Clothing Ourselves with Love

Thank you. Wow. Years ago, while my wife was still a young girl, and even growing up into her high school years, her mother would make her clothes and her twin sister. I don't know if you knew that my wife has a twin sister, but she does. And so that was a skill. Her mother was just a lovely woman, a talented woman, a quiet, humble woman. Loved being around her. Died way premature in her life at 46 with cancer. But when our little girl got a little bit older, my wife thought it would be very important that she make her daughter some clothes. So after her mother passed away, we went and bought a nice new sewing machine. And my daughter had been taking some piano lessons, our daughter, Kendra. And she decided she was going to make this for her first recital. And she put a lot of love and a lot of effort because she would have to unstitch it, and stitch it back, and unstitch it, and stitch it back. And those of you who sew know how that just takes time. And she did it, and she took all this time, and she did it with love. And when she gave our daughter that gift and she put it on, it was like it was worth gold. She said, Mama, this is so nice and so pretty. I love it. And when she went to her piano recital, she couldn't wait to say, look, this is what my mother made me. Honestly, that filled my wife with a lot of pride and such relief and joy because she recalled back that she wasn't so nice to her mother with all of the clothes that she had made. But Kendra was honestly appreciative. And she had clothed herself with something that was made full of love. And she loved it. Today, that's what we want to talk about, what it means to be clothing ourselves with love and how that unites the body of Christ. We've been in this book called Believe. We've spent 10 weeks talking about our identity in Christ and what it meant to believe those things that Jesus believed. And we learned all those things that are important to us in our faith. And we learned to grow in that. And then as a result, we moved to our actions, how we act upon those things that we believe. Because our beliefs shape our behaviors. What we believe is how we behave. And now we're moving to another section of what we are becoming. And really, if you look at these next several weeks, you see those words that we're going to be looking at, love, joy, peace, kindness. All those kind of things are found in Galatians in what we call the fruit of the Spirit. Another word for them are virtues. And so we're going to be moving into this virtues and the things that we should be becoming as a result of our identity in Christ, as a result of what we believe, and as a result of our actions, our behaviors. Then we are living and becoming these virtues. But today, they all begin with love. If we do not have love, we cannot possess all of the rest of these virtues. So before we get into our text this morning, let's go to God in prayer. Father, thank you that we have this privilege to be here today to talk about love. Lord, we cannot emulate, we cannot be all that you were to us on the cross. Greater love has no one ever seen than what you did for us on the cross. And it's because of that love, Father, that motivates us, that wants us to chase after your love, Father, and to pursue that with such a passion that we can love others and that we can love you with all of our heart and with all of our soul and with all of our mind and with all of our strength, Father, and then we can love one another. Sometimes we're not very good at that, Father, but I want to be. I want to be as good as I can be, Father, in this area of love. Teach me how to love. So go with us this morning, Father, as we talk about it. In Jesus' name I pray, amen. You will need your Bibles today because I decided that what I had on the screen that I put on there last Thursday, Colossians chapter three, verse 12 through 17, just wasn't enough. I want to start in about verse seven and read those passages of scripture. So if you will forgive me this morning, I'm going to put one of these in my mouth because I am really struggling with my voice today, so I hope that doesn't bother you. It bothers me, but I hope it doesn't bother you. So we're in Colossians chapter three, but I'm going to read from verse seven and then verse 12 will be up on the screen here in just a moment through 17. Our key verse is found in verse 14. Verse seven says, in these you too once walked when you were living in them, but now you must put them all away. Anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you've put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in the knowledge after the image of its creator. Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free, but Christ is all and in all. Put on them on then as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another. And if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other as the Lord has forgiven you. So you also must forgive. And above all these, and here's the key verse, and above all these virtues, put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts so that to which indeed you were called into one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. Last Wednesday night, I actually began this kind of this series of sermon, this sermon, when I talked about in Ephesians about putting away the old self and putting on the new self. And that word putting off really was meaning lay aside. All those things, all those virtues that aren't of God, we need to lay them aside. And then we need to put on the new self, which is a choice that we have to literally clothe ourself. That word put on literally has a translational meaning, to clothe yourself with the love of