Love Is | Week 5 | Full Service

This is why you know it's not a feeling, because God commands us to love. And you can't command a feeling. You ever tried? You know who probably tries the most and fails the most is us. If you are a married male who's also a father, we are probably the worst at trying to command feelings.

And it's like, you know why? We don't like it when they have feelings that are it's like like like, you know what? We we get mad when when when our wife is sad because we we want it to not be so, and we wanna change it. And we want and so we get so mad, we think, well, just draw your we don't just stop it.

You can do that with your kids. Stop it. Or if they're really going, oh, you want you you really want something to be sad about? I'll give you something to be sad about. That's like threatening. You better stop being sad or I'm gonna make you sadder.

It never works, does it? Matter of fact, usually when you tell someone to stop feeling a certain way, you just made them feel more that way. You know, it it it it's like herding cats. It it doesn't work. It's like trying to reason with a Seahawks fan. It doesn't work.

There you go. Stop being mad at me. Wait. I just said that doesn't work. It's not a command because you can't command feelings. It's I mean, it is a command. It's not a feeling. Duh. Reverse of what I just said. Secondly, I'll just move on. Love is a conduct.

That means this is what we've been looking at. The first Corinthians four through seven says this is how it conducts itself. It's actions. Love is a verb, not a noun. That's why it's not a feeling. It's not a thing. It's something we do.

It's it's it's something you do. It's a conduct. It's something we we we step out and do. Matter of fact, it's an action that actually leads to a feeling. It can change the way you think, and it can change the other person when you do it.

CS Lewis in Mere Christianity, one of the greatest theological professors on why Christianity makes sense and all that, talked about this very subject when he wrote this. Do not waste your time bothering whether you love your neighbor. Don't waste your time bothering whether you do or not. And the neighbor doesn't mean the guy that just lives next to you. He's talking about the people in your church, the people. The neighbor means the people in your life.

He says, don't waste your time wondering if you do. Act as if you did. As soon as we do this, we find one of the greatest secrets, he says. When you're behaving as if you love someone, you'll presently come to love them. If you enter someone you dislike, you'll find yourself disliking them even more.

If I go out and beat you up, like, yeah, I feel victorious And and but yet, if I break my hand breaking your face, now I'm mad at you because I broke my hand. You know, it's like basically when you get in a fight and you hurt the person, you may feel like justice prevailed, but it doesn't make you like them anymore.

But when you choose to do something kind to somebody you like, it actually changes your perspective, he says. He goes, if you do him a good turn, you'll find yourself disliking him less. It's this whole phrase. Like I said, guys, you can't pray for and pray on someone at the same time.

If you have someone that really bothers you, start praying for them. And if nothing else, it changes your attitude. And then they won't bother you as much. Try it. But I don't wanna do it. I like to not like them. Just see what happens. If you're frustrated with your spouse, pray for them

more than you pray on them. Know, p r u y, there's a word pray there. Play if I put it on the screen. Get it? So it's it's it's it's a command. It's also a conduct. And then finally, love is a commitment. That means it's a choice. I'm gonna go crazy because there's a spot on my glasses.

Start being like a cat here in a minute. Sorry. Still there. He's also my mic, by the way. Some of you probably always wondered, how does he have not have a mic on? The glasses are the mic. That's how cool of a production team we have. They made these for me. Isn't that awesome? Anyways,

they love me. See, they committed to helping me. Isn't that nice of them? Love is a commitment. It's a choice. It's it's it's something that we choose to do and we commit to do. And you know what? If you think of love as a feeling,

when you don't feel it, you don't wanna do it. Where real love is when you don't feel it, that's especially when you need to do it. Matter of fact, chapter 14, the end of this chapter on love, the very first statement in chapter 14 verse one, it says this, let love be your highest goal. See, it's a command. It's a goal.

So it's not a feeling. It's it's it's a conduct. It's an action. It's something you do, but ultimately, it's a commitment. It's gotta be the number one commitment in your life, in your relationships, is I commit and choose to love. It's a choice. I don't do it when I feel like it. I do it so I will feel something,

in other words. And and and and it's it's not there's a myth that love is uncontrollable. That's part of the myth we still buy into. The movie show up and they go, I can hear all this truth and it makes sense, but my heart still goes to the wrong idea. I still get stuck in that wrong idea.

