COVENANT COMMUNITY CHURCH
PASTOR: TERRY VAUGHAN
AUGUST 25, 2002
KJV
SERMON TITLE: ROOTED AND GROUNDED IN LOVE
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” John 3:16
Ephesians 3:14-19 “For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named. That he would grant you , according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man. That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fullness of God.”
I want to preach to you on verse number 17: “That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love…” I want to preach to you on being rooted and grounded in love. I want you to know and understand that in the word of God…..God is a God of love. Christ loved us while we were yet sinners. He gave his life, his blood and his body on the Cross at Calvary. So we can rest assure this morning that God is the God of love and we need to be rooted and grounded in love in all that we go to do.
It seems like we’re living in a world where there’s a lot of hatred going on. There’s a lot of anger. But the Bible says that anger rests in the bosom of fools. I’m a firm believer that God is not the author of confusion. He’s the author of Eternal Salvation. I want you to remember that God is a God of love. I believe we are living in the last days.
In Matthew 24:12 “and because iniquity shall abound the love of many shall wax cold.” Sometimes we get to looking at all the bad things that are going on in this world and it can make our love grow cold. But we need to be rooted and grounded in love. If we want to act in our anger then we are acting like the devil. If we want to hate somebody, we can’t be a child of God.
2 Timothy 3:2 “For men shall be lovers of their own selves..” We’re living in a day and time when everybody wants to put themselves first. But I want to tell you what Jesus did. He came to give his life for us on the cross of Calvary. The Bible says he was made lower than the angels. For the suffering of death for he by the grace of God should taste death for every man. Christ didn’t come to be number one. He came to be the least. But men and women want to be number one. If you have the love of God in you, you’ll put everybody else before you. You’ll do unto others as you’d have them do unto you. Our churches and Christians today need some love. There’s nothing any better than to tell somebody that you love them and you’re praying for them.
2 Timothy 3:4 “…men will be lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God.” They’d rather have some sort of recreation on Sunday than gather together at God’s house. This may not be a pretty place this morning but God is here. God needs to be first and everything else needs to be last. A lot of people say they have the love of God. How do they know if you don’t show it to them? The Bible says not to just love in word or tongue but let us also love in deed and in truth. God loves us and wants us to express the love that he gives us to others. We need to possess his love and express his love.
Number one: We need to love Him. You’ll find in Matthew 22:37 “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.” If we love him, we ought to show it to somebody else. There’s a lot of people who say they love God and then they don’t act like it. That day I knelt down and accepted him into my heart…I fell in love with him and I’ve been in love with Him ever since. But people don’t love God like they used to. If they did, they’d love the Lord’s house. They’d love the Lord’s people and the Lost. We love him because he first loved us. I found out this in Proverbs 8:17 “I love them that love me.” You know what? The more you show your love to him, the more he’ll show his love to you. There’s a lot of people that have been saved by the Grace of God but they don’t any love toward the Lord. The Bible says that if you love the Lord you’ll keep his commandments. What is his second greatest commandment? Love thy neighbor as thyself. You can’t love God and hate everybody else around you. I also found in Psalms 145:20 “The Lord preserveth all them that love him.” He’ll watch out after you and keep a hedge about you. It excites me that God loves me. Why I’m just an old sinner boy. I don’t deserve his love but he loves me anyway. Sometimes this way may get rough but as long as we continue to love the Savior, we can make it.
Number two we need to love the Saints. There’s so many churches today that have split because of the anger and people not loving one another. It don’t matter what they do, you still have to love them. If you love the savior, you’ll love the saints. You get those people who say, “Preacher, they made me mad.” It’s okay to be mad. It’s okay to be angry. But the Bible says to be ye angry and sin not. Don’t you take your anger in the Spirit and let it come out in the flesh and become the will of the devil. Hebrews 13:1 says “Let brotherly love continue.” I’m not saying that you have to agree with everything they do. You’re going to have disagreements. But if we’re rooted and grounded as one, we should be able to come together as one and say, “Lord, what’s best for your church?” I don’t base my life on what’s best for me and my family. I base my life on what’s best for God.
John 13:35 “By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples if you have love one to another.” You see we’re all in the body of Christ and no one is above anybody else. Even the least of the members is just as valuable as the most. Christ puts us on the body as it pleases him. I want to be satisfied with what God has me to do.
1 John 4:21 “And this commandment have we from him, that he who loveth God love his brother also.” it goes on down to say, “how can you hate your brother whom you have seen and love God whom you have not seen.”
Number three: We need to love the sinners. People don’t have the desire to reach out to the lost anymore. You hear these statistics about people getting killed everyday. So many people die every second of the day in our life time. Somebody is dying right now as we speak. What we need to be concerned about is.. Do they know Christ? We can’t fall in love with what the sinners do and how they live their life but we can fall in love with their souls. People are dying and falling off into hell. Why? Because we’re not sharing the gospel with them. Because we don’t love them enough. Every body in the member of Christ is a minister. We are called to minister for Christ. You can go in your grocery store and lay a track down on the counter. There’s been many people saved because someone left a track. When someone picks it up, God’s Spirit starts working with them. Let me share the gospel with you in 9 words. CHRIST JESUS CAME INTO THE WORLD TO SAVE SINNERS.
Matthew 5:46 “If you love them which love you, what reward have you?” We can’t just love those that love us. We have to love those that don’t love us. The Bible says we have to love our enemies. Wouldn’t it be terrible if one day some man lifted his eyes from hell and said, “I didn’t know about this place. Why didn’t they tell me?” What if no one had witnessed to you? We need to share the word of God and let people know that Heaven and hell is real. Eternity is real.
Proverbs 10:12 “Hatred stirreth up strife but love covereth all sins.” We need to love our Savior. We need to love the Saints and we need to love sinners.
1 John 4:8 “He that loveth not, knoweth not God for God is love.” If we don’t know how to love it’s just like saying we don’t know God.
We’re going to be heading toward our homes or out to eat and we get in that rut of living our lifestyles. We do the same things every week. How often do we need to change that? We need to be rooted and grounded in love. We isolate ourselves and forget about those that are dying and going to hell. You purpose is not to get saved and wait on the Lord to call you home. Your purpose is to live his Salvation and share it with somebody. So when you leave today, stop off somewhere and tell someone about Jesus. Call someone and tell then you love them and that you’re praying for them.
May God Bless you
