Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] This morning, somewhere around 150 to 160 kids will get out of bed and they'll go in the kitchen and they'll look into a little bag that they got from this church, and it'll have some breakfast bars in it, it'll have some yogurt in it, and it'll have a variety of things in it.
[00:00:34] And the only thing that those kids will eat today is what's in that bag.
[00:00:41] Because they live in incompetent families and they're not being cared for the way they should.
[00:00:49] So every year at Christmas time, we take a Christmas offering to guarantee that every single weekend, those kids can get out of bed, have something to eat.
[00:01:05] We do that because it's what Jesus taught us to do.
[00:01:11] We don't do that because we're a social service organization or we have some agenda.
[00:01:22] We do that because Christ said, give them something to eat.
[00:01:28] So every Christmas, we do that.
[00:01:33] This afternoon, moms will go into the cupboard and take out things to make lunch.
[00:01:42] And the stuff she's taken out of her cupboard, she got out of our food bank.
[00:01:48] Every week, every month at Old Brooklyn and Elyria, we provide food for about 200 families in each place.
[00:01:58] And they'll eat today because last Christmas you gave them.
[00:02:04] You gave generously, and we financed the food bank for the year.
[00:02:10] We're about 60% of where we need to be.
[00:02:13] So if you.
[00:02:16] If you'd whisper a prayer in your heart and ask God to direct your way, let's fully fund this food program for the year, and let's make a difference in some people's lives. Could we do that together?
[00:02:36] Dear Heavenly Father, I thank you for this church.
[00:02:41] I thank you for their inclination to do good.
[00:02:45] I thank you for their willingness to partner with you in making a difference in people's lives.
[00:02:53] I pray for every child who's eating today and every family who's eating. I pray that they would sense the love of God.
[00:03:01] I pray that somehow or another, through that simple. That. That. That simple act of receiving something, they could sense your presence and they would feel a new inclination toward you.
[00:03:15] I pray that you would open up the windows of heaven and pour out a blessing upon those who give so generously. I pray it'd be a blessing that they couldn't contain.
[00:03:27] Dear Heavenly Father, I pray today that we could think about, you are a God who, in the core of your nature, is a God of love, and you do everything you do out of love.
[00:03:45] And I pray that we could understand that in you, in Christ's name. Amen.
[00:03:53] The Christmas story begins as a love story.
[00:04:00] We don't, the gospels don't tell us the backstory, but we can guess.
[00:04:07] Joseph and Mary met somewhere, like all couples do.
[00:04:14] Maybe somebody, maybe their friends introduced them to each other or maybe they met at the synagogue or. But they met somewhere.
[00:04:26] And when they met, it was kind of one of those things where they both sensed something special about each other.
[00:04:39] Do you remember that happening?
[00:04:42] Ah.
[00:04:43] Ah, I can remember.
[00:04:46] I, I knew Sharon a long time before that golden moment happened. And I thought, a pretty special person here, I better be on my best behavior.
[00:05:03] And they noticed that they wanted to spend more time together.
[00:05:13] They kind of liked, they kind of liked spending time together. And Joseph liked Mary making her special dish, whatever it was.
[00:05:32] And the more time they spent together, the more it became clear that they wanted to spend the rest of their life together.
[00:05:42] They fell in love.
[00:05:46] Ah.
[00:05:47] Joseph spoke to Mary's dad.
[00:05:51] Ah, I never made it easy on my son in laws when they came and talked to me about my kids.
[00:06:02] I said, you better be serious, bro, because I'm dead serious.
[00:06:07] Ah.
[00:06:12] And then the special day came when Joseph looked in Mary's face and held her hand and said, would you marry me?
[00:06:29] I'm sure Mary was like most young ladies when the man she loved asked her to marry her, she was absolutely delighted.
[00:06:41] Ah.
[00:06:42] And they set the date for the wedding.
[00:06:48] And after the proposal, sometime later, the angel Gabriel showed up in Mary's life and said, mary, you have been highly favored by God and God is going to send his Messiah in the world through you.
[00:07:13] And Mary said to the angel Gabriel, you do know that I'm only engaged to Joseph.
