ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE
Today is a big day. Today is the day that the huge class of 2 students from WCS will be graduating. It is exciting for them and their parents that they will finally get to taste a small portion of freedom. Next week will be a big week for our own Alan Townsend and 4 or 5 others from Route One youth that will finally finish their first major step in life. They will hopefully, depending on finals testing, be able to walk across the stage, and know that they are finally done.
All of the studying or cramming, the late night book reports, the last minute projects, are over. There are no more equations to solve, no more verbs to circle, no more nouns to underline. There is no longer a reason to know the atomic number of an element on the periodic table. And now when someone ask you, “If one train is leaving NY at noon and the other is leaving LA at 3 what time will they meet?” You can look at them and know that the right answer is WHO CARES!! This is an awesome time.
But what I want to say to you today is that no matter where you go in life the learning never stops. The education you received in school is critical and extremely important to achieve success in life, but the education we gain in the real world is absolutely priceless. And there is no book to teach you how to succeed. Besides one and that’s God’s word. But we’ll get to that in a minute.
Many years ago Robert Fulghum wrote “All I Really Need to Know I learned in Kindergarten.” It was his way of sharing all that we would need to live by in order to be happy and succeed in life. He says,
• Share everything.
• Play fair.
• Don’t hit people.
• Put things back where you found them.
• Clean up your own mess.
• Don’t take things that aren’t yours.
• Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody.
• Wash your hands before you eat.
• Flush. (I’ll say that again for all the wives.)
• Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.
• Live a balanced life--learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.
• Take a nap every afternoon.
• When you go out into the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands, and stick together.
• Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the Styrofoam cup: The roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that.
• Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the Styrofoam cup--they all die. So do we.
• And then remember the Dick-and-Jane books and the first word you learned--the biggest word of all--LOOK.
Today I want to teach all of you the most important lesson you need to know. Robert Fulghum give some great advice, but if you come to me and ask me, “Pastor Ryan, what do I need to be the most successful person possible in life?” I am going to look at you and say, “all you need is love.”
No I’m not talking about the Beatles song. And I am not talking about a love that we have for that fling, or high school boyfriend or girlfriend. The love I am talking about is the love that we can only get from God. An unconditional love. Learn God’s love, what it means, what it is, how it can be used in our lives and you will be successful in everything you do.
I can’t stand up here today and honestly say that I understand love. This is by far the most complicated word that there is. When we are growing up we think we understand what love is. I remember my first girlfriend. Her name was Chelsea West. We met on a beautiful day much like today. I had just sat down in my new desk in Mrs. Simpson’s first grade class at Hoover Elementary. Chelsea walked in with her brand new Malibu Barbie lunch pale and I was in love. I know what you were thinking. FIRST GRADE! I know its weird but some of us develop quicker than others. She was my first love. But I wasn’t ready for a commitment so our relationship didn’t last long. In reality she made me choose. It was GI Joe or her and I said see ya.
Seriously though we grow up thinking we are in love. I am sure at what time or another most of us were in some sort of relationship were we thought we really loved the person we were dating only to eventually come to a point where we learned that we really didn’t love them.
Love is complex. We spend our lives thinking we can grasp it, what it means, how it works but in reality we really have no idea. If we want to even begin to understand the word love you have to know God. God is love. Love in the world is always conditional. Its always based on fulfilling the needs of one person. If I am part of this world then I will love you if or until you hurt my feelings, you talk bad about me, you lie to me, you fail me in some way. I will love you if you are meeting my needs when I need them met.
I see this worldly, shallow kind of love in youth all the time. I see girls who are young and so eagerly seeking for a guy to show them love. And that guy does show them love in the beginning. He takes them on dates. He writes them sweet love poems, he buys them flowers. She gets emotionally wrapped up in their relationship and starts believing they are in love. Then she falls and has sex with him because he said if you love me you’ll do it. Once his needs were met he dumps her. Girls have come to me who have experienced this and the first thing, never fails, the first thing they always say to me is, “I really thought he loved me.” The world’s love takes advantage of us.
God’s love is totally opposite. God’s love to me is 4 things. God’s love is Accepting, Forgiving, Supporting, Freeing. If we learn what these 4 parts of love mean and how they work in our lives then I believe this is all you need to succeed in this life. Now God’s love is more than these 4 things and originally I had more than 4 but for time’s sake we will look just at these 4 today.
I John 4:7-21.
