Sermon: "Extreme Love"
I. Our Father’s Love
Our text for this morning is:
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."
Jesus said: as I have loved you, so you must love one another.
We have a short video to remind us of how God has loved us.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-788600572641310610&q=Fathers%20love
In keeping with our concept of “extreme” from last week, I have titled this sermon “Extreme Love”. That is love that goes beyond what is normal. Certainly God’s love for us could be considered “extreme love.” And Jesus says if we love one another the way he loved us – that is, beyond what is normal – the world will know that we are his disciples.
So this morning we want to consider how we can love each other to the extreme. I believe we can do this if we will learn to meet each other’s needs, just as God showed the full extent of his love for us by meeting our greatest need. It is the need to be saved from eternity in hell. In John’s Gospel we read that very familiar verse:
John 3:16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son that whoever believes in him shall nor perish but have eternal life.
We cannot save anyone but we do have needs that are basic to being a human being that can be met in our relationships with each other. I believe Jesus established the Church partially for the reason to have our needs met as people living on this earth.
Everett Worthington has identified:
II. 3 basic needs that God created us with.
He writes:
Each of us is a person created by God with a fundamental yearning for permanent,intimate and productive fellowship with him and our natures reflect this.
There is more to life than just daily existence. We want to do something with our lives, something that will last. This is true in our relationship with God, in our relationships with our spouse (if we're married) and in our relationships with other people. I believe that in our local congregation it is true in our relationships with one another as people who attend this congregation.
We strive for: permanence -- something that will last -- which we normally call commitment.
We strive for intimacy -- that is a close connection with God and other people.
We strive for productivity -- we want to have a positive effect in the world and on other people.
Permanence: we read in John 3:16 that God intends to give us eternal life
Intimacy and Productivity: we discover that God created us with these two needs when we read
Genesis 2:15-18The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. And the LORD God commanded the man, "You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die."
The LORD God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him."
God put Adam in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. God said it wasn't good for the man to be alone.
God created us to be productive and have a positive effect. We get tired of work and think that we want to retire. But what does almost every retiree do? They go get another job or they die. We get tired of helping other people. But what happens when we only take care of ourselves? We get depressed and have no joy in life we live.
God said it's not good for us to be alone. God created us to be a community of people, relating to each other, helping each other.
One of the worst punishments a person can be given is to be placed in solitary confinement: where the person has no contact with other people. We need to be in relationships with other people. But the relationships need a certain quality to them. This quality at its extreme is true intimacy.
God models the fulfillment of each of these needs for us and we want to look at that. But before we go there let me just say this.
We know that Adam and Eve sinned and through Adam sin has entered the whole human race.
Romans 5:12 Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned
As a result, the image of God in us has been distorted. And so we make substitutes for fulfilling these basic needs in each other. Instead of loving each other with extreme love as God loves us, we use substitutes.
Instead of permanent commitments -- we substitute immediate selfishness.
Instead of true intimacy -- we substitute cheap sexual relationships and illicit romance.
Instead of productivity -- we substitute power and control over other people.
We want to focus our time this morning on how we can truly love each other to the extreme by meeting each other's needs. We only truly love each other if we look out for each other’s needs.
III. Our need for commitment
God models commitment to us by making covenant's with people. A covenant is a permanent binding commitment or contract. Here is the covenant between:
God and Abraham
Genesis 15: 9-11, 17-18 9 So the LORD said to him, "Bring me a heifer, a goat and a ram, each three years old, along with a dove and a young pigeon."
10 Abram brought all these to him, cut them in two and arranged the halves opposite each other; the birds, however, he did not cut in half. 11 Then birds of prey came down on the carcasses, but Abram drove them away.
17 When the sun had set and darkness had fallen, a smoking firepot with a blazing torch appeared and passed between the pieces. 18 On that day the LORD made a covenant with Abram and said, "To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates-
Jesus talked about the covenant between himself and his disciples and it includes believers today.
Jesus and his church
Luke 22:2020In the same way, after the supper he took the cup, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.
Jeremiah 31: 3333 "This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel
after that time," declares the LORD.
"I will put my law in their minds
and write it on their hearts.
I will be their God,
and they will be my people.
2 Corinthians 3: 3, 63You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.
6He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant—not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.
Jeremiah alluded to it. Jesus declared it. The apostle Paul confirms it.
Jesus has made a covenant or a commitment to everyone who has placed their faith in him. God sets the example for us by being completely faithful to every covenant he ever made.
A covenant is a commitment to a relationship between two people that implies that the members are mutually dependent upon each other.
It is an agreement or a pledge to do something in the future; and it means the person is obligated or emotionally impelled to the other person with whom one has made the commitment.
For a commitment to mean anything at all it must include an aspect of loyalty.
Loyalty is the tie which binds a person to a promise they have made.
To be loyal means to be faithful to the promise. In simple terms it means to keep your promise: to keep your word: to do what you say you will do.
We are saying this morning, that God created us with a need to be in relationships where there is a high degree of commitment and permanence. There must be loyalty in our relationships. Our relationships must be such that we depend on each other.
We didn't decide this is a good way to relate. When God created us he made us with this need. When we become believers, Jesus places us in his church as part of it. And the relationships within the church begin to meet this need for commitment.
The writers of our church membership covenant understood this. The second half of the membership covenant reads as follows:
I promise, as a member of this church, to be loyal to Christ and to support the work of the church by my regular attendance and prayers: to contribute to its work as the Lord blesses me; and to have a spirit of Christian fellowship and unity with all other members.
