Gateway Church's Podcast
Love Is Part Of His Plan
If you'll open your Bibles, please to Nehemiah chapter 3 and then also to Matthew chapter 22 We're in a series called the blueprint God's master plan for your life And we began this series by looking at the literal meaning of the book of Nehemiah We then transitioned to where we're looking at the spiritual meaning of the book of Nehemiah three weeks ago Pastor Robert talked about the sheep gate those those strangely named gates and the Into the old city of Jerusalem and how the sheep gate represents that all of us are sheep And all of us need a shepherd Shepherds are a part of God's plan and then two weeks ago Pastor Robert looked at the fish gate and how all of us are Responsible to share the love of God with other people and so we're going to continue this study of Nehemiah And then go to some other places in God's word But you know I was thinking as I prepared for this message how Strange of a time it is in the course of human history this day in which we live And I really believe that God has honored each one of us by allowing us to be alive today Sociologists tell us that people who are alive today are the most discouraged and the most medicated of people in all of human history of anyone who's ever lived But I believe that there's a biblical reason for that Revelation 12 and verse 12 says that the devil knows that his time is short and five verses later Revelation 12 verse 17 says because the devil knows that his time is short What he seeks to do is to cause as much misery for people as he possibly can And so I believe that the way he does this the most is by disrupting and destroying human relationships You know the thing that you and I hunger for most are the the very thing that we were most and first created for and that is healthy good strong loving relationships If I were to ask each one of you today What's your favorite memory? Your greatest experience the most fun that you've ever had in your whole life Douglass all of you would tell me stories of people People that you were on that vacation with people that you played on that softball team with people with whom you worked You tell me stories of people? But if I also were to ask you What is your most miserable experience? Most likely you would tell me stories of people you tell me people that hurt you I Don't know if it's a surprise to you that the source of both our greatest pain and our greatest joy Has its location in exactly the same place and that is in relationships with people So I want to talk a little bit about relationships Today, we're going to begin our time together in God's Word in the in my chapter three If you'll begin reading with me in verse one Then Elia sheave the high priest rose up with his brethren the priests and built the sheep gate They consecrated it and hung its doors They built as far as the tower of the hundred and consecrated it then as far as the tower of Hananel Next to Elia sheave the men of Jericho built and next to them zakur the son of Emory built Also the sons of hasanah built the fish gate They laid its beams and hung its doors with its bolts and bars and next to them Miramot the son of Uriah the son of cause and these are the words. I'm looking for made repairs next to them Mishulam the son of Barakiah the son of Machisabel made repairs next to them zadok the son of batonah made repairs and next to them the techoites Made repairs, but their nobles did not put their shoulders to the work of the Lord now the words made repairs are found Nowhere else in all of scripture, but in Nehemiah chapter 3. They're found 26 times we just read for if you continue reading Throughout the third chapter of Nehemiah you can find these words made repairs 22 more times now. Let me tell you what I believe is happening here Nehemiah whose name means one who comforts is the type of the Holy Spirit. He's in Babylon in prison basically in exile He begins thinking about his hometown our hometowns have a place of warmth in our hearts and This day the city of Jerusalem looked like an absolute trash dump The wall was down the gates were burned the houses were in rubble. It looks like a trash dump and Every time Nehemiah thought about the city of God no other city on earth has God said my glory would dwell here Than Jerusalem and every time Nehemiah thought about Jerusalem. Here's what he thought When people in that region see the city they think to themselves What kind of a broken down old God would dwell in a city like that and It was the reputation of God I believe that caused him first to go back and to say we've got to rebuild I wonder if when people around the world see the church today If they think a similar thing about the church You see as we talk about rebuilding the church of God and making repairs where Things are broken. I believe it's important that we start where Jesus started now I want to grant you we can talk about any one of a number of things as we talk about making repairs today We could talk about faith We could talk about hope first Corinthians 13 13 says but the greatest of these is love and Jesus says a similar thing in Matthew 22 If you'll begin reading with me in verse 34 But when the Pharisees heard that he has silenced the Sadducees they gathered together and then one of them a lawyer asked him a question Testing him and saying teacher which is the great commandment in the law now Listen, this was a very good question. No doubt those standing around who sought to test Jesus would have thought to himself I think we've got him this time There were a lot of laws 613 to be exact what they did the Jewish rabbis of that day did is they counted up The Hebrew characters and the Hebrew giving of the 10 commandments In other words, my name is Marcus. There's six characters in my name and so they counted up the ABCs of the of the Hebrew text of the 10 commandments They counted six hundred and thirteen characters And so the Jewish rabbis thought to themselves well Then there will be six hundred and thirteen laws and here's what they did They divided them up into two hundred and forty eight positive laws or thou shouts One for every part of the body that they knew about at that time 2065 