DO YOU LOVE JESUS?

Chris McCurley: the slide, I love ice cream. Ice cream is my number one all-time favorite food. I love that you can get so many different flavors and so many different toppings and ⁓ I love the coldness of it and the sweetness and the creaminess. I love that you can get treats like dairy queen like a blizzard or a McFlurry from McDonald's. Ice cream is just so good. In my opinion, it's the best food out there. I eat it pretty much every night ⁓ over in our intern house. Austin and I will sit down at the end of the day and we'll watch some sports or YouTube and we'll both just eat out of a tub of ice cream and just have a good time. So I really love ice cream. And you might be thinking, man, Chance is up there just yapping about ice cream. He's talking on and on. He must really love ice cream. And you'd be right. I do. Or do I? Do I really love ice cream? Am I willing to change my life for ice cream? Am I willing to go do difficult things for ice cream? Am I willing to give my life for ice cream? I think the answer to that is a resounding no. I don't know how many of you have had this experience before, but maybe when you're young, you're on the on the playground in school, you'll say something like, Man, I love ice cream. And all the other boys out there or all the girls are like, ooh, he said he loves ice cream. He's in love with ice cream. And you have to you have to say no, I don't really love it. I just I just like it and they make fun of you and it's this whole ordeal. And that's all fun and games, but I think that there can be some truth to that statement. I don't mean that ice cream is the love of my life, that it's my best friend in the world, that I'm gonna alter my whole life for ice cream. It's just a thing. And while I think it is an amazing thing, it's just a thing. So that begs the question: what is different in my love for ice cream versus my love for something or someone and what is love. In order to answer that question, I think we first have to understand what it means to love. And as we look into the New Testament, we see in the Greek that there are several languages or several words in the language for love. There's ⁓ there's words for a familial kind of love, a friendship kind of love, a romantic kind of love. But the two in the New Testament that it focuses on and uses is Phileo and Agape love. Now the first kind, Phileo, is used twenty five times in the New Testament, and it means a love. Grounded in a close, personal, emotional bond and or an affectionate, brotherly kind of friendship. A good example of this is the love between David and Jonathan in 1 Samuel. We see that they're an inseparable pair, and that throughout the political and family battles they face, their love for each other only grows. The second kind of love used in the New Testament is agape. Agape love is used 116 times in the New Testament and is used over 200 times. If you count it used as the verb form, agape o. Now, agape love is the word primarily used for love in the New Testament. And unlike a close personal friendship, it means an unconditional, self-sacrificial love. It means that you're making a choice to love. You're driven by a duty to love, even if love is not received, if and if it means it will hurt you. And I want you to note how many more times that. Agape love is used compared to Phileo love. 25 to 200. Now I don't want to take away from that Phileo love. ⁓ I think it's very important in the New Testament, but as we strive to see what love is really like, the love that Jesus speaks about, it seems that the New Testament gives us the answer. Agape love. Jesus often used the verb form agape in the Bible when talking about love. We'll see a few verses here that are Super famous. ⁓ some of the most famous verses talking about love in the Bible. The first one, Matthew chapter twenty-two, reads, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And the second is like it, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. Jesus is talking to the religious leaders out here, ⁓ here when talking ⁓ about what the greatest commandment is. And he says, The greatest commandment is to agape. It's to love others and to love God unconditionally. He doesn't say to love when you want to or when you feel like it. He says, love with your heart, your soul, and your mind. Love with everything you have. Love sacrificially. Love unconditionally. Now look at John fifteen, thirteen. Jesus says here, Greater love has no one none than this, that someone lay down his life for his friend. Shortly after this statement, Jesus would go to the cross and do Just that. He showed the sacrificial love that he felt for his friends and for the world by putting the weight of sin on his shoulders and dying on the cross so that we could be saved. Jesus shows us that love is more than just good feelings. Love is sacrifice. Finally, look at John fourteen, fifteen with me. Jesus tells his disciples here, If you love me, you will keep my commandments. Jesus connects love with obedience. He says to love is to be in accord with With my teachings and my words. It is to keep his commandments. If we are to love Jesus, we will follow his word. So, what does that mean for Christians? How are Christians supposed to love people and more importantly, to love Jesus? I want you to think about your