God's Valentine

God's Valentine

1 Corinthians 1:18-25

    Jim asked his friend, Tony, whether he had bought his wife anything for Valentine's Day.

'Yes,' came the answer from Tony who was a bit of a chauvinist, 'I've bought her a belt and a bag.'

'That was very kind of you,' Jim added, 'I hope she appreciated the thought.'

Tony smiled as he replied, 'So do I, and hopefully the vacuum cleaner will work better now.'

    Mark works in a lawn-mower-parts warehouse.  Somehow Mark got the idea that his wife did not want a card on Valentine’s Day, but when he spoke to her on the phone he discovered she was expecting one.  Not having time to buy a card on his way home, Mark was in a quandary.  Then he looked at the lawn-mower trade magazines scattered around the office — and got an idea.  Using scissors and glue, he created a card with pictures of mowers, next to which he wrote: “I lawn for you mower and mower each day.”  Mark’s wife loved it.  The card immediately graced their refrigerator door.

    Hallmark has over 1330 different cards specifically for Valentine's Day.

    About 1 billion Valentine's Day cards are exchanged each year. That's the largest seasonal card-sending occasion of the year, next to Christmas.     Of those, teachers will receive the most Valentine's Day cards, followed by children, mothers, wives, and then, sweethearts. 

    I wonder, how many of those cards are ever misunderstood ore rejected?

    Have you ever sent a Valentine or love letter only to have it misunderstood, or worse, rejected?  Today's text says that this is the case with God's Love letter to the world.  God showed how much He loves us through Jesus and the Cross and yet many reject that message and others simply don't understand.  From today's text, we learn that ...

The Foolish Power of God's Love  (vv. 18-20),

Is Often Misunderstood  (vv. 21-22),   and

Yet This Is The Message We Proclaim  (vv. 23 - 25)