negative laws or thou shalt nots one for every day of the year Now they commonly made distinctions in the laws. There were some laws were heavy others light Some were great and some less all were inspired and good and true, but not all carried the same weight And so they asked Jesus of the law Which is the greatest it's really a good question And so Jesus responds in verse 37 this way He says you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind this is the first and great commandment and The second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself on These two commandments hang all the law in the prophets in other words If you don't understand love the rest of the Bible will make no sense to you But if you understand love You can understand what God is saying Jesus went on to say in Matthew in John 13 Verse 34. He says a new commandment. I give to you this would have been startling to those listening God gave us 10 You're giving us a new one Jesus says a new commandment. I give to you that you love One another as I've loved you that you also love one another by this will all know that you're my disciples If you have love For one another now the church was founded on love one another And I believe with all my heart that if we will ever repair the church of God So that it becomes everything that God dreams it to be that we will begin to make repairs in how we love each other Now before we get into the heart of this message I want to share with you one of the most chilling and one of the most haunting scriptures in all of God's Word to me Just before the crucifixion of Jesus he began to share with those that he loved about what would immediately proceed the end of all human history and Here's what Jesus says in Matthew 24 verse 12 He says because of the increase of wickedness the love of most will grow cold and That word for grow is actually the Greek word for evaporation. It's not something that happens quickly It's something that happens over a course of time, and I wonder if it's possible today That without our being aware of it that our understanding of the love of God has drifted away from what the word of God actually says about it And so I want to share with you what I simply went to dictionary calm typed in the word love All right, there were 20 or 30 definitions that came up there and a full third of them were sexual in nature There's another sermon there by the way But I want to share with you the first two because the first two formed the heart of all the definitions Here's what dictionary calm says the definition of love is number one is this a profoundly tender passionate affection for another person the second is like it it says love is a feeling of warm personal attachment or deep affection as for a parent child or Friend I want you to notice something very peculiar about both of these definitions Both of these definitions have primarily to do with the feelings of the one doing the loving Now there are those that who have said in the past well, love is not a feeling well I want you to know that I strongly disagree with that I Believe that any time we authentically love of another person that our feelings will very much get involved in that process But I just refuse to believe that love boils down to a feeling and the reason why is because if my love for you comes down to the way I feel and my feelings change I Know Then our relationship will by necessity change now does that sound like the way of the Lord to you I? Think God has a better plan for us than that one man wrote his ex-fiance a letter He says dear Susan I want to apologize from the bottom of my heart for breaking off our engagement Words cannot express the depth of my regret will you please come back to me your absence is left a space that no one can fill Please forgive me so that we can start all over again. I need you so much yours forever Bob P s by the way congratulations on winning that million daughter lottery You know really that's the kind of love that all of us are used to that's the kind of love that we're most familiar with The kind of love that has an agenda Most of us are way too familiar with that and so to set the context for our time together today I want to give you a working definition For the word love so if you're taking notes, I want you to write this down if you're not taking notes. I Want you to write this down? Here's the definition for love is when the wants and needs of another become more important to me than my own When the wants and needs of another become more important to me than my own I want to give you two significant ways not the only ways But I believe two significant ways that our love for others is expressed and the first is this it's in your notes that love Honors the dignity of others and we're gonna read a portion of the sermon on the mount for Matthew chapter 5 And I want you to hear the great contrast that Jesus says Exists between God's way of love and the world's way of love listen to what Jesus says beginning in verse 38 You have heard that it was said an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth But I tell you not to resist an evil person But whoever slaps you on your right cheek Turn the other to him also if anyone wants to sue you and take away your tunic Let him have your cloak also and whoever compels you to go one mile go with him, too Give to him who asks you and from him who wants to borrow from you do not turn away You've heard that it was said you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy But I say to you love your enemies Bless those who curse you do good to those who hate you and pray for those who spitefully use you and Persecute you that you may be sons of your father in heaven for me He makes his son to rise on the evil and on the good and sends rain on the just and on the unjust For if you love those who love you what reward have you? Do not even the text collectors do the same and if you greet your brethren only what do you do more than others? Do not even the text collectors do so therefore you shall be perfect just as your father in heaven is perfect now Let me ask you. I'm gonna give me a break here. Seriously. Who can do this? Who can do this? I'll tell