June 6, 2010

Essentials Of The Faith / Sunday Morning Sermon Series / Galatians: A Grace-full Life

A basket of fruit: Love,  a gift of the Spirit (Part 2)

Sermon Series: Galatians: A Grace-full Life

Title: : A basket of fruit: Love, a gift of the Spirit (Part 2)  Text: Galatians 5:22-24

Introduction: Love....if you want to know what it is, just ask, a child.

·       When someone loves you, the way they say your name is different. You know that your name is safe in their mouth.

·       Love is when a girl puts on perfume and a boy puts on shaving cologne and they go out and smell each other.

·       Love is when mommy makes coffee for my daddy and she takes a sip before giving it to him, to make sure it tastes ok.

·       If you want to learn to love better, you should start with a friend who you don’t like to play with.

·       Love is when you tell a guy you like his shirt, then he wears it everyday.

·       Love is like a little old woman and a little old man who are still friends even after they know each other so well.

·       Love is when daddy gives mommy the last bite of a really good dessert.

·          Love is when mommy sees daddy smelly and sweaty and still says he is handsomer than Brad Pitt. (Bruce Allen)

Children understand much more than we give them credit for. They see things more clearly, at times, because their vision isn’t clouded by cynicism, distrust or an overabundance of theological baggage. Children know love when they see it...and when they experience it. How about you?

Transition: Open your Bibles to Galatians 5:22 (pg. 889 in the Bibles under the chair in front of you.) For it’s there we’ll find ‘Love: the first fruit the Holy Spirit places in our spiritual basket.’

I. Galatians 5:22-24            Love

Read: Galatians 5:22a

A. Understanding the Fruit

Country singer Weylon Jennings sang about the deeply profound search for love in his song ‘Looking for love in all the wrong places.’ For many, real love is illusive. Often because we don’t really know what we’re looking for.

ASK: Why do you think love is so hard to understand?

I believe it’s because the world, and many people in the church, see love as just an emotion...a subjective feeling different people experience in different ways. Making it nearly impossible to

grasp it’s meaning.

Yet...I believe God wants us to understand what love truly is. So much so that His Word is saturated with love... In fact, God made love, the foundation for kingdom living. Listen:

·       James 2:8 ‘If you really keep the royal law found in Scripture, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” you are doing right.’

·       1 John 3:11 ‘This is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another.’

·       Romans 13:8 ‘Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for he who loves his fellowman has fulfilled the law.’

·       1 Peter 1:22 ‘Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for your brothers, love one another deeply, from the heart.’

·       John 15:12 ‘...My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.’

Love is the foundation of life in God’s kingdom...

today and forever.

So, if God wants us...no commands us, to love Him and others, then He must believe we can understand what it means to love.

Wouldn’t you agree?

Even a cursory reading of Scripture will reveal that the one thing that ought to be evident to everybody when they see us as Christians, is Christ-like love in our lives. And so, the first fruit mentioned in our spiritual basket...is love.

What is love? I’ve said before that English words can have multiple meanings:

·       Fast: can mean quick, that colors don’t run, to tie something tight, morally loose, not eating, your watch has gained time. One word, may meanings.

We do the same with the word love. We use it to mean almost anything.

·       I love Glee. I love my sports car.

·       I love cheese steak hoagies. I love my wife, my children.

·       I love the smell of clothes when they come right out of the dryer.

Truth is, I love each of those things in a different way. But the problem is I’ve used the same word to describe my ‘feelings’ for each of them.

So, what do I mean when I say I love something

or someone? Let’s try to define it.

Webster: Strong affection for another, a feeling of kinship, tenderness, admiration, warm attachment...passion.

·       All about feeling, emotion.

Dictionary.com: a profoundly tender, passionate affection for another person. A feeling of warm personal attachment or deep affection, as for a parent, child, or friend. 

·       Again, feeling and emotion.

To the world, love is just a feeling. But God’s Word gives a more complete picture of love. To God, love is not just something that happens to us. It’s not just something we experience/feel. Love is something we.... DO!

Read: John 3:16 ‘For God so loved the world that He (what?) gave...his only begotten Son...’

God set the example of what love is. When God wanted to display His love towards us, He did something, He got involved in our lives. He didn’t talk about the theological ramifications of love, He did it, He loved. And that’s what He asks of us.

When God commands us to love, He’s not telling us to have warm fuzzy feelings towards one another. He’s commanding an action.

Turn with me to 1 Corinthians 13:1 (pg. 876 in the Church Bibles)

Read: 1 Corinthians 13:1-13

We are not being told how to feel in that text. We are being told what love does and doesn’t, DO! Do you see it?

This is new and different than what the world understands about love. You see, in the New Testament, God introduced a new kind of love that had not been known before.

The Greek word is Agape. It’s an unconditional, self-sacrificing, Christ-like love. It’s the kind of love that sent Jesus to the cross, to die a painful death...for something He didn’t do. He did it, not only out of love for the Father, He loved you!...So He did something, He died for you...

