There's Something About Love
- Pastor AJ Camota
- Feb 22, 2009
- Series: 40 Days of Love
40 Days of Love:
THERE’S SOMETHING ABOUT LOVE
Ephesians 5:2:
“Live a life filled with love for others following the example of Christ who loved you and gave himself as a sacrifice to take away your sins. And God was pleased because that sacrifice was like sweet perfume to him.”
Luke 19:1-8:
1 Jesus entered
2 A man was there by the name of Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was wealthy.
3 He wanted to see who Jesus was, but being a short man he could not, because of the crowd.
4 So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore-fig tree to see him, since Jesus was coming that way.
5 When Jesus reached the spot, he looked up and said to him, "Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today."
6 So he came down at once and welcomed him gladly.
7 All the people saw this and began to mutter, "He has gone to be the guest of a 'sinner.' "
8 But Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, "Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount."
Good Morning. Today I will be preaching a sermon that continues to support the new curriculum for our Care Groups. The curriculum is called 40 Days of Love, but since we tackle one chapter a week, it is more like 40 weeks of love.
At the end of these forty days if I’m going to put it into play, if I’m going to love the way, I’ve been challenged to love and love the way God intends me to love… Each week we’ve been hitting some big stuff like love should be our highest goal, not just one of our goals on our personal list of 50. This was difficult because we all have other things that we find important, which have essentially been starving our love. One week I learned about being quick to forgive and was immediately confronted by situations where at first, the chances of me forgiving people were very slim. Love forgives and shows how to be loving with your words.
If we’re going to pull this off, there’s one word that I just feel like God has given me a word during every time I’ve been reading and learning. The word is “sacrifice.” It’s the word I want to share with you today. It’s really what I want to challenge you to do as you try to be a more loving person.
It’s going to take more than will power. If we’re going to pull this off it’s going to take more than just good ideas. If we’re going to be loving the way we’ve been challenged to love, it’s going to take more than just coming here once a week and being inspired. To love like this, love in deepened relationships; it’s going to require sacrifice.
In life there are two trails. When it comes down to life you’ve got to decide which trail you’re going to be on. When it comes to love and relationships are you going to do the safe, predictable, superficial relationship circle? Or are you going to sacrifice? Because really what you are sacrificing is comfort. You’re sacrificing convenience. You’re sacrificing safety.
Some of us in here we can come every week to this 40 Days of Love but we’re playing it safe. We’re still walking in circles in relationships. We’re not experiencing the ups and the downs of the journey. One journey is safe. The other journey requires sacrifice. The more I talk with people about what they want in life they want the journey. They maybe don’t want the sacrifice. But they want the results and the rewards of what comes with that. We want something more.
We all have something in common, we all want to love and be loved. You want to know and be known. You want to serve and be served. You want something richer and more in your relationships and your love but how do you get there?
We need to look at how Christ loved and follow His example.
Ephesians 5:2 we read,
“Live a life filled with love for others following the example of Christ who loved you and gave himself as a sacrifice to take away your sins. And God was pleased because that sacrifice was like sweet perfume to him.”
When we read in Luke 19, we see how Christ relates to Zacchaeus.
Luke 19.
1 Jesus entered
2 A man was there by the name of Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was wealthy.
3 He wanted to see who Jesus was, but being a short man he could not, because of the crowd.
4 So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore-fig tree to see him, since Jesus was coming that way.
If you didn’t grow up in church you might not have learned about this guy. I am pretty sure the biggest thing that stuck out to me was: This guy was really short.
Then verse 5 “When Jesus came by he looked up at Zacchaeus and called him by name. ‘Zacchaeus! Quick! Come down! For I must be a guest in your home today.’ Zacchaeus quickly climbed down and took Jesus to his house in great excitement and joy. But the crowds were displeased. ‘He has gone to be the guest of a notorious sinner,’ they grumbled. Meanwhile Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, ‘I will give half my wealth to the poor, Lord. And if I have overcharged people in their taxes, I will give them back four times as much.’ Jesus responded, ‘Salvation has come to this home today. For this man has shown himself to be a son of Abraham and I, the Son of man, have come to seek and to save those like him who are lost.’”
In this short encounter we don’t have the liberty of knowing how long they were together. We have the beginning and we have the end result. End result was a transformed relationship. This brief encounter with Jesus Christ takes a guy who all of a sudden comes out and says, “Now I’m going to live on half. I’m going to give half of everything to the poor and anyone I’ve cheated I’m going to pay them back four times.” That’s repentance.
Something happened in that conversation. Something happened with Jesus that I think you and I can learn from.
But in this event with Zacchaeus, what did he sacrifice? What did Jesus sacrifice to get what he got? We are now at the point where I share with you ways I have been challenged. I share them with you in hopes that you can be challenged as well.
