What's Love Got To Do With It?
Notes
Transcript
Knowing God, Knowing Love
Knowing God, Knowing Love
The message that God put into my mind as I was awaking on Wednesday morning is what I will share this morning, on this Mother’s Day when we remember and celebrate all that is best about our own mothers’ love or the idea of motherhood, in case we didn’t experience it directly ourselves.
Some people call it a Hallmark Holiday, because it is one of the biggest days for greeting cards in the year. And if you didn’t get a card yet, the good news is that it’s easier to choose a card today than it was last week, because there aren’t as many left at the store.
So,
Happy Mother’s Day
Happy Mother’s Day
to each of you.
We celebrate moms because there is a love that we experience from the heart of a mother that is very different from what we experience in most of the rest of our lives. Most of us think of a mother’s love as a self-giving and non-judgmental love that sticks with us through any of our sins and errors, our misses and mistakes.
The intimate nature of the love of our mothers is deeper than almost any others’ love. That is, if it works right. For some of us, it is our adoptive mom who gives us that love, or like I had, a “second mom” that was my best-friend’s mom. As well as a whole string of church mothers along the way.
But God didn’t tell me to preach about a mother’s love today. He told me to preach about his. There is no greater love, and the love of God is real, and pure, and perfect, and what should form and manage the love we have toward others.
So,
What’s Love Got To Do With It?
What’s Love Got To Do With It?
Most of us know that line as the title of a song sung with the unique passion of a gravelly-voiced one-time Motown artist.
In 1984, Tina Tuner released the song written by Terry Britten and Graham Lyle that became one of her greatest solo hits in the second part of her career. It’s a song that isn’t a love song so much as it is a lyric wondering what it means when we use the word “love” in our human connections.
After the verse talks about what is basically just “animal attraction” that makes us respond we respond to when we first connect with someone in a special way, the chorus says,
What’s love got to do with it? What’s love, but a second-hand emotion? What’s love got to do, got to do with it? Who needs a heart when a heart can be broken?
The second chorus adds,
What’s love got to do with it? What’s love but an old-fashioned notion? What’s love got to do, got to do with it? Who needs a heart when a heart can be broken.
There are a lot of things wrong with the idea of love that Tina Turner sings about. It starts with a common misconception that human love is the spark that goes between us when our hands touch, or our eyes meet or our hormones or pheromones respond to another warm-blooded air-breathing person.
It has nothing to do with caring about what happens to the other person, or what is best for the other person, or anything else. It is just about how I feel when I notice the spark, or my skin tingles or my brain goes stupid. Eros is the New Testament word for that, we just anglicize it into “erotic.” It’s more physical than emotional, more selfish than loving.
That’s not the kind of love that we are talking about today. We are talking about the love of God, the love the New Testament describes with the word agape.
Love is What God Is
Love is What God Is
In 1 John 4:7-8 we read,
7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.
We start with our directive:
Let Us Love One Another
Let Us Love One Another
Why?
Love is From God
Love is From God
It is the evidence of our new birth in Christ from God
The One Who Loves Knows God
The One Who Loves Knows God
Know God, Know Love; No love? No God.
Know God, Know Love; No love? No God.
The conclusion is the key:
God is Love
God is Love
But is this just the dream of a spiritually heart-sick teenager? To find love and experience love and enjoy love?
Love Cares About The One Loved
Love Cares About The One Loved
The Witness of God’s Love
The Witness of God’s Love
is from beginning to end in the Bible.
1 John 4:7-8, which we shared a moment ago is near the end of our Bible.
But God shows his love at the very beginning of the Bible, in his act of creation of humankind:
7 then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature. 8 And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed.
This is what I call the “Hands On” nature of God’s relationship with us.
God could have just spoken us into being, as he did with the earth, the sun, the starts, the very universe. With all those, God spoke, and the Word of God caused all things to be created.
But he didn’t just speak. He go his hands dirty.
God reaches into his creation, digs his fingers into the soil, and begins to craft the clay as the Master Sculptor. Not to “catch” the nature of a man in a sculpture, but to form the nature of humanity out of what he had spoken into being.
When he was ready, God created life in his newly-made image of himself: He blew his life-giving Spirit into that form he held in His hand, and the man became a living being.
That’s a first picture of love that we have from God: We are lovingly created by the hand of God to be just what he intends us to be, and his own Spirit-life is given to us.
Soon after that record of faith, we find that God cares about the loneliness of this first human. It’s not satisfied by the rest of the animal creation. So God, who created us for relationship with Him, created the mate to man to have relationship on his own level.
God Loves Us Enough to Share Love
God Loves Us Enough to Share Love
21 So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. 22 And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man.
Sin Damages Love’s Relationship
Sin Damages Love’s Relationship
8 And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. 9 But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?” 10 And he said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.”
Love Will Break Your Heart
Love Will Break Your Heart
5 The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. 6 And the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. 7 So the Lord said, “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them.”
Love Will Make Amends
Love Will Make Amends
21 And when the Lord smelled the pleasing aroma, the Lord said in his heart, “I will never again curse the ground because of man, for the intention of man’s heart is evil from his youth. Neither will I ever again strike down every living creature as I have done. 22 While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.”
God’s Love Longs for Our Love
God’s Love Longs for Our Love
29 Oh that they had such a heart as this always, to fear me and to keep all my commandments, that it might go well with them and with their descendants forever!
Love Will Find A Way
Love Will Find A Way
9 In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him.
10 In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
I thought about using the song
Love Lifted Me
Love Lifted Me
in the worship service this morning, but it is difficult to find a recording that matches how I would like to sing it.
I don’t need (a slow version)
I don’t need (a dirge)
I don’t need (a party song)
Because the song tells a story of relationship.
I kept listening to some of the versions of the song, and then found a version sung in worship by Bebe Winans.
I was sinking deep in sin, far from the peaceful shore; Very deeply stained within, sinking, to rise no more.
But the Master of the sea heard my despairing cry; from the waters lifted me, now safe am I!
Love lifted me, love lifted me, when nothing else could help, Love lifted Me! Love lifted me, love lifted me, when nothing else could help, love lifted me.
Love lifted me, love lifted me; when nothing else could help, God sent His Son! God sent His Son, God sent His Son. when nothing else could help, God sent His Son.
His Son Gave His Life...., When nothing else could help, His Son Gave His Life.
His Life Set Me free...., When nothing else could help, His life set me Free.
Now I’m free indeed....
That’s because. . . .
When nothing else could help,
God sent His Son, His Son Gave His Life, His Life Set Me Free, Now I’m Free Indeed. When nothing else could help, Love lifted me.
Love lifted me, love lifted me, when nothing else could help, Love lifted me.
God’s Love Lifts Us to Heaven
God’s Love Lifts Us to Heaven
The end of the Bible tells us why, describing the conclusion the Love of God sets up for us:
3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. 4 He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”
The Invitation Comes From Heaven
The Invitation Comes From Heaven
17 The Spirit and the Bride say, “Come.” And let the one who hears say, “Come.” And let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who desires take the water of life without price.
So Then, Live Love
So Then, Live Love
11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.