The First Presbyterian
Church of Hemet
John: The Story of Love
Dr. Larry Thorson
May 30, 2010
Scripture
read in this sermon: Mark 10:35-45; Mark 9:38-40; Luke 9:51-56; John 13:34-35
All Scripture is taken from Today’s New International
Version Copyright © 2001, 2005 by International
Bible Society
1. Summarize the biblical text:
John was known as the disciple of love,
however, before his filling with God's Holy Spirit we have three clear examples
of when his actions denied love.
2. What is the point of this sermon?
When the Jesus Creed says love your
neighbor as yourself it calls us to do something that does not come naturally
to us in our natural state. Being able
to love is somewhat dependent on being loved and the ability to receive love. We have to learn to receive love and then
learn how to give it away.
3. What action do you want readers to take as a
result of this sermon?
Identify specific times in the last
month when you were loved and specific times when you demonstrated love to
another person. Make a list of people
that you can now show love and appreciation to.
Introduction
This is the final message in our series
Stories of the Jesus Creed. In past
messages we've looked at how the little creed that shaped every aspect of
Jesus' life influenced the people he spent time with. As a refresher the Jesus Creed goes like
this: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 30 Love the Lord your
God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with
all your strength.' 31 The second is this: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'”
Matthew 12:29-31a.
Has anyone here ever had trouble loving
their neighbor as themselves? We know
how to show God our love by reading our Bible daily, attending worship regularly,
serving in the church, and tithing our money.
We can even show love to others as long as the others are like us. But loving your neighbor, any neighbor, a
random neighbor, well that takes something else.
Sandra
Bullock in “The Blind Side”
In the movie, "The Blind
Side," Sandra Bullock won an Academy Award for her role as Leigh Anne
Tuohy, an affluent Christian woman who lived with her husband and two children
in a suburb of Memphis. Riding home on a stormy night with her husband Sean,
they see a young man they know from the football team at their local Christian
school walking alone with the rain pelting him in the dark. She asks her
husband to pull over, jumps out of the car, and says, "What are you doing?
Where are you going to sleep tonight?" "I don't know," the young
man said. He was a big, high school age boy. A bit rumpled in appearance, she
later found out that he was not doing well in school and was flunking all his
classes. One of thirteen children, his parents weren't involved in his life but
some thoughtful Christians had helped him enroll in a Christian school and he
was a star on their football team. But that night he was somebody having
trouble remembering if anyone loved him until Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy took
him home with them. That night they gave him a warm bed and eventually adopted
him as one of the family. Leigh Anne
hired a tutor and helped get him through school. And then Michael Oher became a
champion NFL football player drafted in the first round of the 2009 draft by
the Baltimore Ravens.
That's some serious love your neighbor
as yourself kind of stuff. But it's
important to realize that Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy weren't born super saints.
I don't know much about their background except that Sean was a big basketball
and baseball star at Ole Miss who married an Ole Miss cheerleader from a
Christian school in Memphis and now they own 80 fast food restaurants in the
Memphis area. I also know they profess
Jesus as their Lord and Savior and helped start the mega Grace Evangelical
Church of Memphis. But they, like all
the rest of us had to learn how to love by first receiving love from our
Savior. That was true for them, it's
true for us.
John's
Three Denials
That was even true for the disciple of
Jesus who actually become known as the disciple of love, John. We always remember how Peter denied Jesus
three times and yet eventually became the boldest of all preachers, but John
actually denied loving people three times and yet eventually God made him the
disciple of love. Love became so much a
part of who he was that 20% of all instances of love mentioned in the New
Testament come from his writings. But
the Bible wants you to know that it wasn't always that way for John. We will read the third instances when denied
love to someone.
For John's first denial of love
we read in Mark 10:35-45 35... Then
James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came to him. "Teacher," they
said, "we want you to do for us whatever we ask." 36 "What do you want me to do for you?" he
asked. 37 They replied, "Let
one of us sit at your right and the other at your left in your glory."
38 "You don't know what you
are asking," Jesus said. "Can you drink the cup I drink or be
baptized with the baptism I am baptized with?" 39
"We can," they answered. Jesus said to them,
"You will drink the cup I drink and be baptized with the baptism I am
baptized with, 40 but to sit at my right or left is
not for me to grant. These places belong to those for whom they have been
prepared." 41 When the ten heard about this, they became indignant
with James and John. 42 Jesus called them together
and said, "You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles
lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. 43 Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become
great among you must be your servant, 44 and whoever
wants to be first must be slave of all. 45 For even
the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as
a ransom for many."
John wasn't loving anyone, he was
bucking for power. So Jesus corrects him
and says that the way one becomes great in the kingdom of God is by loving
others through service. Amazingly, this
same John who became known as the apostle of love was originally more concerned
with his position than he was showing love.
That was his first betrayal of love.
John's second betrayal of love
is in Mark 9:38-40 “Teacher,” said
John, “we saw a man driving out demons in your name and we told him to stop,
because he was not one of us.” “Do not stop him,” Jesus said. “No one who does
a miracle in my name can in the next moment say anything bad about me, for
whoever is not against us is for us.”
Sound familiar? Again, despite what Jesus previously taught
him about who was greater in the kingdom, John was more concerned with his
position as having exclusive powers from Jesus than he was in helping people be
freed of demons. That was his second betrayal of love.
