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Muskegon SDA Church

The Way of Love

Jason Sliger

The Commandment of Love

The Way of Love- Part 1

The Way of Love- Part 2

The Way of Love- Part 3

The Way of Love- Part 4

The Way of Love- Part 5

The Way of Love- Part 6

The Way of Love- Part 7

The Way of Love- Part 8

The Way of Love- Part 9

I can't think of a better person to follow than Jesus, amen?

Well, it's a pleasure to be with you here again this morning and I trust that the Lord has a blessing in store for each 1 of us.

And I trust that the Lord has blessed each 1 of you as well.

I invite you to bow your heads with me and we're gonna start with a brief word of prayer and then we'll dive into our study together.

Loving Father in heaven, We are thankful, Lord, that you have come to give us an example that we can follow.

And may the song of our hearts this next week be, I will follow thee, my Savior.

This morning, Father, as we reflect upon your word, we pray, dear Lord, that you would speak to us through it.

In John the 13th chapter, we find Jesus and the disciples alone in the upper room.

They are having a very meaningful conversation, well at least Jesus is having a meaningful conversation with them.

And his heart is burdened with a lot of things that he needs to share with his disciples before he's finally led to the cross.

As you know, the disciples were not in a very teachable frame of mind at this point.

They were arguing amongst themselves about who would be the greatest.

They were jockeying for the best position on the left and the right of Jesus at the table.

They really had a lot of strife inside of their hearts.

Judas, as you know, has already betrayed Jesus at this point.

And while all of this is going on, this dynamic in the upper room, Jesus really hits to the heart of the issue.

And he makes a statement in John 13 in verse 35 that we read last week in our sermon together, but we're gonna look at it a little bit more today.

By this, Jesus says, "'Shall All men know that you are my disciples, if.

Now, in the general sense, we oftentimes apply this Bible passage to mean that we should love everybody.

That would definitely be an application to the Bible passage.

But given that we know the context and what's going on in the upper room, the more specific application of the Bible passage is that Jesus is telling the disciples that the world would know that they are his disciples if they have love for 1 another in that group.

All those people that are bickering amongst themselves who should be the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

Jesus says, if you love 1 another in this group, the 12 of you, that this would be the example to the world that you are my disciples.

And of course we know that as we look at Acts chapter 1 and Acts chapter 2, as we see the disciples there coming together in unity and experiencing this love that Jesus has talked about in John chapter 13, the result was indeed The world knew that they were disciples of Christ.

The gospel went to the world at a very rapid pace.

This morning what I wanna do is I wanna take a look at this concept of love in the Bible.

The word that we know as agape in the Greek.

I think there's gonna be a couple of lessons that we can learn that will help us in our personal walk with the Lord and also in our interactions with other people.

The servant of the Lord writes in 1 of the periodicals in 1901, the Southern Review, January 1 of 1901, she writes this statement.

He only who loves his fellow man to a purpose can know God.

The Bible says, he that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love, right?

So she's saying if we don't love our fellow man, we cannot know who.

That should give us some pause for thought.

She goes on and she says this, this is the reason why.

This is the reason why that there is so little genuine vitality in our churches.

Why is there little vitality in our churches?

Now what do you think of when you think of the word vitality?

This is the reason why, she says, that there is so little life, energy, excitement in our churches, why?

Then she goes on, she makes this bombshell of a statement that I had to read several times before I really got the grasp of it.

It says this, theology is valueless unless it is saturated with the what?

The first time I read that to me, Dori, when I first saw it, she was like, wow, I've never heard that.

And of course, I thought the same thing when I read that.

Theology is valueless unless it is saturated with the love of Christ.

Now, what do you think of when you think of the word saturation?

The word saturate means it cannot hold anymore.

It's like the sponge on your sink counter in your kitchen that dries up throughout the day, and then the dishes are timed, it's time to wash the dishes, and you get that sponge out, and you put it underneath the water and it fills up until it is saturated with water, cannot hold anymore.

And she says that only when theology is saturated with the love of Christ that then it becomes what?

If we want our theology to have value to it, to others, we should first, what?

His love in the human heart will lead to the doing of works that will bear fruit after the similitude of the character of God.

Then she says, in the 13th chapter of 1 Corinthians, the apostle Paul defines what?

Christ-like love, which is what our theology needs to be saturated with.

1 Corinthians 13 defines Christ-like love.

And then she says this, it would be well to print this chapter in small type in every paper issued by our presses.

Did she, do you think that she thought this chapter was important?

Every paper that comes off of Our printing press should have 1 Corinthians 13 somewhere on the page in small type.

And she also tells us, interestingly enough, that this chapter should be read every single day.

You think that would change us if we read that chapter every day?

Thinking about it, reading it, meditating on it, thinking about it, reading it, meditating.

And then she quotes 1 Corinthians 13 and she concludes by making this statement.

This chapter is an expression of the obedience of all who love God and keep His commandments.

It is brought into the action in the life of every true believer.

Every true believer will have this experience in their life.

This morning, I want you to go with me, if you would, to 1 Corinthians chapter 12.

We're gonna delve into this a little bit more, because I don't know about you, I want to know God better, amen.

I wanna have the character of Jesus, amen.

So we ought to spend a little bit of time understanding this.

Now let me, before we get into this, and actually today we're really not gonna get into 1 Corinthians 13, that's to come as we continue to unfold this series.

But let me make this statement here at the very beginning.

Unfortunately, 1 Corinthians 13 has kind of been relegated to the wedding.

1 Corinthians 13 has kind of been relegated to the love chapter between a husband and wife or between 2 people that are dating each other.

I wanna tell you this morning, 1 Corinthians 13 is much more than that.

It is much more than that, and it is lacking, I believe, in our churches today.

You know this already, but when the Bible was written, it did not have chapter and verse divisions in it, so it would have just read like a letter.

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Series

The Way of Love

The Way of Love- Part 1

Transcript

Parent Series

Sponsor

Recorded

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Looking Back

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The Way of Love

The Way of Love- Part 7

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