Tag Archives: Love

“The Mesage of Christmas”

by • on 10:01 AM • in Christmas Messages

For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.                               John 3:16

Intro:

1. Tonight I want to take just a few minutes and share with you about:

a. “What Is Christmas All About?”

I. Love

“For God so LOVED the world”

A. God is love, which is His very nature

1. He cannot be anything but love

B. There is nothing that we can do to get God to love us anymore than He does!

1. In Eph. 3:16, the Apostle Paul prayed that we —-

 “may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God.                  Eph 3:16-19

C. For GOD SO LOVED YOU!!!

1. That He sent His only Begotten Son, the Lord Jesus Christ to this earth

D. In Psalm 139:13, King David said of the LORD -

 For You formed my inward parts; You covered me in my mother’s womb. 14 I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Marvelous are Your works, And that my soul knows very well. 15 My frame was not hidden from You, When I was made in secret, And skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. 16 Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed. And in Your book they all were written, The days fashioned for me, When as yet there were none of them. 17 How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God! How great is the sum of them! 18 If I should count them, they would be more in number than the sand; When I awake, I am still with You.                Psalms 139:13-18 (NKJV)

E. So #1, Christmas is about LOVE

1. 2ND; Christmas is about –

 

II. PEACE

A. When Christ was born;

1. The angels came to the shepherds proclaiming the message of PEACE:

Now there were in the same country shepherds living out in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. 9 And behold, an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were greatly afraid. 10 Then the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy which will be to all people. 11 For there is born to you this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. 12 And this will be the sign to you: You will find a Babe wrapped in swaddling cloths, lying in a manger.” 13 And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying: 14 “Glory to God in the highest, And on earth —–peace, goodwill toward men!”   Luke 2:8-14

 B. When Christ comforted His disciples in John 14:27, He said:

Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.

C. Every time Christ appeared to His disciples after His resurrection,

1. He met them with the words:

“Peace be with you!”

D. So CHRISTMAS is about:

1. LOVE

2. PEACE

E. Christmas is also about

 

III. SALVATION

 For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.                               John 3:16

A. The bible tells us in the BOOK OF ROMANS -

1. That all of us are sinners –

[3:23]“for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”

 [3:10-12] As it is written: “There is none righteous, no, not one; There is none who understands; There is none who seeks after God. They have all turned aside; They have together become unprofitable; There is none who does good, no, not one.”

B. The consequence to our sin, resulted in GREAT DEBT –

[6:23a] For the wages of sin is death,

C. But God loved you so much, that He sent His Son Jesus

1. To come to this earth, be born in a manger

2. So that He might one day DIE to pay for your SINS

[6:23b] …but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.  

D. That’s the GOOD NEWS of the GOSPEL

1. And that’s the ULTIMATE MESSAGE of CHRISTMAS

E. God gave us the ULTIMATE gift of FORGIVENESS

1. Through JESUS CHRIST

[5:8] But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.   

F. Isn’t that amazing?!

“IN THAT WHILE WE WERE STILL SINNERS, CHRIST DIED FOR US!”

G. No matter how great your sin

1. God didn’t require that you go CLEAN YOURSELF UP 1ST

2. And THEN COME TO HIM

H. God said:

“I love you so much, that I’m going send JESUS to the earth, to pay for your sin”

I. There is nothing that you can do to make yourself more or less worthy of being forgiven

1. No amount of GOOD that you can do will ever…

a. MAKE UP for ALL the SIN that you have COMMITTED

J. Now here’s the key…

1. In order to BE FORGIVEN BY GOD

2. You have to RECEIVE God’s gift of FORGIVENESS through Jesus Christ

K. God says, if you want ME TO FORGIVE YOU, then you must -

[10:9-10] …confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.

L. If you BELIEVE in your heart that God sent Jesus Christ to pay for your sins;

1. Then you MUST CONFESS this with your MOUTH

M. It’s just like all the PRESENTS you have at home right now;

1. They may be under the TREE with YOUR NAME on THEM

2. but in order for that PRESENT to become YOUR PRESENT….

