Series: One Another Living: Our Desperate Need for Community

Title: Love One Another

Text: 1 John 4:7-12

I. A Drought of Love

This summer we’ve experienced one of the worst droughts in decades. If you water your lawn and garden, you know it’s true:

The dogwood leaves have curled.

The lawns have struggled to survive.

Some of our great trees are brown and dying.

Our cars have continually been covered with dust and dirt.

But the drought we’ve faced is nothing compared to the drought in East and Central Tennessee.

Climatologists classify our drought as "extreme" a D3, but they classify the drought in East Tennessee as "exceptional," a D4, the most severe drought possible.

http://drought.unl.edu/dm/monitor.html

God created plants to thrive with plenty of water. Without water they wither away.

One year of drought is bad, but survivable. If we face drought again next year, it could be devastating.

When the rains come – as they did this week – life returns.

Yet, our drought of water is not our most severe drought. Our greatest drought in this land is a drought of love.

God created you and me to thrive with plenty of love. Without love, we wither away.

One year of a drought of love is bad, but survivable. If you or I face a drought of love for a period of years, it could be devastating.

When love comes, life returns.

So we’re lookin’ for love, but often as Waylon Jennings sang,

"In all the wrong places."

Hopin' to find a friend and a lover
God bless the day I discover
Another heart, lookin' for love

Billions of dollars are spent each year in search of love:

Clothing, cosmetics, cosmetic surgery.

Diamonds, flowers, jewelry.

Diets, athletic clubs, Internet dating services.

In search of love people plunge into the twisted world of:

Pornography, adultery, and perversion.

Why all this time, money, effort, and dangerous behavior?

Because just like plants need water, we need love.

 

Often the love we seek, is not the love which will satisfy; it’s not the love God had in mind.

Often the love we seek is self-satisfying, self-gratifying, self-fulfilling.

God’s way of loving is not focused on yourself. God’s way of loving is focused on others.

Never does God’s Holy Word tell us:

To seek for love.

To look for love.

To try to find love.

What does God’s Word commands us to do?

In our reading from John chapter 13, Jesus said,

34"A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. ³⁵By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another."

John 13:34-35 (NIV)

In John chapter 15, Jesus said,

12My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. ¹³Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.
John 15:12-13 (NIV)

First Peter chapter four commands us:

8Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.
1 Peter 4:8 (NIV)

Our reading from First John chapter four, commands us three times:

7Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God...

11Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.

12No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.

1 John 4:7-12 (NIV)

God’s way of loving is focused, not on ourselves, but on others.

Loving one another is the key to "one another living." It’s the key to how God designed us to live.

Over the next eight weeks, as we immerse ourselves in "one another living."

We must remember that loving one another is the key. When we truly love one another, we will have no problem:

Encouraging One Another

Agreeing with One Another

Being Kind and Compassionate to One Another

Offering Hospitality to One Another

Teaching and Admonishing One Another

Submitting to One Another

Serving One Another

 

If "all men will know that [we] are [Jesus’] disciples, if [we] love one another," then for the sake of God’s kingdom:

The first place we must practice "loving one another," must be right here in the church, among one another.

When people see us loving one another, they say,

"That’s what I’ve been looking for."

As a prominent biblical scholar once said,

"More people have been brought into the church by the kindness of real Christian love than by all the theological arguments in the world, and more people have been driven from the church by the hardness and ugliness of so-called Christianity than by all the doubts in the world."

William Barclay, Leadership, Vol. 9, no. 3.

 

III. One Another Warnings

The Epistles are also full of "one another" warnings.

Unfortunately, when people see us Christians:

Wounding one another.

Judging one another (Romans 14:13).

Refusing to forgive one another (Colossians 3:13).

Holding bitterness toward one another (Titus 3:3).

Slandering one another (James 4:11).

Bitting and devouring each other (Galatians 5:15).

When people see us acting like that, they want no part of it. And I don’t blame them.

My heart breaks ever time I read about a church in turmoil:

Nine times out of ten, the problem is not a financial scandal or a sexual scandal or any Ten Commandment sin.

It’s a love problem. This group or that person is so consumed with what they want, that they simply stop loving one another.

 

In the book of Genesis, Joseph was born to Israel in his old age.

He loved his Joseph even more than his other sons. He even made him a coat of many colors, an Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.

