Is Love a Part of Your Life Foundation? (part 1)

Five Things We Need to Know about Love

4.21.2024

Introduction

We are reexamining our spiritual foundations this year!

Love is the foundation for faith. Faith works by love – Galatians 5:6

Galatians 5:6 (NKJV)

For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision avails anything, but faith working through love.

I plant flowers every April for the spring/summer months.

To do so, I must prepare the soil and use something other than the red clay we have here in NC!

Flowers grow very well if the soil is right!

Love is the soil on which the plant of faith thrives!

2 Timothy 3:1-5 (MSG)

Don’t be naive. There are difficult times ahead. As the end approaches, people are going to be self-absorbed, money-hungry, self-promoting, stuck-up, profane, contemptuous of parents, crude, coarse, dog-eat-dog, unbending, slanderers, impulsively wild, savage, cynical, treacherous, ruthless, bloated windbags, addicted to lust, and allergic to God. They’ll make a show of religion, but behind the scenes they’re animals. Stay clear of these people.

Matthew 24:12 (MSG)

For many others, the overwhelming spread of evil will do them in—nothing left of their love but a mound of ashes.

By the Holy Spirit, God has placed an amazing kind of love within us so we can make a difference in the harsh climate of today.

1 John 4:7-21 (NLT)

Dear friends, let us continue to love one another, for love comes from God. Anyone who loves is a child of God and knows God. 8 But anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love. 9 God showed how much he loved us by sending his one and only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him. 10 This is real love—not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins. 11 Dear friends, since God loved us that much, we surely ought to love each other. 12 No one has ever seen God. But if we love each other, God lives in us, and his love is brought to full expression in us. 13 And God has given us his Spirit as proof that we live in him and he in us. 14 Furthermore, we have seen with our own eyes and now testify that the Father sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. 15 All who declare that Jesus is the Son of God have God living in them, and they live in God. 16 We know how much God loves us, and we have put our trust in his love. God is love, and all who live in love live in God, and God lives in them. 17 And as we live in God, our love grows more perfect. So we will not be afraid on the day of judgment, but we can face him with confidence because we live like Jesus here in this world.

18 Such love has no fear, because perfect love expels all fear. If we are afraid, it is for fear of punishment, and this shows that we have not fully experienced his perfect love. 19 We love each other because he loved us first. 20 If someone says, “I love God,” but hates a fellow believer, that person is a liar; for if we don’t love people we can see, how can we love God, whom we cannot see? 21 And he has given us this command: Those who love God must also love their fellow believers.

Two words set this kind of love apart:

Unconditional

Self-sacrificial

What life does to me is determined by what life finds in me!

God has given us an ability to love unlike anything we experience without Him.

Human love has self at the center. God’s love has God as the center of all.

When I came to Jesus, I was introduced to a love I had never experienced that revolutionized how I think about me. And that changed how I treat others.

Over the next few weeks, we are going to examine what love looks like.

I encourage you to allow the Lord to deal with you about what the Bible terms walking in love. Or, we would call it living a lifestyle of love.

This could transform everything about life for you.

SO:

How’s Your Love Life?

Years ago Tina Turner sang – What’s love got to do with it?

Answer – Everything!

Love is both the foundation and motivation for the kingdom of God.

 

Love is the central theme of all that God is and does.

 

A step out of love is a step away from God into darkness and into Satan’s territory.

There is no spiritual growth without growth in love…

 

5 things we need to know about love:

1. Jesus gave the Jews two commandments to love that absorb the TEN.

Matthew 22:35-40 (NKJV)

Then one of them, a lawyer, asked Him a question, testing Him, and saying, Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?”37 Jesus said to him, “‘You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and great commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”

They sum up our responsibilities towards both God and our fellow man.

Love God.

Love your neighbor as yourself.

If you love, you will not break any of the Ten Commandments.

You won’t curse using God’s name.

You will honor your parents.

You will not lie.

You will not covet other people’s property.

You will not commit adultery.

You will not worship idols.

You will not murder.

Romans 13:8-10 (NLT)

Owe nothing to anyone—except for your obligation to love one another. If you love your neighbor, you will fulfill the requirements of God’s law. 9 For the commandments say, “You must not commit adultery. You must not murder. You must not steal. You must not covet.” These—and other such commandments—are summed up in this one commandment: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” 10 Love does no wrong to others, so love fulfills the requirements of God’s law.

2. Jesus gave believers a new commandment which, if obeyed, fulfills all others.

John 13: 34-35

A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another. 35 By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.”

