Sermon Tone Analysis

Being Valentine’s Day, I thought it appropriate that we speak this morning about love.

I don’t want to limit this morning’s sermon to romantic love, but rather I want to look at how do we define love, who do we love, and lastly to understand how God loves.

The world has created a poor imitation of love.

On the internet the other day, I stumbled across a Love Calculator.

The way it works is that there are two blocks to fill in the names of two people, and then it tells what the chances are of your relationship working.

I entered Sam and my name, and the love calculator gave us a 14 % chance.

Here is what the self proclaimed “love doctor” said about Mike and Samantha.

/Dr.

Love thinks a relationship might work out between Mike and Samantha, but the chance is very small.

A successful relationship //is// possible, but you both have to work on it.

Do not sit back and think that it will all work out fine, because it might not be working out the way you wanted it to.

Spend as much time with each other as possible.

Again, the chance of this relationship working out is very small, so even when you do work hard on it, it still might not work out./

I wonder how the Love Doctor defines “Love”

 

On Valentine’s Day 1970, the Comic strip “*Love Is*…” made its debut in newspapers across America.

The idea started when a young lady used to sit and doodle on pieces of paper when she thought about her fiancé.

For her, they were an attempt to define the love she felt, and a way to give expression to her emotions.

Do you remember some of them?

Love is… Being able to say sorry

Love is… Letting her take over the bathroom                         Slide 2

Love is… Not asking how much her new dress cost               Slide 3

Love is… Realising that cold feet are a cure for snoring                   Slide 4

                             Slide 5

ASK CONGREGATION:       How would you define love?

The best definition I’ve encountered so far is that love is “*seeking the best for the person, even if it is at your cost*”.

SLIDE 6

And that makes more sense to me when I place it next to a definition of lust, because lust is “*seeking the best for you, even at the expense of others*”.

Slide 7

The other day, a mother told me of all the things she does for her children because she loves them, but she felt abused because the more she does, the less it seemed her children appreciate her.

When we spoke about it for a while, she realised that actually her actions weren’t motivated by the best interests of her children at all; she wasn’t doing it for them.

She was doing it for herself.

Slide 8

She was doing things so that her children would love her.

The question in her head was not, “How do I make my child feel loved?”

She was asking, “What can I do to make my children love me?”

She was the subject of her own love.

She realised that *she was practicing lust*.

Love is centered on the other person, *on what is best for them*.

With lust, the focus is on ourselves.

Love says, “Even if I get nothing out of this, I am doing this because you will benefit from this and I love you.”

Lust asks, “How much do I have to do to get what I want?”

In English we are quite limited in the vocabulary when we talk about love.

We use that same word in so many different ways.

The result is that I love my wife, but I also love my children.

But then I also love my cats, I love my job, I love eating Nachos.

In the car Lauren often says, “I love this song, it’s my favourite” and when the next song starts she says, “I love this song, *it’s really* my favourite.”

So if I say “I love you”, do I mean I love you in the same way I love Sam, or do I mean I love you like a McDonalds meal I will eat and forget in a few hours?

The Biblical languages of Hebrew and Greek are both much richer in the words they offer for love.

Maybe the first word in Hebrew is /rēa., /which speaks of friendship or neighbourliness.

Rea was the way any Jew related to his fellow Jew.

This word was used exclusively for other Jews.

Slide 9

 

A similar Greek word is Philos, which means to befriend, brotherly love.

This Greek word philos is the root to a lot of English words.

A philanthropist is a person who phileo’s people.

Philharmonic means the phileo of harmony.

I am sure you can think of a few people you have a /rēa /or a “phileo” relationship with.

But in Israel this word was usually reserved for people just like you.

The second Hebrew word is /ǎ∙hǎ//ḇ//ā(h)/.

Slide 10

 /ǎ∙hǎ//ḇ//ā(h)/ is beyond sheer neighbourliness, it speaks of a strong affection between people which is more special, more exclusive.

A man and lady may start out as mere friends, but a time comes when they realise, “My relationship with you is different to anyone else.

I am more committed, I am more connected to you”.

I Ahabah you.

At that point love escalates from Rea  to  Ahabah.

AT school I had 30 classmates, /rēa/, but I had a friend from Grade 2 who is still my dearest friend today.

That is Ahabah.

Ahabah is not romantic or sexual, the Hebrew word for that kind of love is (/dô//ḏ/), Ahabah is a soul mate kind of connection.

The Greek word for sexual love is Eros, from which we get the word erotic.

Slide 11

When people visit prostitutes, or have casual sex, they have (/dô//ḏ/),  without Ahabah, without a committed love.

They have Eros without Phileo, they have sex without friendship.

Sex without the other two forms of love is a cheap imitation of God’s design for us.

Leviticus 19: 18 says, Love your neighbour as yourself”.

*In Hebrew it says, Ahabah your /rēa/** as yourself.*

What that means is that we are not *just to be* friendly to our friends, we are not just to be neighbourly to our neighbours, but we are to be passionately, committedly loving our neighbour as if they were the most important person in our lives.

Back to my school analogy.

For me to practice that, I would need to transform the casual nature of my relationship with my 30 classmates, to treat every one of the like my best friend.

I have to escalate my love from casual to deliberate and committed.

But it is not just treating them all as my best friends, it is understanding that we are inseparably connected.

*I don’t love them as I love myself, I love them as myself*.

*They are me, we are inseparable*.

Every good I do them is actually good to myself.

But when I hurt them, I hurt myself.

In marriage we speak of two people becoming one.

In Ahabah, we become one, we are joined, fused, inseparable.

An image the Bible gives is that we become parts of the same body.

 

1 Samuel 18: 3 says that Jonathan made a covenant with David, because he *Ahabah David AS HIS OWN SOUL*.

Jonathan loved David as himself, because he can’t see where David stops and he starts.

For David to be killed by Saul would be the death of Jonathan.

Jonathan didn’t love David in the same way or to the same measure he loved himself, he loved David asif David were his own soul, the essential part of his own life.

That is the same message as Leviticus 19.

We are to love our neighbours and our friends asif they are our very soul, the center of our own existence, inseparable joined in the same body.

Imagine loving each of your friends asif they were the only one.

Imagine loving your neighbour asif they are the centre of your universe.

And then imagine loving all your other neighbours in exactly the same way.

Transition   Agapaoh

Luke’s Gospel is written in Greek.

In Luke 10, Luke recorded an incident between Jesus and an expert in the Law.

The lawyer came to Jesus and he quoted Leviticus 19: 18, but he had to find a Greek word for love, for Ahabah.