Christmas Is Love 2017
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Intro:
Intro:
AG: Love is often associated with the holidays. It shows up on TV and in greeting cards. Many of the songs of the season also focus on love.
The World has this idea right!
We are to love each other
That is a noble and a divine call.
The problem is in their definition and expectations of love.
TS: Today, the 2nd Sunday of advent we celebrate the Love of God. There are many great texts to which we could turn, but I want to focus our thoughts this morning on
In this text, we see the seriousness, manisfestation, and mandate of love.
Hear the word of the Lord as recorded by John in
The World has this idea right!
We are to love each other
That is noble and a divine call
The problem is in their definition and expectations of love.
Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God.
Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.
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.
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.
Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God.
Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.
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.
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.
Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.
Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God.
Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.
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.
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.
Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.
Love’s Seriousness
Love’s Seriousness
v. 7-8
v. 7 John opens by telling us “Let us love one another”
Love is to be a part of every child of God’s life.
The world has this right.
John specifically says:
a. it comes from God
Love’s source is God Himself!
He originates it and imparts it to us.
b. It demonstrates you know God
It shows the world that we have a relationship with and being conformed to the image of God.
c. It is evidence you are born of God.
This is one of the main themes of John’s letter.
Many times he writes of evidences that we have been converted by God’s amazing grace.
Love is a powerful evidence of that change.
In v. 8, John gives us the reason loving each other is so serious: If you don’t love, you don’t know God
God is love
People who have been born again and encountered our amazing Father, know love.
We know love because God is love!
God Himself is love!
Love’s Meaning
Love’s Meaning
The World has this idea right!
The meaning of Love
God Himself is love!
He is the very essence of love.
Love is inherent in all He is and does.
We are to love each other
Love’s Manifestation
Love’s Manifestation
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.
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.
That is noble and a divine call
God’s love for us is the source of our love for each other.
:9
God’s love was manifested among us by the Advent of Jesus!
God’s love for us is the source of our love for each other.
God sent His only Son into the world
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
He was in the beginning with God.
All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.
In him was life, and the life was the light of men.
The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
(John bore witness about him, and cried out, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks before me, because he was before me.’ ”)
And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.
God entered the world by taking on Flesh.
Literally, Love had Come into the world!
IL: Love Came Down at Christmas Author: Christina Georgina Rossetti
1 Love came down at Christmas,
love all lovely, Love divine;
Love was born at Christmas;
star and angels gave the sign.
2 Worship we the Godhead,
Love incarnate, Love divine;
worship we our Jesus,
but wherewith for sacred sign?
3 Love shall be our token,
love be yours and love be mine;
love to God and others,
love for plea and gift and sign.
So that we might live through Him
God took on flesh, so that through Jesus we might live.
John is talking about the atonement.
Through Jesus’ sacrifice to pay for our sins, we who are dead in sin, can be made alive.
And you were dead in the trespasses and sins
in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—
among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.
But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us,
even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—
When Jesus was born, God was setting in motion events which would change the world.
The problem is in their definition and expectations of love.
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.
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.
Love is God sending Jesus to pay for our sins.
Love’s Mandate
Love’s Mandate
Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.
The mandate of love is to love others as God has loved us.
Love must be continual and habitual in the life of believers.
Love must be continual and habitual in the life of believers.
The Love God demonstrated for us, should mark our lives
Remember, this love isn’t what the world teaches.
The world makes lust into love
They take physical appetites and assume that craving is love.
This isn’t just sensual, we cheapen the word love by talking of loving chocolate, coffee, bacon!
This misconception turns something divine and makes it merely an appetite.
Often times this appetite is taken to excess an satisfied in ungodly manners making it worse.
Another commonly held misconception is that love is merely seeking to never offend.
Tolerance has become a god to many.
Love, means accepting me just as I am, sin and all.
It means never challenging any idea I have.
There are people so misguided, that they won’t dare question the validity of anything:
They can consider themselves of the opposite gender or recognize 50+ so called genders.
BUT you are accused of hate if you dare point to the biological reality God created.
They have falsified their ethnicity to get a job, and anyone pointing out reality, is called a bigot.
Whatever you identify as goes today.
Brothers and sisters, it isn’t love to feed their delusions!
What example of Love did God display:
1. Truth
God revealed and spoke truth
Jesus in encountered a woman at a well.
in the course of the conversation, she revealed the sordid truth about the lifestyle of sin in which she lived.
Did truth harm her? NO! Notice her reply:
The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ). When he comes, he will tell us all things.”
Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am he.”
John 4:
“Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?”
Do you not say, ‘There are yet four months, then comes the harvest’? Look, I tell you, lift up your eyes, and see that the fields are white for harvest.
John 4:
Truth set her free
It pointed out her real need and she found forgiveness in Him
If we love others, we will speak truth to them
Truth calls them to repent of sins
Truth calls them to live for God.
2. Service
Jesus spend His days meeting the needs of others.
Conclusion:
Conclusion:
Often we read He was “moved with compassion”
He just didn’t empathize, He met needs
Many today claim to “feel” for others.
They will declare it, protest about it, demand others accept it.
But many do little in the way of actually meeting needs
If we love others, we will serve them!
Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due, when it is in your power to do it.
Whoever has a bountiful eye will be blessed, for he shares his bread with the poor.
If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food,
and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that?
No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.
If we love another:
God abides in us
Love demonstrates that God is with us
His love shines through us to the world
His love is perfected in us
We learn to love by God’s gift.
Conclusion:
Do you know Christmas love?