If I want to love like that:
I Must Sacrifice Time
In verse 5 of the text we see: 5When Jesus reached the spot, he looked up and said to him, "Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today."
Let’s be honest. You can’t love others if you do not sacrifice time. It was never about stuff we give. We can always make more money, we can always get more stuff, but we can never get time back. So when we sacrifice our time for others, we are giving them the most valuable thing we have.
We don’t have the privilege of knowing Jesus’ calendar that day but he definitely has a history of stopping and giving people time.
In this event, so much time that they have a meal together. Jesus didn’t say, “Hey Zacchaeus, climb down from that tree, O wee little short man, and let’s have a quick cup of coffee. Lets hit up a Burger King or a Falafel King drive through.”
You need to sacrifice time out of your busy schedule, which is a huge sacrifice because time is money. And actually in today’s economy time is more valuable than money.
Jesus didn’t do it once. Check it out. He did it many times. Many times he had the economy of time where he just paused and he invested in people’s lives. In Mark 5, we see that Jesus comes off a boat and he’s met by this high ranking religious figure named Jairus and Jairus said “Jesus, my child is dying. Would you come heal her?” And Jesus says yes. They begin to walk to Jairus’ house. Along the walk all of a sudden somebody goes up through the crowd and touches Jesus. And Jesus stopped and said, “Who touched me?”
If we’re going to love like Jesus loved, if we’re going to meet the challenge that we’ve been talking about in this campaign we’ve got to sacrifice time.
So the question that I wrote in my journal and tried to answer and I’m going to pass on to you is: “Do the significant relationships in my life get the best of my time or do they get my leftover time?” If you think about it, let’s be honest, sometimes those closest to us that we love the most get our leftover time.
II Must Sacrifice Superficiality
If we’re going to love like we’ve been talking about, we can’t stay on the surface. We have to go below the surface. This is a huge risk. You think about it. Jesus could have walked through that town stopped and said, “Hey disciples! Look! It’s the wee little man! How’s the weather up there? Good to see you buddy!” And then kept going.
How many times do we do that? We just nod at people: “Hey how’s it going?” We give them this superficial response to life. The reason this action is deeper than time is because I can give you all the time in the world! I could give you four hours today. But we could just talk about sports and weather and never go below the surface. So it’s more than just time. It’s sacrificing superficiality.
No More Buffet-style relationships.
To get your money’s worth at a buffet, you have to get a little bit of everything. You cannot only indulge with one dish.
But that same image that I just gave you is how many of us do relationships. We’ve got a lot of people in our life but we just skim off the top. We just stay on the surface.
People talk about all the friends that they have. My question is how many of those have you ever gone deep with? How many really know who you are? How many do you really know? You know everything about them. To know and be known. To love and to be loved. To serve and to be served.
My challenge for you this week, if you accept it, is every day for the next seven days, have one conversation where you intentionally take it below the surface. And you stay there. You listen. Ask questions. You try to move from the head to the heart. You don’t try to fix the person that you’re listening to. You just ask a question that penetrates their heart and stay there in the moment. In some ways you’ll find you’ll minister to them. Because God’s Spirit in you can use you to care for them.
How are you sacrificing superficiality in your relationships? Another way to ask it is what steps are you taking to get beneath the surface?
Like I mentioned, we don’t know what Jesus said to Zacchaeus. We just know that something happened that got him to totally repent. To totally change. I realize that Jesus had the whole God-thing going for him that we don’t. But to go below the surface and to risk that is big. You can’t love when you’re moving fast. You can’t love when you stay on the surface.
III Must Sacrifice My Agenda
Everywhere Jesus went, the Bible says, there was a crowd. Their agenda became his agenda. Everybody had needs and wanted healings and to touch him and to ask him questions. He kind of moved through life, interacted with people and made their agenda his agenda.
What you’ll find is when you sacrifice your agenda and really listen to other people you will hear pain, sadness, heartbreak. I’d even go so far to say that if you talk with people and you’re not hearing pain, especially in today’s climate, if you’re not hearing the pain and loss and sadness and heartbreak of other people, chances are you’re jumping to your agenda too quickly.
Loving is really saying I’m going to sacrifice my agenda for your agenda.
This past week, I was speaking to one of my best friends on facebook. He recently moved to the
I will be honest. In my conversation, I originally wanted to focus on the things going on in my own life. I wanted to talk to a buddy about some of the stuff that was going on and stressing me out. Typically this guy’s a great, great friend.
My guess is many of us in here, we have been watching the stock market the last two weeks more than we’ve been listening to significant people in our lives. I’m not just talking about your own personal portfolio. I understand that. But we’re caring more about the ups and the downs of the market than we are caring about the ups and downs in people’s lives that we say that we love.
How quickly do I move conversations and relationships to me?