And and for example, like this phrase, I fell in love. You don't fall in love. You fall into interest. You fall into a little bit of a connection. You fall into intrigue. You fall into infatuation. And that usually generates you wanting to follow-up on that. But at some point, you have to choose to love.

Because if it's all about the feeling, at some point, this person's gonna write more checks that come out of the account in your life than go in. And if it's not real love, you're gonna be like, alright, feeling's gone. I'm out of here. It's like kind of if you chew bubble gum

just to chew the flavor out of it, not to blow bubbles, you're never gonna get to the real point of it. You're gonna be like, alright, the sweetness is gone. I'm done. You know how to blow real bubbles what you gotta do with the sugar in it before you can blow a good bubble? You gotta get rid of the flavor

because you can't blow a good bubble while you still have that sugar granulation in there. You can't really do what bubble gum is supposed to do until the flavor's gone. Most of us never get to the purpose of the relationship of what love is. Once the sweet infatuation is over, we think it's over.

You don't fall into love. You know what you do? You climb into love. Love takes work. Love is a choice. And then when you do that, it may be hard, but you will climb to a whole another level of a different kind of feelings that goes beyond the feelings we always think of as love.

So my point here is a lot of us, if you're honest, you've never actually loved at all. You just went in and out of infatuations and interest till the sugar was gone, and then you moved on. Or the other person did the same thing. And so if we do that, then it just becomes a contractual thing.

When you can give me what I want, make me feel a certain way. When you bring the sweetness and the sugar, I'm good. Other than that, I'm out.

And it leads to kinda some sadness. This is an actual letter. It's a love letter lament of a woman who broke off an ingrained engagement and then regretted it. And here's what she wrote. Dearest Jimmy, no words could ever express the great unhappiness I've felt since breaking our engagement.

Please say you'll take me back. No one could ever take your place in my heart, so please forgive me. I love you. I love you. I love you. Yours forever, Marie. She then added, PS, congratulations on winning the lottery. That

ain't love. Instead of I love you, I love you. I want you, I you, I want you. Really? I love your money. I love your money. I love your money.

It's a command. It's a conduct. It's commitment. Great. So now what I wanna look at, knowing that going in after all these weeks, the last thing I wanna look at is this big idea. This matters because without love, nothing else matters. Without love, nothing else matters.

And I'm gonna show you in the first three verses five things that they're not bad. They're actually good things. They're things we should probably want to do and have. But what he's saying is, it doesn't matter if you do all of these things. If you don't have love, that was a waste. It didn't matter.

So if we don't learn to love, nothing else we do. No success we have will matter. No relationship will matter. It just won't matter.

So what do I mean? I'm gonna go back to verse one through three. We skipped that if you notice. We started in verse four of this passage. I wanted to save one through three to this because what Paul did, he started saying none of nothing else will matter if you don't do what I'm about to say. I wanted to see what it said and say, hey, look at all this stuff. This is what it is. Now let's go back and say he says, hey, nothing else will matter if I don't do this.

And so here's what he says in the first three verses. He says, listen. And remember, he's talking to a church that was successful in all these things,

but they weren't really successful. In God's eyes, it didn't mean diddly squat. And so we need to reflect on this in our own life. Do we live a life of love or do we live a life of something that does involve love that seeks all these other things and we might even get these other things. And we think we're doing well, but we're really not. We're doing stuff that doesn't matter.

And here he goes. If I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels, but I didn't love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clinging cymbal. If I had the gift of prophecy and if I understood all of God's secret plans and possessed all knowledge, and if I had such faith that I could move mountains but I didn't love others,

I would be nothing. If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it. But if I didn't love others, I would have gained nothing. If I don't love others, nothing else matters. Even all these things we're supposed to do as well.

And so what did he say there? There was five things if you break down that passage. I'm just gonna go right into them. Five things that if I don't live a life of love, what won't matter? The first thing he said is nothing I say will matter. First thing he says is your words don't matter if you don't love others.