John's third betrayal of love
that the Bible lets us know about is Luke 9:51-56 “As the time approached for him to be taken
up to heaven, Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem. And he sent messengers on ahead, who went
into a Samaritan village to get things ready for him; but the people there did
not welcome him, because he was heading for Jerusalem.”
“When the disciples James and John saw
this, they asked, “Lord, do you want us to call fire down from heaven to
destroy them ?” But Jesus turned and
rebuked them, and they went to another village.”
What, call fire down from heaven on
people just because they reject your message?
This is from the man who later became known as the disciple of
love? The Bible doesn't hide the warts of
God's followers. They're all laid out
there for everyone to see.
But something eventually happened to
John and that something was that he himself received love. Nothing is more important for the development
of love than being loved. I can stand up
here and talk to you until I'm blue in the face about the different ways we need
to love people but nothing is more powerful than experiencing love.
Lewis
Smedes and His Mother's Love
Lewis Smedes, former professor at Fuller
Seminary, in his memoir tells of his own slow and painful growth in loving God
and others when he describes the love he looked for in his mother:
“Every comfort I was taught to see from
my heavenly Father I looked for in her, my earthly mother, but, all the time I
was growing up, she was working too hard and working too much to have either
time or energy to get close to me long enough for me to find God's comfort in
her. I was never conscious of my missing
father whom I had never known, but I missed my mother all too often.”[1]
But when his mother was 86 she broke her
hip for the second time and through some providential accidents Smedes was able
to spend every afternoon with her. One
afternoon Smedes opened his heart of pain to his mother. One of the questions he asked her was why she
had never gotten married again. He asked
her “Didn't you ever want a man in your life?
A man to take care of you? A man
to talk to at the end of a day? A man to
sleep with you?”
“Oh yes, she said, “I did; I felt so
tired and so alone, and I sometimes wished that I had a husband, but I was
afraid that if another man came into the house, he might not care for my
children as I did.” Smedes continues: “I
knew then that I had found the love of my heavenly Father tucked into the love
of my earthly mother.”
Learning
to Receive Love
For Smedes, God's love had been there
all the time in his earthly mother only he didn't see it until much later. For the young football player Michael Oher
that we talked about earlier, his heroin addicted mother and never seen father
deprived him of the love he needed. But
God found him and called people to love him.
That's what happened to the apostle
John. Jesus knew what kind of love John
needed and included him in everything and everywhere he went. When Jesus went to the synagogue ruler's home
to heal his daughter, he took John along.
When Jesus was transfigured on the mountain, he permitted John to see it
take place. And when Jesus prayed in the
Garden of Gethsemane, he asked John to stay close by. Through that John knew what it felt like to
be loved.
Of all the things John heard Jesus say,
he wrote this down in John 13:34-35... “A
new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love
one another. By this all men will know
that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” In the way that you have been loved, that's
how we are to love one another. John
knew what it felt like to be loved. The
question for you is do you know what it feels like to be loved?
For some of you it may have been a while
since you experienced someone doing an act of kindness for you. Maybe you've forgotten what it feels like to
be a special person in someone's life.
You know in your head that God loved and sacrificed his only son for you
but he doesn't feel very close right now.
I've known times in my life when I
brought issues to God and he resolved them almost the next day. Then I've known times when it seems like I've
done something to offend God and he's not listening to me. That's a hard place to be.
A
Final Assignment
As an assignment this week, I want to
urge you to sit down and write out the occasions when you received love from
someone recently. Recently can be as far
back as you want it to be. If you truly
find that no one has expressed any gestures of love to you and you're feeling
neglected then I want you to be so bold as to ask God to allow you to
experience his love again in any way that he desires to show it to you. It may be someone calling you up and telling
you how much they appreciate you. It may
be an invitation to something that you didn't expect. You're going to have to look for it.
Then the second part of the assignment
is to write down the various ways you have made someone's day or were a
blessing to someone recently. Again,
recently can go back as far as you're comfortable with.
Finally write down a list of the people
that you could bless with a smile and maybe a hug. Show them somehow that you
love them. If you love God with all your
being it means you've first received his love in Jesus Christ and then you
will be able to love your neighbor as
yourself.
Small Group
Ice Breaker Questions
1.
If someone made a movie about
your life what would it be about and who would you want to play it?
2.
Describe an act of love that
you've seen or heard of recently.
Recite the Jesus Creed as a Group – pages 1-2
Discussion Questions
1.
Why do we have to learn to love
instead of just loving?
2.
What potential risks were taken
by the Tuohys when inviting Michael Oher (the homeless football player) to live
with them?
3.
Read the following stories in
Luke and see how a given person either does or doesn't show love to
others. What advice might you have in
directing them in learning to love?
a. Mary
& Elizabeth (Luke 1:39-45)
b.
Joseph and Mary (Luke 2:4-7)
c. John
the Baptist (Luke 3:1-18)
d.
People of the Nazareth synagogue (Luke 4:14-30)
e. Levi
(Luke 5:27-32)
f. the
Centurion and his friends (Luke 7:1-10)
g. the
sinful woman and Simon the Pharisee (Luke 7:1-10)
h. the
rich young ruler (Luke 18:18-30)