Love Is The Way
Good evening . First I want to tell you how glad I am to have this opportunity to speak to you tonight. I thank God that we live in a country were we are free to worship our god without the fear of persecution from our goverment. Next I want to tell you how glad I am that Jesus went to the cross on Calvery and gave us the chance to receive forgiveness for our sins and the hope for eternal life.
Vacation Bible school is coming up and most of you will be participating in some way. The theme is Love Is The Way. There has probable been more wrote about love through the years than anything else. The majority of songs and poems that are wrote deal with love. Through the years more movies have been made dealing with love than anything except maybe Rocky. Little children start writing love notes in the second or third grade. Everybody seems to understand that love is a very important thing.
The bible is the ultimate love story. Within the bible there are many isolated love stories, like Ruth and Boas, David and Bathsheba , Jacob and Rachel , Abraham and Sarah , and many others. The recurring theme of the bible as a whole is Gods love for his people. By Gods love his people have been disciplined , guided and instructed , and there has always been a way for Gods people to receive forgiveness for sins and share in Gods love.
Love is the way, nothing bad can ever come out of true love. Love causes us to do things that nothing else would. Its because of love that a mother will walk the floors at night with a crying baby. Its because of love that a man will leave his parents and take a bride. Now that's biblical not just something I thought up. Love will cause you to put up with each others bad days. Love will cause a parent to keep disciplining Jr. over and over for the same offense till he stops doing it. Love is the best of motivators and God knew that and wants us to do that.
I want to show you some of the things that the bible says about love. ( Proverbs 17:17 A friend loveth at all times , a brother is born for adversity.) Now think about that for a minute. A friend loveth at all times not just good times but also in bad times . A brother is born for adversity. To me this is saying that no matter how bad a situation gets a real friend will still be there for you. I,m reminded of a little saying that I heard somewhere that goes something like this A friend in time of need is a friend in deed.
Romans 13:7&8 Render therefore to all their dues: tribute to who tribute is due; custom to who custom is due, fear to whom fear , honor to whom honor. Owe no man any thing, but to love one another : for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law.) Now how much thought have you given to these verse s? Let see first we are to pay our debts. Next is to love one another. Now even if you love one another you are still required to owe love to one another . Now lets jump down to verse 10 ( Love worketh no ill to his neighbor: Therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.) Simply put this means that if we love we will not do any wrong against anyone. Remember the story of the good Samaritan taught us that anyone we come into contact with is our neighbor.
Now I want to go to First Corinthians chapter 13 verse 4 -13( Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, 5 Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; 6 Rejoiceth not in inequity, but rejoices in the truth; 7 Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things. 8 Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. 9 For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. 10 But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away. 11 When I was a child, I thought like a child, understood like a child : But when I became a man , I put away childish things. For now we see through a face: now I know in part ; but then shall I know even as also I am known. 13 And now abideth faith, hope , charity, these three ; but the greatest of these is charity.
Now most of us think of charity in the sense of giving to the needy and that is one meaning of the word charity but in this passage charity is being used as another word for love Look at verse 3 ( And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor , and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.) Now the apostle Paul was describing worldly meanings for charity and saying if you don't do these things out of love it profiteth you nothing. As for verses 4-8 these are some examples of the manifestations that love can take in a Christian and also some of the behaviors that a person with love in there heart will not display. Verse 13 states that of three characteristics of a Christian charity or love is the most important.
The love that God showed for all people when he sent Jesus to die on the cross is the single greatest act of love in the history of the world. Our God is a God of love. Our God is the total embodiment of love . In Jesus we all had a example of love at its most perfect. Jesus was patient, kind , and non judgmental. He was forgiving and slow to anger. Jesus never returned evil for evil, nor did he ever work to harm any of his enemies. Throughout Jesus ministry he worked to teach both friend and foe of a more perfect way. In John 15 verse 13 Christ said ( Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.) Now when Jesus said this he knew that his time on this earth was to end soon. Jesus also knew that he was going to make this ultimate show of love . Jesus went to the cross for both the godly and also for the ungodly.
In Romans 5:6-8 Paul says (For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. 7 For scarcely for a righteous man will one die ; yet preadventure for a good man some would even dare to die. 8 But God commandeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.)
Now this is what all this means to me. In the history of man there have been stories of people laying down there life to save the live of a loved one or friend. I think of the war story about the private that jumped on top of the hand grenade to save his buddies. There have also been instances of people giving there lives to save the lives of total strangers. Here I think of a sinking ship and the cry women and children first. Or maybe the man who gave his life to shove a child out of the path of a truck in Louisville last year. But I have never heard of anyone dying to save the life of there enemies. That is exactly what Jesus did when he went to the cross. He died on the cross for both those who believed and also those that had yet to believe. One of his former enemies went on to become a apostle. Now the apostle Paul was a persecutor of the early church after Christ died and yet he was able to receive forgiveness because of Gods love. We were not even born yet. And still the bible teaches that Jesus died for us too.
