Sunday, December 8, 2019

Reckless love of God

Pericope: 1 John 4: 7-12 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. 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. 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.
Sermon Text: 1 John 4: 9 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. 
Sermon Title: The Many Reasons for Christmas Pt 2 The Reckless Love of God
BP: Move the hearers to accept the love of God
Review:  Last Sunday I started this Christmas sermon series off raising and answering the question the “Why” of Christmas.  I established the reason Christmas has been hijacked by the secular society is because Christians refuse to talk about why do we have Christmas.  Christmas is the result of humanity sin in the Garden of Eden.  I made four points Point 1: The reason for Christmas is God’s quid pro quo. Point 2:  The reason for Christmas is it takes away the loneliness. Point 3: The reason for Christmas it reveals the real you. Point 4 The reason for Christmas is it brings joy.  
I said unless and until we are willing to talk about thatChristmas would remain a hostageof department stores, online shopping, Santa, Frosty the snowman, Rudolph the red nosereindeer, etc… While there is nothing intrinsically wrong with those things when they are put in the context of truth, they sufficiently cloud the issue and we never get to Jesus being born to take away the sins of the world.  
This morning let’s look at the second major reason we have Christmas.  It is directly connected to the first.  In fact, they are symbiotic.  They are one and one “a” The second reason for Christmas is the love of God.  God’s love is the antidote, answer, response, and even the outcome of sin. But not the love you are familiar with.  In fact, love is also a victim of secular society.  Love is also a prisoner, a hostage and kidnapped by Hollywood and our own lack of knowledge and experience of the love of God.
In our text this morning John introduces us to Gods love.  John is the writer who supplies us with descriptives of God.  God is light.  Jesus is God the word of flesh.  God is love. God is giver…for God so loved the world…To understand Gods love we’ve got to go back to Gen 3:15 I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he [Jesus] shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise [Satan] his heel.”
Gen 3:15 was in the mind of God before he created the Garden of Eden.  In other words, in the mind of God, God had already made provision for Adam and Eve to sin. REPEAT You may say, God is prefect, he made them perfect or without sin and put them in a perfect place. So why would he already provide for them and us to fall? Because God is Love!! Because love demanded it. You see God created us to be in a love relationship with him. Therefore, God had to create humanity with free will.  The only way God could experience a loving relationship from us is to give us the free will not to love him because coerced, obligatory, forced love is not love.  So in giving us free will it also meant we had the free will to sin.  
So Adam and Eve sinned using their free will and God had to provide a way back to him even though he set it up the possibility for sin.  REPEAT You must get that fact, axiom, that truth before I can teach you and you accept Gods reckless love.  If you don’t get this revelation, then Gods love to you will be no different than Phileo – Greek for love of a friend or eros – Greek for physical intimate sexual sensual love. These are Hollywood love of which we move in and out of thinking that we are operating in the love of God. REPEAT That’s why Tina Turner can raise the question What Love Gotta do with it INSERT AUDIO SONG.  What’s love but a second hand emotion. Well Gods love is reckless love. INSERT AUDIO SONG, love has everything to do with it in the following ways.  
Point 1:  God is the original Love DoctorVs 7, 8 3:1 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. 3 See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him.
In the text we see John describing the indescribable.  We see John defining what cannot be defined with human terms.  Johns says something that on the surface are so profound we gloss over.  Oh!  We say! God is love – next!  No! Pause! Selah! Ponder!  What does this really mean?  Wee it does not mean God is a bundle of emotions. It does not mean God is only love.  
The text means that you cannot separate God from his actions in creations.  In other words, the who creation is evidence of God’s love principally through Jesus Christ…that is why I say God is the original love doctor.  
Story - God’s Loving Son”
A certain rich man died and left no heirs. When his household goods were auctioned off, an elderly lady dressed in shabby garments was the only one to bid on the picture of the dead man’s son. It had been greatly cherished by the wealthy father because his only child had died at an early age. But the crowd that had gathered for the sale showed no interest in it. When the woman who bought the portrait was asked why she wanted it, she said she had been the boy’s nurse many years before and had loved him dearly. Later, she examined the picture closely and noticed a bulge in the heavy paper on the back. Making a small cut, she removed an envelope which turned out to be the man’s missing will. The document very clearly stated that he wanted to leave his property to the person who still held dear the memory of his beloved son.
This woman is representative of any child of God, who because of love for His beloved Son, Jesus, receives the greatest inheritance known to humanity. Certainly every believer can give thanks for that today.
