Essentials Of The Faith / Sunday Morning Sermon Series / Special Services / Advent 2004

12/19/04 Love

Title:  ‘Looking for Something More?’ pt. 4   ‘Love’                                                                                                      Main Text: The Book of Hosea

 
Love
 
Introduction:
ILL: Hettie Green was a famous millionaire. She lived in seclusion and became a virtual recluse. She had only a few friends and an ugly mongrel dog that kept biting the few friends she did have. One of them said, "You've got to get rid of that dog." Hettie refused. She said, "That dog loves me and he doesn't even know how rich I am."  Robert C. Shannon, 1000 Windows

For some people, the only love they feel is from a pet.

ILL: Dearest Jimmy, No words could ever express the great unhappiness I’ve felt since breaking our engagement. Please say you’ll take me back. No one could ever take your place in my heart, so please forgive me. I love you, I love you, I love you!  Yours forever, Marie. P.S. And congratulations on winning the state lottery. Source unknown

For some people, the only love they feel has strings attached.

I think what people want most in life is to feel loved, and without that feeling, they are empty. They try to fill their emptiness with other things that make them feel better, at least temporarily, but nothing truly fills the void of love.

Transition: The fourth candle of Advent is the Candle of Love. It is lit to remind us that there is a perfect and complete love offered to us by God, available to all who ask. But many don’t ask? Why? Because they have adopted the worlds view of love.

The World’s Love is…

The world uses the word love very loosely.

To the world, love is sex, but many have sex without any thought of love and often the results are unwanted pregnancies and STD’s.

To the world, love is indulgence. We have children and buy them all kinds of things and think we are showing them our love.

ILL: A newspaper reported that 3 people were killed when there car tried to outrun a train. The parents of the dead 15yr old who was driving the car are grief stricken. You see, they loved their son very much. So much that they gave him a Trans-Am before he was old enough to drive it. They loved him so much they even let him drive it illegally while he was underage and without a drivers licence. He picked up two friends and tried to outrace a train in his Trans-Am…he lost.

To the world love is…well kind of odd.

ILL: A woman involved in the New Age movement spoke of her relationship with her crystal as a love relationship. She sleeps with it and when she wakes up she said she can feel love radiating from it.

Transition:  With all this going on, do we as a society, really know what love is?

Love Defined
I have been told if you want an honest answer to a question, ask a young child. Here are the answers given by a number of children to the question ‘What is love?’

ILL:
•    Love is when a girl puts on perfume and a boy puts on 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.
•    Love is when you tell a guy you like his shirt, then he wears it everyday. (From a sermon by Bruce Allen)

Well, truth be told, there is a better source for defining love, God’s Word.

The English language has just one word for love and we use it to describe our love for our spouse, our love for a friend, our love for our favorite food, even our love for God, the Bible, however, uses three words to describe Love.

Phileo: Brotherly love, the love between friends.

Eros: Romantic or sexual love, the love between a husband and wife.

Agape: Unconditional love, the love of God for his children. When the Bible says God is love, this is the word it uses. It is the word used in Jn 3:16 ‘For God so loved (agape) the world’ Agape: Unselfish, Unconditional, Unmerited love.

Agape love is God’s love for us…even when we don’t deserve it even though we do everything to rebel against it. It is the kind of love the world is starving for but is  too afraid to accept because it means acknowledging God and his authority over them.

Transition: Perhaps the greatest picture of God’s agape love for us, other than the death of Jesus Christ on the cross, is found in the life of the prophet Hosea.

God’s Love is…

Have you ever read the Book of Hosea? It reads like a transcript from a Jerry Springer show. 

ILL: ‘Clergy marries a prostitute.’ Hosea, a man of God, marries a prostitute who repeatedly cheats on him. His 3 children are not his and have three different fathers. After running around with everyone in town, his wife ends up a slave. Hosea buys her back and takes her as his wife…again. To top it all off, Hosea claims that he knew all along she would be unfaithful, but God told him to marry her and take her back every time she was unfaithful.’

Hosea is perhaps the most shocking book in the Bible and could be a story line on Jerry Springer. I am not making this up.

Read:
Hosea 1:2-3a: ‘When the LORD began to speak through Hosea, the LORD said to him, “Go, take to yourself an adulterous wife and children of unfaithfulness, So he married Gomer daughter of Diblaim.’

Hosea 3:1a: ‘The LORD said to me, Go, show your love to your wife again, though she is loved by another and is an adulteress.