It doesn't matter what you say. Ain't that funny how we often focus so much on the words we say when it's really not even about that? Our words mean nothing if we don't love. And then we think like, but I told you this. I said this. You know what? We're a lot like dogs in that we read subtext.

We don't really pay attention to words very often. When we're in trouble or we're mad, we argue over, I said this, I said this. Some of you are caught in loops in your hands like, but I didn't say that. I said this, I didn't say that. And you know what? You can fight that till the cows come home and keep arguing all you want until you're divorced and then do it again with someone else. Or you can understand that when someone says this and this and this, it's not about the words.

It's about what's underneath the words or what's not underneath the words. You're saying things, but it doesn't match.

See, dogs are good at reading that because they don't understand the words. You think they understand it, they don't. Go up to your dog and start talking to them and saying the opposite of what your tone says. I used do this with my dog.

My my sister believed our dog actually you could understand words. No. It doesn't. I mean, dog's intelligent, smart, but it it hears tone more than words. I go, let me show you. I go, come here, buddy. Come here. I go, aren't you ugly?

Aren't you the dumbest thing I've ever seen? I should never even I hate you. I can't even believe you're in this house. You're nothing but a problem. You ruined my life every day. Did my dog walk away depressed? No. I'm just oh, oh, oh, we're having a moment. This is awesome. I love you. I love you. I love you.

Come on, guys. We know that. If I don't actually choose and love and have the command, I follow the command to conduct myself with love and commit myself to love, it doesn't matter what you say to the other person. That's why we had to talk about trust last week.

So it's nothing I say will matter. The second thing is nothing I know will matter. Who knows if who cares if you know a lot? How many have I just nailed you in every fight you have? You're like, well, I know that this is true and I'm just saying, and you're in that loop. Just time out.

The reason you keep having that same fight is it doesn't matter what you know or what you say if there's not love. That's the real problem. The real problem is the love. Quit arguing about the way you're arguing. Get to the heart of the matter. It's about love.

Because you know what? Nothing I say will matter. Nothing I know will matter. Third, nothing I believe will matter. Like, well, I believe in the Lord. I believe in all these things. Great. You know the devil believes in Jesus too. Demons shudder when they hear the name of Jesus. They're like Mufasa. Say it again.

Doesn't change anything for them because they don't really love and they don't know his love. They don't care. They don't love them. They may believe. So who cares what you believe? I think this is where we get into a lot of trouble. These first three things, nothing I say, no, or believe will matter.

Because I think that's what drove a lot of the chaos in the church and in our culture when there's a politically charged and there's things like pandemics going on, and everybody wants to say, I'm just saying that I believe this and here's what I know. So we're all being loud with our mouth, trying to say what we know and what we believe and backing it with what we know and information, and we think that that's actually going to get us somewhere with anybody.

That was the biggest struggle for me as a leader of a church during all of that, was the people that I agreed with the most, y'all made me the maddest.

Because there I agreed with what you said. I agreed with what you believed. I agreed with what you know. What I didn't agree with is the way you did it. There was no love. And I don't know about this. Can't throw us all under the rug. Throw myself. Maybe you're like me. I know that when I engage in any relationship,

including an online kind of a thing where we try to engage, that's where we get in a lot of trouble, is is is when I jump in and I get involved in some kind of discussion

and I wanna say stuff and I'm worried about how I say it because I know stuff. I wanna get across what I know and I it's because of what I believe and it drives it. And I really defend that and I go after someone and there's not a relationship, there's not love, I'm just doing it, I realize I've crossed the line. I don't care about being in right relationship. I just care about being right.

And here's what I've known in my own life, and maybe it's you. If I really sit back and analyze why did I give so much emotional energy to that. And I think the extreme example is what I watch when we start comment fighting and I'll go back and forth on Facebook, especially when it's somebody you kind of know. So you are going back and forth. It's like, hey, at some point, why didn't you just talk?

But it's easy to go back and forth, and at some point, you keep going and we walk away and to make ourselves feel better, he says, defended the faith or I defended the right. I defended freedom. I defended like, I helped like, I I just I just helped win the second, you know,

American Revolution by doing that. No. It didn't matter. You did nothing except for get yourself tired and worn out and made you think you did something great when now you have no energy to actually do something that matters. I defended the no, you didn't.

