Title: Love passionately
Contents
♡♥♡ Love passionately. / 1 Peter 1:18-25
***Introduction
Do you know a lot of popular songs? What theme do you use the most in popular music? Maybe 'love'? Everyone knows that ‘love’ is good and important. The world knows that love is important. So I need love and I will sing again. But how many times do you suffer because of that good love? Love hurts because there is a foreign object in it. All kinds of calculations follow the love of the world. This calculated love is the foreign substance that hurts pure love. Then, isn't that the love that saints seek? Tonight, let's make up our minds and practice love.
The comedian who is good at talking used to say ‘In Jenben… Do you know the gag called '? This is the heavenly version of the Yanbian series.
“Hey, in our heaven, after reading the Bible ten times, we can’t even say that we have read the Bible. Go and go, read it 100 times and say, ‘Go, you must read the Bible a little!’ If you want to read it 200 times, you will start to doubt it by saying, ‘If you study the Gonom Bible, you will understand a little bit!’
One time, a newcomer to heaven in our back house boasted, “I have read the Bible 300 times.” Then, he was dragged away by an angel, and he was furiously scolded while playing a bingo game, a Bible character, and never again boasted that he had read the Bible a lot. The other day, Master Kwon, who had read the Bible 600 times, memorized the Bible in front of Jesus, and was scolded for making a mistake.
But one day it was Jesus laughed “heh heh heh” and said, “Who knows the Bible so well?” Heaven was praising him for leaving. So I thought, ‘I think that person read the Bible 1000 times.’ it wasn't He had only read the Bible once, and had an accident on the way and was a newcomer to heaven. Jesus asked the man about the Bible.
“Tell me about the Bible.”
Then the newcomer was talking like this in a trembling voice.
“The Bible… bore… I love you... ”
Then Jesus stroked him and praised him, saying, “I know the Bible properly.” I've never heard anyone say something like this after reading it a thousand times. It was only then that I realized that in heaven it doesn't matter how many times you read the Bible... ”
Are you comforting me? It is also 'love'.
If we don't come to our senses, even the life of our spirits will be in jeopardy. Enlargement, money almighty, bosinism, meritorious ideology, etc. This is the reality the church seeks. There, love, trust, and tolerance are all being lost. The beautiful and sublime love that the Lord laid down his life for me is being thrown away as if it were thrown away. In its place, the worldly wealth and glory are settled as foreign substances. The Lord is shedding tears of blood while looking at this generation. In such a time, I think it is necessary to consider and follow the words of the text.
1. Let's look at the background of the text.
Peter's epistles were written when severe persecution was inflicted by the Roman emperor Nero. Have you seen the movie 'Quo Vadis'? Just think of those scenes. The content is a message that comforts, encourages, and gives courage to the saints who are living moment by moment amid persecution and the crisis of life. Peter is confirming to the saints who are in trouble and adversity that the power of salvation they have is eternal. A person's physical life is finite, like grass or flowers of grass, which exist for a while and then disappear, but God's Word gives us courage by comparing it to exist for eternity.
2. Now let's love passionately.
Love is not as easy as it sounds. Even in the songs of the world, it is said that ‘everyone loves one’, but really, no one can do ‘agape’, the love the Lord loved us and the love that Christians do. The love of the world is subject to foreign substances, whether physical or hedonistic, beautiful or material. That is, you love because you have something to love.
Let's look at the Christian love in verse 22. We will read it in the modern language. “You have been freed from selfishness and hatred by believing in Christ who saved you, and your soul has been purified, so that you can truly love everyone. Therefore, love one another passionately, from the depths of your heart.”
We, who have been purified through faith in Jesus Christ, already have the power to love. Love here is 'agape'. ‘Agape’ is ‘sacrificial love that does not ask for anything in return’ and at the same time ‘willful love’ that requires self-determination. Loving someone who hates me cannot happen without self-sacrifice or volitional determination. But we already have the ability to love like this through Jesus Christ. It's just something we need to put into practice.
After receiving Jesus, a 70-year-old woman living in Audley, Australia, was filled with the Lord's peace and joy. I wanted to share this joy. So the old woman asked the church members, "Is there any way I can show my love to others?" But there was no one to give a proper answer. So the grandmother told Jesus this. After a while, this grandmother heard this voice while praying.
“You now live not far from Audley College, and as you know, there are a lot of foreign students there. They all miss their hometown. But what if you prepare tea every Sunday afternoon and invite these foreign students to your house to serve tea?”
Grandma wrote and put up a flyer that invited students to her house on a Sunday afternoon. On the afternoon of the first week, a student came. The next week three students came, and the next week six students came. Every week the students came to my grandmother's house.
Grandma told the students that it was her simple faith, but something she had never known before was on her mind. After that, the students came to know Jesus one by one through my grandmother's testimony. It went on for five years. And my grandmother passed away. When the news that the grandmother had passed away spread to the school, it is said that about 70 students came to the funeral to mourn. Those 70 were students who knew Jesus through their grandmothers.
The grandmother practiced the love of Jesus Christ with the little things she could do. But that small and gentle love has given birth to a new love for many young people.
Belief is not faith because it is believable. True faith is believing even in situations where you cannot believe at all. Luke 6:6-10 records the miracle of Jesus healing a man with a withered right hand on the Sabbath. Jesus said to the man with the withered hand, “Get up and stand in the middle.” Then he looked around the crowd and said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.”
Everyone, if you can reach out your hand to push it, wouldn't it be a dry hand? But the withered hand held out his dry hand. Since I moved my hand, it has already been healed. As a result, dry hands were restored. Even love that is just loveable is not true love. Just as the Lord loved me who did not deserve to be loved, so we must practice love in the same way. The love affair will continue in the future. Because this is the final goal we need to reach.
Let's open the new year 2003 with the love of the Lord with the Christmas of the Lord who gave us happiness.