READING 1:
Eph 4:30—5:2
Brothers and sisters:
Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God,
with which you were sealed for the day of redemption.
All bitterness, fury, anger, shouting, and reviling
must be removed from you, along with all malice.
And be kind to one another, compassionate,
forgiving one another as God has forgiven you in Christ.
So be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love,
as Christ loved us and handed himself over for us
as a sacrificial offering to God for a fragrant aroma.
SERMON:
This week I would like to explore the topic of love. I have put much
thought into this over the years and have found that there is a great
difference in what the Bible has to say about love and what the secular
world has to say about love. As I’ve struggled through these differences
in my mind,
I have come to the conclusion that:
a) the secular world has absolutely no idea what love is and
b) the GREAT majority of people (including Christians) have been
brainwashed by the culture and the media to believe love to be something
that it is not.
This should not come as a surprise though; God is the author of LOVE and
those who do not know God cannot know what REAL love is. So what is love?
Well, before you can understand what love IS, you must first understand
what love IS NOT.
Point #1
The two most popular phrases, in my opinion, that has brainwashed the
culture are “falling in love” and “making love”. I always have a problem
with these two phrases whenever I hear them because they are completely
man-made concepts that will not be found in the Bible and bear no truth.
Man has designed phrases like these in order to try and explain what he
does not understand.
QUESTION: So when you “fell in love” what exactly happened? You tripped
and fell and all of the sudden, without warning, some mystical force
called “love” took over you? AND how exactly do you MAKE love?
Let's look at this:
Does love = SEX? If God is Love (1 John 4:8)...then God is Sex?
OR
God is a mystical force that creates an emotional response between two
people?
I DON’T THINK SO!
Point #2
I am bothered by how the world has tried to degrade love to nothing more
than a feeling or an emotion. We see this all the time in music lyrics,
movies, etc. and it makes me sick. Now I’m not denying the reality of the
emotion people call “love”. But that emotion IS NOT the essence of love.
The feeling we get inside when we say we “love” someone should more
correctly be called “infatuation”, “a deep longing for”, “a deep concern
for”, “passionate about”, etc. These types of feelings are usually felt
when you are very close to someone emotionally or have an emotional
connection with another. These feelings are very natural but are nothing
more than a physiological reaction in the brain. When you think of that
particular someone, those thoughts cause a chemical reaction in the brain,
which creates an emotion. Our thoughts control our emotions, therefore;
emotions are subjective and cannot always be trusted.
So is love nothing more than an emotional response to a thought?
NO!
(Let’s also factor in that the English language has much to do with this
misconception because of the lack of words available, unlike Greek and
Hebrew)
In Closing...
So what is love? Love is an action. Love is a choice.
Love is self-sacrifice.
How do you walk in love as the verse says?
ANSWER: “Imitate” God.
What actions are we imitating? Giving of ourselves to one another in
service, being kind, being tenderhearted, by forgiving each other, by
being patient with each other, by not envying, by not boasting, by not
rejoicing in another person’s failures, by showing compassion. Anyone can
say, “I love you.” But those words have no substance if not shown by
their actions. Bitterness, fury, anger, shouting, and reviling are the
opposite of love and spring forth from our sinful nature, not from the
new nature we have been given in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Remember, Jesus (God) will NEVER ask you to do something that He hasn’t
already done first.
Jesus told us...
“ This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.
Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his
friends. You are My friends if you do whatever I command.”
(John 15:12)
God Bless you and your families this week.
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