You have to receive the PRESENT, TAKE IT; open it; make it yours

[10:13] For “whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”

N. Have you received the greatest gift of all?

1. Have you received the Lord Jesus Christ as YOUR PERSONAL Lord/Savior?

Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation.           2 Cor. 6:2

SINNERS PRAYER:

1. Dear God I confess to You that I am a sinner and I need your forgiveness

a. Lord, I admit that I can’t earn my salvation

b. I can’t be good enough or undo anything that I have done

c. So I desperately need You to forgive me

2. LORD, please forgive me and cleanse me for all of my sin

3. I repent of all known sin and I surrender my life to You today

4. Jesus please come into my heart and right now become my Lord and Savior

5. By faith I receive Your gift of salvation

6. Thank You for cleansing me and forgiving me from all of my sin

7. Fill me with Your Holy Spirit

8. In Jesus’ name I pray, amen!

* If you just prayed that prayer and mean it, then Jesus just came into your life, and not only has God forgiven you of all your sin, you are now a child of God and one day when you die, you will go heaven!

O. The Word of God tells us that – We CAN KNOW where we’ll spend eternity!

These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life, and that you may continue to believe in the name of the Son of God. 1 John 5:13

CONCLUSION:

A. And that’s what Christmas is all about Charlie Brown!

1. Love

2. Peace

3. Salvation

 

 

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Supernatural Love

by • on 7:41 PM • in 1 Peter

 

 

 

 

1 Peter 1:22-25

 

 

ILLUSTRATION:

Several years ago a man and his friend were playing golf one day, and one of the guys was getting ready to make his chip shot. As he prepared to stroke the ball on the green, he saw a long funeral procession on the road next to the golf course. The man took off his golf cap, got on his knees, and bowed his head to pray.

His friend said, “Wow! That is the most thoughtful and touching thing I have ever seen. I can’t believe how great it was for you to stop your golf swing because of a funeral procession passing by. What thoughtfulness!”

The man replied, “Yeah, well, we were married for 35 years. I figured that was the least I could do!”

 

A. What love!

1. So SAD, but that is too often how superficial our love can be

2. And God wants to CHANGE that in all of us! 

B. God wants to give us the SUPERNATURAL ABILITY TO LOVE

1. Our SPOUSES

2. Our FAMILIES

3. One ANOTHER

C. In today’s text -

1. Peter is going to TEACH us:

4 specific ways we are to LOVE SUPERNATURALLY:

 

I. Love Sincerely

1 Peter 1:22

22 Since you have in obedience to the truth purified your souls for a sincere love of the brethren, fervently love one another from the heart,

“To love sincerely means ‘genuine’ or ‘without hypocrisy’. It is unfeigned love which is without pretense or without acting a part.”          – Lloyd J. Ogilvie

“To love sincerely is to love authentically-like God Himself”

 

A. Jesus was the PERSONIFICATION of LOVE

1. He loved everyone whom He met

He reached out to the sick, the blind, the crippled, the lonely, the widows, the poor, the dishonest tax collector, the Roman officer, the children; everyone whom HE encountered, He loved them all!

CHRIST’S LOVE WAS / IS AUTHENTIC – No pretense

He disliked hypocrisy greatly and He spoke against hypocrisy directly

B. In the Sermon on the Mount in Matt. 6, Jesus preached:

Matthew 6:1-6 (NASB)

1 “Beware of practicing your righteousness before men to be noticed by them; otherwise you have no reward with your Father who is in heaven. 2 “So when you give to the poor, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be honored by men. Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full. 3 “But when you give to the poor, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, 4 so that your giving will be in secret; and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you. 5 “When you pray, you are not to be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on the street corners so that they may be seen by men. Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full. 6 “But you, when you pray, go into your inner room, close your door and pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you. (hypocritical motives; the desire to recognized)

 

C. In order to have a ‘SINCERE’ or ‘UNFEIGNED LOVE’

1. Peter points out 2 prerequisites (V. 22)

D. 1st, we must have

#1. We must have Purified Souls (V. 22)

A. Under the Levitical Law,

1. The act of purification required the slaying of a sacrificial animal

2. And the SPRINKLING of the BLOOD upon that which was to be cleansed

a. The Altar, the Priest, the Levites

b. And even the people of God themselves

 

B. Our purified souls is what Peter was teaching on back in vv. 18-20

 

1 Peter 1:18-19

knowing that you were not redeemed with perishable things like silver or gold from your futile way of life inherited from your forefathers, 19 but with precious blood, as of a lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ.

