Today’s Key passage of Scripture comes from: Galatians 5:22-23
While you are turning there…
See if you can remember all of the fruits of the spirit.
Hopefully many of you can.
As we look in Galatians 5:22-23 this morning, we read…
22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith,
23 Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.
This morning we are going to look at the first one in this list
(1) Love
As Christians, The Bible is our foundation.
It is the final authority on all matters
AND
It alone should direct our life!
And if you boil the Bible down
To one core message…
To one central theme…
It can strongly be argued that
That one central theme
Would be that of LOVE!
In fact,
Love is mentioned 442 times throughout the Bible
That is more than any of the other fruits of the Spirit!
And that is not even to include the 24 times
when the Bible uses words like Charity
or other words which mean love!
AND when you compare it to
All of the other fruits of the Spirit…
Peace being mentioned 420,
Faith 336,
Joy 187 times,
And all of the others are mentioned 35 times combined!
When God gives us something in the Bible
It is for a reason.
Perhaps Jesus taught on hell
More times than He taught on Heaven
So that we would pay attention to it!
Perhaps we are told about LOVE
More times than
Any other fruit of the Spirit
Because
WE ARE TO EMMULATE
God’s Love for us
In a consistent manner throughout our lives!
Romans 5:8 teaches us…
8 But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
When God made all of creation
It was good!
God was happy
And so was mankind.
Adam and Eve were running around
And having a great time in the
Garden of Eden.
But then
They as the representatives of all mankind
Chose to break that fellowship with God!
They chose to do the opposite of what He had commanded them
Although He had shown them His love by giving them a beautiful garden to live in
And filling it with
All kinds of awesome animals,
Some of which were extinct before we were even born
So that we will never have the joy of seeing them ourselves
Despite all of that
They chose to break that fellowship with God!
But as Romans 5:8 tells us,
God commended, OR showed
His love towards us
He made the first move
And He has been showing us His love ever since!
Remember how things were when you were dating?
Remember that no matter how great a relationship was destined to become…
There had to be that initial meeting.
Then there had to be that initial getting to know you stage…
And finally, there was the
“I Love You” stage…
You know, the one where
One person or the other had to say
I Love you to the other.
For God,
Dealing with mankind may seem a bit like that.
Here He is,
The creator of all things great and small…
He gave us everything we could ever need
And then we reject Him.
Then, later on,
He writes us
A huge book
Fills it with poems and songs and stories about how much He loves us…
And now He is waiting for us to respond to Him!
God has told how much He loves us
So much that I could probably
Preach an entire year worth of sermons just on Love!
But I won’t do that. There are plenty of other
Things God told us,
So today’s sermon will have to suffice for now!
CHARITY
As I mentioned earlier
The Bible uses different words to refer to love
Sometimes as well.
If you’ve been a Christian any length of time
You should already know what is found in
I Corinthians 13
This is called the LOVE CHAPTER
It starts off in verse 1 saying
I Corinthians 13:1-13
1 Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.
If we talk about how much we love others
And all of the wonderful things we are going to do for them…
And yet we don’t follow through,
We are just making a lot of noise.
If you want to make a comparison to that
It is the person who is always bragging
OR
It is that little yippy dog that
Someone has.
It can make all of the noise in the world when you
Come to the door and ring the doorbell.
It will sit there and bark in the window all day long.
But when the rubber hits the road
And its master opens the door.
One of two things usually happens.
That thing will either try to lick you to death…
Or it runs the other direction.
I’ve had neighbors and friends with those little things.
Some of them were just as cute as could be,
Yet,
They never follow their words up with actions!
This chapter continues to
Describe Love
And what is not…
Then we are met with
the description of what LOVE IS.
Verse 4 says…
4 Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up,
5 Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil;
6 Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth;
7 Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.
8 Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away.
Charity suffereth long…
Hey, what do you know,
Longsuffering is another one of the
FRUITS OF THE SPIRIT…
Since it goes right along with Love,
Perhaps that is why it is only mentioned 14
Times in the Scriptures!