When someone makes this commitment, the members respond with the following:
We promise to love, except, and care for you to the mutual benefit of all of us. We will demonstrate a spirit of Christian fellowship and unity with you and thus bring honor and glory to God.
It is easy to make these statements. It is much harder to keep this commitment to one another when many other commitments are pulling us in all directions.
We communicate the level of our commitment to anyone by the amount of time we spend with that person, and by the extent to which we support that person, by the level of trust we have with each other, and the perseverance in the commitment over a long period of time.
One grave problem with our culture is that people are afraid to make commitments and keep them. Signed contracts don’t seem to mean much let alone promises only states in words. Promises of lifetime marriage are quickly broken.
When we love each other with extreme love as we are expected to do in the body of Christ: in other words within the church, we will communicate loyalty and commitment to each other by spending time with each other and supporting each other.
The second aspect of extreme love is when we meet:
IV. Our need for intimacy
God created us for intimacy
Genesis 2: 22 -- 25Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man. The man said,
"This is now bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called 'woman, '
for she was taken out of man."
24 For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.
25 The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.
God created us for intimacy with himself and for intimacy with other people. The intimacy with God was broken when Adam and Eve sinned
Genesis 3: 8-11Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden. 9 But the LORD God called to the man, "Where are you?"
10 He answered, "I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid."
11 And he said, "Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?"
Notice that Adam and Eve felt like they needed to hide from God. That closeness, the intimacy was destroyed. But the need for it is still a part of what we are as people.
We still seek intimacy with God
Psalm 61: 1-4Hear my cry, O God; listen to my prayer.
2 From the ends of the earth I call to you, I call as my heart grows faint;
lead me to the rock that is higher than I.
3 For you have been my refuge, a strong tower against the foe.
4 I long to dwell in your tent forever and take refuge in the shelter of your wings.
God has built into us a longing for close meaningful supportive relationships.
So we don't think that intimacy ultimately refers to sex, let me give you a definition of intimacy.
Being confident that what we reveal about ourselves will be understood and that the person with whom we disclose ourselves will accept us, seek our good, and communicate support and love.
This is a basic need we all have. The church is meant to be a place where this need can be met.
I Corinthians 12: 12-13, 24, 26The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts; and though all its parts are many, they form one body. So it is with Christ. 13For we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body—whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink.
But God has combined the members of the body and has given greater honor to the parts that lacked it, so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.
For us to develop this type of intimacy in our relationships, it will require mutual love and confidence in each other. It will also require vulnerability and trust. We need to be able to expose our hearts without the fear of being ridiculed and hurt.
We cannot develop intimacy with one another without spending time with each other.
We cannot develop intimacy with each other without opening ourselves up to each other. We need to learn to share our shortcomings, our failures, our fears and our doubts. But we need to be able to do it without fear of being criticized, or judged, or put to shame.
It begins with someone being able to say, “Here's what I'm struggling with, would you please help me?”
I believe it will be practically impossible for this to take place in the setting of the whole Church gathered for celebration and worship on Sunday morning. I believe that it will require that we get together in smaller groups, or in twos and threes, or maybe even one on one.
I believe that it will only happen when we are willing to admit that we need each other. I believe it will only happen when we really care for each other. I believe it will happen as we pray for each other. I believe it will happen as we encourage each other.
A third need we have is:
V. Our need to be productive – to have a positive impact or influence on each other.
Genesis 2:15
The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.
God is a Creator God, and we are creative people. We need to do something with our lives. We are not designed to sit around and do nothing. We are not created to strive for a time in life when we will are to relax and indulge ourselves in pleasing ourselves.
This is also true for our relationship with the church. This is true for our relationships with other people in the church. We have a need to positively affect other people here at church. We have a need to be involved in the work of the church. Our involvement in the work of the church shows other people in the church that we love them and that we love God.
How can we go about meeting this need?
Teach about God
Deuteronomy 6:6-9These 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.
Lift up those who are beaten down
Isaiah 58:5-7
5 Is this the kind of fast I have chosen,
only a day for a man to humble himself?
Is it only for bowing one's head like a reed
and for lying on sackcloth and ashes?
Is that what you call a fast,
a day acceptable to the LORD ?
6 "Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:
to loose the chains of injustice
and untie the cords of the yoke,
to set the oppressed free
and break every yoke?
7 Is it not to share your food with the hungry
and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—
when you see the naked, to clothe him,
and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?
Lead people to become followers of Jesus Christ
Matthew 28:19-20Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."
In our relationships with each other we learn to serve, sacrifice, give, encourage, help, show grace, forgive, and respect each other.
If we are not taking the time and making the effort to do this for one another on a regular basis, we are not loving each other with extreme love the way God loved us.
Paul said in I Corinthians 11:1 Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ.
If we want to affect this world and the people in it, we must do it Jesus’ way.
We teach servant leadership by being servants as we lead
We teach submission by submitting
We teach sacrifice by sacrificing
We will never be content or satisfied with our church experience if all we do is wait to let other people have a positive effect on us. We have a need to have a positive effect on others.
Conclusion
At one time or another, each of us will fail to meet each other's needs for commitment, intimacy, and being productive. Therefore our fourth need is for forgiveness.
When we fall short of loving each other to the extreme may we be quick to forgive.
Matthew 6:14-15
For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.
My prayer is that we will be a church of people that love each other to the extreme by meeting each other’s needs.