FBCWest 717 | Love
Recorded On: 06/21/2026
Bulletin
Hymn # 339 “It Is Well with My Soul”
SCRIPTURE READING – Psalms 18:1 - 3
Giving of Selves and Our Offerings
OFFERTORY PRAYER
OFFERTORY MUSIC – Pru Hungate
Praise and Worship
“Battle Belongs”
“Raise a Hallelujah”
“Egypt”
Proclamation of the Word
Message by Pastor Joe
“Love”
PRAYER TIME / Time of Reflection
“How Great Is Your Love”
Acknowledgements and Announcements
Sermon Notes
Deuteronomy 6:5 Love the Lord your God completely
Leviticus 19:18 Love your neighbor as yourself
Matthew 5:43 & 44 Love your enemy
John 15:12 Love other believers as Christ did
Ephesians 5:25 & 26 Husbands are to love their wives as Christ loved the church
1 John 4:7 Love is from God
1 Peter 4:8 Love covers a multitude of sins
1 Corinthians 13: 1 – 13 Love defined
Scritpures
Transcript of Service
Several weeks ago, we did a message on love. It was about God's love for us and how that love can never be separated from us. Message is entitled something very similar.
It's called love. It's how we are to suppose to love one another and respond to God's love. And this message will discuss who were to love, what's standard for those persons and people that were to love. And we'll also discuss what love really is.
I encourage you to listen to this message. We are here because of the fury of his love. We're talking too much about his love. But today I want to talk about love going in a different direction. Oftentimes we want to hear about the true fact that God loves us, that that love is never separated from you. But today, I'm still talking about love, we're talking about love.
How we are to love others. We have this tendency to think that kind of love is, oh, in a sense, we're supposed to love everybody the same. That's not true. And in your own experience, you know that that's not true. You love your children much more than you do strangers on the street. I know that's true, since when we used to be when we had children or grandchildren when they were young and you go to a restaurant. And if your children or grandchildren cry, that was because there was a reason for it.
And you try to comfort them. When somebody else's children were crying, you were irritated and said, why don't they shut those brats up? Love is different. And so I want to talk about several different persons and groups of people that were to love, but there's a different standard for each.
So that's the wrong, that's last week. Jump to this week, I'd appreciate it. So while we're waiting for that, I guess I'll do some more introduction.
Because you hear, again, people talk about, well, now is love. And the sad thing is it's an old song, and now they're using it to talk about dogs. Now it's supposed to love your dog, because in English, you can like your dog, but you can't really tell the person who's supposed to love. But we have this idea, well, we just love everything and everybody. But God has set for us a certain things that we're to do and love, and there's certain commitments. And so the very first and most important person of his God. We love God because he first love us. And so there is a commandment, if you will, which we shouldn't need to love him.
And so that commandment is found in Deuteronomy chapter 6, which even Jesus will talk about as being the supreme commandment, the first. It says, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might. So first off, it says, you shall, so it's not an option, you shall love the Lord your God. The object is the Lord our God. And if you don't love the rest of it, doesn't matter, it's who you do. And so again, we should love God because of his love towards us. It should be a natural response to him. But if he isn't your Lord and your God, then the rest of it says, with all of your heart, who you are, and the concept of the scriptures, your heart is the essence of who you are.
It's your being, it's the quality of person, and we're to love God with our essence, who we are, all of it, not a portion of it, not even the best part, all of it. And with all of your soul, that spiritual aspect that I will bless the Lord, oh my soul, that by spirit, who God has placed His image upon me, that spiritual person, so I'm to love him in an essence of who I am, but in the spirit portion of who I am, love him with all my soul. Notice it isn't a portion, it's all. So if you love the Lord with 99 percent of your heart and 99 percent of your soul, you didn't know.
You may have done better than most, but that's not the command. The command is that we're to love the Lord entirely of our essence and entirely of our spirit. And with all of your might or your strength, I'm going to take an example of this. Jesus showed us love with all of His strength and the love of God with all of His strength. He was beaten and clogged up, then forced to carry His cross, and then they nailed Him to a tree, and in that crucifixion you basically died by affixiation. Or you would basically hang on and you would use your feet, which were nailed, to push up so that you could breathe.
And when your legs could no longer handle the strain, you would fall, and then you could in breathe. And then he would do the same thing over and over and over, using all of His strength to demonstrate His love towards God, being obedient to Him and His love for us. To the point that is hard, how do I know that it's hard first? Because when their soldiers confirmed His death, they thrust the spear into His side and out came water and blood, which indicates the heart broke. He loved God with all of His strength. We love God as long as it's convenient.
