Practice Love for One Another!
1 John 4:7-12
Two teenage young men were out cave exploring when they found what appeared to be huge bear tracks deep inside a long, cavernous tunnel.
They bravely decided to keep going, but they moved ahead slowly and cautiously,
keeping their eyes and ears open in case a bear lurked
nearby.
Suddenly, from behind a large rock formation jumped the biggest,
meanest-looking grizzly bear they had ever seen.
The bear
stood up on his hind legs, beat his chest, and roared so loudly that is sent a
terrible sound echoing off the walls of the cave.
Scared to death, the two young men decided to run for their lives.
They took off on a dash for the daylight.
They had a little bit of a lead on the bear,
when one of the guys dropped to the floor of the cave and started untying his boots.
He whipped his backpack off, and took out a pair of running shoes,
and began lacing them on his feet.
His buddy yelled at him:
“Hey,
man! Whatta ya think you’re doin’? Let’s get outta here! We don’t have much of a
chance of outrunning that bear as it is!”
The guy on the floor hopped up and began sprinting toward the cave’s exit.
He turned and yelled over his shoulder:
“I
don’t have to outrun the bear. All I gotta do is to outrun you!”
Do you ever feel like people treat you like bear
bait?
When the going gets rough, they bail out on you?
They claim they love you until it costs them something and then, they ditch you.
We all have
the desire to be loved.
God created us with the desire
to be loved.
However, we live in a world starved for love
--Vance Packard calls America “a nation of strangers.”
As a result we’re experiencing an epidemic of loneliness in society.
One Gallup poll reported,
that four in ten Americans admit to frequent feelings of “intense
loneliness.”
Americans are, in fact, the
loneliest people in the world.
Everywhere you look there are signs that people are hungering for fellowship, community, and a sense of family.
For instance, beer commercials don’t
sell beer.
--They sell
fellowship.
No one is
ever portrayed drinking alone
It’s always done in the context of people enjoying each other’s company.
Phrases accompany the commercials like: “it
doesn’t get any better than this!”
Advertisers have discovered that independent-minded baby boomers are suddenly longing to be connected as they enter middle age.
Dave Stone
wrote in his book, I’d
Rather See A Sermon:
As times have changed, so have people. In Time magazine, Robert Wright said,
“These days,
thanks to electric garage-door openers, you can drive straight into your house,
never risking contact with a neighbor.” He’s right. We used to build a front
porch with a swing, now we build a back-deck with a privacy fence.
The is meant to be a contrast to that coldness.
The church is meant to be a place where people
genuinely care for each other.
Jesus insisted that the outstanding characteristic of his
followers, should be their love for one another.
In John 13:34-35 we read – “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
I. THE MEANING OF AGAPE LOVE
What do you mean, when you say you love something?
In English, we have only one word for love:
we love our pets; we love chocolate; we love our children, our parents, and our spouses; we love Christmas; we love pizza.
--Anything that makes us feel good, we love.
The New Testament was originally written in the
Greek language, of the common people.
In the Greek language of the common people,
there were a good number of words to express affection for something.
When they’re translated into English, they’re all translated as “love”.
There are
four basic words in the common Greek that we see most often:
a. philos – friendship or
brotherly love
b. eros – romantic love
or passion
c. storge – parental love
d. agape – love for the
sake of love
Now, there is a difference between the first three words and agape:
The first three, are based on what the other party does for you;
based on what you receive; the benefits of the relationship.
But Agape love is a sacrificial love.
It exists for the sole benefit, of the one being loved.
The greatest definition of
agape love is found in 1 Corinthians13:4-8a –
“4
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not
proud. 5 It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it
keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the
truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. 8
Love never fails.”
II. THE MODEL
OF AGAPE LOVE
Simply, the most complete model of agape love we have, is Jesus!
1 John.
4:10
–
“This
is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an
atoning sacrifice for our sins.”
John. 3:16-17 – "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son,[ that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.”
Romans 5:6-8 – “You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. 7 Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. 8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
When I was about 12 I went to 4H camp.
