Sermon Tone Analysis

Overall tone of the sermon

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What Is Love?
Intro - New short series, key in on the idea from Pilate (what is truth) guiding us to a similar question - What is love?
And we need to know what love is, church - we at least need to have some greater idea of love than what society informs us of!
I say that, because frankly, we all have a wildly different, and for some of us, greatly incorrect idea about love.
And that is no insult!
We have been born into a time of differing opinions, and instant information!
We think of a question, and we ask the world - and get a thousand different answers in the blink of an eye.
That is a wonderful thing, church, but it can be damaging as well.
I think back to my younger days, just a couple weeks ago, when I would sit and wonder if I loved someone.
I mean, how different would that look if I had instant access to all these different opinions and interpretations of what was going on in my life?
Would I even be able to approach to know what love is?
I thank God that I could just sit in my room and wonder without any real outside influence!
Do I love her? How will I know it?
Does she love me?
How can I tell?
If she lets me hold her hand, does she love me?
If I buy her a gift, will she know I love her?
Maybe if we go out to a romantic dinner, or for a long walk on the beach, maybe then they will know I love them!
But all those things aren’t really love.
We distort what love is, church, with what emotion, and society tell us love should be, and what it should look like.
And today, I really want you to be honest with yourself.
Admit what you believe love to be right now, in your head, and let’s together, let God use His word to help our hearts to hear his word.
talk about the many different ideas of love we have.
hash them out briefly…from both sides maybe???
[story about love (man murdering wife?)
Wind up the intro by setting the stage for us to understand love the correct way - from God’s point of view - and not from our subjective and flawed perspectives.
----
pray
[picoflove]
It is important in life to set the right tone to anything you decide to do.
To get off to a good start, if you will.
And that is what I want to do today.
And since we are talking about one of the most important aspects of our lives, and our faith, it is even more important for us to get off to a good start!
To do that, I want to dive right in to the meat of this message early on.
I want to dissect the message that John spends this entire letter, and perhaps even a good portion of his gospel hinting around at!
God Is Love
I know we all know that.
At least on the surface we know it.
But still we sit here, the collected followers of Jesus, having just been redeemed by Christ’s sacrifice and reassured of His plan for us through the resurrection - here we are still wondering thousands of years later what love is supposed to look like!
It boggles the mind, really.
Just as I said earlier, we all have these different ideas of what love is supposed to look like.
But here in the text, John tells us that love is one absolute and perfect thing!
God is love!
And if God is love, then love is God!
Now I can hear the more cynical and sarcastic among us asking themselves, well if I can’t see God, I can’t see love!
After all, no one can know God, right?
Jesus tells us in John’s Gospel, “[read]”.
No, we all know God.
We have all seen God!
Even if you don’t know a single thing about Jesus, Paul reminds us that all creation speaks to the glory of God, so that we are all without excuse!
So you know Him.
You have seen Him.
We have all seen Him.
We intrinsically know what He looks like!
But I want you to understand, church, if you don’t ever show love, you will never know love!
What love looks like.
So you know Him.
You have seen Him.
We have all seen Him.
We intrinsically know what He looks like!
I think that the movie Forrest Gump reminds us the best of this simple fact.
One of my favorite moments in it, is this simple reminder he gives Jenny, and the audience, that he might not be a smart man, but he knows what love is!
I think that the movie Forrest Gump reminds us the best of this fact.
One of my favorite moments in it, is the simple reminder he gives Jenny, and the audience, that he might not be a smart man, but he knows what love is!
And so do we.
How does that song go?
Don’t know much about history, don’t know much biology.
Don’t know much about a science book.
Don’t know much about the french I took.
But I do know that I love you.
We know what love is, church.
Sure we might close our eyes to it, and convince ourselves that it looks different than it really does, because of what the world, or our own desires tells us, but we know deep in our souls what it really is.
We are without excuse.
[picoffightingcouple]
Now there is a difference here that I need to point out.
We all know what love is, but sometimes, our situations, our anger, our disappointment, whatever it might be, something stands in between us and showing someone - or even the world - our love!
True love; God’s love.
But I want you to understand, church, if you don’t ever show love, even when you don’t especially want to, you will never know love!
[married man story]
When you show love, you wind up loving; perhaps without even meaning to.
To know love, show love.
That is the power of love.
An emotion, a state of being that “covers a multitude of sins!”
The question is, do we respond to that love the right way? Do we see it, and in the process see God, and then try to figure out how to be more like Him?
And to live more like that?
Are we more comfortable understanding the world without the cross, and without the resurrection?
That is the real question.
You see, when you don’t try to love, or live, like Jesus, then you essentially are telling God that you don’t really care about the cross or tomb!
You are living life completely removed from the ultimate expression of God’s feeling for all of mankind, and for you!
He is showing you how to love!
He is showing you what is expected!
And we, like spoiled children, look that gift horse in the mouth and act as if love is something it isn’t.
[picofhappymarriage]
One of those things we act like love is, is a marriage.
In fact, possibly the most common symbol of love is marriage.
Of course, when you base love off of a flawed human expression of love, there tends to be problems.
Don’t get me wrong, the institution of marriage is not to blame - God has given us all we need there - it is our application of love over a marriage, and then our comparison of that love over time that is to blame.
You see, what was a loving marriage to me, might not be the same to you.
What seems normal to me might be abnormal to you.
So when we view love, or the expression of love, only through the lens of marriage, or romantic relationships, we fall short, because humans tend to fall short.
No, God knows we need something else to define love for us, and so in this text, and many others - and most importantly, the cross - He outlines that for us.
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