Real Love (May 1, 2022)

Real Love

1 John 3:16-24

What is real love?  “Love” is a word that is thrown around more than a baseball at Spring Training. Everyone talks about love. I love this. I love that. I love your hair. I love that shirt. I love this team or that team. I love summer. I love Christmas. “I love you. You love me. We’re a happy family.” Love, love, love. Two characters on a TV show mumble something about loving each other as they slide between the sheets. We say we love our favorite sports team, then we wind up questioning the coach’s parentage when he makes a bad decision. We hear pop singers sing about love. Love is everywhere.

As a culture, we talk an awful lot about love. We love lots of things, from pizza to beer, from warm spring days to our friends new hair do, from a car to that new girl at school. We have come to confuse love with infatuation and lust. The main difference is that infatuation and lust are selfish in motive. When we are dealing with those ideas, we are looking out for our own selfish interests. We only “love” the object of our affection so long as it pleases us. We seek our own pleasure over the interests of someone else.

And then there's the story of Bud.

Bud was a factory worker with more than a slight resemblance to Archie Bunker. Every single day he’d come home sweaty and dirty. He’d go in the back door, grab a beer from the frig, and plop himself down in front of the TV until his wife brought him supper.

One day as he was driving to work he happened across a Christian psychologist on the radio -- kind  of a local version of James Dobson. And something the commentator said stuck in his mind -- this being that love and marriage are about sacrifice.

And it hit him – no, convicted him – that he’d been expecting his wife to sacrifice for him but he’d never really sacrificed for her. It was as though a relational light bulb came on and he knew that he had to do something about it.

So he decided that he was going to surprise her the next day. Before coming home he showered and shaved. He went to the florist and bought flowers and instead of going in through the back door he went to the front and rang the bell.

When she answered the door he held out the flowers and said -- "Honey, they’re for you! I love you."

She looked at him, her mouth dropped open. Tears filled her eyes.

And she said, "I’ve had a terrible day. Billy broke his leg and I had to take him to the hospital. No sooner had I got home than the phone rang. It was your mother and she’s coming to visit for two weeks. I tried to do the wash but the machine broke and there’s water all over the basement floor. And now, you come home........  drunk!

Poor Bud. It’s hard to win at love. But he’d finally got the right idea! He was on the right path, at least as mapped out by John in our text this morning. True love manifests itself in sacrificial action.

Today in 1 John 3: 16 - 24 we will discover that  ...

  Real Love Works

  Real Love Obeys   and ...