It doesn’t behave itself unseemly, it is not provoked,
It seeketh not her own!
That is an important one!
True love doesn’t say
You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours!
It says I love you
And I care for you
That is why I am doing this…
And I expect nothing in return!
Now that is true love!
And as this chapter comes to a close,
In Verses 11-13, we read…
11 When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.
12 For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.
As we think on this chapter,
We have to realize that
Just as the love we hold for fellow
Human beings must grow and change
Throughout our lifetimes
The love which we hold for God
Must change as well!
When we were young,
When we were “babes in Christ”
We acted one way
We did certain things…
And now that we are mature,
We need to act another!
We need to put aside childish bickering
We need to look for ways we can
Serve Christ and to bring glory to Him.
If we truly love Jesus Christ
It won’t matter who it is that
Gets the earthly glory
Or the earthly credit.
What will matter to us is that
Souls are Saved and that Lives are changed
And that God gets the glory,
Not us!
While we are on this earth,
We will never be perfect,
No matter how hard we try!
We can see the Lord’s will
And we can understand the things given to us by the Scriptures
Only in part…
But someday,
We will understand it
In a whole nother light!
When we get to Heaven
We will understand
Just how much God really does love us
And all that He did for us
While we were on this earth!
The final verse,
I Corinthians 13:13
Reminds us that…
13 And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.
The greatest of these three things…
And the greatest among many other things is love!
CONCLUSION/Invitation
Jesus Christ showed us just how Great His love of us was…
John 15:13 Says that…
Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.
Jesus Christ did this!
He came to this earth
Lived a perfect life
And then died on the cross
To prove just how much
He cared for us.
Jesus Christ died for
All of mankind…
We mistreat the temple of the Holy Ghost
We mistreat other Christians
And we ignore what the Bible teaches us
So that we can do the things that
We want to do!
Yet, again, in
The book of John,
When Jesus was speaking with Nicodemus,
We read the words so familiar to us…
John 3:16-17
16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
17 For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.
And,
The Lord who
Did this great thing
Of dying on the Cross to forgive us of our sins
Took it one step further.
II Peter 3:9-10 Tells us that…
9 The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.
10 But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up.
The Lord is not willing that ANY should perish,
But that ALL should come to repentence!
Now that is LOVE!
As we draw to a close today,
I want you to take note of that last verse!
II Peter 3:10
It says that the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night!
When a thief comes,
Unless he’s an exception to the rule,
He isn’t going to just
Bust in the door
And then announce his presence…
Hello, I’m here…
He is going to come quickly and quietly.
That is how the Day of the Lord will come!
We are not guaranteed another day or another hour.
The only guarantee we have in this life
Is the breath that is inside of our lungs right now!
Don’t know Christ as Saviour
There is no better time to do so.
Like we talked about this morning,
Luke 12:20
20 But God said unto him, Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee: then whose shall those things be, which thou hast provided?
The Bible also tells us in, I Timothy 2:4 that we serve a God who wants ALL MEN to be saved and to come into the knowledge of the truth. (Who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth)
Do you have that knowledge today?
Knowing that you are going to Heaven when you die is as simple as A,B,C.
A, Admit that you are a sinner and cannot get yourself to Heaven.
B, Believe that Jesus Christ is God’s only and perfect Son and that He came to earth, lived a perfect life, died on the cross to pay for our sins, and rose again in order to show that He was more powerful than even death itself.
And then
C, Choose to accept Him as your personal Lord and Savior trusting that He is the ONLY way to Heaven.
If you are not quite sure how to do that, you can pray a simple prayer something like this…
“Dear Lord, I know that I am a sinner and that I have done things wrong. Please forgive me of my sins and allow me to live with you in Heaven someday when I die. Thank you for dying on the cross for my sins and forgiving me. In Jesus name, Amen.”
Let us pray