If you're like me, all you did was defend your own insecurity and your own anger. Because you don't like the fact that people go this way. You don't like the fact that culture's changing. You don't like the fact that this it's a messed up world. We forget that the world is messed up, and we're a part of that.

But I like to protect myself, and that's a defensive measure. That's not a loving. That's not a gospel oriented method. That has nothing to do with the kingdom.

That has to do with our own frustrations. It's like my dad used to do and now I become him. I get a newspaper, I realize my wife started laughing at me because I start reading the newspaper and my dad used to this. I wouldn't see his head. I would just see him reading the newspaper and hear him say, what the hell is wrong with people? And now I do that.

And sometimes now that we have social media and all that, we can not only just say it to ourselves and the quietness of our home, we'll say it right to the person.

And then we pat ourselves on the back. That's my calling.

That's not your calling. If you're a Christian, you're called to love first. Yeah, truth. We do need to say things. We need to believe things. We do need to know things. And we need to share them with people. But he says, speak the truth in love. That means love first. Always love first. If you start doing that without love, you're wasting your time. It doesn't matter. And actually, Jesus says, don't do that.

It's why it says they will know you're a Christian by your love. That doesn't mean you don't get to the truth, but truth will never unlock love. Love will unlock someone's willingness to listen to truth. And that's what I get mad at in our society.

Because the way we are trying to be as a church is a scared, we're afraid of losing our influence,

and we're out there trying to demand our way and protect our rights and do all that. And you know what gets left out in that? The love of Jesus and people don't get saved and they don't come to know Christ through that. They just get yelled at.

And that it usually comes from the fact that now that we're saved, we think we're we're more righteous than those people that do these bad things. We're not more righteous. We're just more forgiven.

Love, it won't matter what you do if you don't choose love. So if you wanna engage with someone, but you have no interest in committing to having a relationship and loving them, don't engage. Just don't do it. You know what that'll do for you if nothing else? It'll give you a lot of emotional energy back.

It'll give you a lot more time back. It'll make you feel more peace because it's not gonna accomplish what you think it will.

Nothing I say will matter. Nothing I know will matter. Nothing I believe will matter. And then fourth, nothing I give will matter. Says I can give everything to the poor. I can give my own body. I can give all that. It says it doesn't matter. Now like I said, all these things are things we knew. We need to say stuff. We need to know stuff. We need to believe stuff. We need to give.

It says without love, it won't matter. See, there's a statement out there. You see, you can give without loving, but you can't love without giving.

So if you genuinely are gonna love, you're gonna give. If you say I love the Lord, great. If I love his church, which we're supposed to be a part of, that's why I say all the time. If you say you love this place, this is your church, then you should serve, you should give. You just should. I mean, that that's what love is. That's what it does. So if you say that and you don't do it, you don't love, you're in the contractual relationship. You're just like, I'm hoping to get some of your lottery winnings here each week.

But they're also the reverse is true too. If you're giving without love, that's not gonna help you either. It's gonna accomplish that. And you know what the only thing it's gonna accomplish? It's gonna make you eventually feel resentful.

Some of are like, yeah, you keep saying to give and to serve and I do that and I'm still I'm getting frustrated. I feel like well, ask yourself why. Why are you doing it? Because we give for a lot more reasons than love.

Some it could be, you know, fear. Well, you know, you just kept threatening me, Bill. You said leave if I don't do it. So now I'm doing it. I'm like, alright. I'm sorry. I didn't mean it that way. What I meant is sit down and actually look at it from an honest point of view.

But we don't if we just give out of obligation, out of fear,

out of the desire to have prestige, to be seen as a good person, because look what I did, that's a lot of on our social media stuff. We just virtue signal all over the place. I get a time, why didn't you post about this? Because I just don't have anybody to argue with about that. If you wanna talk to me, fine. Well, you need to purr like like, what? You're saying I'm a bad person because I didn't pass on

because I, as an individual, didn't act like everybody else. Are we in junior high again? When you try to say everything, you say nothing. Think about that.