I was not a swimmer, just had never had the opportunity to learn.
The camp was on a beautiful lake and of course there was an area for swimming.
There was an L shaped dock that went out into the lake, with the farthest part being in water that was over my head.
For some reason, one of my older friends decided to take me out to the deep part on their shoulders.
About the time we got to the dock, and the water that was over my head, they dropped me.
I needed a savior or I was going to drown.
I don’t know who the guy was, but he had their legs hanging over the side of the dock, dangling them in the water.
All I remember, is that I grabbed his legs and I was coming up out of that water.
He was my savior that day!
Now, to save my life that day, all that guy needed to do was let me climb up his leg.
But to save our soul from the ravages of sin and death,
we needed a savior that was willing to do much more.
Christ has given of Himself so that we might have salvation and
eternal life
He was willing to give up heaven to come to earth.
He was willing to be mocked and laughed at.
He was willing to be beaten and tortured.
He was willing to die in our place, enduring the pain of
Hell for us.
His love is not based on our worthiness, but his worthiness.
He knows that most of the time we’re not very loveable --
but He loves us anyway!
His love
for us does not benefit Him.
--It benefits us
His love is unsurpassed in its scope.
Ephesians 3:17b-19 – “And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, 18 may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, 19 and to know this love that surpasses knowledge--that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.”
III. THE MINISTRY OF AGAPE LOVE
Augustine:
“What
does it look like? It has hands to help others, feet to hasten to the poor and
needy,
eyes to see misery and want, ears to hear the sighs and sorrows of men. That is
what love looks like.”
A preacher in Tennessee tells about how his father was not a Christian and never went to church.
He said, everyone else in the family would get ready to go to church,
and his dad would stay home.
The preacher would come by and visit, and his dad would always give him the same pat answer; “I know why you’re here and I know what you want, you want another name and another pledge, you don’t care about me.”
The preacher relating the events said
“If
I heard my dad say it once I heard him say it 20 times.”
Towards the end of his life, his dad got throat cancer.
He had surgery and couldn’t talk.
He said as his dad was wasting away in the hospital room,
that it was filled with flowers and cards -
almost all of them from someone in the church.
Food came to his house, from his mom’s Sunday school class at the church.
He said,
people from the church came and prayed with my dad.
He said, one day, even though my dad couldn’t talk,
he took a scrap of paper and scribbled words from Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
“In this harsh world, draw your breath in pain to tell my story.”
He said, dad what is your story?
His dad with trembling hand wrote on the scrape of paper,
“I
was wrong, I was wrong about the church.”
He said, I got to talk with my dad about salvation in Christ, before he died.
Simply because of the love and the fellowship of a church.
Bob Russell
writes: “In
a healthy church, the love that flows from the heavenly Father and through his
children is deeper, richer, faster, and more authentic than that which is found
anywhere else in the world.
Mark 6:34 tells us, that Jesus
was filled with compassion toward the people, seeing them as
“sheep
without a shepherd”.
In
2 Corinthians 1:3, Paul
describes God as “the
Father of compassion and the God of all comfort”,
and he commanded
the church to express this kind of compassion, too.
In Colossians. 3:12-14 we read –
“Therefore,
as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with
compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. 13 Bear with each other
and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the
Lord forgave you. 14 And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them
all together in perfect unity.”
Christian Schwartz, in Natural Church Development wrote:
…Our
research indicates that there is a highly significant relationship between the
ability of a church to demonstrate love and its long-term growth potential.
Growing churches possess on average, a measurably higher “love quotient” than
stagnant or dying [churches]…
Unfeigned, practical love, has a divinely generated magnetic power,
far more effective than evangelistic programs,
which depend almost entirely on verbal communication.
People do not want to hear us talk about love, they want to experience how
Christian love really works.”
Why did the early church explode in growth?
--Because of their love for each other.
