Sermon Extras

SERMON NOTES

ADVENT 2021- LOVE- 1 John 4:7-21

REVIEW> We began the ADVENT season last week! We learned that Advent means “the arrival of”. We said that in this season of Advent we do 3 things: 1) Look back to see what God has done 2) Look around to see what God is doing 3) Look forward to see what God will do. IN advent we do 2 main things: 

• celebrate Jesus’ first arrival
• anticipate Jesus’ second arrival 

Each week we are looking at a word that guides us! Last Sunday we learned about hope and said that: Hope is the confident expectation that what God said will happen. 

INTRO> This week our topic is massive… our word for today is LOVE. Four simple letters that lead to a massive topic. If you type “love” into Google you get 11,410,000,000 results. On amazon in books you get 75,000 results. When it comes to music, its almost impossibly to measure this topics impact, the billboard top 100 said that in the last 20 years, of the #1 songs, 64% of them mentioned the word love. When you think about art and everything else, you then begin to realize that this topic is literally endless. One thing becomes clear: Human beings are obsessed with love. 

CONTEXT> When it comes to the scriptures, one translation mentions the word love 898 (NLT) Jesus himself said the word around 15 times recorded in scripture. The Apostle John, who writes the letter that we are in today, is known as “The Apostle of Love” Why? Because in Chapters 4-5 John uses the word 36x! Wow! But we need to ask a questions here…. 

APP> What is love? (play funny music show SNL pic) 

CONTEXT> When it comes to the scriptures and the word love, there are a few words that are used. Lets walk through these and see if we can gain some clarity. 

4 Bible words for Love:

• Phileo – Friendly love. “I like you.” 
• Storge–  Family love. “I trust you.” 
• Eros- Romantic love. “I want you.” 

APP> There is a problem with these. Notice the “I” statements in those sentences. These forums of love at their very center have YOU at the center of them. When love is approached this way it is almost always described as a “feeling” The OED defines love as “feelings relating to attachment or attraction.” But there is a problem with this… what happens when the feeling go away? That’s primarily what the culture tells us. 

*ILL> Just a couple of weeks ago the famous singer Adele released her new album entitled, “30” shattering all records. The albumin is primarily about her recent divorce with her ex husband. She sat down with Oprah to talk about the album and said basically, that their marriage ended not because she didn’t love him but because they weren’t “in love anymore” Oprah said what a great message to women to “free them” from being trapped. 

APP> Now… I’m not trying to critique Adeles life, but I think she is a great example of the overall cultural concept of love. If love is primarily a feeling, what do we do when we don’t feel loving anymore? *ILL> You see, if you think love looks like this (PIC) primarily coming FROM you, then there is a problem. 

APP> You see, John actually tells us what the problem is in verse 10, “In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loves us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” You see, this is something that we forget about this time of year, we simply gloss over it. Even in the Christmas story birth announcement, Matthew 1:21 “She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus for he will save his people from their sins.” You see, there is a problem, we are broken human beings and no matter how hard we try but our love is broken and imperfect.

APP> Here is the problem, As human beings we desire perfect love but only demonstrate imperfect love. 

4 Bible words for Love:

• Phileo – Friendly love. “I like you.” 
• Storge–  Family love. “I trust you.” 
• Eros- Romantic love. “I want you.” 
• Agape- Divine love. “You before me.” 

*ILL> True love, biblical love isn’t the former picture, biblical love looks like this. (PIC) 

Good News: 

1. God is love. v8 (it doesn’t say God is LAW)

• The Law says, “If I obey, then God will Love me” Love says , “God loves me therefore I am free to obey.”
• APP> How do you operate in your relationships? Law or Love?

1. God loves us first. v10 “sent his son”

• APP> Who do you need to take the first step toward? 

APP> So what is our response to this? It’s always the same…. Repentance. Repentance is laying down our lesser loves in order to experience the greater love of God. 

Big Idea> Advent assures us that we don’t achieve God’s love, we receive it. 

“The gospel is this: We are more sinful and flawed in ourselves than we ever dared believe, yet at the very same time we are more loved and accepted in Jesus Christ than we ever dared hope.” 

― Timothy Keller, The Meaning of Marriage: Facing the Complexities of Commitment with the Wisdom of God