 

C. If we are to ‘LOVE SINCERELY’

1. We must be cleansed from our sins by Jesus Christ

 

 

“We must be DEAD to SELF; and ALIVE to GOD”

 

 

D. We must receive this unconditional love from God

1. In order to express it to others

 

 

“God is the source of love and forgiveness and all that is good.”

 

 

E. The 1st REQUIREMENT in ‘LOVING SINCERELY’ is

1. Our souls must be PURIFIED

2. ‘Dead to SELF, ALIVE to God’

 

F. The 2nd REQUIREMENT to ‘LOVING SINCERELY’ is

#2. We must be those who obey the truth

A. Jesus Christ is the source of all truth

John 14:6      Jesus said* [to him], “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.

Truth, Love & Obedience all go together -

B. Jesus said that those who GENUINELY LOVE HIM;

1. Are those who OBEY HIM

John 14:15      “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments.

 

John 14:21     “He who has My commandments and keeps them is the one who loves Me; and he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and will disclose Myself to him.”

 

John 14:23     Jesus…said…, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our abode with him.

C. John reiterates this same truth in all 3 of his Epistles

1. He summaries the importance of our obedience in –

2 John 1:6

And this is love, that we walk according to His commandments.

 

D. True love for God is always demonstrated through obedience

 

E. So #1;

1. God wants to teach us to SUPERNATURALLY LOVE ONE ANOTHER with:

 

 

I. SINCERE LOVE

a. Purified Soul (dead to flesh; alive to God)

b. Obedience to the Word

 

 

F. #2, then; God wants to teach us how to SUPERNATURALLY:

 

 

 

II. LOVE FERVENTLY

 

A. The word ‘FERVENTLY’ means:

 

 

“To love deeply or intensely. To love fervently is to love with all of your strength.”

 

 

It literally means ‘TO STRETCH YOURSELF’ as an athlete at the end of a race

1. ‘Fervent Love STRETCHES itself outside it’s comfort zone’

 

B. That was the commandment Jesus gave us in –

 

Mark 12:28-31 (NASB)

28 One of the scribes came and heard them arguing, and recognizing that He had answered them well, asked Him, “What commandment is the foremost of all?”

29 Jesus answered, “The foremost is, ‘Hear, O Israel! the Lord our God is one Lord;

30 and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart , and with all your soul , and with all your mind, and with all your strength .’

31 “The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself .’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”

 

C. The greatest commandment is to FERVENTLY LOVE:

“We are to love one another deeply and intensely”

1 Peter 4:8  Above all, keep fervent in your love for one another, because love covers a multitude of sins.

Illustration:

A husband and wife one day were fussing. They were really going at it. So the wife suggested they write down their complaints on a piece of paper and then show the other person exactly how they felt. She thought it might cut down on the bickering. The husband agreed and got the pager. She got out the pencils. They both started writing.

They both wrote furiously for a while. The husband would pause, look at his wife, and write some more. The wife would pause, look up at her husband, and write some more. The husband paused again, looked at his wife with an even angrier look on his face, and then he would write some more. The wife did the same and then put her pencil down. Her husband was still writing. He looked up at her in fury and continued writing. He kept writing. Then he wrote some more. Then he wrote even more. The wife was getting furious because she had covered one side of the page and her husband was finishing the back side of his paper. He kept looking up at her and coming up with more to write. Every time he looked up, something new would come and he’d write some more.

The wife was in pain and agony. She was clenching her fists and tears of anger were welling up in her eyes. Finally, her husband said that he was finished. They exchanged paper and looked at each other’s sheet. As soon as she gave him her sheet and looked at his, she felt terrible. She wanted to take her sheet back. For when she looked at her husband’s sheet of paper, in spite of his anger and in spite of his pain, he had written on every line, “I love you, I love you, I love. I’m ticked off, but I love you, I’m angry, but I love you. I don’t want t to be here right now, but I love you.”