 

· Not Bible knowledge

· Not church attendance

· Not church work

 

1981- Lady began to quote scripture…

What do people think about when they think of you?

3. Love cures strife and keeps the dark kingdom out of your life.

James 3:14-16 (NKJV)

But if you have bitter envy and self-seeking in your hearts, do not boast and lie against the truth. 15 This wisdom does not descend from above, but is earthly, sensual, demonic. 16 For where envy and self-seeking exist, confusion and every evil thing are there.

James 3:14-16 (AMPC)

But if you have bitter jealousy (envy) and contention (rivalry, selfish ambition) in your hearts, do not pride yourselves on it and thus be in defiance of and false to the Truth. 15 This [superficial] wisdom is not such as comes down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual (animal), even devilish (demoniacal). 16 For wherever there is jealousy (envy) and contention (rivalry and selfish ambition), there will also be confusion (unrest, disharmony, rebellion) and all sorts of evil and vile practices.

Strife is necessary for Satan to work at his best!

As oxygen fuels a fire, strife fuels darkness. What happens when you starve a fire of oxygen?

Cover your candle in a jar with the top and what happens?

Satan seeks to stifle your walk with God through strife.

 

1 Corinthians 3:1-3 (NKJV)

And I, brethren, could not speak to you as to spiritual people but as to carnal, as to babes in Christ. 2 I fed you with milk and not with solid food; for until now you were not able to receive it, and even now you are still not able; 3 for you are still carnal. For where there are envy, strife, and divisions among you, are you not carnal and behaving like mere men?

Babies are sweet until they don’t get their way.

Philippians 2:3 (KJV)

Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory; but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves.

 

2 Timothy 2:24-26 (NKJV)

And a servant of the Lord must not quarrel but be gentle to all, able to teach, patient, 25 in humility correcting those who are in opposition, if God perhaps will grant them repentance, so that they may know the truth, 26 and that they may come to their senses and escape the snare of the devil, having been taken captive by him to do his will.

 

4. Jesus introduced the concept of loving your enemies to the disciples.

Matthew 5: 38-44 (NKJV)

You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. 39 But I tell you not to resist an evil person. But whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also. 40 If anyone wants to sue you and take away your tunic, let him have your cloak also. 41 And whoever compels you to go one mile, go with him two. 42 Give to him who asks you, and from him who wants to borrow from you do not turn away. 43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you, 45 that you may be sons of your Father in heaven; for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. 46 For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? 47 And if you greet your brethren only, what do you do more than others? Do not even the tax collectors do so? 48 Therefore you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect.

 

They were accustomed to eye for eye tooth for tooth. I will do to you what you do to me. This love was foreign to them.

Matthew 5:44-48 (MSG)

I’m challenging that. I’m telling you to love your enemies. Let them bring out the best in you, not the worst. When someone gives you a hard time, respond with the energies of prayer, for then you are working out of your true selves, your God-created selves. This is what God does. He gives his best—the sun to warm and the rain to nourish—to everyone, regardless: the good and bad, the nice and nasty. If all you do is love the lovable, do you expect a bonus? Anybody can do that. If you simply say hello to those who greet you, do you expect a medal? Any run-of-the-mill sinner does that.
In a word, what I’m saying is, Grow up. You’re kingdom subjects. Now live like it. Live out your God-created identity. Live generously and graciously toward others, the way God lives toward you.

 

5. This love is like an alien to our world.

1 John 3:1 (NKJV)

Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God! Therefore the world does not know us, because it did not know Him. 2 Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. 3 And everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself, just as He is pure.

 

This Love is a Stranger

What manner of – Gk – potapen –

from what country, tribe or race; something foreign;

Other translations – from what far realm; what unearthly; how otherworldly…

Wuest, Volume III, p. 143

The foreign kind of love produced in us by the Holy Spirit constitutes us a foreign kind of person to the people of this world, and since they do not understand foreigners, people of a different race from themselves, they simply do not understand Christians. Children of God could just as well have come to earth from a strange planet so far as the people of the world are concerned. They are strangers to them.

This is by far the most difficult thing you will ever do.

 

This love will cause people to notice a difference in you, and will become the oil as it were in the machinery of relationships.

Action Points:

1. What would need to change in me for the two great commandments to get top priority each day?
2. What makes the love of God look so different from human love?
3. Talk about Matthew 5:43-44 and how it could change a current difficult relationship.