relationship with Jesus for a second as I ask this question. Do you love Jesus? Do you truly love him? Because so often I find that many Christians including myself, often have an outlook kind of like my love for ice cream when speaking on the love for Jesus. It may be my favorite food. I may eat it all the time, but do I truly love it? Yes, I go to church on Sundays. Yes, I participate in devotionals and connect groups. Yes, I give in the offering. That means I love Jesus. I don't cuss. I don't I don't tell people ⁓ I don't tell people Bat to watch bad moods, bad shows. I don't do that. That means I love Jesus. I don't I don't drink, I don't smoke. That means I love Jesus. You can do all those things, but I hate to burst your bubble. That's not what loving Jesus with the agape love that he talks about really means. Loving Jesus is more than just showing up on Sunday morning. Loving Jesus is more than just giving a devo. Loving Jesus is more than just giving money to the church. And I love all of those things. I want everyone to do all of those things. But if you do it without your heart truly in it, it's not really love. When your Christianity becomes a routine, it's not really love. Loving Jesus is more than just showing up on Sunday morning. And it's changing your heart, your mind, and your soul to follow him. It is loving him and his word unconditionally. Turn with me to John chapter twenty-one and we'll start. In verse 15, I want to read this passage here because I really like the interaction between Jesus and Peter. So we see this is after Jesus has been crucified, he's been buried, he's been raised, and he's appeared to ⁓ several of his followers. And we're gonna see one of those instances here. So Peter and several of the disciples have gone out to fish, and they've had no luck catching anything. Well, a man comes from the shore, he says, calls out to him, Have you caught anything? And they say, No. He says to cast their net on the other side, and when they do, they catch so many fish that there are fearful that their boat will sink. They immediately know this is Jesus speaking to us. And Peter, being the spontaneous one of the group, dives straight into the water, wanting to get to Jesus as fast as he can. And after they eat a meal, we see this interaction between him and Peter. Starting in verse fifteen, when they had finished breakfast, Jesus said To Simon Peter Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these? He said to him, Yes, Lord, you know that I love you. He said to him, Feed my lambs. He said to him a second time, Simon, son of John, do you love me? He said to him, Yes, Lord, you know that I love you. He said to him, Tend my sheep. He said to him a third time, Simon, son of John, do you love me? Peter was grieved because he said to him the third time, Do you love me? And he said to him, Feed my sheep. And we'll skip down To the end verse 19, we're at the end of all this, it says, And after saying this, he said to him, Follow me. Jesus, I want you to notice what Jesus says here. And besides the passage saying he said to him about a million times, I notice that Jesus asks Peter a question, the same question, three different times. He says, Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these? Now again, I don't always dive into the Greek atonement preaching a sermon. I'm by no means a Greek scholar, but I want to look back at those words we see in the New Testament for love, Phileo and Agape. Jesus says to Peter, Do you love me more than these? And the word he uses is agape, that unconditional love. Peter replies, Yes, Lord, you know that I love you. And the word he uses is phileo. And ⁓ I don't wanna I don't want you to come away from this thinking thinking anything bad about Peter because it seems here Jesus does the same thing again and Peter says Phileo Jesus says Agape And then the third time ⁓ Jesus steps down and y uses Phileo and so it seems that he's even questioning Peter's friendship at this point. And you know, Jesus asks, Are you are you willing to do anything for me? Are you willing to sacrifice for me? And Peter basically says, Jesus, you're like my best friend. You're you're like my my bro. And and I don't want you to come away from this thinking. Like Peter needs to get it together. Why would he say that? But I want you to come away from this thinking. What kind of love do I have for Jesus? Do I love Jesus in that familial way, that friendship kind of way, or do I love Jesus with everything I have? And it all comes down to the point at the end of the passage that Jesus makes. He says, if you truly love me, you will follow me. Jesus says, Follow me to Peter. If we are to truly love Jesus, we will follow him. And I don't want to make that seem like it's an easy task. Following Jesus is a really big commitment. His twelve apostles, they had to lead the lives that they had. They they went through a lot of trials and hard times. Most of them would eventually be killed for their faith. Christianity wasn't meant to be easy. Jesus says in John 15 18, If the world hates you, know that it hated me before it hated you. The world is going to hate Jesus, and because of that, the world will hate Christians. Christians will be ignored. Christians will be made fun of. Christians will be rejected. In some places, Christians will even