[00:07:23] We're not, we're not married yet.
[00:07:27] And the angel said, the Holy Spirit will overshadow you and the power of the Most High will come upon you. And so the child that you will give birth to will be called the Son of God.
[00:07:42] Well, shortly after that, Mary went to visit her relative Elizabeth, who was also six months pregnant.
[00:07:52] And she stayed with her three months.
[00:07:57] And so when she came back home to Nazareth, Mary was three months pregnant and she had to have another conversation with Joseph.
[00:08:13] Ah.
[00:08:17] Ah.
[00:08:18] I wonder how she worried about that conversation.
[00:08:25] I wonder how much tension there was when, when she actually sat down with Joseph and said, ah, something has happened I need to tell you about.
[00:08:37] Ah.
[00:08:38] The conversation isn't recorded, but we know it didn't go well.
[00:08:45] Their love was tested and Joseph was planning to break the engagement privately and not to make a big scene about it.
[00:09:02] And when he was making his plans to do that.
[00:09:09] The Lord appeared to him in a dream and he said, joseph, don't be afraid to take Mary as your wife.
[00:09:23] Ah, she hasn't been unfaithful to you.
[00:09:27] God is doing a special thing in the world and he's chosen Mary to do it through.
[00:09:36] And the Gospel implies that the next day Joseph got up and went and talked to Mary's dad.
[00:09:46] And, ah, Mary moved in with them that day.
[00:09:53] Ah, they had a beautiful romantic love.
[00:09:59] It was a love that was tested, but with God's help, it survived.
[00:10:06] And then Joseph and Mary had to go to Bethlehem because the Romans wanted more taxes.
[00:10:14] And the way they got more taxes was they made everybody register.
[00:10:19] So they knew who lived in the land and they knew what job they had. And they kind of guessed on how much you made.
[00:10:28] And so they would set the amount of tax that they believe should be collected. And Mary and Joseph had to go to Bethlehem.
[00:10:36] Now, Bethlehem was a relatively small village and there were a whole bunch of people there to register.
[00:10:46] And so very quickly there was no place to stay anymore.
[00:10:54] And Joseph and Mary.
[00:11:00] Made the best of a bad situation.
[00:11:03] And they cleaned out a cattle stall and they put fresh hay down and they put blankets around, and that's where they stayed while they were waiting for the registration.
[00:11:21] Well, going into labor is never a convenient saying. Ah, I've been through it five times with Shay.
[00:11:30] It's never convenient.
[00:11:34] The very first child we had, you didn't get an individual room. Then they had a delivery ward and they just had curtains between ladies. Anybody remember the old days? They just had curtains between the bed.
[00:11:50] And we went in for Misty to be born. And there was a screamer there that day.
[00:12:02] It still unnerves me 50 years later to remember this lady screaming her lungs out.
[00:12:11] And I was praying to God, oh, God, please, if Sharon does that, I don't know what I'm gonna do.
[00:12:20] And Sharon said, I'll try my best not to do that.
[00:12:29] And so there in that.
[00:12:33] There in that little stall turned into a.
[00:12:40] An apartment, Mary wept and gave birth to Jesus.
[00:12:49] And then Mary and Joseph experienced an altogether different kind of love.
[00:12:58] A love that was very different than the romantic love they had. They experienced parental love.
[00:13:05] Ah, I can remember my children being born.
[00:13:14] And I can remember just wanting to kiss their face off.
[00:13:20] Ah.
[00:13:21] I just kept bumping my lips against their little cheeks.
[00:13:25] Ah.
[00:13:27] Ah.
[00:13:28] I had a terrible urge to bite them. I have no idea where that came from.
[00:13:33] Ah, but I didn't do it.
[00:13:35] Ah.
[00:13:37] I just remember the Love I felt for those kids was unlike any other love I had ever felt in my life. Can. Can I have an amen? It's just different.
[00:13:52] Um, and so there is Mary and Joseph in their little apartment, Jesus wrapped up in blankets.
[00:14:07] And they're. They're both holding him and they're both kissing him, and. And they're both feeling this overwhelming sense of parental love.