Love is the way. As Christians we are suppose to have brotherly love for each other. As we grow we should work to perfect our love. Each time we tell someone about Jesus we are planting a seed of gods love. Sometimes we get to watch that seed grow and as anyone who has ever helped led someone to Christ knows there is no greater feeling than to see a new brother or sister baptized into Christ.
I was talking with my sister the other day and we both are amazed at the number of people that go to the Church that grew up in. We lived on Octavia hollow and thought it was our personal job to get everybody on the hollow to go to the Sharondale Church of Christ. Now for the most part we had our successes at that time with kids our own age. But today if you go to Sharondale you will not only find a lot of those same kids that we invited to church way back then but you will also find a lot of there parents and aunts and uncles also. It just amazes me at what one seed can do.
Now with VBS approaching I want to encourage all of you to get that little guy that lives down the street to come with you. You might never see that seed of love grow into a Christian but as he or she goes through live something may happen to cause that person to seek out God and with your seed planting of love now who knows what kind of crop you might inspire in the future. That's the last plug I'm going to throw in for VBS I promise.
Its through our love for each other that we share in each others joy as well as each others sorrow. When one among us has some good thing happen in there life we as a Christian family should all join in the rejoicing and likewise join each other in time of trouble. I heard about this man that was being sued , I don't remember what the suit was for , but it was something fairly minor. Well when the man went to court the courtroom was full of people from his church. The Judge ask the man's attorney who all these people were and when told they were there to be character witnesses the plaintiffs attorney made a motion to dismiss the lawsuit . Now this to me sounds like a church that had learned how to love.
You see love is not always something that you feel for someone else. There is more than one type of love . I have heard sermons preached on the different words used in the original writings of the bible and what kind of love they represent. Now I don't remember what the words were but I do remember what remember what kind of love they represented. One was the kind of love a man might have for a woman. This is what I refer to as passion love. Another was the kind of love a parent might have for a child. This is what I refer to as parental love. The last one is the kind of love that is demonstrated by our actions toward our fellow man. I call this brotherly love. Most people don't have any trouble with the first two they come pretty naturally. Now the third one is the one that we have to work at. Its not always easy to put someone else's needs before your own wants. But that's exactly what we are suppose to do.
John 15 : 12 ( This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you.) These are the words of Jesus. Now Jesus loved us enough to give his life for us. He went to the cross on Galvary and suffered the cruelest of deaths . This was not something that Jesus wanted to do . As Jesus prayed in the garden of Gethseimane he prayed to God ( O my Father, if it be possible let this cup pass from me : nevertheless not as I will but as thou wilt.) Matthew 26:39 Something that we need to remember from time to time is that Jesus when he walked on this earth had the same physical needs that we have He felt hunger and thirst just like us and he had the same emotions that we have. To pray this prayer shows that Jesus dreaded the things he was about to suffer. The last part of the prayer shows that Jesus was willing to do it because it was what God required.
So I say to you today that you must have brotherly love. Christ commanded it. I encourage you to work on it . Its not something that comes naturally to us, but is instead something that comes about with practice. The more you do anything the better you get at it. As you continue to mature as a Christian the easier it will be. How will you know when you've mastered it? Well I don't know for sure if you will ever know. Remember all the things love is , and the things that love is not. Practice these things and others around you will see the evidence of your love.
Before I close I want to tell you a story about a little boy and a puppy. I heard brother E. W. Damron tell this story April 12, 1979. The reason I remember the date is it was the day I was baptized. There was a little boy who wanted a puppy. He ask his daddy every night for a puppy. Well his dad knew how bad he wanted a puppy, so one day his dad brought him a puppy. The little boy was very happy with his new puppy and he played with it and took good care of it. The little boy and the puppy soon became the best of friends. Well as time went by the little boy got tired of the puppy. The puppy came running up to the little boy wanting to play and the little boy yelled at the puppy, which scared it and it went scampering away. Then the puppy came back to the little boy again you see the little puppy loved the little boy. This time the little boy kicked the puupy. Now the puppy ran off very confused and hurt.The puppy came back again and again the little boy kicked it. This was repeated over and over . No matter how mean the little boy was to the puppy it just kept coming back. You see the puppy loved the little boy very much. Well finally the puppy came crawling back to the little boy and the little boy took a big rock and killed the puppy.
Now I know most of you are wondering how this horrible story ties in with the rest of this sermon. Well you see the little boy represents Gods people and the puppy represents God. Through the years Gods people have kicked God in the face on more than one occassion. The puppy kept coming back to the little boy because he loved him and God has kept coming back to his people because he loved them. In the end God sent his son, the messiah that Gods people had prayed for, for so long. Just like the little boy had ask his dad over and over for a puppy. Well you see the puppy could have run away and Jesus could have called ten thousand angels. But instead Jesus because of his love, like the puppy in my story paid with his life. What did he pay? He paid a debt he did not owe for the sins of the very people that killed him. While Christ was hanging there on the cross he said "Father forgive them for they know not what they do." Its because of this cruel death that Jesus endured that we can share in Gods love.
Tony Jude