All of our strength should be that we're running with Him. Then when we can't run, we walk with Him. Then when we get on our hands and our knees and we keep moving with Him to the point that even then, if we have to be on our bellies, we take our fingers and we keep moving until we no longer can move, it's with all of our strength. That's the standard that we should have to love God, because He loved us that way. It's a high standard, but no less than He deserves, because He's our Creator, He's our Redeemer. It's all of those things, and therefore, if He is the Lord our God, then He should be loved completely, fully, totally by everything that we are, so that when we allow our mind to get off track, we should get back on track. That's why the Scriptures tell us we should have a renewal of our mind, because our mind tends to think about things that aren't necessarily that important, or will not last for eternity.
So we should love Him completely with our mind, should love Him completely with our heart, love Him completely with our soul and all of our strength. So that's the first standard. There's a second love that we're supposed to have, the Bidigus 19.
You shall not take vengeance nor bear any grudge against the sons of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself and the Lord. God has commanded us to love our neighbor as ourselves. Now notice, of me, fully, completely, all that you are, you're to love your neighbor as yourself. Now, for you, that may not be that big a standard. For me, it's a very high one, because I love me a lot. I love, or does we say this, I love me so much, I take me wherever I go. I think it's essential that when I go someplace, I take me with me.
I think what I have to think is important, and I have wisdom, and you ought to listen to me. I think when I tell a joke, you ought to laugh, because I think it's funny. I think I'm pretty important. And if I think that way of myself, and I love myself that way, then God says, then you're to love your neighbor as yourself. Well, the problem with this is one we tend not to. In second, exception as the Pharisees said, well, who's my neighbor? And the true answer is, when somebody's in need, they're your neighbor.
If they're in need, and you have the ability to all that need, that's your neighbor. And you would not want to be hungry, and you would not want to be lonely, and you would not want to be cast aside, where to love others the same way. But again, I suspect you may not love yourself as much as I love me, but very few people hate themselves. I suspect when his over and the service is over, you'll probably go and get something to eat, whether you go to a restaurant or you make it at home, because you're going to be hungry, and you're going to take care of yourself. Even the people who don't think as much of them still fill their needs.
So we should do that as well. Here's a tricky one. Matthew 5, 43, and 44.
Jesus speaking says, you've heard it said that you shall love your neighbor. This people want to hate their enemy, and I understand that. But I say to you, so this is Jesus who we call Lord. Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you. God has told us even the people who are against us were to love.
Now, I tried to make an exception to this, and go, well, they may not be muttoned in the me, but there's a lot of evil people doing terrible things, and we ought to fight against that or whatever. But then I realized, God doesn't need me. He can take care of himself. He can take care of his enemies, and when he's through that, you'll take care of it. So in then, between time, maybe I should love them, because like it or not, before I became a believer, and before you became a believer, if you are one, you are God's enemy.
And yet, because of his love, change you from being an enemy to a child. Maybe if we love our enemies, we will change them. So he says, we're to love them, but we're also to do something else. We're to pray for them. Now again, we could say, okay, Lord, I pray for them.
Prussia. Turn them into dust. Touch it and revel in it. Now, no, the implication here is that we pray that God would bless them and change them. Or if he doesn't change them to change our attitudes towards them. So we're told to love God, to love our neighbors as ourselves, but even our enemies, we're to love and to pray for. Another group that weren't to love in John chapter 15, 12, this is my commandment.
Notice, aren't options. This isn't, well, if you think it's a good idea, you should do this. That's it. Commandment. Love me. A commandment. Love your neighbor. You've heard it said, but I tell you a statement that our Lord and Savior said.
And then he says, this is my command. This is a commandment that Jesus is giving to those of us who are following him. That you'd love one another just as I have loved you. How did he love us? First off, he put up with us. I mean, let's face this, some of us are really hard to handle.
Notice the love of God. And he showed us mercy. And he showed us compassion. And he showed us these things. And then he gave himself for us. And that's how we are to love one another.
So what's the difference between me and me? Well, we hear that in the church a lot. What about me. I've been. What about me? And Jesus says it's about you, of you, and I'm going to give myself for you.
And that's the standard that we are to love, our brothers and sisters, his standard of loving us, the way he loved us and gave himself for us. Another group, husbands, love your wives. So notice it's a commandment to husbands. As an aside, the Scriptures never tell the wives to love their husbands. They'll say to respect them, let's face a wife sometimes you don't.
But it never tells the wives to love their husbands. But husbands are told and commanded to love their wives. How? Just as Christ also loved the church and gave himself up for her. Husbands are to love their wives again the way Christ did and was willing to die for the church. I would someone say that you may think your wife is killing you. Your job is to love her anyway because it's a death sentence. You continue to love her until one of you passed.
We're to love. The difference between if you will, the husbands love in their wives. And we love in each other the way Christ did.