[00:14:23] But in all of that, there was a love that was even one step richer than parental love.
[00:14:37] In that stall that day, in that little apartment that day, there was the moral attribute of love from an infinite God.
[00:14:50] Ah.
[00:14:52] Ah. I learned when I was a boy that God so loved the world that he gave his only son that day.
[00:15:05] There was the rich love between Mary and Joseph. There was the richer love between parents and children.
[00:15:14] But there was the richest love of all.
[00:15:18] It was the love that God Almighty has for you and for me.
[00:15:27] And for that love's sake, Christ came into the world on the first Christmas.
[00:15:36] God sent His Son to be the Savior of humanity.
[00:15:42] John, who was the apostle who was closest to Jesus Christ, wrote a letter. And in his letter he said this.
[00:15:51] By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of His Spirit.
[00:16:00] And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent His Son to be the Savior of the world.
[00:16:08] On that first Christmas morning, the love of God expressed itself most richly in Jesus Christ, God's only begotten Son, who came on that Christmas morning to express the love of God toward you and I and to save us from everything that displeases God.
[00:16:34] You see, when God gives us his love, he gives us Himself.
[00:16:44] John went on and wrote, so we have come to know and to believe that.
[00:16:52] So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us.
[00:16:58] For God is love.
[00:17:00] And whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in Him.
[00:17:07] You've all heard the phrase God is love.
[00:17:11] But have you ever paused to think about what does it mean, God is love?
[00:17:18] Could we spend just a few minutes and do that this morning?
[00:17:22] God is love means God has a strong affection based on admiration.
[00:17:34] The love of God is a strong affection based on adoration. First of all, God loves Himself.
[00:17:44] In the Trinity. The Father loves the Son and the Son loves the Father.
[00:17:49] The Son loves the Spirit and the Spirit loves the Son.
[00:17:53] The Spirit loves the Father and the Father loves the Spirit. They have an affinity based on admiration for each other.
[00:18:03] The Father admires the Son, the Son admires the Father.
[00:18:08] The Son admires the Spirit, the Spirit admires the Father, the Spirit admires the Father, and the Father admires the Spirit.
[00:18:17] God is love means in the heart of God there is a great admiration for each other.
[00:18:26] God admires his moral attributes that he sees in himself.
[00:18:34] But God loves you.
[00:18:37] And whether you are aware of it or not, there's something in who God created you to be that God genuinely admires.
[00:18:49] I've always thought about it's important for me to admire God. I've rarely thought about.
[00:18:56] There's something in the heart of God that is so awesome that he looks at me in all my flaws and says, there's still something I admire in you.
[00:19:09] Can you hear this, Church?
[00:19:12] The second thing God is love means is attraction.
[00:19:17] In love there is an attraction.
[00:19:19] Ah.
[00:19:21] Sometimes it takes us a moment to notice it, but we become attracted to each other.
[00:19:27] God is attracted to himself. In the Trinity, the Father, son and Holy Spirit 1 are attracted to each other.
[00:19:39] But there's something in the character of God because God is love that makes him attracted to you.
[00:19:48] God likes being around you.
[00:19:53] There's something about who you are that draws him, that calls to him, that attracts his heart and his attention.
[00:20:06] God is love means devotion.
[00:20:10] It's one thing to be attracted. It's another thing to be completely devoted to.
[00:20:21] Mary. And Joseph's love was tested because Joseph wasn't sure that Mary was really devoted to him.
[00:20:36] As he read the signs, it seemed to him that she wasn't devoted to him and it was a deal breaker for him.
[00:20:48] God is absolutely devoted to himself.
[00:20:53] Ah, but you ought to know God is devoted to you.
[00:20:58] For God so loved the world that he showed his devotion to you by leaving the beauties and the splendors and the majesties of heaven and being incarnated in a child and living among us for the lifetime that Christ lived among us.
[00:21:20] Showing the devotion of God to humanity.
[00:21:25] God is love means unselfish loyalty.
[00:21:29] When we really love somebody, our selfishness takes a second place and loyalty replaces selfishness.
