Loving In The Fourth Dimension
I John 4:7-12
A man passed by a cage at the zoo and noticed that in the cage was both a large lion and an active monkey.
He saw a zoo worker nearby and asked, ‘How does that work having both a lion and a monkey in the same cage?
It works ok for the most part. Do they ever not get along?
Every once in a while What happens then? We just get a new monkey.
That is the answer you find in many churches….in relationship Christians find themselves in…..when the church is not the loving environment that it should be we often just get a new monkey(not talking about pastor’s here)
Dear friends, let us love one another, because love is from God, and everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. (8) The one who does not love does not know God, because God is love.
(9) God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent His only Son into the world so that we might live through Him. (10) Love consists in this; not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
(11) Dear friends, if God so loved us in this way, we also must love one another. (12) No one has ever seen God. If we love one another, God remains in us and His love is perfected in us.
PRAYER
1. We might ask ourselves the question as we consider how difficult it is to really love as God has loved us. The world is filled with many images of love which are not accurate.
Psychologists tell us that the excitement of being in love increases your heart rate so that your face glows, your lips look more red, and those circles under your eyes actually become less noticeable!
Heightened emotions of love cause your pupils to dilate, so that your eyes look brighter and clearer. Love is a desirable thing.
The problem is the confusion of the world’s thoughts of love.
Loving what appeals to us, what draws love out of us. What is easy to love. God’s love is very different. Fourth Dimension love!
2. We have talked from time to time about how the Greek has at least four different words that are translated by our one word ’Love’ which allows us to fool ourselves about the true nature of our love.
a. Eros ’fleshly love’ b. Phileo ’friendship love’
c. Storge ’family love’ d. Agape ’sacrificial love’
1) Most of what the world calls love is based upon the most shallow definition of love(eros) ’what appeals to my basest self’.
I might say I love my wife and children and I love
strawberry pie. I agape one and eros the other.
It would make life much easier if we spoke regarding love in the Greek terms.
If a young man parked a car and leaned over to the young lady next to him and said ’I eros you baby’. It would say exactly what was on his heart.
Most marriages fail because they can’t grow into the fourth dimension of love.
They most all have eros, some deepen to friendship
(JIMMY STEWART in Shenendoa ‘I know you love her but do you like her’?),
some even grow into family devotion but the key to a successful, long lasting, satisfying marriage is sacrificial love.
’Honey, I agape you’. ’will put you first, sacrifice my own interests, do what is best for you’.
2) Interesting that this word was almost never used in classical Greek but developed by Jesus Christ and NT writers.
It is not a word the world understands and is only
possible as God works through our lives.
LOVE IS PROVIDED THROUGH GOD (7 )Dear friends, let us love one another, because love is from God, and everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. (8) The one who does not love does not know God, because God is love.
1. God is the source of this kind of love: love(agape) is from God…. God is love. If we are truly united to God then we will share what is true of His nature, which is sacrificial love.
church in Kansas…….. piano on the eastern side of the sanctuary….
After several months of debate.. the western party decided to take matters into it’s own hands.
So late one Saturday night,……. moved the piano…next morning …. eastern understandably upset, ..next week .. the piano back.
Each week after that the piano was moved several times on Saturday and early Sunday morning.
Eventually.. the church split…. to this day…. refuse to even speak
Not a demonstration to the world of the nature of God.
2. GOD IS LOVE: Love is possible, no matter how difficult it might seem, because God loves through us.
It is His nature which places this capacity in us.
Rom 5:5 God’s love has been poured out(not sprinkled) in our hearts through the Holy Spirit Who was given to us.
1) V:8 doesn’t say God loves but God is love.
It is not one of His many activities but it is the
essence of all He does.
When He teaches us, disciplines us it is always done out of love.
Max Lucado writes, "If God had a refrigerator, your picture would be on it.
If He had a wallet, your photo would be in it.
He sends you flowers every spring and a sunrise every morning.
Whenever you want to talk, he’ll listen.
He can live anywhere in the universe, and he chose your heart... Face it, friend. He’s crazy about you."
LOVE IS PROVIDED THRU GOD
LOVE IS PROVEN THROUGH JESUS (9) God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent His only Son into the world so that we might live through Him.
(10) Love consists in this: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
During the 17th century, Oliver Cromwell ruled England and had sentenced a soldier to be shot for certain crimes. The execution was to take place at the ringing of the evening bell.
That evening the bell did not sound. A young woman was brought before Cromwell with bruised and bleeding hands.
She had climbed into the belfry and clung to the great clapper to prevent it from striking.
It effected Cromwell’s heart so much that he said to her, ’He shall not die but shall live because of your sacrifice. The bell shall not ring tonight’.
Because of what Jesus did Christians shall not face judgment on that day.
This kind of love is not heard but seen.(woman brought forth…See one day the scars as in room with disciples…see my..)
My words may say ’I love you’ but my life demonstrates it to be a fact.
Man named Alvin Straight was 73 yrs old and lived in Laurens, Iowa. His 80 yr old brother who lived several hundred miles away suffered a stroke.
Alvin could not drive a car because of his bad eyesight and he was deathly afraid of planes, trains and buses.
In 1994 because of his great love for his brother, Alvin climbed aboard his 1966 John Deere tractor lawn mower and drove from Laurens, Iowa to Blue River, Wisconsin.
1. God manifesting/revealing His love means that it ’came out into the open, was made public’.
It is the opposite of to ’hide or make secret’.
No one can look at the cross and deny God’s love for
them.
a. The death of Jesus was not an accident but an appointment. He did not die a weak martyr but a mighty conquerer. He died that ’we might live’.
That is the nature of this fourth dimension love: it
does what it does because of the need of the one loved.
b. A PROPITIATION is something that meets God’s just demands. Jesus was an acceptable sacrifice which allows God to forgive sinners and still be consistent with His holy nature.