Christ so that you become a new self. He makes us a new creature. A new, he has created us in our new life. We have been born again when we come to know Jesus Christ is our real and savior. So we put off the old and we put off the new and put on the new. And as we clothe ourself in this new unity or this love, it unites the body of Christ in some unique ways. And that's what I wanna talk about this morning. The first thing that I wanna talk about is that it repels the repulsive habits of evil. Look there in verse seven through nine. And you can see that on the screen this morning. In these, you too once walk. What are the these? Well, you have to look at verse five and verse eight and verse nine. Those these are sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil, desire, covetousness, which is idolatry. Then in verse eight and nine, it says, but now you must put them all away. Anger, wrath, malice, slander, obscene talk from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you've put off the old self with these practices. Look at that, folks. When we put on the new self, we put on the love of Christ. We clothe ourselves with the love of Christ, but we put off the old way. In fact, in the old days, who Paul is talking to is a lot of people who have been influenced by the Greek culture. And living this kind of lifestyle was normal. It was accepted. Sexual immorality was okay to live. And Paul says, you are no longer called to live that way. You have put on a new self. You need to repel the repulsive behavior of the past because that is not of God. I want you to notice the words. You must put them all away. Folks, Christ does change us. When we come to know Jesus Christ and our real and personal Savior, there is something different in our lives. It should not be that hard to put them all away, but you and I both know we still have temptations. You have a choice to live life for Christ and in Christ as a new creature. He commands us, he demands us, he propels us to live that kind of life, yet we still get on that slippery slope sometimes and we still fail to live and we want to claim that old life sometimes. I want you to ask how we can do that. How can I really live in this new life? It says you must be in love. Now, I just heard a reading of C.S. Lewis's work, The Great Divorce, and one of the main characters says, I'm not just in love, I'm in love. I have been encompassed by the love of Christ. And how many of you remember that very first puppy love that you had? I was just moved to Stinnett, Texas, that thriving metropolis of 2,000 people. I was attending my first year there as a third grader in Mrs. Page's class, still my favorite teacher of all time, Mrs. Page. And I saw a girl who was named Texas and I fell in love with Texas. I'm glad my wife's not here today. Except this is being recorded. I thought Texas was about the cutest thing in the state of Texas. And I would even look for opportunities to skip P.E. or recess if she wasn't going outside. I was gonna stay inside and play jacks. Boy, that's how manly I was. I wanted to spend time with Texas. And a couple of weeks or so after all that, I mean, I was fortunate I didn't get arrested for just, what do you call that when you're just? Yeah, stalking, yeah, that's it. I was almost stalking. She only lived like a couple of houses away from me. But in about two weeks, Texas made sure that I knew that there was no future for us. But we stayed good friends through all of our lives and high school and everything. We really were good friends. and we all have those kind of moments, but the moment that I can remember when I began to walk in love with my wife was when we were just becoming friends, and we were already friends, we were doing some activities together, but I had volunteered to be an usher at the layman's pastors conference at Whalen Baptist University, and this is where a bunch of pastors would come in and they would invite some incredible speakers in, and they always asked some of the students to come and just be there at the doors to be there to help any pastors that might have a need, and that night, Jeannette had also volunteered, and I didn't know that she had volunteered, and so we were ushering at the same door, and during the conference, we got to go in and sit at the back, and we were up there listening to Draper talk, I'm trying to remember his first name all of a sudden, but anyway, Dr. Draper was giving a discussion, used to be president of the Sunday School Board, and he was giving a sermon on marriage, and as we walked out that day, two friends began to connect, and she said, as he talked about what it meant to be in love and to have a godly marriage, we walked out and she said, that's the kind of marriage that I want someday, and I looked at her and I said, so do I, that's the kind of godly marriage that I want, and I walked her on to the dorm, now I wasn't walking in love, but I was walking on cloud nine, because that beautiful redhead is contagious, her joy, her smile was contagious to me, and as I got to know her about a month later, we had our first date, and then I really was walking, not only in love with her, I was walking in love, because I knew that God had placed us together, and that's been over 40 years ago that God did that, but walking in love means a couple of things, but it can only walk in love when we are in that relationship with Jesus Christ, the one who died for us, the one who loved us enough to give us his very best, and it's only through that can I put off all those things, and it should not be that hard to put away all those things that make life miserable and difficult, so clothing ourselves with the love of God unites the body of Christ, and