[00:21:41] We start saying, ah, I care more about that person than I care about myself.
[00:21:49] Church young people who aren't married, let me give you a big hint.
[00:21:56] Ah.
[00:21:57] Ah.
[00:21:59] Don't marry somebody that you don't want to serve more than they want to serve you.
[00:22:07] Do you hear this? You marry someone because you want to spend the rest of your life so serving them, not because you want them to spend the rest of their life serving you.
[00:22:19] Can you hear this?
[00:22:21] Can. Can I have an amen from people who know how this Work.
[00:22:26] How do you know who you want to marry?
[00:22:29] Do you want to spend the rest of your life loyally serving this person?
[00:22:36] Or do you have things turned around and you say, I bet I can get this person to do most of what I want the rest of my life.
[00:22:47] You will not have a happy marriage. Church.
[00:22:51] Ah.
[00:22:54] God is unselfishly loyal to us.
[00:23:00] My loyalty to Christ has been infinitely beneath what he deserves.
[00:23:08] His loyalty to me has been infinitely above what I deserve.
[00:23:13] The band sang this morning. He gives us chance after chance. Remember, we've studied that. The moral attribute of God, of forbearance. God is a God of absolute loyalty. He sticks with us thick and thin because he is a God of love.
[00:23:34] Ah.
[00:23:35] And then at another, higher level, love is adoration.
[00:23:42] When we really love, we adore.
[00:23:47] Ah.
[00:23:48] Ah.
[00:23:50] It shocks me. It actually shocks me that God can find me adorable.
[00:24:05] Because sometimes I look in the mirror and I say, you're a jerk.
[00:24:09] I'm getting sick of your stuff.
[00:24:12] Anybody?
[00:24:13] Ah.
[00:24:14] Ah. Here I am, ready to throw myself in the ruffle garbage truck the next time it comes around and God is saying, ah.
[00:24:27] Don't do that.
[00:24:29] I adore you.
[00:24:31] I adore you enough that I'm going to work in you. And I'm going to keep working in you until I draw out the beauty.
[00:24:40] I'm going to make it clear what is adorable in you. And my love is going to push me to do it.
[00:24:46] Can you hear this, Church?
[00:24:48] God is love means God has an adoring disposition.
[00:24:56] And then there's one more word, and it's going to strike you as odd, because in English, words lose their primary meaning and they take on a secondary meaning.
[00:25:11] So in theology, complacency means something different than it does in everyday vocabulary. When you hear the word complacent, you hear you don't care one way or another.
[00:25:25] When you're complacent, it's I don't care one way or another. But that's not what it originally meant.
[00:25:33] Complacent complacency originally meant an inner calm and security.
[00:25:44] When you really love someone, you have an inner calm and security about them.
[00:25:50] Ah.
[00:25:51] Ah.
[00:25:54] You don't have inner turmoil and insecurity.
[00:25:59] The love of God is an internal calm, an internal security and internal satisfaction.
[00:26:13] When God looks at us, he looks beyond the failures.
[00:26:24] He looks beyond the inabilities.
[00:26:27] He looks beyond the crudeness, the rudeness.
[00:26:35] And out of the riches of his love, he has a calm, secure feeling toward us.
[00:26:47] God looks at us and sighs with a sigh of satisfaction.
[00:26:56] Because God is love.
[00:26:58] Can you hear this church?
[00:27:00] The God that we worship, the God that came into the world that first Christmas morning?
[00:27:09] He is not a God who is internally stirred up.
[00:27:17] He's not a God who's caused internal security by the stupidity and the failures of human. Humankind.
[00:27:27] He's not a God who's perpetually dealing with dissatisfaction on the inside. He is a God of complacency, calm, security and satisfaction because he is love.
[00:27:42] Can you hear this?
[00:27:44] Now? This is important. The whole reason we're doing this sermon series is to add thinkable ideas to what we mean when we talk about God.
[00:27:56] So when we say God is love, what should we be thinking?
[00:28:03] We should be thinking God is a being who admires his. The people he loves. He is attracted to the people he loves. He is devoted to the people he loves. He's unselfishly loyal to the people he loves. He adores the people he loves, loves. And he is complacent toward the people he loves.
