Sermon for 3/8/98
Love Never Fails
Introduction:
A. Love Never Fails- What a joke? Let’s join the ranks of the skeptics and see what they have to say. I dare say that one of these will hit us all.
B. Friends who are no longer friends.
1. So called friends who chum up to us to get something.
2. Friends since babies, but now once entered Junior High, no longer hang around the same crowd, no longer spend time together. See each other from time to time and remember the good times, but our heart bleeds.
3. Friends since High school, in the same youth group, Grown in the Lord together, went on youth trips, mission trips together. Went to the same Bible College, started to drift apart. Got out of college and rarely talked. When you see each other it is only at a distance and you remember the good times. Now you hear that this person has left his wife and children, and you want to go to them and talk with them, but you have drifted so far that you no longer know the address or phone #. If you did, you wouldn’t know what to say.
4. Friends in college, had a great relationship after college, saw each other and were accountable to each other. Then you begin to drift apart; you become so busy that you forget your friend, you wrong your friend or your friend wrongs you. You seek to be reconciled and forgiveness is granted but the relationship is not the same. No closeness. When you see each other there is nothing but the cold shoulder. Heart bleeds.
5. You shared a few good moments at camp or on a trip and you would like to get to know this person better. You try and try but they always put you off. You admire them from a distance and you wonder what is wrong with you.
6. This person will not leave you alone. They smother you and eventually you have to distance yourself from them. Then they never call and you wonder…
7. This Friend always tempts you to sin so you have to leave them. Your heart breaks over them.
8. Your friend becomes rich and you are still poor, your friend no longer pays any attention to you.
9. Philea love fails.
C. Families who fail us and we no longer consider them family.
1. As children and young adults they abused you and so you cannot stand the sight of them.
2. They have aband0ned you time and time again. Absentee parents. Latch Key children.
3. Gave you up for adoption.
4. They were too harsh as parents and never let you be free so now that you are free you are free from them.
5. They are always on your case about this and that so you distance yourself as much as possible…
6. They have different interests than you and so you drift apart.
7. Your parents disown you. We gave birth to you but you are not our child.
8. You have done something that is a no-no and so the whole family disowns/ shuns you.
9. Big argument and that is the end.
10. You got along well with one of your siblings when you where younger and now through a variety of reasons you can’t stand each other or at best there is an uneasiness between you. You remember the good times and your heart breaks.
11. You can deal with losing friends more than family. However, family love does fail.
D. Romantic love, eros love does fail. It is the worst of them all for breaking our hearts and ripping us to shreds.
1. All is roses on the good side of romantic love; the bad side of love is the dark side.
2. Dating is a mean spirited affair.
a) Because you do not have a gorgeous body no one will go out with you.
b) You start dating a beautiful girl and then a few weeks later she goes out with your best friend.
c) You date someone for a few months and then something happens and until your dying days this person hates you. That is the amazing thing about this love, it goes from intense admiration to extreme hatred.
d) You were friends before and then you started dating and it didn’t work out and so now you have lost your special someone and a friend.
e) You look at a special someone and wonder why it didn’t work out. The Chemistry was just not right.
f) You look at other people with their special someone’s and you are alone and you feel left out all the time.
g) You become engaged and a few weeks before the wedding ceremony, they decide to back out, you decide to back out. All of your days there are uneasiness between you.
3. Marriage.
a) When we were contemplating marriage. Different views.
b) There are no guarantees.
c) Skipper- "I would rather shoot you than divorce you."
d) Your best friend and your family and your whole life is wrapped up in this marriage. If it fails your whole world comes tumbling down.
e) You lose your best friend and now this person is the enemy. After a few years the hatred, animosity might die down, but there will always be this uneasiness between the two of you.
f) Your children will be crushed. No matter what you do. The battle between you two will affect your children.
g) Like going through a death but worse.
h) Spiritually.
i) Physically.
j) Emotionally.
k) Financially.
l) To see them with someone else!
m) Maybe it will not be that bad, maybe just be in a dysfunctional marriage all of your days.
n) Maybe you will have to leave because of abuse, alcohol.
o) Just tired of being married. Separated.
p) Eros love, romantic love fails all the time.