7My beloved friends, let us continue to love each other since love comes from God. Everyone who loves is born of God and experiences a relationship with God. 8The person who refuses to love doesn’t know the first thing about God, because God is love—so you can’t know him if you don’t love. 9This is how God showed his love for us: God sent his only Son into the world so we might live through him. 10This is the kind of love we are talking about—not that we once upon a time loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to clear away our sins and the damage they’ve done to our relationship with God.11My dear, dear friends, if God loved us like this, we certainly ought to love each other. 12No one has seen God, ever. But if we love one another, God dwells deeply within us, and his love becomes complete in us—perfect love!13This is how we know we’re living steadily and deeply in him, and he in us: He’s given us life from his life, from his very own Spirit. 14Also, we’ve seen for ourselves and continue to state openly that the Father sent his Son as Savior of the world. 15Everyone who confesses that Jesus is God’s Son participates continuously in an intimate relationship with God. 16We know it so well, we’ve embraced it heart and soul, this love that comes from God. God is love. When we take up permanent residence in a life of love, we live in God and God lives in us. 17This way, love has the run of the house, becomes at home and mature in us, so that we’re free of worry on Judgment Day—our standing in the world is identical with Christ’s. 18There is no room in love for fear. Well-formed love banishes fear. Since fear is crippling, a fearful life—fear of death, fear of judgment—is one not yet fully formed in love.19We, though, are going to love—love and be loved. First we were loved, now we love. He loved us first.20If anyone boasts, “I love God,” and goes right on hating his brother or sister, thinking nothing of it, he is a liar. If he won’t love the person he can see, how can he love the God he can’t see? 21The command we have from Christ is blunt: Loving God includes loving people. You’ve got to love both.
This is an awesome chapter on love. It states clearly that if you love or understand love then you must know God because God is love. We all have an understanding of the world’s love. God’s love is on a totally different level. God’s love is not about meeting my needs first as it is loving everyone around us more than we love ourselves. It’s a sacrificial love.
To understand God’s love you must understand that God’s love is first…
I. Accepting
When I read the stories of Christ ministry I sometimes laugh to myself when I think of the type of people that are hated during his time. People hated Matthew because he was a tax collector, people ignored the beggers, and the diseased had to yell unclean when they walked through town. I laugh because there is nothing new under the sun. I look at who is hated today. Tax collectors are still very much hated. We look down at the beggers or less fortunate as bums, or people that cost us tax money.
We see homosexuals as the diseased that could never be allowed to step foot in the church. If there is someone that is seen as different than us in any way than they are always looked upon as the outcast.
Christ brought a whole new way of thinking to us. Christ purposefully spent time with the people that were hated the most. He wanted to show us that to understand God’s love we must love everyone. This scripture in I John says in verse 7 to “love each other”, and again in verse 12 it says, “love one another.” It doesn’t say only love the healthy. It doesn’t say we should only love those who live in an 10 mile radius of Warrenton, MO, who stand no shorter than 5 ft tall, who are white, make at least 25,000 a year drive a sedan and work 50 hours a week. Christ doesn’t say I will love you if you meet my needs or if you meet some standard that is set by a culture. Christ says I will love you no matter what.
God wants us to accept everyone no matter what. No matter their past or present, no matter their skin color, no matter their political beliefs, no matter their occupation, no matter their spiritual beliefs, or their monthly income, or their age, or the way they raise their children. God says I will love and accept you exactly the way you are. So, if you want to succeed in love then you have to learn to accept everyone no matter what.
Turn over to Matthew chapter 9:9-12. Here you have a perfect example of Christ being challenged for accepting people for who they are.
“9As Jesus went on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector’s booth. "Follow me," he told him, and Matthew got up and followed him. 10While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and "sinners" came and ate with him and his disciples. 11When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, "Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and ’sinners’?" 12On hearing this, Jesus said, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.”
This makes me laugh. Here you have the “holy men” the “spiritual leaders” scratching their heads asking why would Jesus spend time with sinners? I picture them with that expression of someone in disbelief that is like, “how dare he, or how could he?” But the bible says, “Christ was shaken by their great holiness and he studdered the words it’s the sick that need a doctor not the healthy.” No it doesn’t say that. I am sure Christ look them straight in the eye and said it’s the sick that need God. It’s the sinners. It’s the poor, the lost those that are looked down upon for whatever reason. God accepts everyone, and anyone who thinks otherwise is the one that is truly lost.