that it repels the repulsive habits of evil, but not only that, but it renews the self in knowledge, look at verse 10, and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator, Paul would say it like this in Corinthians also, so we do not lose heart, though our outer self is wasting away, this old self we have here, but the inner self is being renewed day by day, now is that true in your life? Is your inner self being renewed day by day? That word renewed simply means it's a daily process of clothing myself with God's love, in other words, when I get up in the morning, the very first thing that I need to do is say, God, here I am, I wanna spend some time with you, I want to sense the power and the presence of God Almighty, I want to know your love, that word knowledge then equals, it takes place as a believer, comes to a personal deep knowledge and fellowship with Christ, so renewed knowledge is a daily process, the goal is that we become like Jesus, that believers become like him on a day by day process, and we cannot do that if we don't spend some time concentrated, focused and being God-centered, that is the whole purpose of what we've been doing with this 21 days of fasting and praying is to kinda enrich your disciplines and your prayer life, so that you would quit focusing on some of the things out in the world and begin to focus on God and be God-centered, so that the love of God can just, so you can just walk in the love of God. Now folks, some of that process needs to be like this, let me just share this, one of the things that I've enjoyed this past week is that once I get home, the TV does not come on, I'm spending the rest of the day just reading, and I'm reading some, it's not all just Bible, I'm reading the history of Bonhoeffer, an autobiography of Bonhoeffer, I just, I love that theologian, so this has given me a chance to read this book that's this thick, and I've just pick up all kinds of things, and it excites me, and I'm energized by it, I read scripture, I pray for all those that I'm praying for, and it's become a refreshing time, I spend, believe this or not, I spend more time talking to my wife, and she spends more time talking to me, but what I really enjoyed is this solitude, this moment of quietness, this moment of just, not just letting all the things of this world just go outside, and have this solitude time where I focus on godly things, because when that solitude comes, then it moves to a time of meditation, and it's not what I'm looking to get out, it's what I'm looking to get out, when I meditate, I'm looking to what god is gonna fill me with, what can you, god I want you, please fill my heart and my soul with you, it also gives me a time to examine what are some things that I need to work on, and in the end, there is communication, because god definitely speaks to me. See, I think satan wants us to be so busy that we don't have these moments of solitude, and we use all these excuses of that I just need to escape, I just need to watch TV, I just need to do this, I need to do that, and it keeps us away from the love of god, because we don't have this time of solitude of meditation, of examination, and communication with god. So we need to be renewed on a daily basis, and I hope that this fasting period of time helps you to move into that kind of realm of relationship with god. The third thing this morning, that clothing ourself with love unites the body of christ, it is a bond of a perfect relationship between all of the virtues. It gets us to the key verse this morning. Let's read again, verse 14, it says, and above all these things put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. I wanna focus on that word bind for just a moment. The word bind there really has almost a medical term to it. It is almost the same word as a ligament. Everybody knows that ligaments are muscle kind of tissues that holds our body together, and it allows us to do the functions that we do. I wanna show you a picture. It reminds me of my old human anatomy and physiology class that I took back in college when I thought I was gonna be a professional sports therapist and work with sports medicine and all those kind of things, and god quickly called me out of that because I couldn't remember all those things that you see on the board there. So I think I got a B in the class and I should have made an A. But this thing here is something we hear about a lot and this ACL, if you're involved in sports in any way, this blows out and it's this little ligament right there that just runs in front there of this other ligament back there. And if it tears, what happened is this femur will go back and this tibia will move forward and they call that the knee going out, okay? Just one little muscle, you can't hardly walk. I'm sure there's some of you here who's had an ACL tear in your life and you've had to have surgery and you've had to have repair because your knee just completely gave out. Now we'll leave that up there just for a moment, but it's such an important part of the process of your knee working and doing the right thing. The same idea is what we need to look at in love. Without love, I cannot maintain all the virtues listed in verse 12 and 13. Look at those words right quickly in your Bibles. Compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, patience, bearing one with another. If one has the complaints of another, forgiving each other as the Lord has forgiven you so also must forgive. Here's the point, if we do not have love, we cannot possibly begin to move to all these things that are listed there in 12 and 13. The love of Christ is what drives us to forgive one another. This is one of the toughest things that we have