Whoever shows up in our congregation. You may be easy to love, you may be hard to love, but I'm still required to love you. As Christ loved the church. Husbands, at least in our culture, you got to choose your wife. No one wrote out a contract saying that eight years old you're going to marry some girl across the country.
You got to choose. Well, if you made a bad choice, sorry. You're in a life anyway. And not love your wife in the sense of what is it benefits you, but you love your wife to benefit her. It's where I have a big disagreement with some very people that I think that will say that the women and wives make their husbands better. If that's the case, then husband, you married the wrong woman. And why if you married the wrong man?
Because men, your job is perfect before the Lord. It's your job to make her better, not her job to make you. And so men, we need to be better, to grow in the Lord, to do the other things that you need to do so that we can't love our wives the way Christ loved the church and can make her better. Now, I won't say that I wasn't improved somewhat by my wife.
Her job is my job to present her perfect. It means that sometimes it's not what I want, but what's best for her. As the set aside, my desire for what's best for your wife. First, John, chapter 4, verse 7 says, Let us love one another from God. Everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. You see, you can't do these commandments by the standards that they've been told to us to do without God. God is love.
So you can have the worldview of love that we call eros, the erotic love, where what you get is because you desire something to pleasure yourself. And it's about you. Love. That's not the love of God. The love of God is, I see a need and I provide for it. You can only do that. You can only love the Lord your God, but you completely know who God is. And understood, you can only love your neighbor as yourself because you know who God is.
And how he's changed you and how he's blessed you. And you can only love your enemy because God loved us when we were his enemy. And we can only truly love each other. We know who Christ is and what Christ has done and we know him. And we can only love our spouses, our wives if we have imparted and understand and his love. You see how love is kind of like a bank account.
You can write a check for money that's not in your bank, but it won't get cashed. It'll bounce. You also think about if you just love according to who you are, you're going to write a very, very small check. Because there's not going to be much money in that account. But when you've experienced God's love, he's given you an ability to write checks of love. At a mount you cannot believe. Because he is love.
And everyone who loves is born of God. If you don't love other people, and I'm not saying you're not struggling, because oftentimes we struggle. But if it's like, ah, that doesn't matter, then maybe you should consider the fact that maybe you're not born of God. Or maybe you don't understand him as fully as you should. Because let us love one another. Love is from God. And then first Peter tells us this, above all, keep fervent in your love for one another.
It shouldn't be cold. It shouldn't be warm. We should love to love one another.
Why? Because love covers a multitude of sin. I understand this even in a natural sense. When you are my family or others, my friends that I love, I used to have this, if you will, I can account. It says, I love you this much. And if you exceeded that amount of love, I just kind of just went away.
Because I didn't want to hate you, but I didn't want to hate you. But when there's true love from God, then I don't count what you've done wrong to me. Because love covers it.
Just talk about our sins. It's as fast as far as the east is from the west. When we love one another, we don't count sins. We don't count objections. It's covered. Because I know sin against God. I know sin has been more than adequately covered. Love, what is it?
People tend to think that love is a warm fuzzy. I just enjoy it. It's just so much fun. Love.
This is the definition of love. It's found in 1 Corinthians chapter 13. This is often times, the only time you ever heard this passage is out of wedding. This is not about a wedding. This is not about a wife.
This is about a love between believers and non-believers and believers and believers. It's what love is. It's not romantic love.
Now, hopefully, because if we're supposed to love our wives as Christ did, this is how we love. And so he's going to show us what love is. Because love isn't a feeling. It's an action. So, he starts out saying, if I speak with tongues of men and of angels but do not have love, I become a noisy gong. He said, Paul saying, without love, you're just making noise.
And there's enough noise in the world. We don't need more noise. We need a little quiet.
So love is essential. Otherwise it's just no. If I have the gifts of prophecy and know all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. Notice how essential. It doesn't matter. Or your abilities or your successes.
If you don't have love, it doesn't matter. God's not impressed. If I have, if I give, if I feed the poor and I find surrender my body to be burned and do not have love, it profits me nothing. So I'm saying, notice we talked about faith and without faith it is impossible to please God. God says without love, there is no rewards.
You can sacrifice all you want. You can be a silent martyr, I want to be the perfect husband, even though I don't love my wife, but I'm just going to be the perfect husband because it's whatever. So when you get to heaven and you go, well, wasn't I the perfect husband? God's going to be the perfect husband. You didn't love her.
No reward. So then he's going to tell us, after telling us how essential love is, he's going to tell us this love is patient. Oh, really hard. Patient. But you don't understand the people I'm dealing with God, they're really not that wonderful. A little slow.
Love is kind. Love is kind of kind. Love is kind. If I used to drive me crazy when I would see these bumpers, this says, commit a random act of kindness. No be so kind to everyone all the time. That's love. And it's not jealous. There are a lot of people who want what you want and you want what they want.