When you try to say everything, when all you do is pass it, you feel like you're busy all the time, you're engaged all the time, but you're really saying nothing, especially without love. And so I can do that with giving. I can give for and a lot of times I give because I I'm I'm basically trying to get control.

We do that a lot. Okay, God. I'm gonna do what you said. I'm gonna give you my time. I'm gonna give you money. I'm just so then I know you'll give me what I really want. You're back to the contractual relationship. And we do that with each other. We do that in marriages.

And our relationships are supposed to be covenantal. Covenantal men says we covenant together that I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna do this no matter what. My love for you is gonna be based on who I am, not who you are. Because that's how God's love is based on us. But we don't. We enter contractual infatuations

instead of covenantal love. And we do the same thing with church.

That's why I get throat punchy here. I was like, hey, guys, wake up. If you're gonna be church, you need church. You don't need to teach apostle this. We think church is a cafeteria that I come in, I go, okay, I'll get listen to this. I'll do this. I'll do that. And as long as I'm infatuated with this place, as long as you make me feel good, as long as I get what I want, I'll hang around. But if you push or we try to get too much or we get too far or I just lose, don't

have that feeling anymore, I'm moving on. You need to make a covenant. You need to become a part of the body of Christ.

And we commit to each other because if I give, it won't matter. And here's the sad thing is when I give for the wrong reasons, I don't get the blessing and what God wants to do in our hearts when we give. I just give and I've blocked myself from getting the good part.

Let me give you an example. Anybody ever heard of Charles Francis Adams? Right. Nobody has in any of the services. Anybody heard of John Quincy Adams? Alright. You know who his dad was? John Adams.

You know who John Adams is? How many know who John Adams is? If not, I require you to go to a community college and take a history class or buy a book. Second president of The United States. I

like him because he's the ones that pointed to George Washington and said, you need to be the commander of the army. That was one of the best decisions he ever made. But John Quincy Adams, his son, Charles Francis was his grandson.

Well, he kept a diary every day. Learned that from his dad. John Quincy's dad, they all kept diaries every day. Taught it to his son, Brooke. Brooke Adams, the great grandson, kept a diary every day. What's interesting, this father and son kept a diary every day. So historians have come back and learned some interesting things about them because they often wrote on the same day about the same topic.

And it was interesting to see the perspective. And one of the entries was this, Charles Francis, the dad wrote this on one of the days. He said, went fishing he said, went fishing with my son today, a day wasted.

So what does that tell you? What do we know about him in that moment? That going fishing with his son to him was an absolute waste of a day. Now that tells you, first of all, he didn't wanna do it, but you cannot wanna do something and still love. Right?

So but if he did it because he loved, he wouldn't say it was a day wasted. Because he knew I furthered I loved him in a way that I knew he needed. I know this was good for him, and in the end, that's good for me. That's not a wasted day when you do something you don't like for someone you love. That's not wasted.

That actually helps you love them more. You build it up. You know you cared enough. You made that sacrificial choice. So when he says a day wasted, he's not loving. So why did he do it? Obligation? Appearance? Had a wife that was like in his kitchen? I don't know.

Like, you know what? This kid is crazy and I'm not spending one more second with him. You two are going fishing. Get the heck out of the house. Don't know, but for whatever reason, it wasn't love. So at the end, even though he did give the time and do it, all he got was the feeling of a day wasted and some resentment.

His son, though, wrote on the same day, went fishing with my father, the most wonderful day of my life. You see, he loved his dad and he appreciated the time. So in that love, they both did the same thing. Yet he got something out of it and the dad missed it.

Are you in a relationship right now? And sometimes I've talked a lot comparing it to marriages, but a lot of us are probably struggling with the parenting thing, either down or up in our family line. But in all of those relationships, are you in those moments that even when you do give,

you haven't committed to love because you think love's a feeling? So since you don't feel it, you do it for other reasons, instead of just saying, I'm committing this because I love them, and I know this will be good, and in the end, it'll be good for me. And you're sitting here still giving,

and you're just getting resentment. And when you hear love sacrificed, love gives, you're like, I've been doing that. Okay. But did you make the commitment, the choice to do the conduct that's commanded, which is I am choosing to love? And then understanding that when I choose to love, that's not only great for them,

that does come back and is great for you. It makes you more like Jesus. And the reward is knowing that if he loved, he would knew that I just blessed my son. So who cares if I didn't feel like going fishing?

