SERMON TITLE: Let’s Quit Pretending
SERMON TITLE: Real Love
SERMON TEXT: 1Peter 4:7-8
In First Peter
4:8, we are told, “Above all,
keep fervent in your love for one
another, because love covers a
multitude of sins.”
Fervent love is love that stretches itself out for
others. It holds nothing back, but gives
everything it has. It knows no
limitations and is free from hesitation and reservation. It is maximized in its efforts, radiant in
its expressions and ablaze in its passion.
Have you ever
noticed that the people who need your love the most deserve it the least?
G. K. Chesterton declared, “The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our
enemies; probably because they are generally the same people.”[1]
If you’re close
enough for someone to slap you on the cheek, then they’re probably a member of
your own family or circle of friends.
High maintenance
relationships are the ones that test the sincerity of your love.
Jesus commanded
His disciples to love their enemies and to pray for those who mistreated
them. (
Have you
noticed that God sends rain and sunshine to the fields of those who are…
If all we do is
love the loveable, then how are we different from the rest of the world? If we only greet those who greet us, we
shouldn’t expect a medal. Even the worst
of sinners do that.
Jesus commands
us to return good for evil. Here’s what
He proposed:
“Don’t hit back. If someone strikes you, don’t retaliate; take
it and turn the other cheek. If someone
drags you into court and sues for the shirt off your back, gift wrap your best
coat and give it to them as a present.
If someone takes unfair advantage of you, make what they’ve taken a gift
to them and thereby gain victory over your tendency toward anger and hatred.”
Such actions
cannot be carried out as a mechanical response to a command, but by a heart
empowered by love; real love. Such
actions demand a heart that is secure in God’s definition of them.
Love makes the
people around you too VALUABLE to
write off.
Hitler portrayed
Jews as being less than human vermin that required extermination. During WWII we called German soldiers KRAUTS
and Japanese soldiers NIPS or JAPS. We
dehumanized our enemies so we could kill them and not feel bad about it. Why?
Because it’s hard to kill someone we view as a person.
An example of this occurred in
It’s hard to
hate our enemies when love turns them into REAL people with festering hurts and
wounds; people who have been victims of child abuse, parental abandonment,
betrayal, rape, and so on.
On
Inside the house, the Sextons turned
their hostage experience into an opportunity to demonstrate Christian love. The
Sextons listened to their captors' troubles, fed them, showed them gospel
videos, read to them from the Bible, and prayed and cried with them.
During negotiations with the police,
Ricky Sexton refused his own release when Lewis and Tanner suggested that they
might end the standoff by committing suicide. The standoff had an unusual
ending. Before surrendering to the police, Angela Tanner left $135 and a note
for the Sextons that read: "Thank
you for your hospitality. We really appreciate it. I hope he gets better. Wish
all luck & love. Please accept this. It really is all we have to offer. Love, Angela and Dennis." [3]
Something
happens when love
Some 2000 years
ago, Love stretched Himself out on a cross and with total disregard for His own
pain and personal needs declared, “Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing.”
That is Fervent
Love.
TRANS: Not only does REAL LOVE stretch itself
out for us, it also covers us.
The Amplified
Bible declares, “Above all
things have intense and unfailing love for one another, for love covers a multitude of
sins--forgives and disregards the offenses of others.”
(1Peter 4:8)
The writer of
Proverbs wrote, “Hatred stirs
up strife, but love covers all
transgressions” (Proverbs
Love covers in that it does not stir up or
broadcast the sins and failures of others.
In Genesis
9:20-27, we are told that Noah blessed his sons, Shem and Japheth, but cursed his
grandson,
In scripture,
nakedness is associated with shame.
God did
something similar to this in the Garden.
After eating from the tree, Adam and Eve “knew that they were naked” (3:7), and in an attempt to cover their nakedness and
deal with their shame, “they
sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin coverings” (3:7).
Later, we are told “the
Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife, and clothed them” (
This is the way
love acts with regard to the sins and failures of others. Love does not condone sin, but neither does
it broadcast or take delight in the failure and shaming of others.