When you attend the average funeral. Much of what is said is in regard to the life of the individual who has died.
We don’t talk much of that actual death itself. We usually try to forget the instant of death because of the sadness it brings us.
When Jesus instituted the Lord Supper He commanded us to ’remember’ His death.
His death is the world’s only hope and the greatest proof of God’s love.
The greatest icon for love is not the valentine heart that we see so often on February 14th but the cross upon which the life of Jesus was spent for us.
2. Verse 10: Love consists in this: not that we loved God but that God loved us.
a. We may try to make a big deal of the fact that we love God but John says that the proof of love is that God loves us.
1) My loving God is not a demonstration of Agape love because God is so loveable.
The more you know Him and know about Him the
easier He is to love.
But that God could look at my life and know every
weakness, sin, and secret and still love me is amazing.
That He could love me when I was an enemy and
hostile to Him is beyond comprehension.
Ps 139 Thou art intimately aquainted with all my ways. Behold O Lord, Thou dost know it all…such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is too high, I cannot attain to it
2) We have trouble loving someone who has done only one harmful thing against us.
God knows everything about you and me..’infinite
knowledge of us…..yet His love for us still stands.
(LOVE IS PROVIDED THRU GOD - PROVEN THRU JESUS)
LOVE IS PERFECTED THROUGH US (11) Dear friends, if God loved us in this way, we also must love one another. (12) No one has ever seen God. If we love one another, God remains in us and His love is perfected in us.
1. What God did in sending Jesus to die was also meant to be an example of how we should act toward others. What are three arguments of why we should do this?
a. It is obedience to God’s Command: we also must love one another
1) God’s example is not just to inspire us but to instruct us how to live our own lives. It is part of who we are as God’s people.
2) Paul said in Rom 13:8 Owe no man anything, but to love one another. Rom 1:14 I am a debtor to every man. John says it is something we MUST do.
b. It is an opportunity for God’s Witness: no one has seen God
1) An amazing truth John points out. Where can a lost world see the love of God? WHERE IS HIS BODY?
World of nature? Discovery channel: Coyote’s chase, kill and tear limb from limb a little rabbit? GOD IS LOVE!
Aftermath of a tornado’s effect on a community? God is love!
Coiled rattlesnake in your path? God is truly love, I can see it in that snake.
World of people? Watch the nightly news or read the daily newspaper? Boy it is sure obvious that God is love!
World of Religion? Pagan religions who tremble and bow down to idols of an angry god to appease it’s wrath?
Throw their babies in the rivers to crocodiles as a sacrifice? God is love?
Muslums: Terroristic plots and holy wars?
2) John states that God showed the world His love in sending His Son to die for us but God’s love is seen today in only one place: The life of a Christian and in His Body the church.
It is the only place where Agape, sacrificial, God’s kind of
love can be on display.
c. We perfect God’s Love: His love is perfected in us
1) God’s love is made complete when it is demonstrated in our lives. Goes full circle – completes the circuit
The nature of Agape love is in giving to others.
When His love is received by us and lived through us and blessing the lives of others it is then that it has fulfilled it’s purpose.
Teddy Stallard was an unattractive and unmotivated fifth grade boy.
His teacher, Mrs. Thompson found him difficult to like due to his deadpan, expressionless, unfocused stare.
She had to admit that down deep inside she took pleasure in marking his papers with red ink and making an F with a special flair.
As a teacher she had access to his records and sought to know more about him.
1st Grade: Teddy shows promise with his work and attitude but has a poor home situation.
2cnd Grade: Teddy could do better. Mother is seriously ill and he receives little help at home.
3rd Grade: Teddy is a good boy but too serious. Slow learner. His mother died this year.
4th Grade: Teddy is very slow but well behaved. Father shows no interest.
At Christmas the children in Mrs. Thompson’s class brought her presents in pretty wrappings. When she got to Teddy’s it was crudely wrapped in brown paper and loosely held together with tape. She opened it to find a bracelet with stones missing and a bottle of cheap perfume.
Some of the children snickered but trying to be nice she slipped on the bracelet and even some perfume saying, ’Doesn’t it smell lovely?’
When school was over Teddy lingered behind and came to her desk,
’Miss Thompson, you smell just like my mother, and her bracelet looks real pretty on you too. I’m glad you liked my presents’.
That night she went home and asked God to forgive her for how she had treated that little boy.
Next day, her class welcomed a new teacher.
Miss Thompson was no longer just a teacher but an agent of God.
She committed herself to loving her children and especially Teddy Stallard.
Teddy began to show dramatic improvement and by the end of the year had caught up with most of the other students.
She did not hear from Teddy for a long time until one day she received a note:
’Dear Miss Thompson. I wanted you to know that I will be graduating second in my high school class’ Love Teddy Stallard.
Four years later:
’Dear Miss Thompson: They just told me I would be graduating first in my class. I wanted you to be the first to know. The university has not been easy but I liked it. Love, Teddy Stallard.
Finally:
Dear Miss Thompson: As of today I am Theodore Stallard, MD. How about that? I wanted you to be the first to know. I am getting married next month. I want you to come and sit where my mother would have sat if she were alive. You are my only family. Dad died last year. Love, Teddy Stallard.
She went to the wedding and in Teddy’s eyes she had earned the right to sit in a special place because as an agent of God’s love she had done something for Teddy that he could never forget. She had exercised the power of God’s love.
God’s love had been perfected, made complete through her life as He desires to do that same through your life and mine.
Loving as God love will provide you a special place in the life of others. A place that only God can earn by loving through your life. Unto the least of these…
1 Pet 4:8 Above all(more important than anything else we do) keep fervent in your love for one another