Hosea 3: 2-3: ‘So I bought her for fifteen shekels of silver and about a homer and a lethek of barley. Then I told her, You are to live with me many days; you must not be a prostitute or be intimate with any man, and I will live with you.’

The story of Hosea and his wife Gomer tell us at least 7 truths concerning God’s love.

1. God’s love is unreasonable: Why would God commit to a bunch of people he knew would be unfaithful to him? We certainly wouldn’t make that kind of commitment so we can’t understand, or believe, God would do it either.
When God told Hosea to marry Gomer, he was showing that his love for us makes no sense to the world..it doesn’t fit their logic. Paul gives us another perspective.

Read: 2 Tim. 2:13 ‘if we are faithless, he will remain faithful, for he cannot disown himself.’

God’s love is unreasonable.

2. God’s love is relentless: When the one we love fails to love us back, we often give up on them. But, no matter what we do, God never gives up on us. Hosea’s pursuit of Gomer shows us that God is relentless in his pursuit of us even when we are sinful people. When we sin against God, he seeks after us, when we become slaves to sin, he buys us back.

God’s love is relentless.

Read: 1 Peter 1:18ff  ‘For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life, but with the precious blood of Christ.’

3. God’s love is pure: God never accepts our sin nor does he gloss over it. He takes our sin very seriously. Hosea insisted each time that Gomer be faithful to him as his wife. When Gomer insisted on being unfaithful to Hosea, he let her go. Gomer learned the consequence of her sin the hard way. God responded to Gomers sinful departures this way.

Read: Hosea 2:6-7 ‘Therefore I will block her path with thornbushes; I will wall her in so that she cannot find her way. She will chase after her lovers but not catch them; she will look for them but not find them. Then she will say, ‘I will go back to my husband as at first, for then I was better off than now.’

God allows us to wander and he doesn’t make it easy for us in our sin. But, the purity of God’s love is what brings us back to him after each of our sinful diversions.

God’s love is pure.

4. God’s Love is unconditional: Agape love…unconditional acceptance, and unending forgiveness. Can you see it in the Book of Hosea? It would have been understandable for Hosea to forgive a minor betrayal by Gomer, but she sinned in a big way. She flaunted her adultery in front of Hosea and everyone else.
She perhaps was once beautiful but now, her sexual sin and lifestyle had ravished her body and stolen her beauty. That’s why she was sold for about half of what other female slaves sold for. There was nothing left in her worth loving…yet God told Hosea to love her, to buy her back and take her once again as his wife. God’s love doesn’t depend upon us in any way.

Read: Romans 5:8 ‘But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.’

God’s love is unconditional

5. God’s Love gives meaning to life: God’s love is for those who wake up each morning and ask ‘What difference does it make if I get up or not? My life is just an endless cycle of random events that don’t mean anything.’

When God told Hosea to marry an adulterous woman, he was telling us that life, no matter what it is like, has meaning. Gomer knew her life was more than her sinful past…it now had meaning.

God’s love gives meaning to life.

6. God’s Love brings Hope, Peace and Joy to life: Gomer’s life of sin led her to the marketplace to be sold into slavery. She had no Hope, no Peace, no Joy…until God told Hosea to buy her back, to love her and to take her as his wife, once again. God’s love restored Hope, Peace, and Joy to her life.

7. God’s Love is powerful: No matter what Gomer did, she was not able to destroy Hosea’s love for her. Nothing we do or have done will cause God to love us less, let alone give up loving us.

Read: Rom. 8:38-39 ‘For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.’

God’s Love is powerful.

Conclusion

People are desperate for love in their lives. The problem is not more love, not quantity though, it is quality, the right kind of love. God’s love perfectly fills the void for love in our lives, but it just doesn’t happen. We have a part in the process.

ILL: Martin Luther explained it this way: "While Christ’s death is sufficient for every sin of every person who ever lived or ever will live, it becomes effectual only for those who confess their sin, accept the sacrifice, and embrace Christ as Lord and Savior."

Christ’s death on the cross was his demonstration of love for you.

Your Christmas gifts under the tree were given by those who care for you. It’s their expectation that you will accept the gifts and open them up.

The Gift of God’s love is no different. It is offered by God with the expectation that you will accept it as your own. But you have to open it.
•    You open the gift of God’s love by telling God you admit your sinfulness and need his forgiveness.
•    You open the gift of God’s love by accepting what he did to prove his love for you…Jesus’ death on the cross of Calvary for your sin.
•    You open God’s gift of love by asking him to come and live in your heart and guide your life.

God loves you. This Christmas won’t you open the gift of God’s love.