When she saw that much love, it covered the multitude of sins that had brought up the argument in the 1st place.

When you and I love like that, that kind of love can cover up a multitude of sins.

 

I. Love Sincerely

II. Love Fervently

D. #3, God wants to teach us to—

 

 

 III. LOVE WITH A PURE HEART

 

A. As humans, we talk about romantically loving from the heart;

1. But God speaks about loving from a PURE HEART

B. The Proverb asks the question:

“Who can say, ‘I have made my heart clean, I am pure from sin’?” (Prov. 20:9)

C. The answer is that NO ONE can cleanse or purify himself or herself from sin

1. Peter has just reminded us that only Christ can do that (vv. 19-20)

Just as our love must come from God, so must a pure heart come from God”

D. This is what Paul wrote to young Timothy in –

2 Timothy 2:22   Now flee from youthful lusts and pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace, with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart.

I. Love Sincerely

II. Love Fervently

III. Love with a Pure Heart

 

E. And finally this morning:

 

 

IV. LOVE FOREVER

1 Peter 1:23-25

23 for you have been born again not of seed which is perishable but imperishable, that is, through the living and enduring word of God.

24 For, “All flesh is like grass, And all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, And the flower falls off,

25 But the word OF THE LORD endures forever.” And this is the word which was preached to you.

 

Here are 3 biblical facts:

#1. God is love

#2. God is Eternal

#3. Therefore Love is Eternal

A. To illustrate his point, Peter quotes from –

Isaiah 40:6-8

6 A voice says, “Call out.” Then he answered, “What shall I call out?” All flesh is grass, and all its loveliness is like the flower of the field. 7 The grass withers, the flower fades, When the breath of the Lord blows upon it; Surely the people are grass.

8 The grass withers, the flower fades, But the word of our God stands forever.

‘WORD’ here is the word ‘RHEMA’ meaning the ‘SPOKEN WORD of God’

‘LOGOS’ is the ‘WRITTEN WORD’

B. Peter says the SPOKEN WORD of the LORD will ENDURE FOREVER

The WORD of GOD will endure FOREVER and SO WILL LOVE!!!!

 

C. Paul tells in 1 Cor. 13:8, 13 that:

“Love never comes to an end & Love goes on forever”

 

Conclusion:

What is ‘Supernatural love’?

It’s silence when your words would hurt.

It’s patience when your neighbor’s curt.

It’s deafness when the scandal flows.

It’s thoughtfulness for another’s woes.

It’s promptness when stern duty calls.

It’s courage when misfortune falls.

- Haddon Robinson

 

A. May we all remain TEACHABLE;

1. As we GROW in GOD’S amazing LOVE!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Love, Love, Love!!!

by • on 3:54 PM • in Exhortation

Come celebrate with us today the love of God!

1 Corinthians 13:1-13 (NKJV)
1 Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal.
2 And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.
3 And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing.
4 Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up;
5 does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil;
6 does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth;
7 bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
8 Love never fails. …13 And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

“By this shall all men know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” – Jesus

In His love,

Pastor Pete

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1 John 2:7 “Love One Another”

by • on 12:57 AM • in Sunday Teaser

Join us tomorrow for our Sunday morning worship service @ 10 am. Tomorrow we will be continuing our study from the book of 1 John 2, as we begin a study on this topic of ‘Love’.

Dr. John MacArthur states: “Love is the preeminent mark of a genuine believer. Love for God is the benchmark of one’s relationship to Him, and love for other people is the epitome of human relationships. Because love is the saint’s highest moral duty toward others, it is not only the ultimate mark of genuine salvation, but also provides the supreme assurance of that reality.”  

So far in 1 John 2, we have studied the law of 1) Keeping God’s Commandments 2) Abiding in Christ 3) Walking in Christ, and tomorrow we will study God’s commandment to 4) Love one another.

I pray that as we continue our study through this wonderful book of 1 John, that we will all grow in the grace and love of our Lord Jesus Christ!

If you are unable to join us in our sanctuary tomorrow morning, you may still listen in on our live Sunday morning service via our live streaming feed on our ‘KSLW’ listen live player (10 am,).

For His glory,

Pastor Pete

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