E. Church family love. Church fails you.
F. Tina turner- What’s love got to do with it…
WBTU:
A. Paul what are you talking about? Love never fails, Huh!
B. Agape love never fails. God’s love for us never fails.
C. We are the ones who fail each other and fail God. However, we can take this to the bank, love never fails. It is guaranteed.
D. We become hard-boiled
E. I am loved so I can risk loving you. Because of my relationship with Christ I can endure. He loves me and I love Him and as long as that doesn’t change everything else is fine. My heart will break but I know that I am loved.
Thesis: I Corinthians 13:8- This little phrase says so much. It says three things. Love is eternal. Love is unconquerable. Love never gives up.
For instances:
I. Love is eternal.
A. What is the secret power of love?
B. 1 John 4:10- herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.
C. Eternity is where love started and that is where it is destined to live forever.
D. God never fails. So many souls have tested him throughout the course of time. So many still reach out to Him with broken hearts and minds, and every one of them will say with no exception that they find, Jesus never fails. Even in the days of old He brought His people through, and then He came to show His love and died for me and you, and he rose again to prove that every story had been true that Jesus Never Fails. Jesus never fails—Jesus never fails.
E. Our love often fails, but not His.
F. Eternal existence and value. Something in us eternal and changeless, God has set eternity in our hearts.
G. We are so prone to think about the changes in our lives. Let’s fix our eyes on something that does not change.
H. Love is perfect. Man cannot perfect God’s love. We are perfect in Him but imperfect in ourselves.
II. Love is Unconquerable.
I. The Bible tells us that all flesh is as grass, And all the glory of man as the flower of the grass, and its flower falls away.
J. Love will stand firm and unshaken. All other things are not perfect and temporary. End of verse 8.
K. God never changes, so His love implanted in Christian’s heart never changes either.
L. Christian mother and father who love child and want to see that child grow up in love and serve the Lord. Time goes by and the goal is not fulfilled. However, they continue to maintain that desire in their hearts. It is their unchanging goal.
M. Christ’s love in unconquerable.
N. Jesus agonizing in the garden, gazing upon Peter, praying for forgiveness for his murderers, hanging on a cross, torn by thorns, pierced by a spear, dying of thirst and sorrow, bearing in His heart the sin of the world; coming back from the grave.
O. They may take away a lot of things, but they will never be able to take away Christ’s love for us. It is unconquerable.
A. Man’s reaction, whether positive or negative, toward God’s love does not in the least affect that love.
B. Love may not change every sinner; but no man, no matter how evil, will be able to make God’s love collapse.
C. The question is will we love Him?
II. Love never gives up.
A. How do we respond when our love is met with evil?
B. Romans 8:37-39- For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
C. Most people fail to love to the end. They love expecting love and appreciation in return, and when it does not come, they stop. I am glad God doesn’t do that.
D. Human love often fails; Christ’s never.
E. The use of force produces immediate ends but it does not produce love. Love redeems where force fails. Love stands a chance.
F. At the center of human history is a cross. The cross is the correction of all false views about life, force, and punishment. There we have love at its highest and noblest, yet love crucified, love denied, love spurned and the persecutors went home rejoicing, thinking they had been victorious. Love glorious conquered. Love never gave up.
G. The cross could not overcome Christ’s love for sinners. Christ’s love overcomes many sinners. Same way for us.
H. Grieving heart, go on praying, hoping, believing; but above all go on loving to the uttermost, for this is what it is to be like Christ, whose love never fails. In this way known perhaps only to God, we will win out in the end. Whatever today is not well, by God’s power it will become well, though we cannot fully comprehend how this is so or how God will make it so.
Conclusion:
A. Why does love fail? Love does not fail; we fail. We fail in so many ways. This is why we need God.
B. WE all want people who will be our friends forever. Only one. Never leave us nor forsake us.
C. Do you love Jesus Christ?
D. Love can be refused. May our love not fail.
E. From the Rose- When the night has been too lonely and the road…