No wonder everybody's trying to keep open to Joneses. Let me tell you a secret. They're lying to you on social media. They got filters to make themselves look better. They're taking pictures of who cares. Their life's not that wonderful because if their life was wonderful, they'd live it rather than tell you about it.
It's not, you don't need to be jealous. Love does not brag. You don't have to be fortunate and is not arrogant. Does not act unbecoming. It understands how we are interacting with others.
We don't become off putting to others that they actually want to be around you because that find patience and kindness and humility. It does not seek its own. Jesus didn't come to the world to oppress us. He came to save us and to redeem us. He did not seek his own what we needed and by his love acted. It is not provoked. In Newf's in, there are people who just can't wait to be upset. Let's get in a fight.
We just don't agree. Does not take into account a wrong stuff. There's no score. You wrong me three times so I get the wrong you three times.
You wrong me whatever I don't wrong you back. I love you instead. Does not take into account. Wives, you are particularly prone to this. I beat up on the husband's down. I'm going to beat up on your wives. We husbands of the time will do really stupid things.
Admit it. We'll do stupid things. And then if we become manly enough, we seek forgiveness. You forgive but you don't. Three years later when we do something you won't remember that. Why I thought you forgave me. You killed account. You just waited to cast that.
Does not rejoice in unrighteousness. When you are doing things that are contrary to God's will, we shouldn't be happy about it. We shouldn't be rejoice. We should be rejoice and we are getting closer to God but we should not be rejoicing in unrighteousness. But rejoices with the truth. When someone speaks the truth, we should say, Amen.
And keep... It bears all things. Doesn't matter what the wrong it was suffered. Doesn't matter.
I write a wrong. It bears it. It believes all things. It hopes all things. It endured all things. If there was a secret to the Christian life, probably that one statement is a key.
It endured how many people stopped short because they were tired or gave up because they didn't see a difference. Maybe you could just with the beginning love the larger God with all your strength. Some would arrive. Endures all things.
Love never fails. You don't believe that because if you did, you'd keep loving. But you think it's going to fail.
So you'd give up. You'd give the endure. But if there are gifts of prophecy, away with it. There's going to come a time when the preaching is no longer necessary. I won't need to tell you what God's like and I won't need to study what God's like because we're going to be in His presence and know what He's like. We don't know what the future is because it'll be the present. If there are tongues, they will cease. There's this angelic speaking, big deal.
Be done away with it because there'll be a language of heaven. If there's knowledge, it will be... Where we know in part and we've prophesied in part, we all know what God has revealed to me and I try to expand more and communicate that to you. But it's not total complete knowledge. So we know in part and then we speak what we know in part. But when the perfect comes, the partial will be done away with it.
Now some say that's the scriptures and some whatever. When that perfect is here, longer need it. Because it will be complete. And then He says this, When I was a child, I used to speak like a child. Think like a child.
Reason like a child. When I became a man, I did away with child mistakes. When we were baby Christians, maybe we should want what we want and we try to expand in whatever, tell me, mount me, mount me. That's as a child. We're a grow in the love and nurture and admonition of the Lord. So think like children. But we think in reason and act like grownups.
A child wants what a child wants. A good parent knows what he needs and finds it. It acts in love. So we think that way, not childish things.
But now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Then I will know fully just as I have been fully known. Paul saying, we understand this partially. But when we get to see the Lord, it all be revealed. If it concludes by saying this, but now faith, hope, love abide these three.
The Christian life is made up of faith, leaving when God tells us something that it will come to pass, expecting that to happen in some future time and love. But the greatest of these is love. Why?
Because we won't need faith when we see... We won't need hope because we love it. It'll be in our grasp. But since God is love and will be in His presence, love will be there in eternity.
It will last forever and ever and ever and ever. So why not get an early start on heaven and love here? Why not be more like God to be Godly? Well, how can we be Godly? Well, I have a sin problem that God has dealt with, but as I acknowledge with Paul, I do the things I don't want to do, and I don't do the things that I ought to do. So I understand I struggle with that. And if I had the faith of a Master, there are these things, whatever.
If I love God, the way He's instructed me, if I love my... See as instructed me. Now, I love my enemy as He has instructed me. Now, I love you the way He's instructed me.
And if I love... Why? As He has instructed me. Now, I love it.
Love... He's defined it. Then it won't be too hard to tell how much I'll be God. I won't be illegitimate. I know God. And to know God is to know His love. And to know His love means I am so secure in it, I can risk loving you whether you ever love me back or not. Because my love is not new loving me back.
It's dependent upon His love to me. Love is not a feeling. It is an action. Let us act. And all that people stand.
Thank you.