ILLUS: From what I understand, you will never
find an imperfect piece of Waterford Crystal (the fancy stuff from
Unlike Waterford Crystal, the church is made up of seconds. It is
filled with imperfect people who have all been forgiven by the grace of God.
In Chapter Six of his first letter to the Corinthians, Paul wrote:
9 Don't you know that those who do wrong
will have no share in the
10 thieves,
greedy people, drunkards, abusers, and swindlers-- none of these will have a
share in the
11 There was a
time when some of you were just like that, but now your sins have been washed
away, and you have been set apart for God. You have been made right with God
because of what the Lord Jesus Christ and the Spirit of our God have done for
you. [New Living Translation]
Love doesn’t seek to shame others by uncovering their sin. To the contrary, it refuses to stir up
strife. Instead of reminding people of their sins and using those sins against
them, love goes the limit in allowing the b
Love lifts the
garment of forgiveness and without
Love does not
take delight in rehearsing the past sins of others. It refuses to keep score of the sins of
others and does not keep a record when others do it wrong. It never
Loving people
do not seek ways in which they can get revenge or punish their enemies. Instead, they seek to bless those who are
talking bad about them.
Have you noticed
that Jesus didn’t command us to love our neighbor more than ourselves, but as
we love ourselves? I know all the bad
things about me and I still chose what I like to eat when I go to a restaurant. I wait until it’s cool outside to mow the
lawn. I wear comfortable clothing and
avoid things that cause me pain. I don’t broadcast my faults or uncover those
sins God has forgiven. That’s how God
wants me to love you and you to love me.
There was once a velveteen rabbit, and in
the beginning he was really splendid. He was fat and bunchy, as a rabbit should
be; his coat was spotted brown and white, he had real thread whiskers, and his
ears were lined with pink sateen. On Christmas morning, when he sat wedged in
the top of the Boy's stocking, with a sprig of holly between his paws, the
effect was charming.
There were other things in the stocking,
nuts and oranges and a toy engine, and chocolate almonds and a clockwork mouse,
but the Rabbit was quite the best of all. For at least two hours the Boy loved
him, and then Aunts and Uncles came to dinner, and there was a great rustling
of tissue paper and unwrapping of parcels, and in the excitement of
For a long time he lived in the toy
cupboard or on the nursery f
The Skin Horse had lived longer in the
nursery than any of the others. He was so old that his brown coat was bald in
patches and showed the seams underneath, and most of the hairs in his tail had
been pulled out to string bead necklaces. He was wise, for he had seen a long
succession of mechanical toys arrive to boast and swagger, and by-and-by break
their mainsprings and pass away, and he knew that they were only toys, and
would never turn into anything else. For nursery magic is very strange and
wonderful, and only those playthings that are old and wise and experienced like
the Skin Horse understand all about it.
"What is REAL?" asked the
Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender,
before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz
inside you and a stick-out handle?"
"Real isn't how you are made,"
said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves
you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then
you become Real."
"Does it hurt?" asked the
Rabbit.
"Sometimes," said the Skin
Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real
you don't mind being hurt."
"Does it happen all at once, like
being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"
"It doesn't happen all at
once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's
why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or
who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes
drop out and you get
Eventually,
the little Rabbit became the boy’s favorite toy. The Boy loved him so hard that he loved all
his whiskers off, and the pink lining in his ears turned grey, and his brown
spots faded. He scarcely
Perhaps the Skin Horse was
more right than we might realize: “When someone loves you, REALLY loves you, then you become
REAL to them, and when you become
REAL shabbiness doesn’t matter.”
God loves you! He really loves you!
[1] Citation: G. K. Chesterton, Leadership,
Vol. 9, no. 2.
[2] Ted Childress, former
FBI hostage expert, speaking as part of Donald Hoke's
sermon, "The Stockholm Syndrome," Preaching
[3] Gary Yates,
[4] The