you then wait for them to grow up just so you could marry them. You should go back to your families here in Cleveland where you’ve got a future. Why follow me to my country where you be a foreigner.
Naomi had enough love for her daughters to be honest with them. She had agape love. She was looking out for their best interest. What she is really saying to them though is "do you love me and if so, then how much." Orphah and Ruth both thought hard about what she said. Orphah thought, "yes it really is going to be tough to give up all I have and what I might be in order to go to a country I’ve never seen with customs I do not know." She went to her mother, and gave her a big hug while crying and turned to go back home.
Orphah had a phileo or friendship type of love for her mother. There was nothing wrong with it. She had to make a choice between her future and her mother-in-law. She chose her future. Sometimes friends are going to go in different directions because the price to stay together as friends may be higher than one of them is willing to pay.
Now if you’re dating someone and you know them as a friend, you can decide rationally, if the price of continuing this relationship is greater than what I am willing to pay. Even though you may part in pain and in tears, you’re still able to part. If you’re hurting because of a relationship that’s ending, it is okay to hurt, but remember the hurt will not be there forever.
I’m sure Orphah may have wondered if she did the right thing or not. But her choosing an option offered did not diminish the love she had had for her mother. Nothing would take away the memories of the good times, but we only have one life to live.
Naomi then turned to Ruth, and told her, "Look your sister-in-law is headed back to her family and the life she once knew. Why don’t you go back home too. Don’t feel bad about it in the least. I understand."
Unknown to Naomi, at some point in her relationship with her daughter Ruth, Ruth had crossed over from phileo love to agape love. Ruth could only think about what was best for her mother. Ruth was probably thinking. "What’s going to happen to Naomi when she gets back home? Who’s going to take care of her as a widow?
Ruth told her mother, "please do not try to talk me into leaving you . Where ever you go I will go. What ever house you live in, I will live in. Your people will be my people. Your God will be my God. Where you die I will be buried. May God take away my life if anything but death separates us. Now Ruth really had her mother’s back.
Isn’t it interesting the kind of love that the world so desperately seeks between individuals is found here in the word of God in the book of Ruth. Not only that, the pledge that a single person makes to another single person, or a daughter to a mother in law, is the basis of the pledge we make to one another in marriage. This fine description of love has nothing to do with sex. Yet we all benefit when we find this type of love and commitment in our lives coming from another person.
Ruth has a strong emotional bond attachment to her mother and she makes a rational decision to give up what appears to be best for her, in order to do what is best for Naomi. She took love a step higher than Orphah. Jesus put it this way, "greater love has no one than this, that a person should lay down his or her life for a friend." What Ruth was saying in her response to Naomi, was "I love you and your well being mean more to me than my own."
Love is a choice to go in a specific direction for the good of another person. The more we appreciate love as a choice, than a feeling, the more we can build healthy relationships with each other in our homes, our marriages, and our relationships to others.
Just before Jesus was crucified, his number one main man, who had promised to have his back covered denied three times that he even knew Jesus. Peter was a guy, who in the moment of crisis, backed away from the commitment he had made to follow Jesus. Since love is a choice and not simply a feeling, we can choose to enter into a love relationship again. It is far better to make wise choices than simply try to go on feelings. It’s possible to love someone even after they have betrayed us, cursed us, and denied ever knowing us. It is almost possible for us who have done these things to others, to turn around and begin to honestly love them. So there is always hope in Christ.
When Jesus rose from the dead, he presented the question to Peter, "Peter do you love me more than these." Jesus was seeking to know what place Peter would give him in his life. Since the disciples were present, Jesus may have been asking do you love me more than your family and friends. But also since Peter had been out fishing, Jesus may have been asking, do you love me more than your profession or your job. Peter responded, yes Jesus , you know that I love you.
Jesus then asked, "But Peter do you love me with an agape kind of love. Peter responded. Yes Lord you know that I love you as a friend. Peter did not use the same word for love that Jesus used. So Jesus asked Peter, well do you truly love me as friend, phileo. Peter said, yes lord I love you as a friend. It was on the basis of this friendship love, that Peter grew into a much deeper lover relationship with God. Peter moved from phileo to agapee because the time came when Peter gave his life for the cause of Christ.
When somebody tells you "I love you." Think about what it is they are saying, Are they saying, "I want you for me," "I want to be your friend", or "I want to give all that I can to make you all that God wants you to be." What they are saying, should a make difference in how we respond to their words. Let us also be conscious of what we mean when we tell someone "I love you."
God is asking the question of us, "Do you love me." What do we mean when we say yes. Is our love for God simply based on a feeling we get sometimes in church? Is our love for God simply a friendship in which we hope God will be there when we need Him in moments of trouble? Is our love for God a recognition that I owe all that I have and all that I am to be used for your honor and glory?
God loved us by taking action. For The Scriptures state John 3:16 "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.
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Sermon Outline--Pastor Rick
Do You Love Me? Part 1
2/6/2000 Ruth 1:2-18 John 21:15-19
I. What Does It Mean
A. 9 Old To Fourth Grader
B. Dad To Daughter
C. Married 25 Years Etc.
II. Greeks Words For Love
A. Eros ---Desire
B. Phileo---Friendship
C. Agape --Unconditional Commitment
D. World Is Searching
III. When Sex Is Not The Key
A. Making Love Or What
B. Men & Women --Different Languages
C. 10 Minutes With A 20 Year Sentence
IV. The Importance Of Friendship
A. Honest Evaluation
B. Spending Time
C. Informed Decision
D. Can Move To Agape
E. After Agape Sex Is Celebration
V. Starting A Relationship
A. Blinded By Those Unsaved Hormones
B. Refusing To See The Truth
C. Need Emotional Bond, Friendship, Commitment
D. Feelings Are Tricky
E. Same Old Person--Different Chemical Reaction
F. We Have Unsaved bodies
VI. I Got Feelings--You Got Feelings
A. Feelings Coming An Going
B. Too Many Relationships
C. Not Always Going To Feel The Same
D. Love Is Not Done Once And For All
E. True :Love & Feelings
F. Respecting The Sexual Boundaries
G. Love & Friendship
H. Love & Costs Involved
VII. Coming To America
A. Husband, Wife, Two Sons
B. Cleveland
C. Tragic 10 Years
D. Naomi, Orpha 7 Ruth
E. Phileo Love Shared
VIII. Naomi Makes A Decision
A. I’m Going Back Home
B. Make The Best For Yourselves
C. Two Women In Sorrow
D. Two Daughters United
E. Fork In The Road
IX. Naomi Asks To Count The Cost
A. Your Family Is Here
B. You May Not Remarry
C. Don’t Become A Foreigner
X. Orphah Makes A Decision
A. It’s Going To Be Tough
B. Phileo Love- Wonderful In Itself
C. A Kiss And A Departure
D. Future vs Mother In Law
E. Friends May Go Separate Directions
F. the Hurt Will Stop Hurting
XI. Ruth Makes A Decision
A. Cross From Phileo To Agape
B. What’s Best For The Other Person
C. I’ve Got Your Back
D. The Love Most Sought After
E. Jesus---No Greater Love Does One Have Than To Lay Down His Life For A Friend
F. Love Is Choice Of Direction
XII. Jesus & Peter
A. 3 Times--I never Knew You
B. Possible To Love Again
C. Do you Love Me More Than These
D. Do You Me Agape Style
E. Do You Love Me As A Friend
XIII. What About Us
A. I Love You???????
B. I Want You, I Want A Friend, I Want God’s Best
C. What Do You Mean
D. God Asks Do You Love Me.