[00:28:25] And then John said, because this is who God is, you need to abide in that love.
[00:28:34] It came to me this week when I was trying to think how to talk about this.
[00:28:39] The love of God creates an environment for the human soul to live in in the very same way that your body does better in some environments than other environments.
[00:28:56] Personally, I like human level warmth, which is hard to find this time of year.
[00:29:02] That environment is a better environment for me than shivering. All right.
[00:29:10] We all thrive in. In some environments better than in other environments.
[00:29:16] All right. It turns out the soul is the very same.
[00:29:21] Your soul thrives in some spiritual environments and your soul shrivels in other spiritual environments.
[00:29:32] When John says, abide in the love of God, he's saying, move your soul back again and again and again into the presence of the admiration, the attraction, the devotion, the loyalty, the admiration and the complacency of God. Keep going back to the love Escape.
[00:30:01] Escape the.
[00:30:04] The unhealthy spiritual environment that so many live in day by day and return again and again to this wonderful environment of the love of God.
[00:30:20] Ah.
[00:30:22] And then John wrote by this is love perfected in us so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment.
[00:30:32] Because as he is, so also are we in this world.
[00:30:37] There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear, for fear has to do with punishment. And whoever fears has not been perfected in love.
[00:30:53] The first thing that this environment of love does is it creates confidence in us.
[00:31:00] It creates confidence in us.
[00:31:03] I used to be terrified the church. I grew up in terrified me about the judgment of God.
[00:31:11] I was absolutely certain I was going to be totally humiliated. And I was absolutely certain that God was going to crush me.
[00:31:23] But that is the religion of man.
[00:31:26] That is not the religion of God.
[00:31:29] Listen. Listen what John, the beloved apostle. The apostle that Jesus loved more than others. The apostle who understood Jesus's love better than others. You know what he says?
[00:31:41] When you get it right and you're living in the environment of divine love, fear dissipates.
[00:31:51] Perfect love casts out fear.
[00:31:57] Do you see how that works?
[00:32:00] Fear and admiration don't go together.
[00:32:04] You rarely admire what you're afraid of, and you rarely fear what you admire.
[00:32:14] You're rarely attracted to what you're afraid of.
[00:32:18] Although some of you people watch movies that I cannot believe you watch.
[00:32:23] I do not know what attracts you to that stuff.
[00:32:27] All right?
[00:32:28] Rarely are we attracted to what we fear.
[00:32:34] Nobody gets out of bed in the morning and says, I just can't wait to have a car accident today.
[00:32:42] We are not attracted to what we fear.
[00:32:45] And we do not fear what we are attracted to.
[00:32:49] We are not devoted to what we fear. We're not loyal to what we fear. We don't. We don't.
[00:32:56] We don't adore what we fear. And we don't feel calm and secure around what we fear.
[00:33:02] So the perfect love of God displaces fear and what the place that fear used to have this love of God has in our life.
[00:33:23] And then this environment of love is going to have an effect on us.
[00:33:29] Listen what John said.
[00:33:32] We love because he first loved us.
[00:33:38] If anyone says I love God and hates his brother, he's a liar.
[00:33:44] For he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen.
[00:33:55] This commandment we have from Him.
[00:33:59] Whoever loves God must also love his brother.
[00:34:04] How do I learn to love?
[00:34:07] Not by watching Dr. Phil on TV, trust me.
[00:34:12] How do I learn to love? Generally, not by what I had modeled for me. In life, the place we learn to love is the God who is love.
[00:34:27] He loves with a perfect love.
[00:34:30] And when we live in the environment of his love, we learn to love the way he loves.
[00:34:38] We learn that love isn't about focusing on me. Love is about focusing on the one I love.
[00:34:46] Love is not about making life easy for me. Love is like making beautiful life beautiful for the one I love. I learn to love from the God who is.
[00:34:58] Who is the moral attribute of love.
[00:35:02] You see, love is not just a feeling. It's a choice.
[00:35:08] I choose to love Feelings follow actions. Do you want to feel more loving?
[00:35:16] Do loving things, Church.