Transition: When you understand God’s love then you realize you cannot get away from it.  
Point 2:  You cannot get away from Gods LoveEph 3: 18, 19 (TLB) 18-19 and may you be able to feel and understand, as all God’s children should, how longhow widehow deep, and how high his love really is; and to experience this love for yourselves, though it is so great that you will never see the end of it or fully know or understand it. And so at last you will be filled up with God himself. Romans 8: 35(TLB) 35 Who then can ever keep Christ’s lovefrom us? When we have trouble or calamity, when we are hunted down or destroyed, is it because he doesn’t love us anymore? And if we are hungry or penniless or in danger or threatened with death, has God deserted us?
When we look more deeply into the text, Paul’s words bring amplification to John’s words.  Paul told timothy in Ephesians, God’s love was inescapable.  Paul said God’s love would chase you down.  You cannot outrun God’s love…
STORY OF THE SONG RECKLESS LOVE - These lines are part of the wonderful song composed by Cory Asbury titled “Reckless Love”.  The song became so popular that even Hollywood artists, little kids and soldiers were singing it.  Sometimes people get confused when they read the title of the song, but the moment you hear it and know the story behind it, you realize how intimate the love of God is.
Many people are asking, why is it called “Reckless Love”? The word “Reckless” does not refer to God Himself, the God we are serving is not reckless.  However, it refers to the way God loves us.  If you try to consider what He did on the cross, He is utterly not concerned with the consequences of His actions in regards to His safety, comfort and well being. 
He is so in love with you and me, that He came to earth to show how much He is willing to sacrifice just to have you back in His arms.  His love isn’t selfish and He is never been self-serving.  He would offer His life to give us the freedom that we don’t deserve.  His love leaves the ninety-nine just to find the one who went astray. 
Cory himself experienced the same kind of love,“His love saw me, broken down kid, with regret as deep as the ocean.  My innocence in youth poured out like water, and He found me, and He put me on His soldiers.  And He carried me on.  Because He is just that good, He is just that kind, He is a Father that never gives up.”  Cory Said.
Transition:  After God’s love chases you down, then it takes your sin away.  You see there is a reason why God’s love chases after you.  We all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Romans 3:23
While we were yet sinners he died for us. Romans 5:8
Point 3:  God’s love takes away our sinVs 9,10 (TLB) 9 God showed how much he lovedus by sending his only Son into this wicked world to bring to us eternal life through his death. 10 In this act we see what real love is: it is not our love for God but his love for us when he sent his Son to satisfy God’s anger against our sins.
Here is where John takes us back to Gen. 3:15.  When we sinned God had already prepared a way back to him.  God’s love is evident in our free will.  So even when we choose to turn away from God he says I knew you would so here is the road block…Who does that? God.
Transition: When you acknowledge God is the author and finisher of love.  When you realize you cannot get away from god’s love because he is chasing you down. God chases you to get rid of your sin.  Now you must do something with that love.  Love is a verb not an adverb, not an adjective.  It’s not descriptive, it’s deliberate.
Story - C.S. LEWIS ON GOD'S LOVE
C. S. Lewis described God’s love like this: "God, who needs nothing, loves into existence wholly superfluous creations in order that He may love and perfect them. He creates the universe, already foreseeing—or should we say ‘seeing’?—the buzzing cloud of flies about the cross, the flayed back pressed against the uneven stakes of beams, the nails driven through the nerves of His hands, the repeated torture of the back and arms as it is time after time, for breath’s sake, hitched up… Herein is love. This is the diagram of Love. He gave Himself!"
Point 4: Love is a verbVs 11, 12 (TLB) 11 Dear friends, since God loved us as much as that, we surely ought to love each other too. 12 For though we have never yet seen God, when we love each other God lives in us, and his love within us grows ever stronger.
Love is a verb and you are the action figure. Pauls puts it this way in 1 Cor. 13 - If I speak in the tongues[a] of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast,[b] but do not have love, I gain nothing.
4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. 11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. 12 For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
STORY - Mercy is the fulfillment of God’s love and God’s justice
Illustration: mother once approached Napoleon seeking a pardon for her son. The emperor replied that the young man had committed a certain offense twice and justice demanded death. “But I don’t ask for justice,” the mother explained. “I plead for mercy.” “But your son does not deserve mercy,” Napoleon replied. “Sir,” the woman cried, “it would not be mercy if he deserved it, and mercy is all I ask for.” “Well, then,” the emperor said, “I will have mercy.” And he spared the woman’s son.
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