As a church we are not immune. In fact many times if we are not careful we can be the pharicees. We can be the ones that without thinking can turn church into a club where only people meeting certain standards can be apart of it. When I watch these churches on tv I sometimes catch myself trying to watch the audience more than listening to the preacher. I look around and wonder where are the beggers, where are the drug addicts, where are the homosexuals. Now I know that I can’t always tell someone fits a certain description based merely on their looks. But I also know that a begger wouldn’t be wearing a nice 3 piece suit to church.
Whatever church you go to today there is a standard. People are more accepting of a certain type of people than others. Many might say you don’t believe that. But let me ask you this, if a homeless person walked into church right now. They come in and they sit next to you. Maybe they are stinking to high heaven, they have the smell of alcohol on their breath how would you react. Be honest. How would would really react. Would you jump up to say hi to them welcome them to church and be excited they are here then take them out to lunch afterwards despite their outward appearance. Or would you move from your seat, make a rude comment to your spouse, tell your kids to stay away?
I know what Christ would do. He would do the former. He would accept them for who they are not for what they look like.
ILL( Begger in church)
If we want to understand God’s love we must first understand what it means to accept without question. I have heard a lot of people in my life complain about all of the government programs that cost us tax money such as welfare, Medicaid, medicare, Food stamps etc… They complain that people that are on those programs are just taking advantage of the system. That many on welfare are just bums who keep having kids so they don’t have to work and they can get more money.
Well I personally believe that if the church today was doing the work that God intended for us to do as a church there would be no need for those programs. The government wouldn’t have to come up with these tax costing ideas because God’s people would be doing their jobs by taking care of the less fortunate. Instead and unfortunately what I see is many churches that are more worried about building projects than taking care of its people.
God says if you want to understand my love, accept and love everyone. Forget about yourself and accept the person that no one else will.
Love is not only accepting but secondly…
II. Love is Forgiving
I John 4:9-11 “9This is how God showed his love for us: God sent his only Son into the world so we might live through him. 10This is the kind of love we are talking about—not that we once upon a time loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to clear away our sins and the damage they’ve done to our relationship with God.11My dear, dear friends, if God loved us like this, we certainly ought to love each other”.
This is an area where I really have a hard time understanding. As I said earlier God’s love is a sacrificial love. It requires us to put others before ourselves. God himself did this by lowering himself below His own creation. He walked amongst us. He ate with us. He slept in the same room as us. He struggled with us. He suffered by our own hands. Whether we were there or not we all had a part in his death because of the sin in us. Yet through all of that God forgave us.
Christ death and level of forgiveness really came to light to me when I watched The Passion of the Christ. Of course many of us saw it and I hope it spoke to you. We can read about Christ death how brutal it was, but when I actually saw what it really was like or a pretty close interpretation it was incredibly moving. I was finally able to understand his love for us. As he is suffering on the cross he asked God to forgive those that were killing him. That is amazing to me.
To be successful in life we have to learn to forgive just as Christ forgave us. And we as Christians should definitely know or be practicing how to forgive just as Christ forgave us.
Flip over to Matthew 18 if you would. Let’s look at verses 21-35.
21Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, "Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times?" 22Jesus answered, "I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.[a] 23"Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. 24As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand talents[b] was brought to him. 25Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt. 26"The servant fell on his knees before him. ’Be patient with me,’ he begged, ’and I will pay back everything.’ 27The servant’s master took pity on him, canceled the debt and let him go. 28"But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii.[c] He grabbed him and began to choke him. ’Pay back what you owe me!’ he demanded. 29"His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, ’Be patient with me, and I will pay you back.’ 30"But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. 31When the other servants saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed and went and told their master everything that had happened. 32"Then the master called the servant in. ’You wicked servant,’ he said, ’I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. 33Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’ 34In anger his master turned him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed. 35"This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart."
I have made reference to this scripture in a previous sermon where I talked about Peter being cocky asking Christ how many times he should forgive. If you remember it was Jewish custom that the most someone should forgive someone is 3 times max. So Peter thought he would try and show off by saying that he would forgive 7 times. Way more than needed. But Christ replies not seven times but you should never stop forgiving no matter how many times it takes. The parable that Christ tells is a great reminder to us and a great lesson, and warning about forgiveness.