[00:35:21] Ah. Ah. Bro. Do you want to feel more love for your wife? Ah. Hold her hand. Say something nice to her.
[00:35:30] Give her a soft kiss on the cheek.
[00:35:34] Do something loving and your heart will respond to it.
[00:35:40] Uh. Uh.
[00:35:42] If you're. If you're. If you're ignoring your spouse and you're speaking to them rudely, you're never going to feel love.
[00:35:51] Love is a choice.
[00:35:53] All right. What does it mean to choose to love? It says, I choose to admire what is trustworthy in God.
[00:36:05] When I love God, I make a choice to say, I trust God more than anyone else.
[00:36:13] Church.
[00:36:15] When I choose to love a person, I. I choose to trust them.
[00:36:21] Say, but, Doc, you don't know. Okay, I'm going to tell you. There is no love where you can't trust.
[00:36:32] And I've known a lot of people who had trust issues and blamed it on the other person. You had to deal with your own trust issues. Church.
[00:36:40] Perfect love casts out fear.
[00:36:44] It cast out the fear of trust.
[00:36:49] I choose to love when I choose to be attracted to what is right.
[00:36:56] Ah.
[00:36:57] I make choices every day.
[00:37:00] Do I choose to be attracted to what is right or do I choose to be attracted to what is wrong?
[00:37:06] When I'm choosing to be attracted to what is right, I'm choosing love.
[00:37:13] I am loving when I am devoted to what is good.
[00:37:18] Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil by being devoted to good. Do you see this? Church? When I choose to devote myself tomorrow to do what is good on every occasion, I'm choosing to live in love.
[00:37:39] I choose love when I'm unselfishly loyal to holiness, when I'm unselfishly loyal to consecrating myself to the moral virtues of God.
[00:37:55] I choose love. When I adore mercy, when I have adoration for mercy, I'm choosing love.
[00:38:06] When I am calm, secure, and satisfied in steadfast love, I'm choosing love.
[00:38:13] Do you see how this works?
[00:38:15] I look to the God who is the moral attribute of love, and I see how he loves. And I start moving myself to live in the environment of his love.
[00:38:30] And then I start choosing the moral attributes of God and choosing them with a sense of love in my life.
[00:38:43] I'm. I'm living a life of love not because I have to, not because it's my duty, but because I find the greatest meaning and joy in it.
[00:38:55] I find the richest love in it.
[00:38:58] I find this is the way God actually created us to live.
[00:39:05] And then John ends this by saying, ah, this living in love.
[00:39:12] It's not just a good suggestion. It's a commandment.
[00:39:17] Church.
[00:39:21] You could, you could stop worrying about all the other commandments if you would just worry about one commandment, the commandment to love.
[00:39:30] Because see, if you're living in this kind of environment and you're living with these qualities, you're going to be doing all the other stuff.
[00:39:39] You get it?
[00:39:40] If you're living like this, you don't have to worry about honoring your parents. If you're, if you're living like this, you don't have to worry about murdering somebody.
[00:39:49] If you're living like this, you don't have to worry about stealing. If you're worrying like this, you don't have to worry about living, committing adultery. When I learn what the love of God is, and then I organize myself to live in that environment and I start loving other people the way God commands me to love them, all the other stuff will fall into place.
[00:40:15] Do you hear? A church Christmas is a statement that God loved humanity so much that he expressed that incredible love to us.
[00:40:31] And then he says, now I want you to live in my love. And I want my love to be expressed to you through you in a broken world.
[00:40:41] Dear Heavenly Father, thank you for the love of God.
[00:40:48] Thank you that we love because you first loved us.
[00:40:58] Thank you that herein is love. Not that we loved you, but that you loved us.
[00:41:04] Now, Father, I pray for everyone who's here this morning.
[00:41:08] I pray for everyone who's watching online.
[00:41:12] I pray that in the, in the environment of your love, something would happen in our souls.
[00:41:25] Something noble, something beautiful, something good.
[00:41:33] And then as our souls are touched by your love, love, like your love might become more evident and real through us.
[00:41:46] And I ask this in Jesus name.