How about you?

Who do you need to go fishing with and stop complaining about it and start celebrating it?

Start leaning into it. Start making it about them. Because if not, it doesn't matter if you give, it won't matter. Because ultimately, the last thing it's talking about is if you can move mountains, if you could do all this stuff, ultimately, nothing I accomplish will matter.

None of your success, none of you can come. You can have this life that looks great, but without love, it will not matter. As the book of Ecclesiastes says, it's like chasing the wind.

It's not gonna get accomplished anything in the end. And I think in the end, when most of us are asking questions about life and making choices of what we wanna do, don't you just wanna hope that your life mattered? That it meant something? Loving others is where you're gonna find that.

Not everything else is a bonus, but loving others is where you're gonna find it. In other words, if you were to rewrite these verses, it could be written this way. You can have the eloquence of an order, the knowledge of a genius, the faith of a miracle worker, the generosity of a philanthropist,

the achievements of a superstar. In other words, you could be Bill Bush, but and humble too. It's another joke, by the way. Just being obvious here, Steve. You just wanna manage expectations. You could be all these things, but if I do not have love in my heart, it is worthless.

So what are you chasing after? All these other things. And maybe in your relationship, like, but I'm all these things. Why is it going so poorly? Because you haven't made the commitment to do what love really is and be what love really is and committing to it, choosing it every day.

And so it'll be empty. It'll be and so it doesn't matter what it looks like on the outside. It won't accomplish anything. Your relationships will not get stronger. They'll get hurt. Your life won't get stronger. It'll get weaker. Let me give you an example to sum this up before we close down here.

Not long, I have a garage gym. I work out of home. And and I bought a thing called a Smith machine. It's kind of a a squat rack that runs on the the the bars that way. And it has little hooks on the bar. That way, if you're working out by yourself, and you're like, I'm not that strong today. You can like grab

turn it and grab these hooks. The hooks will grab the things, so you can you can be strong. You can do a lot of stuff on it. Really cool. But needless to it came you know, it's kinda complicated to put together. Some of the parts are heavy, so it recommends two people. And instead of

know how, I'm better at know who. And I figured I don't even wanna think about reading this book. I'm gonna get the smartest engineering minded person I know that could put anything together. So I asked a guy on our staff, Michael, good friend. I mean, he's a genius. He only works here because he wants to do something with his time. He's pretty much retired after business. But this guy, if we gave him enough of a budget, he could land a rock planer on the moon.

I mean, so I invite him over. So then I won't have to think about the instruction book. I'll just say, what do we need to do? We'll put it together lickety split.

And and so I got to where we started putting together. It went fast, my because I yeah. We're already we're done almost. And we put it together, it looks just like the box. But then there was one last piece you had to put on, and that's the little metal things that the hooks can grab onto.

And as we went to screw them into the two side panels of this rack, we realized that the holes look the same on both sides,

but there's only one side that has the catch part, one side assist. So you screw them into one side and it's in the right part. The other side now, the only way you can go in is it's on the outside, so there's nothing to catch. So now the thing is absolutely useless. And then when you look, the construction man, you you had to look close. It's like, it looks like it's put together perfectly,

but it doesn't work because it means you this this part looked exactly like this part, but they weren't the same. And we put them on the wrong side. Here's the problem. That's the two parts you start with and everything else attaches to that.

So guess what you have to do to flip it around? Take the whole thing apart. Now I'm telling you, when you put it together and looked at it, it looked exactly like the picture on the box.

It looked perfect. It would it looks exactly the same. But if you try to work out and get stronger with that, you're just gonna get hurt. It will not work. It's absolutely useless that way. Everything else was fine except for that one thing. So we had to take it apart, which was frustrating. It's annoying.

And I'm telling you, some of you guys are like, you're dumb. I every mechanical guy in here has done this at least once because you're so good at mechanical stuff, pay no attention to directions, and it's caught you too. So I start taking it apart. And the add insult to injury, my wife walks out and she goes, wait.

