“Loving It”

Deuteronomy 6:1-9 (NIV)

¹ These are the commands, decrees and laws the Lord your God directed me to teach you to observe in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess, ² so that you, your children and their children after them may fear the Lord your God as long as you live by keeping all his decrees and commands that I give you, and so that you may enjoy long life.  ³ Hear, O Israel, and be careful to obey so that it may go well with you and that you may increase greatly in a land flowing with milk and honey, just as the Lord, the God of your fathers, promised you.

⁴ Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.  ⁵ Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.  ⁶ These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts.  ⁷ Impress them on your children.  Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.  ⁸ Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads.  ⁹ Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.

Today, we’ll begin a series about internalization of the resurrection.  How God’s love and grace will begin to look like in our lives.

1 Corinthians 13:1-13 (NIV)

¹ If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.  ² If I have the gift of prophesy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.  ³ If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.

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.  But where there are prophesies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away.  ⁹ For we know in part and we prophesy in part, ¹⁰ but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears.  ¹¹ When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child.  When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.  ¹² Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face.  Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

¹³ And now these three remain: faith, hope and love.  But the greatest of these is love.

We know from Scripture that the main reason Jesus died is this problem humanity has with sin, Jesus wants us to work toward a sin free life.

Christ wants me to be free of sin, not for His sake, but mine.  Jesus wants for us a life of love.  God doesn’t expect perfection; Jesus died because God knows we will never be perfect.

I’m to live a life characterized by love which is a changed life.  If I’m honest God is in the process of changing me; spiritually, psychologically and in every way.

Romans 8:2  For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death.

The letter to the Corinthians is a culture that may be similar to Silicon Valley.  The culture was success-oriented, sex-obsessed, dog eat dog, demanding populated culture of people from all over the world.

Acts 18:9  One night the Lord spoke to Paul in a vision: “Do not be afraid; keep on speaking, do not be silent.

One of the issues that Church had was pride, the opposite of pride is love.

1 Corinthians 8:1b  “Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.”

Paul says you can have spiritual gifts, even miraculous ones and not be a follower of Jesus.  The problem is their (our) hearts are set on the wrong things.

Jonathan Edwards:  “A spiritual gift of miracles or of speaking in tongues does not change a person inherent nature.  A gift ability does not require a change of heart as love or holiness does.  Gifts are like precious jewelry with which a body may be adorned, but which doesn’t actually altar the body’s form.  But the grace of God and its fruit turns the soul into a precious jewel.

Edwards also thinks the Spirit can operate and use gifts in a person who doesn’t belong to the Lord, but the spirit cannot produce fruit in an unconverted person.  Every good and perfect gift is from above.  All wisdom, goodness, kindness, talents… all that is work of the Spirit.

There are several groups in the church that may hear ideas in the sermon today.  When serving God there is a natural temptation to rely on your own natural giftness, rather than God.  There can be time when we are not right with God, but our natural gifts can carry us through.  This is not how it is supposed to be, that can only last so long.

Paul says: if we think our gifts and our success in the church are the proper barometer, that is a mistake.  It is easy to get our identity from our ministry rather than for Jesus.  That we are the things we do in ministry rather than finding our identity in the God who loves us.  He died for us and called us to be His children.

Some activities we do perform in the church becomes our identity that defines us.  This begins to puff ourselves up, instead of depending on God’s love.  The gospel is that God loves us, we are loved because God is a God of grace.

We are working for the kingdom purely out of God’s love which is unconditioned, love is the miracle of miracles.

The essence of Christianity is love.  Jesus lost the love of the Father for a short time to take on our sins and the sins of the world because he loved us so much.

Love is the only reason that can explain why Jesus volunteered to go to the Cross on our behalf.

Love is who Christ is.  The more you see Jesus’ love, the more love grows in our loves.

This week ask the Savior of this world to be filled with His love in working in His Kingdom with His Spirit in all that we do.  God bless.