be killed for their faith. Jesus says, That doesn't matter. The world will hate you because it hates me. Feed my sheep. Follow me. Christianity was not meant to be easy. Christianity was meant to follow Jesus, to show that agape love for him and for others. It was meant to seek and save the lost, no matter what. So, are you willing to sacrifice? And as I ask that question to you, I want to ask it to myself as well. Am I willing to sacrifice my life for Jesus? And that means more than just being a good person. It should fill every facet of our lives. Love for Jesus is surrendering your will to God. Jesus even prayed to God, let not my will, but yours be done. And this can be one of the hardest things to do. Love for Jesus is denying yourself the pleasures of Now I understand that we are all going to sin. But Luke 9 23 says to take up our cross, deny ourselves, and follow Jesus. Love for Jesus is to forgive your enemies, to love your enemies. Loving Jesus means serving others. Jesus, the creator of everything, washed people's feet. Loving Jesus is a refusal to deny Christ. Loving Jesus is putting him above family, as it says in Matthew ten, thirty seven. And I realize that I'm kind of just saying all these reasons. I'm kind of dumping all these ways to love Jesus on you. But I just want you to see how many parts of your life loving Jesus should truly fill up. Because loving Jesus is everything. It is everything. A preacher once made this statement. For many Christians, the challenge isn't dying to Jesus once, dying for Jesus once. It's living for Him every day. I think all of us here would say that we would die for Jesus right now if we had to. But so often we go through life living half-heartedly for Jesus. I can go to church, I can give him the offering, I can do all these good things, and still not truly have a heart for him. Live every day for him, make the sacrifice. Bruno Mars is an American pop singer, songwriter, and dancer. He sings a mixture of Of pop music and R and B and funk music and soul music and he's super unique. I think he is number one in the world right now over Taylor Swift. So he's super popular and he became famous ⁓ several years back with a few hit songs and just recently released an album where he has a song titled Risk It All. And it goes like this, starting with the first chorus. Say you want the moon, watch me learn to fly. Ain't no mountain you could point to, I wouldn't climb. It's crazy, but it's true. There's nothing I won't do. I'd risk it all for you. He continues on in the next course. I would run through a fire just to be by your side. If your heart's on the line, you could take mine. It's crazy, but it's true. There's nothing I won't do. I'd risk it all for you. He he continues, I would swim across the sea just to show you. I would sacrifice my life just to hold you. And he ends the song with a final line. It's crazy, but it's true. There's nothing I won't do. I'd risk it all for you. Now I can't do that song justice just by reading the lines. I'm definitely not gonna do it justice if I tried to sing it to you right now. ⁓ and it seems that Bruno Mars, you he's singing this song to try and, you know, gain the interest of some girl he he's interested in. You know, maybe if you're a guy out there trying to get a girl, sing her this song and it may work. But all that aside, I want to focus on the words of the song that I just read. Because while sung by a pop star, I think they can have a deep meaning. I would swim across the sea just to show you, I'd run through a fire for you. I would sacrifice my life just to hold you. There's nothing I won't do. I'd risk it all for you. Are you willing to risk it all for Jesus? Are you willing to sacrifice your life for Him? Jesus says in Luke chapter 14, verse 26 If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. Jesus says, You have to put everything before me. You have to put your family, the thing you love the most. You have to put yourself and the the pleasures of yourself. You have to bear your cross. You have to do the hard things to be my disciple. Loving Jesus means making sacrifices for your faith. It means bearing your cross. It means risking things for him. And if anyone has any doubts about that, just know that that is what Jesus did for you. And I want you to hear me say that. That is what Jesus did. For you. He came down from being the creator of the world, the ruler of everything, and took a human body. He took the beatings and the mockings and the hate and died a horrific death so that we could be saved. Jesus sacrificed his life for us because his love knows no bounds. His love is agape. It's that unconditional love. Are you willing to risk it all for him? Are you willing to sacrifice your life? To show your love for him. Jesus did it for us. We should do it for him. Finally, tonight, I want to make the point that if you love Jesus, you will take action. I think about the Shema in Deuteronomy six, verses four through nine, where we see the greatest command given by God. He says to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. But that's not where he stops. He says, I want you to teach it to your kids. And I want you when you rise to talk about it, and when you're going along the way to talk about it, when you go to bed to talk about it. I want you to To put it on the