1. Body
1. The Foolish Power of God's Love  (vv. 18-20)
1. God's love, often misunderstood, rarely fully appreciated.
1. God's love is foolish to the lost
1. Christians claim some pretty "crazy" things.
2. Allow me to illustrate using the Incarnation.  Do you know any other God who actually comes down to earth as a human being?  In all the other religions, God is more reasonable and comes as a mighty religious prophet such as Mohammed, Buddha, or Confucius.  God does not come to earth as a lowly human being who suffers the way we do.  How dumb of God to suffer like we human beings. It would have been much easier to stay up in the painless security of heaven.
3. At the heart of our faith is the claim that peace and reconciliation with God was established by God Himself being offered up on a bloody cross for sin in our place.
2. God's love is power to the saved
1. John 3:16 -- For God so loved the world...
2. the saved know, from personal, inward experience the transforming, saving power of the Cross (the love of God)
3. If you really want to understand the heart of God, you need to understand the cross because the cross symbolizes the love of Christ.  Christ’s love is the deepest kind of love, a love which is willing to die for another.  This morning's text says, “We are to preach the gospel which is the cross of Christ and the cross is the very power of God for salvation.”  The cross is power, the power of the love of Christ.
4. Rom 5:8 -- ...but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
3. God's love confounds those who should have known better
1. wise -- skilled, educated, theologians - teachers
2. scribes -- a religious teacher, Doctor of the Law, able to interpret the difficult questions of the Bible
3. disputer -- learned teacher of philosophy or rhetoric.
4. Romans 1:22 says of these sort of men, "Claiming to be wise, they became fools.”The Foolish Power of God's Love Is Often Misunderstood  (vv. 21-22)
5. Who can really fathom God's awesome plans?
4. They don't get it
1. world -- 
1. don't know God
2. Eph 4:18 -- They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts.
2. Jews -- 
1. want a sign - proof
2. Matt. 12:38 -- Then some of the scribes and Pharisees answered, saying, “Teacher, we want to see a sign from You.”
3. for them, Jesus is not the kind of Messiah they expected or really wanted
4. Why didn’t the Jews receive him? Why don’t we receive him? Well... the text lays bare the truth.  Because the “Jews demand miraculous signs…in other words I demand miracles on my behalf.”  Now here's the amazing thing...  Jesus did perform miraculous signs…giving sight to the blind, straightening the legs of the lame, cleansing the lepers…he was reaching out to those in need. 
5. But those weren’t the kind of miracles they wanted or we want. They wanted a Messiah who would overthrow the Romans and reestablish the Kingdom of David. we want a Messiah who will overthrow all our troubles, sell our home for the right price, make this church grow, you know, reestablish the Kingdom of David. 
6. The Jews wanted Jesus to save them from Roman oppression, and Jesus instead went to a Roman cross to save them from the oppression of their sin.
7. We are "Jews" when we say... "If God will _____ then I will ___."
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
3. Greeks -- 
1. over analyze - why?  how?  what?
2. It was the Greeks who produced the great minds such as Socrates, Plato and Aristotle very well respected thinkers who made some reasonable observations. 
3. Socrates is quoted as saying, “The secret to abundant life and a successful society is education. If we can give everyone a good education then it must follow the world will get better and better.” 
4. We are "Greek" when we demand a clear understanding of God's ways before we will believe Him
5. The value of the message
1. through preaching, salvation
2. 1 John 4:9 -- God showed his love for us when he sent his only Son into the world to give us life.Yet This Is The Message We Proclaim  (vv. 23 - 25)
3. We have only one Word for the world.
6. The foolishness of the cross
1. A well known visiting American Preacher was speaking in a church in South America and gave some advice to a congregation about Evangelism. He said, “Don’t tell people about the cross, it doesn’t work. That’s why the Franklin Graham crusades are no longer effective. Just tell them that God loves them and has a plan for them. My ministry proves that. I have thousands that attend my church every Sunday. The message of a crucified Jew is ridiculous to the modern mind and an ineffective tool for Church Growth. So move on to something better. A crucified Messiah is stupid, but promise them prosperity, give them emotional experiences, provide them with self esteem – then you’ll fill the pews.”
7. to Jews
1. "skandalon" (scandal)  -- a tripping point
2. modified by a word that means sure, certain
8. to Greeks -- foolishness
9. The message of the Cross
1. That our God is a God who suffers with us.  God does not eliminate suffering from our lives but God suffers with us and for us.  Would you all imagine a little kid like _____ here?  _____, would you please come up front with me? _____, how old are you?  _____ years old.  So _____ comes running out of the house as fast as he can go and he misses a curb and he stubs his toe and bumps his head. _____ is crying up a storm.   _____ is in enormous pain.  So his mother and father take _____ in their arms and hug _____ and hug him and hug him and hug him and hug him and hug him, squeezing him with love.  Pretty soon _____ stops crying.  It seems that the pain that was inside of _____ goes into the mom and dad.  That’s what happens.  Now, God does not eliminate fast feet and God does not eliminate curbs and God does not eliminate the temperament of little boys who come shooting out of the house and trip over a curb near the street.  God does not eliminate all that stuff. God does not eliminate suffering.  But God is with us in our suffering, holding us and hugging us until the suffering goes from my heart into His.  
2. This is our wonder-filled message of the love of God.  This is the message of the Cross.
10. to the called
1. called = those invited to a banquet
2. power and wisdom -- that is to say, the very things that others were looking for and could not see.

1. Conclusion 
1. Many years ago in a church in England, a preacher entered the pulpit and said:
2. "Brethren, before I preach, allow me to tell this story. Many years have passed since I was in this place. On that evening there came three young men, not only with the intention of scoffing at the minister, but with their pockets filled with stones to throw at the preacher. After a few words, one of them said, 'Let us be at him now.' But the second replied, 'No, let’s hear how he does.’
3. "The minister went on, when the second one said, 'We have heard enough; now throw your stones.' But the third stopped them, saying, 'He is not so foolish as I thought; let us hear him out.' The minister preached and ended his sermon without being interrupted.
4. "Now listen! One of these three young men was executed a few months ago. The second lies under sentence of death in the city jail for murder. The third," continued the minister, while the tears ran down his cheeks, "through the grace of God, is the one who is speaking to you now."
5. We have all played the game and seen the game played, with a parent saying to a child, “How much do I love you?  From the cross, the primary symbol of the Christian faith, we know that the Lord God loves us thiiiiiiiiiiissssss much, without our hands stretched out as far as they can go.  Jesus is facing us, is facing the WHOLE world and saying, “I love you this much.”  That is the message from the cross.
6. We preach a message of love.  A message that says the God of creation loved us so much that he left heaven and came down to show His love for us by suffering for us, and in that suffering, took all of our suffering, sin and shame to Himself that we might know redemption, restoration and reconciliation.
7. This is the message of love that we preach.  This is God's Valentine.
8. Now, one question remains... Will you be His?