you who can do this God can do this And God's the only one who can do this But the way God does this Is by doing it through you and if you and I do not understand what God is doing Then when God calls us to love someone in a way, they don't deserve It will be exactly opposite of what we had planned to do. Let me tell you something about your enemies You may not want to hear this But God loves your enemies exactly as much as he loves you You know why people hurt you? The reason people hurt you is because of a wound in their own heart People are operating out of their own woundedness and that is the reason that people hurt you and God's plan to heal them is To honor their dignity by loving them better than they deserve and it may well be that that the only way God has to get to them is through you The truth is for instance that we will either give our lives as a reaction to people or as a reflection of God God's love does not have to wait on the performance of another person But what I have learned firsthand is this that something supernatural begins to happen to us on the inside When we begin to love like God on the outside Listen to what 1 Corinthians 13 this I want to read four little verses out of what's called the love chapter 1 Corinthians 13 beginning in verse 4 Paul says this love suffers long and it's kind love does not envy Love does not parade itself is not puffed up does not behave rudely does not seek its own is not provoked thinks no evil Does not rejoice in iniquity? But rejoices in the truth love bears all things believes all things hopes all things Endures all things now natural ability can get us part way down this road You and I do have the ability to endure some things To not behave rudely every time and to usually be kind But if we will ever lay hold of God's kind of love only the Holy Spirit can impart this to us and through us I want to contrast God's way of love with the world's way of love Let me give you quickly three characteristics of the world's way of love The first is judgment That if you don't do what I want you to do, I'm going to judge you Secondly is rejection. I will reject you for failing to perform to my expectations for you and Thirdly I will manipulate you and the reason I'll manipulate you is because I want you to do what I want you to do And the way I'll manipulate you is by withholding my affection from you Hoping that your desire for my affection and friendship will be great enough to cause you to do what I want you to do And what I'm actually doing is trying to get you to find your satisfaction in me rather than in God But let me contrast that quickly with three characteristics of God's kind of love Number one is commitment that our love for them is not dependent upon the way they act Number two is forgiveness that we're going to walk in forgiveness Whether they have asked for it or not And the reason why is because the relationship is more important to us than what they said or did that hurt us Thirdly is understanding. We're going to live with other people According to understanding allowing them to be themselves and not penalizing them for what they did Now, I want to be crystal clear about one thing. I am not talking about some gooey Sappy kind of love that does not know how to confront sin One of the chief characteristics of love is this that I love you too much To idly sit by while you make decisions to ruin your life I will get all up in your Kool-Aid if I see you doing that trust me and the reason why is because I love you Not gonna sit by while you do that Oh, often I tell our children if you make decisions that will help your life will support you with all of our resources You make decisions to hurt your life We will oppose you with all of our resources. That's the way God treats us That's the way God treats us. That's the way we treat each other We tell our children you will never be in trouble for doing the wrong thing with the right heart because the love of God Always recognizes the difference between ignorance and rebellion It's possible to hurt someone and not mean to About five years ago. In fact, I was thinking just yesterday five years ago I was I was invited on to the staff at Gateway Church I've been here five years and at that time in my life I had made a decision that I was leaving ministry had already told God I'd already you know Made my declaration. This is not for me anymore. I'm just I'm gonna go on with my life and we started coming to Gateway Church and and Robert is such a great friend and When he began talking with me about the possibility of coming on staff, there were a lot of issues involved in that But probably the one thing that caused me to say yes to his offer above everything else was this It has to do with with the commitment to relationship. Here's what he told me He said among our eldership and among our staff anytime. There's a conflict or a disagreement Here is the agreed-to principle that rules that We kill the issue to save the relationship Rather than killing the relationship To save the issue now. I'd never walked with anybody like that before Most of the people that I know kill relationships constantly to salvage their little issues. I Liked what I heard Frankly wasn't sure that I would see it But in the last five years, I've never seen it fail. I have seen it play out over and over and over again As men and women of God who disagree decide to put down their issues and Love each other. I want to read a portion of a sermon from Martin Luther King that he preached at Ebenezer Baptist Church Just shortly before his assassination and I want you to hear the power of these words. Here's what dr. King said He said I've seen too much hate to want to hate I've seen hate on the faces of too many sheriffs Too many white citizens counselors and too many clansmen of the South to want to hate and every time I see it I say to myself hate is too great a burden to bear Somehow we must be able to stand up before our most bitter opponents and say we shall match your capacity to inflict suffering by our Capacity to endure suffering. We will meet your physical force with sole force So do to us what you will and we will still love you throw us in jail and we