doorpost of your house. I want you to bind it on your hands and on your forehead. He says this should take over every part of your life. When thinking about Jesus and thinking about the Shema, that is action that they are taking that God commanded the people to take. So I want to think what can we actively do and change in our lives to show our love for Jesus? And the first one I want to note is to study God's word thoroughly. There was this girl. Who loved to read. And she was trying out this new book and she just kinda thought, This book is boring, but I've committed to it, I've bought it, so I'm gonna read it. So she reads the whole thing and she hated it and decided she's gonna toss it in the attic. First yard sale she has, gonna gonna try and sell it, get rid of it. Well, time goes on and she meets this guy and they fall in love. So they they've dated for a while and they're on a date and she asks him, You know, we've been dating for a while. I feel like I know everything there is to know about you. Tell me one thing. There's gotta be one thing that I don't know about you yet. He sits there and thinks for a minute and he says, You know, there actually is. There's ⁓ there's this one thing. I wrote a book one time, and it wasn't that good, it didn't really sell that much, but you know, that's what it is. And he told her the name of the book, and lo and behold, it was the same book she had tossed in her attic, the same book she hated. Well, that night, she goes home and she frantically searches through her attic to find that book. She finds it, sits down, And reads it. And you know what? The book is so good. She loves that book. She can't put it down. And you think, well, what changed? What ⁓ what happened for her to suddenly love this book that before she hated? She loves the author. She loves the guy who wrote the book and is now seeing it through his eyes. She's seeing it through in new perspective. It makes it a completely different story. When you read the Bible, Remember whose words you are reading. You are reading the Word of God. You are reading the Word of Jesus. There there was a time in our lives where none of us knew the author. We ⁓ we didn't know the Word of Jesus, but we do now. And loving the author makes loving the book a whole lot easier. So as I make the point of studying God's word thoroughly, remember to love the author. Loving Jesus is Takes action. And if you love Jesus, if you love the author, you will love his word too. The second point I want to make to show change in our lives, to love Jesus, is to evangelize fervently. Now I can't come here and preach that without saying that's something that I have to be better at too. And I want to think about the Great Commission here. We all know that. ⁓ Matthew twenty eight, Jesus tells his followers to make disciples of all nations, to baptize in the name of the Father. And the Son and the Holy Spirit. So why don't I? What holds me back from telling someone about the Word of God? What holds me back from telling someone about my Savior, Jesus? Maybe it's because I I think I don't know enough. Maybe it's because I'm scared to tell someone. Maybe I'm just not thinking about it and I'm going about my life. And I I just pass people without thinking about it. Whatever the reason is, it's not good enough. A true love for Jesus shows a true love for others, and it shows a willingness to bring others to him, because that is what he commands us to do. The final point I want to make tonight when thinking about what we can actively do and change in our lives to show love for Jesus is to shine his light for others. Jesus says in Matthew five, You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand and And it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light so shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven. I feel like this one is pretty simple. Act like Jesus. I don't know if you guys remember the What Would Jesus Do campaign that happened several years back where they had those bracelets that had the WWJD, What Would Jesus do? And there's billboards and there's shirts and there's commercials, all that saying What would Jesus do? When thinking about shining our light, ask ourselves that question. What would Jesus do? He would love people in every way possible. People should come away from meeting us thinking, Man, like that guy is different. You know that that lady, she is different. Why were they so nice? Why'd they offer to help me? Why are they talking about Jesus as they're going through the grocery store? Shining Jesus' light is letting it permeate every part of your life so that you can show it to everyone. Be kind to people, help people, actively do what Jesus would do for people. Shine his light. I want to go back to the title question of the lesson, the whole point of the lesson for just a moment. Do you love Jesus? We're going to stand and sing a song in a moment. And I want you to really think do I truly love Jesus? If that's something that you've been struggling with. This is an opportunity to rekindle that love for him, to open your heart back up to him. He wants your love and he loves you. If you haven't been baptized and you don't want to wait any longer, Jesus loves you and he wants you to be saved. If you have any need, don't wait. Come now as we stand and sing.

Luke 14:26