Here we have a man who owes someone millions of dollars. He seeks forgiveness. The man that is owed the money decides to show mercy and cancel his debt. The man that had his debt canceled had to just be pumped. Can you imagine going to the bank and the bank tells you we have decided to forgive your debts. We know that you can’t pay them right now so we have canceled them. Your house, your car, your electronics, boat, all those things are now yours without worry of payment. Man I would be pumped. But what if then we go into Wal-Mart and we see someone that borrowed $10 last week so they could eat at McDonalds. We go to them and say man I need that money. They say well I don’t have it right now. Can I get it to you tomorrow. But you refuse. You get angry with them and you tell them how they are a liar and a thief and you tell others about how they stole from you. You hold a grudge.
God says if you want to be successful all you need is love. And if you want to love you have to learn to forgive just as Christ forgave us. I see this happen all the time. Maybe not with money but I see people who are supposed to be Christians hang onto things, or grudges all because they just aren’t willing to really learn what it means to forgive. Everyone in here has sinned. Everyone in here including myself, and Pastor Gary we all deserve Hell. In this Parable God is the King that forgave. We are the ones that have been forgiven. He sent his son to die on the cross so that we could be forgiven. He has canceled the debt that we could not pay back.
But then as we live out our daily live we run into people who hurt us. Who say things that hurt our feelings. Who go behind our back. Who steal from us. Maybe your kids don’t get along with someone else’s kids so parents don’t like each other whatever… There might be someone who just for some reason or another just annoys you as soon as they walk into a room.
For whatever reason we don’t like someone or are mad at someone when we don’t forgive them we again represent the man who was forgiven but won’t forgive. This man owed millions but demanded his ten dollars. I can promise you the debt Christ forgave us of is worth millions times more than that $10 grudge you are holding against someone in your life.
Christ says that this man was called wicked and he was punished. He was put into a prison until he could pay back his debt. Which would be never.
Have you learned to forgive like Christ. Christ died to forgive us. Christ says to be forgiven but to not forgive is wicked.
All you need is love. Love is accepting, love is forgiving, and third love is…
III. Love is Supporting
I’ll be the first to admit that I watch entirely too much television. And what I see entirely too much on tv is people spending time tearing each other down. When I was a kid I used to spend my Friday nights watching Nick at Night. I guarantee I have seen every episode of Dick Van Dike, Mr. Ed., Green Acres, Dobey Gillis, Patty Duke, and Mary Tyler Moore. I loved those shows. They were great shows that always made me laugh. But the great thing about them is that they were so clean. They didn’t have to be crude in order to make people laugh.
When I watch a comedy sitcom today all the humor is geared about either sex or tearing someone down for something they did or said. There is no encouraging or supporting of the characters. We now live in a time where media is constantly bombarding us with negative humor. And in turn it effects our life in many ways.
If you pay attention it is really amazing how people will tear someone down just to get a laugh. Working with teens I see it everyday. I see kids that jokingly tell each other they are stupid, or to shut up, say you’re an idiot. Negative comments that don’t support or encourage but simply tear down just for a laugh.
If you want to be successful in life then you have to love just as God loves us. And if you want to love then you have to learn to support and encourage those around you. We all need encouraging. We all need support. We need people to come along beside us to keep us going. We cannot do this god thing on our own. If we try we will fail. We need the Lord to help us and we need Christian brothers and sisters encouraging us and supporting us in our walks thorugh the challenges, through the highs and lows. This means that we have to be different than the world.
We have to be willing to not laugh at the negative comments and be willing to lift up those that no one else will. Paul was that kind of encourager. In his letters to the different churches he always began with encouraging words of support and praise.
To the Romans he starts his letter in Romans 1:8, “First I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you, because your faith is being reported all over the world. God, whom I serve with my whole heart in preaching the gospel of his Son, is my witness how constantly I remember you in my prayers at all times…I long to see you so that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to make you strong—that is, that you and I may be mutually encouraged by each other’s faith.”
To the Corinthians he wrote in I Corinthians 1:4 he says, “ I always thank my God for you because of his grace given you in Christ Jesus. For in him you have been enriched in every way—in all your speaking and in all your knowledge—because our testimony about Christ was confirmed in you. Therefore you do not lack any spiritual gift as you eagerly wait for our Lord Jesus Christ to be revealed.”
To the Philippians he wrote, “I thank my God every time I remember you. In all my prayers for all of you. I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now…”
One more, to the Colossians he wrote, “We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you because we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love you have for all the saints…All over the world this gospel is bearing fruit and growing, just as it has been doing among you since the day your heard it and understood God’s grace in all its truth.”