will still love you bomb our homes and Threaten our children and as difficult as it is. We will still love you Send your hooded perpetrators of violence into our communities at the midnight hour and Drag us out on some wayside road and leave us half dead as you beat us and we will still love you Send your propaganda agents around the country and make it appear that we are not fit culturally and otherwise for Migration and we will still love you But be assured that we will wear you down by our capacity to suffer and one day we will win our freedom And we will not only win our freedom for ourselves But we will so appeal to your heart and conscience that we will win you in the process and our victory will be a double victory Amen How will you? That's a strong word. That's a strong word Love honors the dignity of other people even though they don't act in dignified ways That's the definition of love The second significant way that our love for others is expressed is This that love invest in the destiny of others for Samuel 18 beginning in verse 1 says this Now when he and he's talking about David had finished speaking to Saul The soul of Jonathan was knit to the soul of David and Jonathan loved him as his own soul Saul took him that day and would not let him go home to his father's house anymore and Then Jonathan and David made a covenant because he loved him as his own soul Jonathan took off the robe that was on him and gave it to David with his armor even to his sword and his bow and his belt now Saul is the king of Israel Jonathan is his son and so when Saul dies Jonathan has the right to the throne and So when Jonathan takes off his mantle his coat and he gives it to David He's not saying hey, this is a nice jacket. I think you'll really like this Here's what he's saying. I See the call of God on your life I see the destiny of God on your life and I choose to make an investment in your destiny Here's what he's saying. I'm in this relationship not for what I can get from you But for what I can give to you and verse four says he gave him his armor his sword his bow and his bow He became defenseless and vulnerable and transparent You ever tried to love someone who still had their armor on As hard as you try there seems to be Something that says you can come this far and no closer It's very difficult what we don't understand is that what is intended to protect us from harm Can actually hurt us if we don't know when to take it off David proven to Jonathan that he would not harm Jonathan. So maybe it really is true that perfect love casts out fear I Want you to know that when God's love does not rule your relationships the only other option is your happiness There's no third option What rules every one of our relationships is either the love of God or our own happiness Where God's love will often choose to suffer for another person if my happiness rules my relationships I would never choose to suffer for you unless there was something greater in it for me in the long run which is by definition selfishness You see your happiness was never intended to be the goal of your relationships Your happiness was intended to be the byproduct of your relationships happiness makes a great byproduct And God wants you to be happy in all your relationships. He really does It's just not the goal Because if your happiness is the goal of your relationships, then I'm not happy becomes the reason for everything you do And you will end up destroying the very relationships that God gave you to heal you About four years ago My wife and I were were Well, I'm searching for a good clean word for fight, but I can't find one So I'll just tell you we were in a fight it was one of those fights for the Asians In fact, you know that passage in Ephesians 4 that says don't let the Sun go down on your anger We disobeyed it three days straight This was a fight and our our battle lines had been drawn and we had amassed our troops at the border and both of us had drawn Our lines in the sand and decided I'm not backing off of this one And so I was distracted I went to work and I went through the motions But I couldn't really work because I was planning my next move And so on the third day I Figured out a way to win this fight and what I decided I would do is to go home and ask Lexa one of those Questions that doesn't have an answer. It's one of those impossible questions. You know what I'm talking about? And so I'm driving home that afternoon and I'm rehearsing my lines Radios off Sitting at a red light and I'm plotting how this thing's going to go and I begin to feel the presence of the Lord And I'm thinking to myself here comes the heavenly high five All right, this dog's about to come say, you know, I should have made you a lawyer. I knew that I missed it on you You're really something And here's what God says to me. He says Marcus Would you let any man speak disrespectfully to Lexa? and I sort of I sort of bowed up, you know, I'll grip the steering wheel a little tighter and I said no way and he says Then who will protect her from you? Never noticed that God doesn't need a lot of words And I realized in that moment That the only reason God had given me to my wife was to nurture and protect what God had dreamed of When he created her in his own image Anything else is a complete abuse of my authority You see I had loved my wife with a love that I'd not learned from God I had loved my wife in a way that I had built this little box for her to live in This is the way you need to act and these are the things that you need to do And it didn't work Listen when I began to love my wife with God's kind of love I found a love in God that I had never known before And what I learned was that what I refuse what we refuse to give away We will never acquire for ourselves What we really want is unconditional love Here's the order of it. You give it away first You give it away first Whenever there's An opposition between two people the least important question is who's right The most important thing to realize is that right there in that moment Is an opportunity to come to know God and to express his love in a way that you may have never had before I want you to bow your heads [BLANK_AUDIO]