Make no mistake, Jesus had warm feelings for people. He cried when his good friend Lazarus died. But it was His agape love that caused Him to act, to get involved in the lives of those He loved...and He calls us to do the same thing today.

Transition: So, do we have a better understanding of what God sees as love? Good. Let’s look briefly at how we can grow/cultivate love in our lives.

B. Growing the Fruit

We live in a world, in homes, that desperately need love. How can we ‘do’ love as God has commanded in His Word?

1. Recognize our universal need for love.

Everyday in the news there are reports of the absence of love in our society.

·       People are left to die alone in nursing homes.

·       Young children are left home alone while the mom/dad goes out on a drinking binge.

·       A single mom who are tired of being both mom and dad takes her kids for a ride in the car and drowns them in a lake.

·       Teenagers cry out for attention, for someone to listen to them. Only no one is listening...so they join gangs to find love.

Listen to this true story of someone starved for love.

ILL: Pastor Melvin Newland writes ‘I recently heard of a New Ager talking about her relationship with her crystal, & the love she receives from it, how she sleeps with the crystal, & when she wakes up in the morning she can feel love emanating from it. I thought, "How sad, to be so starved for love as to sleep with a rock, & to think that it is a source of love."

We need to develop a heart to recognize lives where love is missing. To do that we need to interact, get involved in each other’s lives...we need to develop and nurture growing relationships with each other. Then we need to love one another, because... 

2. Love in a verb.

·       It meets the needs of others before it meets the needs of self. Agape, unconditional, self-sacrificing love.

Don’t tell someone that Jesus loves them until you are ready to love them yourself. I can preach a dozen sermons on love and not have as much impact as your one act of love in someone’s life.

·       Love is a verb, it leads people to Christ. The world is starved for love, and it needs to see love displayed, in action, in the church. When they do, they will be drawn to Christ.

It starts here, in this community, in this fellowship, with you and me, us together. Loving each other, not just with words, but with our actions, our lives. And then reaching out to others, outside the church, by our acts of love.

·       Love is a verb, it sees people for what they can become rather than for what they are at the moment.

-I served for one summer at 10^th Presbyterian Church in Phila. The late James Montgomery Boice was the pastor. I led a Bible study for homeless people in the church fellowship hall. After the study I would eat dinner with the homeless. Honestly, the smell and the look of those people sickened me. I couldn’t eat and the homeless knew I was looking down on them because of who they were.

I was taken aside by the Elder responsible for the program and he talked to me about Jesus’ love for people. He reminded me that Jesus looked beneath the physical to the heart, He saw their need for love and He met it.

When I began to see the homeless people as Jesus saw them, my attitude and actions towards them changed and I began to reach them with the truth of God’s love and forgiveness in Jesus Christ.

Who is it that you are having a difficult time loving because they are just too different than you? See them as Jesus sees them. Love them as Jesus loves them.

-OK, that’s a personal example and perhaps you think it’s not a Biblical justification of what I’m saying. OK, how’s this?

In John 8 Jesus sees a woman before Him who was a pitiful sight; tears running down her face, clothes a mess, and as guilty of the sin of adultery as you can be. Yet, Jesus looked at her, saw her for what she can become...and in love, He forgave her.

-How’s this for another example closer to home. In 1 Corinthians 6:1-11 Paul speaks about Christians in the church.

Read: 1 Corinthians 6:1-11

I want this church, more than anything else, to be a community of love. I want you to be able to come here, and feel totally and completely loved.

If we love each other as God has loved us, then we will become a community that will act like a magnet, drawing a world starving for love, into the presence of Jesus and the salvation that He offers.

·       Love... is expected... to act.

Read: Matthew 22:37 ‘Jesus replied: Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’

Read: John 13:34-35 ‘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.’

Read: 1 John 3:14 We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love our brothers. Anyone who does not love remains in death.’

Wow! To love unconditionally, selflessly. Just as Jesus loved you. It’s a sign of your Christianity, a proof of your salvation. Loving one another, it’s that important. It’s not just a doctrine we study. It’s a life we live. And it’s not optional.

How do we do it? Just as Paul has been saying all though Galatians...Walk in the Spirit.

Love is a fruit of the Spirit. It’s produced by the Spirit’s presence and power in our lives...but cultivated by our actions.

Contrary to popular belief, love doesn’t come naturally to us.

Read: 1 John 4:7a ‘Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God...’

Stay connected to Jesus. Hold on to Him till He produces the fruit of love in your life. Then cultivate that fruit by how you live.

Conclusion

Well, can you say that you have the fruit of love in your life? Without love, don’t be surprised if you can’t find the rest of the spiritual fruit in your

basket...what spiritual fruit?

Read: Galatians 5:22-23a ‘But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control...’