Why does it look like you went backwards?

And I goes, because we did. Why? Well, we got a part out of order. Now we had to start all over. And she's like, but but Michael's here, which was an absolute insult to me because those he was saying was like, well, I'd expect you to do that. That's pretty obvious. But with him here, it still happened to Michael's, I know. He turned into Yoda. Failed, I have. Into exile, I must go.

And so now I'm in a fight with my wife. No. Not really. I just laughed about it.

It's the same thing. I go, guys, you're just listening to all this stuff. You're like, but this is one thing, but you don't get it. But you don't know. I'm telling you, it doesn't matter if you get everything else right in your life. Everything else right in your relationships. If you don't love, it won't work.

It won't. It's just doesn't matter anymore. So why? What makes that so important? Well, verse 13 of chapter 13 says this. These three things will last forever. Faith, hope, and love. And the greatest of these is love. You ever read this and step back and someone's like, yeah, it's so powerful, it's so cool, but my mind goes,

why is love the greatest?

Why is it not faith or hope? Why is it love? Simple answer is this. If you don't have love, there is no hope. So why do you need faith? Without love, there's no hope. So faith is a waste of time. When it comes to our life, and especially, you understand chapter 13 is describing what love is. The bible also says God is love.

Doesn't say love is God. God's more than love, but God is love. That means God in his very essence of who he is is the definition of love. So this description of love is describing love. It's actually describing Christmas. It's describing Jesus. It's describing who he is. And he's saying we can be like him and this is what real love is. So think about this. These things will last forever, but the greatest is love. Because without love, we have no hope. Because faith doesn't matter because we will not last forever.

We can't live forever without the love of God. Our relationships will never last. I don't care how much faith or hope you have in it, it won't last. Can I imagine three six John three sixteen if God didn't love us?

How would he say that? Instead of for God so loved the world? For God so really liked the world. He was infatuated. He thought we were cute. He thought maybe we had potential.

So God really, really, really believed and he hoped it would be okay. So he sent his son to check things out. Then after spending thirty three years there, they decided to kill him and he realized they don't get it. They're never gonna get it. They're all going to hell.

That would be a really depressing gospel, wouldn't it? Love is the greatest because without love, this doesn't matter. This won't work. Faith and hope will not save us. Faith and hope are a result of love.

We can have faith and a hope because we're loved. You can have faith in a relationship, hope in a relationship because there's love. We need love.

If you wanna reach someone for Jesus, you don't start with the arguments and I gotta point the truth to them and get them to understand the faith and grab the hope. They're not gonna have the faith or the hope till they know the love.

It's the same with all of our relationships. And I think the reason that's so important is because also love is the one you do. You have faith. You have hope. Love is something you do for others.

It's something you do for others. And that's why it matters the most. In other words, if you really think about it, back to my joke in the beginning, my wife says, you say you love me. You said you'll die for me. You never do. Jesus said, God said he loves us. Jesus said he loved us. He said, I'll die for you.

And then he did.

Christmas is the very story of love, because Jesus may have came into a manger, but he came for the cross.

We should really celebrate Christer.

Some people that come to our church or say this is their church, they would be happy with that. That means only one day a year they show up because they're they're both sides of the same coin. He was born a baby in a manger in order to go to the cross for us.

He said he loved us. He said he would die for us. He said he would save us, and then he did. So without love, faith and hope are useless because we would be hopeless. And there is not enough faith that we could have, not enough good things we can have, not enough things we can do to right the relationship

chasm between us and God. And when we know it, the Bible says we can now love once we know his love. We can love because he loved us first. And what that means is we can love him back now. And when we love him back, we can now experience that love at a level that gives us the confidence and the willingness

to then mirror that love into our relationships and love others the same way. So it is the greatest, and the greatest place it starts is if you can't choose to love the people around you, you probably have a disconnect with you and the love of Jesus,

because that's where it comes from. That's where the hope and the power and the faith and the love, it comes from his love first. And that's why I just wanna stop as we get into the busyness of Christmas now. The craziness is about to happen this week. And I just wanna

literally just stop, take a moment to reflect. No songs, no music, no anything, and take communion with the people I love. Just have a moment. Short little moment. And then I realized as I started to do this, I said we all need this for the I realized for many of you, the craziness is about to calm down.