  Real Love  Abides

1. Body
1. Real Love Works  (vv. 16-17) — Love requires effort
1. Actual demonstrated love
1. The example is Christ's love for us
2. For Jesus' selfless love as the highest model of friendship, see John 15:13: "No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends".
3. Jesus is the model for fur actions for others
2. If you're selfish, that might be a good indicator that God's love is not in you.
3. The movie “The Constant Gardener” Is about a woman who has given her life to serve the African people. One day, she and her husband are riding down a main street. And they see a sick child struggling to walk alongside the road.
1. The wife said “Pull over! I want to help that boy!”
2. The husband said, “Honey, you can’t save everyone! You can’t help every single sick boy you see walking along the side of the road!”
3. The wife said, “You’re right. But this is one we CAN help!”
4. The same thing is true here. You can’t help every single person struggling to get through life.
5. But God will put someone in your life that you CAN help. It might be a young mom at your workplace whose husband just left her high and dry. And now she’s trying to raise her two kids all by herself. And maybe the Holy Spirit is leading you to reach out to her in friendship. Maybe He wants you to bring over a piping hot casserole. Maybe He’s wants you to anonymously put a bag of groceries on the front porch.
6. Or maybe He wants you to invite her and the kids over for a meal and a movie. You can’t help all the single moms in the world. But this is one you CAN help.
4. The Good Samaritan of Luke chapter 10 wasn’t called to minister to every single person who has ever been left for dead by robbers. He was called to minister to one specific man lying in his path. That’s what God is calling us to do. “If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him?”
2. Real Love Obeys  (vv. 18-23) - Love is more than “feelings”
1. Not in verbal agreement only
1. James 2:14-17 gives a similar example: "What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works?  Can faith save you?  If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, 'Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,' and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead". 
2. But with actions
1. James 1:22 advises: "Be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves."
3. This obedience is truer than our own hearts at times
1. Since God, the source of forgiveness (see 1:8-2:2), is "greater than our hearts" the possibility of the conscience condemning us does not shatter Christian confidence. 
2. Even if the Christian is not conscious of sin, one is assured that God hears prayer: see also John 16:26-27. “In that day you will ask in My name… for the Father Himself loves you…”
3. The test of acceptance by God is willingness to "do what pleases him" (v. 22). 
4. In John 8:29, Jesus says of himself: "the one who sent me is with me; he has not left me alone, for I always do what is pleasing to him". 
5. "God", who "knows" everything, judges us by the abiding relation of love to others, rather than by our passing moods. 
6. In John 21:17, when Jesus challenges Peter with "'do you love me?'", and Peter answers "'you know that I love you'", Jesus tells him: "'Feed my sheep'"
4. Jerome, one of the earliest historians of the church writes that, ""When the venerable John could no longer walk to the meetings of the Church but was borne there by his disciples, he always uttered the same address to the Church; he reminded them of that one commandment which he had received from Christ Himself, as comprising all the rest, and forming the distinction of the new covenant, "My little children, love one another." When the brethren present, wearied of hearing the same thing so often, asked why he always repeated the same thing, he replied, "Because it is the commandment of the Lord, and if this one thing be attained, it is enough""
3. Real Love Abides  (v. 24) — Love “sticks with it”
1. The other night, I came across a love letter on the Internet. Let me read it to you:
1. Dearest Jimmy,
1. No words could ever express the great unhappiness I’ve felt since breaking our engagement. Please say you’ll take me back. No one could ever take your place in my heart, so please forgive me. I love you. I love you. I love you!
2. Yours forever,
3. Marie.
4. P.S. And congratulations on winning the Powerball lottery.
2. The faithfulness in discipleship is found in following
3. The Spirit leads us and bears witness of Him
1. John 3:5 -- Jesus answered, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.
2. Romans 8:14 -- For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God.
3. 2 Cor. 1:22 -- who also has sealed us and given us the Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee. 
4. I recently came across something that speaks to this, it says…
1. When I think on the word guidance, I kept seeing "dance" at the end of the word.
2. I remember reading that doing God’s will is lot like dancing.
3. When two people try to lead, nothing feels right.
4. The movement doesn’t flow with the music, and everything is quite uncomfortable and jerky.
5. When one person realizes and lets the other lead, both bodies begin to flow with the music.
6. One gives gentle cues, perhaps with a nudge to the back or by pressing lightly in one direction or another.
7. It’s as if two become one body, moving beautifully.
8. The dance takes surrender, willingness, and attentiveness from one person and gentle guidance and skill form the other.
9. My eyes drew back to the word guidance.
10. When I saw the "G," I thought of God, followed by "u" and "i."
11. God, "u" and "i" "dance."
12. God, you and I dance.
13. This statement is what guidance means to me.
14. As I lowered my head, I became willing to trust that I would get guidance about my life.
2. Conclusion
1. Real Love Works -- I can see the evidence of Real Love in my actions
2. Real Love Obeys -- Even during times when my heart says differently, the evidence of my love is my obedience
3. Real Love Abides -- I cannot have two masters.  Real Love lets God lead.
4. Allow me to close with a story about real love.
5. The mother of a nine-year-old boy named Mark received a phone call in the middle of the afternoon.    It was the teacher from her son’s school.
6. "Mrs. Smith, something unusual happened today in your son’s third grade class. Your son did something that surprised me so much that I thought you should know about immediately."    The mother began to grow worried.
7. The teacher continued, "Nothing like this has happened in all my years of teaching. This morning I was teaching a lesson on creative writing. And as I always do, I tell the story of the ant and the grasshopper:
8. "The ant works hard all summer and stores up plenty of food. But the grasshopper plays all summer and does no work.
9. "Then winter comes. The grasshopper begins to starve because he has no food. So he begins to beg, ’Please Mr. Ant, you have much food. Please let me eat, too.’" Then I said, "Boys and girls, your job is to write the ending to the story."
10. "Your son, Mark, raised his hand. ’Teacher, may I draw a picture?’
11. "’Well, yes, Mark, if you like, you may draw a picture. But first you must write the ending to the story.’
12. "As in all the years past, most of the students said the ant shared his food through the winter, and both the ant and the grasshopper lived.
13. A few children wrote, ’No, Mr. Grasshopper. You should have worked in the summer. Now, I have just enough food for myself.’ So the ant lived and the grasshopper died.
14. "But your son ended the story in a way different from any other child, ever. He wrote, ’So the ant gave all of his food to the grasshopper; the grasshopper lived through the winter. But the ant died.’
15. "And the picture? At the bottom of the page, Mark had drawn three crosses."