Paul was an encourager. He was a supporter. He lifted up his fellow believers. Even while he was in chains in a prison he was writing letters to encourage and support the work being done by Christians. He sets the example for us. Did Paul open all his letters with encouragement. No not always. Pauls gift was to challenge believers to be different than the world. He helped them be accountable.
Showing support or encouragement to someone does not always mean you are going to put your arm around them and tell them great job. Showing our support to someone in love means that we need to approach believers when they are wrong as well. We have to keep each other accountable so that none of us will fall into Satan’s temptation of becoming a well intentioned dragon. A well intentioned dragon is someone that believes they know the best interest of the church. They believe that they are right and their life is perfectly fine when it comes to their walk with Christ, but in reality they are a person who is doing more harm than good by the things they say or how they treat people who don’t agree with how things should be done.
Jesus himself says in Matthew 18 that we need to go to the people that are not living right, that are struggling with their walk, that are becoming one of these well intentioned dragons and we need to help them get right with God.
“If your brother sins against you, go and show him his fault, just between the two of you. If he listens to you, you have won your brother over. But if he will not listen, taken one or two others along, so that every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church; treat him as you would a pagan or tax collector.”
No where does this passage say, “If your brother has sinned against you go and tell 13 other people about how they hurt you.” It doesn’t say, “Do what it takes to hurt that person back, or to divide the church.” It doesn’t say, “If someone hurts you go run to the pastor to tell or if the pastor hurt you go run to a board member.” That way is not supporting or encouraging. Acting that way only allows Satan to get his foot into the door.
Christ says if someone hurts you , go right back to that person no one else and talk to them. Straighten it out. Pray together, mend the wound together. If they won’t listen inform 2 or three more trusted people about the situations and approach them again. If they won’t listen bring it to a larger number, to the church if they still won’t listen then they need to be asked to leave. Man asked to leave the church. That’s pretty harsh. Well its Christ words, not Ryan’s.
If we don’t support and encourage one another this is an example of what might happen. Because people aren’t willing to go straight to the person that hurt them and tell them, then what happens is they tell someone else and that person gets mad then the situation and your feelings and emotions have time to fester and simmer and eventually a church has split all because of little things that happened over a long period of time. We have to encourage each other, and support one another not only with positive words but also with words of accountability.
All you need in to be successful in all you do in life is love. And if you want to love then you have to accept, forgive, and support. Love is all these things. Finally, I will end with this. Love is not only accepting, forgiving, and supporting. Love is also…
IV. Love is Freeing
I John 4:16-18 “God is love. When we take up permanent residence in a life of love, we live in God and God lives in us. 17This way, love has the run of the house, becomes at home and mature in us, so that we’re free of worry on Judgment Day—our standing in the world is identical with Christ’s. 18There is no room in love for fear. Well-formed love banishes fear. Since fear is crippling, a fearful life—fear of death, fear of judgment—is one not yet fully formed in love.”
When we love just as Christ loves us it is freeing. It is freeing to know that there is an awesome God in this world that has loved us so much that he has freed us from out guilt. He has freed us from our deserved punishment. He has accepted us for who we are but is never satisfied with leaving us there, forgave us for all we’ve done, supported and encouraged us through all our lives. Good and bad times. And He has freed us from not only ourselves but also of fear.
The scripture says when we take up permanent residence in a life of real love. Not the world’s idea of love but of God’s then God lives in us. And we can be free of fear. Fear has no place in our lives.
We don’t have to fear man and what they might do. Psalm 56:11 says, “In God I trust; I will not be afraid. What can man do to me?” And Hebrews 13:6 says, “The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid. What can man do to me?”
We are not only freed of our fear of man but also of Death. Not just a physical death but of a spiritual death. Christ has freed us from eternal death. We can rejoice and praise God for freeing us. And Christ has free of a fear of Judgement. I John says when love has taken us over, taken over our house. We can be free of worry on Judgement Day. The lord will tell us well done my good and faithful servant. Christ love has set us free and with his love and strength we can lead others to experience this love.
If you want to be the most successful person in life you can be, all you need is love. And if you want love you need to learn to accept people for who they are, forgive those that have hurt you, support believers in their walks and learn that you are truly free as long as you are walking obediently with God. But remember to learn God’s love you’ve got to love those that nobody else will. When we learn this. When we learn to love like God, then we can know that we are truly successful.