God gave Joseph dreams:

A dream that his brothers would bow down to him.

A dream that even his father and mother would bow down to him.

Joseph was young and naïve. He foolishly told his dreams to his brothers. They burned with jealousy. They had a "love one another" problem; they didn’t.

One day when Joseph was miles from home looking for his brothers who we grazing the sheep, they saw him and they plotted to kill him (Genesis 37). They said,

19"Here comes that dreamer!.. ²⁰Come now, let’s kill him and throw him into one of these cisterns and say that a ferocious animal devoured him. Then we’ll see what comes of his dreams."

Genesis 37:19-20 (NIV)

But instead of killing him, they sold their brother into slavery. "A caravan of Ishmaelites" took him to Egypt.

Years passed by and God raised Joseph to prominence in Egypt. God had given Pharaoh two dreams:

In the first dream there were "seven cows, sleek and fat" and "seven other cows, ugly and gaunt." The "cows that were ugly and gaunt ate up the seven sleek, fat cows."

In the second dream there were "Seven heads of grain, healthy and good" and "seven other heads of grain...thin and scorched by the east wind. The thin heads of grain swallowed up the seven healthy, full heads" (Genesis 41).

Pharaoh woke up in a sweat. He was terrified! In all the land of Egypt, only Joseph could interpret his dream. Both dreams foretold seven years of abundance, followed by seven years of famine.

Immediately, Pharaoh promoted Joseph to his second in command to collect grain during the years of abundance, so they could survive during the years of famine.

When the famine became severe, his brothers, the ones who had sold him into slavery, came to Egypt looking for grain.

Joseph had every right:

To condemn them.

To enslave them.

To kill them.

But he didn’t.

You see, Joseph did not have a "love one another" problem.

He forgave them. He provided for them. He loved them.

I our reading from Genesis 45, Joseph met with his brothers incognito. They did not recognize him.

Finally, Joseph "wept...loudly" and said to his brothers:

3..."I am Joseph! Is my father still living?" But his brothers were not able to answer him, because they were terrified at his presence.

4Then Joseph said to his brothers, "Come close to me." When they had done so, he said, "I am your brother Joseph, the one you sold into Egypt!

5And now, do not be distressed and do not be angry with yourselves for selling me here, because it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you.

Genesis 45:3-5 (NIV)

Joseph did not stoop to his brother’s behavior of:

Deceit

Envy

Bitterness

Greed

Joseph chose to end the drought of love:

He didn’t demand love from his brothers.

He opened his arms to those who had wounded his soul.

He forgave them.

He accepted them.

He even provided for them.

 

Many Christians, many churches today have a desperate need to emulate Joseph, not his brothers.

Jesus said,

35By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another."

John 13:35 (NIV)

When we love one another, we fulfill God’s Law (Romans 13:10).

We must place loving one another above all else.

Once there was a woman who went out on her front porch and saw three old men with long white beards sitting in her front yard.

She said,

"I don= t think I know you, but you must be hungry. Please come in and have something to eat."

They said,

"We don= t go into a house together.@

She asked why.

One of the bearded men pointed at the others and said,

"His name is Wealth."

"His name is Fame."

"And my name is Love."

Then he added,

"Now go in and discuss with your husband which one of us you want in your home."

The woman went in and told her husband what the old man had told her.

Her husband was thrilled. He said,

"Wonderful! Let’s invite Wealth into our home, then we’ll have all the material comforts we’ve dreamed of."

His wife disagreed. She said,

"My dear, why don= t we invite Fame into our home? Then everyone will know how important we are."

Their daughter was listening from the other room. She came is and suggested,

"Wouldn’t it be better to invite Love into our home?"

After pondering her suggestion, her parents decided she was right. So they invited Love into their home.

Love came in and filled their home, but to their surprise, Wealth and Fame followed Love.

When she asked Love, why Wealth and Fame came in too, he said,

"If you’d invited Wealth or Fame, the other two of us would’ve stayed out, but since you invited Love, Wealth and Fame were sure to follow."

 

In our church, in our homes, in our schools, in our work, if we make Wealth and Fame our top priority, that’s all we’ll get.

If we make Love our top priority, the rest will take care of itself.

Let us end the drought of love, by not lookin’ for love in all the wrong places, but by lookin’ to give love in all the right places.