Love, Love, Love, All You Need Is Love

Love

All You Need

Is Love

By Phil Beals

Scripture Reading: - Romans 8:27-39

Text:-Luke 10:27

Resp. Reading:-1 Corinthians 13

Feb 16/14 – LCC

Love, Love, Love, All You Need is Love

I want to begin by wishing you all a belated Happy Valentine’s Day. I hope and pray that you all had a wonderful day on Friday in however you happened to celebrate it.

Having said that, I am sure we all have a basic understanding of love. If you have any familiarity with Christ’s message in the Gospels, you will understand what His message was to the people of the day and to us today. It is all about love.

We have heard the different Greek words regarding love, that of Agape love, which is that sacrificial love … that love that loves irrespective of the cost. Another word for love, Philio, which is a friend to friend love, and demonstrates itself in empathy for others.

This morning I want to spend a few short minutes dealing with secular references to love and how we can take Christ’s message and intertwine it into what we commonly hear about love, to become better at loving God and loving our neighbors. Then I want to take you through some of the application of that love which demonstrates that in fact, All You Need is Love.I am going to reference a lot of passages of Scripture throughout the message.

I am sure some of you in this room, when you see or hear the term, ‘all you need is love’, might think of an old Beatles hit, part of which went something like this:

“Nothing you can know that isn't known; Nothing you can see that isn't shown
Nowhere you can be that isn't where you're meant to be; It's easy
All you need is love; Love is all you need”

The story behind this song is that the Beatles were asked to come up with a song with a message that would be understood by everyone. Brian Epstein, who discovered the Beatles in 1961, apparently said the song was inspired by a message the world needed to hear. He is quoted as saying - "The nice thing about it is that it cannot be misinterpreted. It is a clear message saying that love is everything.”

How then can we intertwine Christ’s message of love into this.Well … It’s true, that love is everything and that love is all we need. Consider this part of Scripture from Luke 10, part of which reads as follows, beginning at verse 25:

… a lawyer stood up and tested Him (Him being Jesus), saying, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” He said to him, “What is written in the law? What is your reading of it?” So he answered and said, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind,’ and ‘your neighbor as yourself.” And He said to him, “You have answered rightly; do this and you will live.” But he, wanting to justify himself, said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”

Then Jesus told the parable of the Good Samaritan. In short, that is the story of a man on a trip, who was attacked by bandits. In the end, it was a Samaritan who helped him back to health. Samaritans in that day were considered outcasts to the Jews.

Think about that from this perspective. What might the world be like if we spent more of our time trying to love our neighbors instead of finding reasons to be in complete disagreement and fight with each other all the time. Is it possible that’s why Christ preached love your neighbor as yourself? Oh … and a key point on that statement is this. First you must love yourself before you can love someone else. Have you ever considered that? Maybe we should remember that.

Is it possible that His message was … if we spent more time loving each other … less time would be spent fighting each other, including hating or learning to hate those we consider outcasts.

Now, I just want to interject this for clarification then I will come back to this. I am not implying, in what I just said that we are to water down the Gospel, because that could not be further from the truth. However, we are not called to ram the message of salvation down people’s throats, were are called to share the love of Jesus Christ.

What is it the Bible says about that? Try this one out for size from 1 Corinthians 3: “neither he who plants is anything, nor he who waters, but God who gives the increase.”In other words, our job is to plant the seed, and water it as we can, but it is God who will deal with any growth, if growth is to occur. Check out the parables of the sown seed in Matthew 13. I needed to clarify that. Back to the message regarding love then.

I am sure we are all quite aware of a very common message regarding God’s love, especially this verse from John 3, which you can probably quote as I read it to you:

John 3:16 – “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.”

But that verse also needs to be followed by this verse, which is verse 17: “For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.”

Or, how about this passage from 1 John 4, beginning at verse 7:

“Let us love one another, for love is of God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God, for God is love. In this the love of God was manifested toward us, that God sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him.

In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.”

Then further down the chapter we find these words:

“Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness in the day of judgment; because as He is, so are we in this world. There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment. But he who fears has not been made perfect in love. We love Him because He first loved us.”

There it is again. That singular message … love, love, love, all you need is love. Or this way … how many times do I have to tell you that love is all. How much clearer can that message be?

Here’s another reference from my most favorite chapter in all of Scripture … Romans 8 … and the last few verses of that chapter, beginning at verse 35, which was part of our Scripture reading this morning:

“Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword … in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.

For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Now that’s love in spades … if I may put it that way.How then can we apply this to our own personal lives, aside from the loving God and loving our neighbors? I know we may not all be married, but the following principles apply anyway in one form or another.

For those of us who are married though, consider this:

Part of Titus 2 reads, regarding the qualities of a sound church – “older men be sober, reverent, temperate, sound in faith, in love … women likewise, that they be reverent in behavior, not slanderers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things; that they admonish the young women to love their husbands, to love their children”

Or this passage, which is regularly and painfully misinterpreted … not to be dealt with this morning … but the message is clear just the same … from Ephesians 5 …“Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her” and later in the chapter –

“So husbands ought to love their own wives as their own bodies; he who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as the Lord does the church.”

Then in verse 33 – “Nevertheless let each one of you in particular so love his own wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.”

Now, just because I cannot leave this alone … the Bible does not teach subservience for women. You must understand the circumstances in the day it was written. That is a whole other sermon, but I like what Matthew Henry’s commentary writes on this subject:

“The woman was made of a rib out of the side of Adam; not made out of his head to rule over him, nor out of his feet to be trampled upon by him, but out of his side to be equal with him, under his arm to be protected, and near his heart to be beloved.”

But if I am going to quote that part, I must also quote this part from Matthew Henry’s: -

“A modest dress is a very good thing, if it be the genuine indication of a humble heart, and is to instruct; but it is a bad thing if it be the hypocritical disguise of a proud ambitious heart, and is to deceive. Let men be really as good as they seem to be, but not seem to be better than really they are.”

I want to close with this, which really touched my heart as I read it. If you want to read the whole thing, it can be found on the internet at - .

We know what our job as a man is … now listen to this men, and it should melt your heart. It’s part of “A Letter from God to Women” from the same web site: “When I created the heavens and the earth, I spoke them into being. When I created man, I formed him and breathed life into his nostrils.

But you, woman, I fashioned after I breathed the breath of life into man because your nostrils are too delicate. I allowed a deep sleep to come over him so I could patiently and perfectly fashion you. Man was put to sleep so that he could not interfere with the creativity.

From one bone, I fashioned you. I chose the bone that protects man's life. I chose the rib, which protects his heart and lungs and supports him, as you are meant to do. Around this one bone, I shaped you.... I modeled you.

I created you perfectly and beautifully. Your characteristics are as the rib, strong yet delicate and fragile. You provide protection for the most delicate organ in man, his heart. His heart is the center of his being; his lungs hold the breath of life. The rib cage will allow itself to be broken before it will allow damage to the heart. Support man as the rib cage supports the body.

You were not taken from his feet, to be under him, nor were you taken from his head, to be above him. You were taken from his side, to stand beside him and be held close to his side.”

How can you not love that? Wow!What can we learn from this? Try this … Our relationship with God is similar to the relationship that a man and woman should have with each other.

Love, love, love … all we need is love.

Let’s pray

(pray)