because some of us have been deeply, deeply, deeply hurt. Not just in our family lives, but sometimes in our church life, so much so that we leave church sometimes because of the hurt that has happened, because somebody has not had a compassionate heart, because somebody hasn't been kind, because there's been no humility, because there's been no forgiving, we've been hurt. What makes us come back to that desire to have compassionate hearts, to have kindness? It is the love of Christ that drives us, right? Without the love of Christ, we cannot possibly begin to have that kind of nature in our life. So I would implore you to understand that love is what binds it all together, that if I'm gonna have the ability to forgive somebody for a dreadful wrong that has occurred in my life, it's because Jesus Christ loved me so much that he's willing to forgive me of the smallest details of my life and the biggest mess-ups in my life. And if God is willing to do that with his love, we also ought to be able to love enough to forgive people in our hearts. That would be a good place to say amen. So what is love? What is love? I think Paul defines it as well as we can define it in 1 Corinthians chapter 13. You can be looking at those things, look for these verses, those things that you see there as I read 1 Corinthians chapter 13. If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. Here's what love is. It's patient and kind. Love does not envy or boast. It is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way. It is not irritable or resentful. It does not rejoice at wrong doing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. Now, our writer of our Sunday school material encouraged us to list out all those things that are positive and all the things that were negative. And so I did that for us. And these are the eight things, and there's eight positive things. love is and there are eight things that love is not. Here are the eight things that love is that you see on the screen. Patient, kind, truth, protects, trusting, hopeful, perseveres and unfailing. Now the next screen is what it is not. Envious, boastful, prideful, dishonoring, selfish, anger, vengeful, evil. Now which of those two, now go ahead and show the next screen. Which of these two sides are you on? I would contend that if you are on the left side there, the patient, kind, truth, what love is, that you are living in the new self. You have put on, you have clothed yourself with the love of Christ. If you are living on what is on the right side here, the envious, boastful, pride, dishonoring, you are still living in the old self. Now there are times, and these don't move parallel to each other, but here's the way I see it. If you lose your patience and you're not very loving because you are impatient, what can happen is that we might move to all eight of those things that what love is not. I might become envious of my impatience. I might become boastful of somebody else. I might be prideful. I might even be evil because I get impatient. If I am not walking in the love and clothing myself with the love of Christ, then I have the propensity and the ability to move way over there and do what love is not and maybe do all eight of those things. So our task is that we let the love of God fill us up because if we let Him fill us up, we will walk in those things that are patient, that are kind, that are truth, that protects, trusting, hopeful, perseveres, and unfailing. Then what will happen is we will go back to what we looked at in those other verses there in verse 12 and 13. If we are doing those things, we will have compassionate hearts. We will walk in kindness. We will have humility and meekness and we will bear with one another and we will forgive one another because we are walking in love. The last thing this morning and I'm moving rather quick. Clothing ourselves with love unites the body of Christ with remarkable worship. Look at verse, the last part of 15 and verse 16. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing songs and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God. I don't know if you got the picture here, but here's the picture that I got as I read that. If I am clothing myself in God's love and I'm walking in love, it exudes in my worship. And when I come to this place, it's about sharing my love of God to Him with a heart full of thankfulness and be thankful. And as I am being thankful, it just begins to progress that I am hearing some teaching, some admonishing one another, loving one another and I sing these songs and I sing these hymns and I sing spiritual songs just out of a heart of gratitude for what Jesus Christ has done for me. I think we would all confess that this is true, what I'm about to say. We have sometimes come to church with a frown on our face because our heart is so much on the old self than it is on the new self. We are so broken and we're so ugly, we're so unforgiving, we're so steeped in the things of the world that when we come to this place, it's just a time of quietness and I may get something when I leave and I may not get something when I leave, but if I get something, well that's good, but then I just return back to the old ways as soon as I leave. That should not be so. When we come to this place, it should be remarkable worship. When we moved to Houston, God led us to a metropolitan church, that's what it's called, the Metropolitan Baptist Church. It was the biggest church we had ever been a part of and so there was a little bit of uncomfortableness and there were people who didn't know us and we tried to do some things in the summer before we joined and we didn't know for sure that's where God would have us, but eventually