02-21-16 2016 Theme Introduction: LOVE LIKE JESUS!

Scripture  1 John 4:7-12

          1 John 4:7-12     Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.  Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.  This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him.  This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.  Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.  No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.

INTRODUCTION

          Love like Jesus! What does Jesus’ love look like?

VIDEO: YouTube of girl helping another in a track meet.

          APPLY: What had that audience seen that day?  They had seen love in action.  And it had such a powerful effect on them that they stood and applauded. More important – hopefully, is that people would emulate what they saw: love in action. When someone form the opposing team helps another to finish the race – does that sound familiar? Romans 5:8 “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, (while we were on the opposing team) Christ died for us.”

          Jesus told His disciples: “By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” John 13:35 In other words: if we show love by our actions the world will notice, they may even stand and applaud.
          Now, this “loving one another” was not just some passing comment by Jesus. It became the royal law of the Kingdom.  James 2:8 says “If you really keep the royal law found in Scripture, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself,’ you are doing right.”
          In fact, love was to become such a crucial part of who we are as Christians that Galatians 5 tells us it is THE MARK of the Spirit bearing fruit in our lives.  “… the fruit of the Spirit is LOVE, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.”
          Notice… LOVE was the very first item on the list.
That’s because love MUST be what we are known for as Christians.

ILLUS: One Handed church steeple

          It was the closing night of a summer VBS. The teacher of one of the classes had missed one night and hadn’t encountered a boy who had come that night, but who was there that Friday. He only had one hand. It shook her a little… and she began to be afraid that the others might make fun of him. In fact, she was so distracted by this that when time came for the closing program she mechanically led the children onto the stage and told them "Now, let's all build our churches. Put your hands together now, here is the church, here is the steeple . . . .”
          Then suddenly, she was aware what she had done. The little boy couldn’t build a “church” because he had only one hand.

          After a moment of awkward silence, the little girl seated next to the boy with one hand held her hand up to his and said, "Here, let's build the church together."

Mark 2:1-17

          A few days later, when Jesus again entered Capernaum, the people heard that he had come home. So many gathered that there was no room left, not even outside the door, and he preached the word to them. Some men came, bringing to him a paralytic, carried by four of them. Since they could not get him to Jesus because of the crowd, they made an opening in the roof above Jesus and, after digging through it, lowered the mat the paralyzed man was lying on. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, "Son, your sins are forgiven."

          Now some teachers of the law were sitting there, thinking to themselves, "Why does this fellow talk like that? He's blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?"

          Immediately Jesus knew in his spirit that this was what they were thinking in their hearts, and he said to them, "Why are you thinking these things?  Which is easier: to say to the paralytic, 'Your sins are forgiven,' or to say, 'Get up, take your mat and walk'? But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins . . . ." He said to the paralytic, "I tell you, get up, take your mat and go home."  He got up, took his mat and walked out in full view of them all. This amazed everyone and they praised God, saying, "We have never seen anything like this!"

          13 Once again Jesus went out beside the lake. A large crowd came to him, and he began to teach them. As he walked along, he saw Levi son of Alphaeus sitting at the tax collector's booth. "Follow me," Jesus told him, and Levi got up and followed him.

          While Jesus was having dinner at Levi's house, many tax collectors and "sinners" were eating with him and his disciples, for there were many who followed him. When the teachers of the law who were Pharisees saw him eating with the "sinners" and tax collectors, they asked his disciples: "Why does he eat with tax collectors and 'sinners'?"

          On hearing this, Jesus said to them, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners."

Loving like Jesus then, looks like responding to people’s needs and it looks like forgiveness

          ILLUS: Fred Craddock, one of the greatest preachers of the modern era told a story about his own father.

          His dad had been greatly hurt by someone in the church years before. For years the church reached out to him to come back, but he always rejected their offers to go to church with one statement: "All they want is another name and another pledge" (meaning: they didn't care about him, all they wanted was one more person on the rolls and his money).

          Year after year, an evangelist would visit the man during the Revival meetings trying to get him to come and he would repeat the same phrase as he dismissed them: "all they want is another name and another pledge."

          That's what Craddock's father always said... all except one time.

          Fred Craddock tells of how his father got cancer and finally had to go to the VA Hospital to receive proper care. Over a period of time, the once burly man wasted away to a mere 78 pounds, and when Craddock made it home and visited him in his hospital room he was shocked by his father's frail appearance. 

          He was also shocked by the appearance of the room. 

          It was filled with flowers and cards. 

          As Craddock went about the room looking at the flowers and reading their cards he was struck by the fact that for the most part they came from the very members of the church that his father had for so long rejected.

          His father motioned him to the bed, and because he could not speak due to the cancer, he weakly wrote these words on his notepad. Words from Hamlet: "Draw your breath in pain as you tell my story..."

          "What's your story, dad?" Craddock asked.

          Then his father wrote these three words "I Was Wrong."

          That church loved Craddock’s father. And because they loved him they gave God the room and the time to change the man’s heart. All because they were committed to concept of loving one another.

          Whether you are in a race and someone else falls, or someone is brought to you by friends, or you come upon them – to love like Jesus is to first walk in the forgiveness he offers you:

INVITAITON