In Acts 2:42-47 we read –
“42
They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the
breaking of bread and to prayer. 43 Everyone was filled with awe, and many
wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. 44 All the believers
were together and had everything in common. 45 Selling their possessions and
goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. 46 Every day they continued to meet
together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together
with glad and sincere hearts, 47 praising God and enjoying the favor of all the
people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.”
When you get a group of people together, who genuinely believe something,
who practice it in their lives, and who really enjoy each other,
it’s such a contagious atmosphere, that you can’t keep
people away from it.
Anne Ortlund, in Up With Worship, says that the average church is too much like a bag of marbles –
we scratch against each other, and make a little noise,
but we
really don’t affect each other much.
She says, the church should be more like a bag of grapes that mesh together,
producing a sweet-tasting wine because of the interaction.
Practicing agape love, is the true test of our
faith.
In 1 John 3:16-18 we read – “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers. 17 If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? 18 Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth. 19 This then is how we know that we belong to the truth, and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence.”
CONCLUSION:
Do you remember the pot-bellied pig craze a few years ago,
when people were spending hundreds of dollars,
to own one of those exotic house pets imported from Vietnam?
Well, this craze started, when breeders of these particular pigs claimed two things:
that these pigs were very smart and
that they would only grow to a weight of 40 lbs.
For some reason, many people apparently loved the idea
of a smart, mini-pig running around the house for,
thousands of these pigs were sold.
Well, it turned out that the breeders were only half-right.
These pigs
were very smart.
Some could even be trained to walk on leashes and use litter boxes.
But they often grew to weigh as much as 150lbs or more!
Some grew to 250 lbs.
Another drawback, that the owners of these unique pigs discovered,
was that they often became openly aggressive
– not at
all pet-like.
So, what did people do with their unwanted pot-bellied pigs?
Well, fortunately, according to an article in U.S. News and World Report,
a man named Dale Riffle came to the rescue.
Someone had given Dale one of these pigs as a gift, and he fell in love with it --
even though it never learned to use its litter box
and in fact developed a tendency to eat carpet,
wall paper, and dry wall.
Well, Riffle loved his pig so much, that he sold his suburban home,
and moved with his new pet pig, whom he had named “RUFUS,”
to a 5-acre farm in West Virginia.
There he started taking in unwanted pot-bellied pigs,
and before long the guy was living in “hog heaven”.
When the article was written, he had 180 pig residents on this farm!
And these pigs don’t just live there...Riffle treats them to a luxurious lifestyle.
The article states, that these little porkers snooze on beds of fresh pine shavings every night. They wallow in mud puddles.
They soak in plastic swimming pools to piped-in classical music.
They wait in line for one of Riffles belly rubs.
They even socialize in age-graded pig affinity
groups....whatever that means.
And these pigs never need fear that one day they will become bacon or
pork chops.
Believe it or not, there is actually a waiting list for unwanted pigs,
wanting to get a hoof in the door at Riffle’s farm.
Riffle says, "We are all put on earth for some reason and I guess
pigs are my lot in life."
Now, I’m
sure you would agree, that it IS amazing, that anyone in his right mind would
fall so totally in love with pigs!
But listen to something even more amazing:
The central theme of the Bible, is that our majestic, all-powerful, all-knowing, perfectly holy, God...is passionately in love with imperfect, sometimes openly rebellious, frequently indifferent people like you and me.
You see,
in many ways, sin makes human beings even more unlovely than Riffle’s
pigs.
Listen to the bleak picture, that Romans 3:10-18 paints of the human race:
“There
is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands, no one who
seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is
no one who does good, not even one. Their throats are open graves; their tongues
practice deceit. The poison of vipers is on their lips. Their mouths are full of
cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood; ruin and misery mark
their ways and the way of peace they do not know.
So all
human beings are flawed because of sin.
In Romans 3:23 we
read – “for
all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,”
We are fallen creatures.
--Isaiah said, that even our best attempts at goodness,
are as filthy rags, in comparison to the holiness of God.
But God loves us anyway.....
even to the extent, of wanting to adopt us as His very
own.
1 John. 3:1 says –
“How
great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be
called children of God! And that is what we are!”