by the end of the summer we were convinced that that was the place we got involved in Evangelism Explosion. Jeanette and I both got involved in this choir. This choir was 300 members strong with about a 25 piece orchestra. One of the most amazing things that I've ever been a part of in my life. Here's what's so amazing about it, it's not what we did on Sunday which was always good, it's what happened on Wednesday night when we came to rehearsal. Now you got to work on technical things, you got to get all those things done, but that's not what we did on Wednesday night, that was done at a different time. We worshipped when we rehearsed and every time we got together there was this time of praying for one another, there was this time of just sensing the awesome power of God. In fact when you went on Wednesday night you had to go earlier, you didn't get a seat. There were more people that would come to rehearsal than be there on Sunday mornings because they wanted to sense the power and the presence and because they felt like it was a family, it was almost a church within a church, 300 people who were loving on each other, who were praying for one another, who were caring for one another, who were exemplifying the love of God like I've never seen before in my life and we would spend hours just singing and praising God. That my friends is the closest thing that I can call remarkable worship, not even on a Sunday morning at a practice time. But I try to do that every time I come into a place of worship because it's a personal thing. I come here to seek God and to pray to Him and to say thank you, thank you, thank you for your immeasurable, unmeasurable love that you have given to me through your son Jesus Christ. I do not deserve it, I will never deserve it, I'm nothing but a broken down old sinner just like all of you who fights and struggles with that old self and the new self, the new creation that God has given me every day of my life. But I promise you that the one thing that I'm going to do as much as I can is that I am going to love you with all of my heart. Why? Because God loves me. Because God loves me and when we clothe ourselves in unity folks, the body of Christ is one amazing place and people in the world would come into this place and say, I want some of that, I need some of that, I'm tired of living the old self way, I'm tired of seeing all of the evil, all the things that possess me, I'm tired of that, I want what you have. Have you clothed yourself with God's love? I want to close with my favorite passage of scripture on the one love. I'll tell you where it's at after I read it, but would you listen to it very intently? Dear friends at First Southern Baptist Church Great Bend, let us love one another for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among our churches. He showed his love for us. He showed his love for us. He showed his love for God. Because God is love. This is how God showed his love among our church here at First Southern Baptist Church. He sent his one and only son into the world that we might live through him. This is love not that we love God, but that he loved us and sent his son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. With God's word, I have never, ever been able to understand how people of God could ever hate or not forgive other brothers and sisters in Christ after the overwhelming love that Christ has shown to us. This was not an easy sermon for me to preach. I love you. I need you. I love you. I love you dearly. I love you. I love you. I need you. I need you. Why? Because I sense the power and the presence of God in your lives. And because of your love, and because of God's love, I love you. And I'll give you all that I can. I'll do all that I can to share that love with others who needs to know Jesus. I pray that if you do not know the love of Christ, if you're still living in the old self and you need to come into the new creation by accepting Jesus Christ as your personal Savior, this would be the day that you would do that. If you're on the other side of the line there of what love is not, I pray that you would deal with that today and move over to the other side and begin to live in the love that God has given to all of us. Whatever you need to do today, whatever choice you need to make, you choose to put on or you choose to lay aside, but choose. Choose love. In Jesus' name. Father, thank you. We come to this time, Father, where all of us have to make a decision. I know, Father, there's been some times in my life that I've been very unlovely. Father, forgive me. My heart's desire is to constantly be a model of Jesus' love, and I know that I fail because I'm a sinner. It's not my heart's desire, Father. My heart's desire is to love people. Father, I want to love you, too. I want to spend more time with you. I want to sense the power and the presence. God, I want to see the glory of God rain down in my life, but also in the life of this church. May renewal and revival occur as a result, Father. We will give you praise and glory and honor. In Jesus' name, amen. We're gonna stand. We're gonna have a time of invitation. If God has spoken to you, there'll be people here to pray with you, but we would love to spend time praying with you as we sing. ♪ ♪ Take up my cross and follow me ♪ ♪ I heard my master say ♪ ♪ I gave my life to ransom thee ♪ ♪ Surrender your all today ♪ ♪ Wherever he leads I'll go ♪ ♪ Wherever he leads I'll go ♪ ♪ I'll follow my Christ who loves me so ♪ ♪ Wherever he leads I'll go ♪ ♪ He drew me closer to his side ♪ ♪ I sought his will to know ♪ ♪ And in that will I now abide ♪ ♪ Wherever he leads I'll go ♪ ♪ Wherever he leads I'll go ♪ ♪ Wherever he leads I'll go ♪