So maybe I'm asking, would you guys do this with me? Because it's about to get crazy for me.

And I just wanna take a moment to reflect on what Christmas really is before we do all the you can pull off the greatest Christmas of all. You could have all the presents, could do all the stuff, do all the fun stuff. Family can come and somehow you didn't kill each other. You can get everybody there, get everybody out. You could actually clean up. You got your stuff set up early. You're gonna get it done after the day after Christmas. You're gonna be happy about it. You could pitch a perfect game for Christmas, but if there's no love,

none of that mattered. None of that mattered.

And that's why I think Jesus asked us to do this moment we call communion.

He said the night before he he went to the cross for us, the night before he says, I'm gonna die for you, and then he did it. He broke some bread, said this is my body broken for you. I'm gonna die for you. And then he did it. He took the wine, the cup, and he said, this is my blood, spilled for forgiveness of sins for a new covenant. I'm gonna make us right. I'm gonna make this work. I'm gonna love you when you can't love yourself. I'm gonna give you hope when you're hopeless. I'm gonna be there for you.

And he did it. But then he said, do this in remembrance of me. So he asked us who know this love to frequently do this together. Why? Because I think we often forget that without love, nothing else matters. We can turn our relationship with God into just a checklist, and we're doing all the things, But without love,

it doesn't matter. We can do the same thing in our relationships. Check the list. I'm doing all the relational stuff. But without that commitment to choose love, it doesn't matter. So as we go into this Christmas moment, we remember the greatest moment of love, God's pursuit of us as prodigal people.

I think the reason he asks us to do this frequently is a chance to hit the reset button. Because if we're gonna remember anything about him, he's saying, remember when I showed you what love is. Remember when I became love itself.

Embrace that for yourself. Embrace the idea that God loves you not because of who you are, but because of who he is. And you can say that's really discouraging or you can realize that's the most freeing thing you're ever gonna hear because that means when you blow it, God still loves you.

And the more we can embrace that, the more we could probably be that in someone else's life. And guess what? When you know you're loved anyways, that's what transforms our life. Love takes us to truth, not the other way around.

So if we embrace God's love, we can then know it and then show it in our relationships. So what I wanna do is just take a moment. I'm gonna do something that's been awkward all the services. Maybe it's just awkward for me, but I'm just gonna stop talking for sixty seconds. And I'm gonna let us reflect in silence

about what do you think you need to talk to God about, how you're living a life of love. First, am I truly embraced his love in my life? And then if I have, how do I need to embrace reflecting that in my relationships? What do I need to do about that? By looking to Jesus. But before I do that, kind of a lead in prayer

is I wanna read verse four through seven, which defines love. But if God is love and Jesus defines love, every time it says love in these verses, I'm gonna put Jesus in there instead to kinda think about it this way. Jesus is patient and kind.

Jesus is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. He does not demand his own way, is not irritable, and he keeps no record of being wronged. He does not rejoice about the injustice, but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Jesus never gives up. Jesus never loses faith. Jesus is always hopeful, and Jesus endures

through every circumstance.

Let's talk to God before we do this. One minute.

He took the bread, broke it, and said, is my body broken for you. Take and eat.

And he took the cup. This is my blood spilled for the forgiveness of sins. Drink.

Father God, I thank you for this moment.

Lord, I thank you that it's a reminder of just to stop for sixty seconds can almost feel awkward in the silence. So easy to get so busy doing a relationship with you that we forget to be still and know that you are God. Thank you for letting us reflect on your love and what Christmas is really about. As we look to what

Jesus did on the cross. So Lord, I just pray for myself, everyone in this room, anyone online, a simple prayer. Help us to embrace your love so deeply that we can express it so clearly to others because as your word says, without that love, nothing else matters. I pray this in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen. Amen.

Hey, I love you guys. I really do. Thanks for joining us online this weekend. Let us know if we can help you in any way. Make sure to follow us on social media and connect with us on the We Are Rock Point app for prayer and everything happening here at Rock Point.