Let’s Talk About Love

Scripture: 1 John 4:7-21

Introduction

• Tuesday is Valentine’s Day: a day of recognizing those people we love.
• Much to my surprise, it is NOT a Hallmark-created holiday; even though it is their biggest sales holiday.
• I looked for just the right Scripture to bring a message about love for Valentines Day.
• I searched the Googles and saw some postings with a bunch of Song of Songs references.
• I could use one of these I thought …. NO uh-uh   little too spicy ,,, not gonna do it.
• Then I saw John’s epistle reference and that was perfect.
• If anyone in God’s Word knew the heart of Jesus, it was John.
• Valentines Day, like many other, Christian holidays were created to distract away from Pagan holidays
• In this case, the Pagan celebration was a purification and fertility rite.
• A goat and a dog were sacrificed and then young men would take thongs soaked in the blood … and you’ll never guess what they did next …
• Women would deliberately get in their path and the men would slap them with the thongs.
• This ritual would presumably help with child labor or help them get pregnant.
• I’m so glad that ritual didn’t last – the Hallmark cards are bad enough.
• Another ritual was that boys and girls would draw names from a jar and form couples.
• The couples would stay together for one year. After that, they often stayed together in marriage.
• At the end of the 5th century, Pope Gelasius I forbid the celebration of Lupercalia and is sometimes attributed with replacing it with St. Valentine’s Day.
• The name Valentine comes from two different martyrs who were granted sainthood.
• According to brittanica.com:

One was a priest who was martyred about the year 270 by the emperor Claudius II Gothicus. According to legend, the priest signed a letter “from your Valentine” to his jailer’s daughter, whom he had befriended and, by some accounts, healed from blindness.

The other was St. Valentine of Terni, a bishop, for whom the holiday was named, though it is possible the two saints were actually one person. Another common legend states that St. Valentine defied the emperor’s orders and secretly married couples to spare the husbands from war. It is for this reason that his feast day is associated with love.

• Let’s talk about love …what is love:

1. God is love
2. God loved us first
3. God sent His Son to demonstrate His love.

1. God is love

• John says God is love. Twice in today’s passage; verse 8 and 16.
• Psalm 36:7 says: “How priceless is your unfailing love, O God! People take refuge in the shadow of your wings.”
• And Psalm 109:26 “Help me, LORD my God; save me according to your unfailing love.”
• 1 John 3:1: “See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him.
• Burt Bacharach, the legendary composer who wrote dozens of pop hits, died Wednesday at 94.
• Think of the power behind the words of one of his most iconic songs:

What the world needs now is love, sweet love
It’s the only thing that there’s just too little of
What the world needs now is love, sweet love
No not just for some, but for everyone.

• What a great sentiment for this great lost world that we live in.
• Personally, my favorite version is the Dionne Warwick version and Hal David agreed.
• Bacharach was the music part of a songwriting duo with Hal David as the lyricist.
• Hal David died in 2012, but tells us in his own words about the making of this song:

Years ago, Burt Bacharach and I wrote a song that we thought we liked. After looking it over we decided that our original instinct was wrong. We put it away in our desk drawer and kept it hidden there for ten months – a flop, we thought.

This was particularly disappointing to me. I had thought of the idea at least two years before showing it to Burt. The chorus section beginning with, ‘What the world needs now” came quickly. However, after I finished with, “No, not just for some but for everyone,” I was stuck. I kept thinking of lines like, “Lord, we don’t need planes that fly higher or faster…” and they all seemed wrong. Why, I didn’t know. But the idea stayed with me.

Then, one day, I thought of, “Lord, we don’t need another mountain,” and all at once I knew how the lyric should be written. Things like planes and trains and cars are man-made, and things like mountains and rivers and valleys are created by someone or something we call God. There was now a oneness of idea and language instead of a conflict. It had taken me two years to put my finger on it.

• This oneness of God and love is something we often overlook.
• I think we are quicker to gravitate to the vengeful God with His harsh rules and strange plan.
• If you read the Bible holistically, what you will see is a love letter from a creator God.
• He lays it all on the line and doesn’t sugar coat any of it.
• His love is always there for us if we would just accept Him and turn to Him.
• God created man in His own image, but the greatest thing He breathed into us is love.

2. God loved us first

• John says in verse 19: “We love because he first loved us.”
• Before you were even born, God knew us and loved us.
• In Genesis 2:7: “Then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.
• Each of us are individual works of art created in love by a loving creator.
• Psalm 139:13 “For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.”
• God loved us first because He loved us before we were even born.
• From Isaiah 44:24 “Thus says the Lord, your Redeemer, who formed you from the womb: “I am the Lord, who made all things, who alone stretched out the heavens, who spread out the earth by myself,”
• Jesus said in John 17:26: “I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.”
• Jesus was present at creation and through Him all things were made – including LOVE.

3. God sent His Son to demonstrate His love.

• John wrote in his Gospel: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
• Jesus came to earth with the single purpose to sacrifice Himself for our sins.
• Paul wrote in Romans 5:8 “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
• Leviticus 19:18: “You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.”
• Before Jesus left the earth, He reiterated this command from God to love our neighbors.
• In Matthew 22:34-40 it is written:

Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”

Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

• It is by our love for others that people will know we are Jesus’ disciples.
• John 13:34-35: “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples if you love one another.”
• Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. Begin to think of love as God energy.
• If we have love towards another, we are tapping into the love God has for us.
• Love gives us a confidence in Jesus that we will have confidence on the day of judgment.
• There is no fear in love. Love drives out fear because fear has to do with punishment.
• We have nothing to fear because we are made complete in Jesus
• Love is often best described by Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians, chapter 13:

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.  It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.  Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.  It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.

• To have love, we must first have some kind of relationship.
• In the Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit live in a continuous state of relationship.
• In Paul’s definition, the relationship is between one or more persons, in this case a church
• As we think about making decisions and functioning as a church body, we should think in terms of love – how God’s love energy will be reflected in what we do.
• John says: “Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister.”
• I think we have learned that here. We have been put in a mix of very diverse people and cultures through our missions.
• We know the value of love in our interactions with those we serve.
• We are all the better for the love that we exchange with the people we meet.
• As we exchange valentines with those we love this week, remember the valentine that God sent us through His Holy Word.
• And especially remember what it meant for that Word of love to become flesh.