Rooted & Grounded “In Love”

Introduction

We’ll use that as an opening text here in just a moment, and then we’ll be moving on to some other text this morning. But Revelation chapter 2 as an opening text here in just a minute. Again, to all those who are visiting with us, and we do have those who are visiting with us from really across the country, and we welcome you, and even from our own area right here in Orlando, we certainly welcome you as well. What we’re doing here is a manifestation of our love for God. As we come to worship Him and praise Him, let it always be because we love Him and we want to praise Him. We want to serve Him. And then as we go to His Word, it’s also a manifestation of that love that we have for Him and for each other.

As we can learn more about how we are to love Him and in fact show that care and affection for each other. We can only be guided by the Word of God. So that’s what we’ve come here to do. We invite you to join us again at any opportunity that you may have. We’ll meet again this coming Wednesday at 7 o’clock. And then, of course, next Lord’s Day. We meet from 9 to noon for periods of worshiping God and studying His Word, and you’re always invited to our assemblies. Last week I began a, well, I didn’t mean for it necessarily to be a series, but I addressed the idea of that deceptively beautiful facade. You know what I’m talking about. You spend all that time and effort and cleaning your house and making sure everything looks great, and yet then you’ve got termites inside.

And so everything looks great on the outside, and yet you didn’t know that your house was being eaten away. Or you’ve got that leak either in, well, depending on how your house was plumbed, either underneath the house and the foundation, or above in the attic. You’ve got that leak, and you have no idea anything’s happening yet. But you will. Everything’s deceptive. There’s an image being put out there of, oh, look how beautiful. And we can do that in our personal lives. That’s what we talked about last week. That we can really be struggling inside. And yet, when we come to each other, well, we want to make sure that everybody knows that I’m fine, you’re fine, I put that image out there, but it’s deceptive. And really, what God wants for us among his people is to be able to be open and honest with each other, to be able to go to each other with our struggles, to be able to help one another.

1. Is It Possible for a Church to Have a Facade?

And Lord willing, we’ll deal with that a little bit more in the coming weeks about how it is that we can, in fact, aid one another and counsel one another and help each other grow in the Word of God. But this morning I wanted to take that idea of the facade and go a little different direction with it. Certainly it is possible for us as individuals to put out a false image, to put out a facade that everything is okay in my life when really everything’s not okay. But is it possible for a church to do that too? Is it possible for a congregation to have a facade that, oh, everything looks good and everything looks healthy, but well, maybe everything’s not. I asked you to turn Revelation chapter 2 because there we read about our Lord addressing the churches.

And the church I want to focus on really not only in this first part, but even later on in our study is a church at Ephesus, because we’ll be going to Ephesians chapter 4 in just a little while. But speaking of the church at Ephesus, our Lord says to them beginning in verse 2 of Revelation chapter 2 I know your deeds and your toil and your perseverance, and that you cannot tolerate evil men. And you put to the test those who call themselves apostles and they are not. And you found them to be false, and you have persevered and have endured for my name’s sake and have not grown weary. But I have this against you, that you have left your first love. That’s such a hard statement to reconcile with what the Lord said here.

Everything looks fine. They are diligent and involved in the work, and yet our Lord can say to them, but you’ve left your first love. Are we dealing with a facade here that the church in Corinth are still actively involved in all the works that they’re supposed to be doing? They don’t tolerate false teaching. They teach truth, they practice truth. But that’s masking what’s going on within. And that the hearts and the love of each individual for Christ and for each other has waned. It’s a deceptive facade. I want to address this from one standpoint this morning. And that is how you and I may even judge our own spirituality. And if we judge it on a congregational level, then we may be, in fact, falling victim to a facade.

2. The Dangers in the Programs Approach

We’ll talk about the programs approach here for just a moment. What do I mean by that? If someone were to ask you where you attend, where you worship, and you might say, Well, I am a member of the Lord’s church and I worship with the brethren at the South Columbia Church of Christ, they may ask you, well, how is your church? And we might respond with all number of good things, and I want to emphasize that first of all, that when I’m talking about programs, I’m not saying that programs can’t be good. We might talk about the wonderful Bible classes that we have. We might talk about how we’re involved in different methods of evangelism and we’re trying to broaden our outreach in social media. We might talk about group activities that sometimes we have.

We might talk about our teens and some programs that we have for them. And all those things are good. But here’s the problem. If I define my evangelism from the standpoint that I am a member of a church that has an evangelism program, I may be masking something. If I define my benevolence from the standpoint that I’m a member of a church that has groups that sees to needs in the congregation, I could be masking something. If I’m say that I am involved in the edifying of the saints because I’m a member of a church that has Bible programs that’s intended to edify the saints through the teaching of the word or in any other number of ways, I could be in fact deceiving myself. Programs are good.

Programs can serve their function. But if I’m defining the spirituality and in fact the health of myself based on what programs my congregation is involved in, I could be deceiving myself. You see, there’s some dangers in the program approach. First of all, we just talk about programs. Oftentimes, programs they only utilize the efforts of a few.

Not everybody is going to be as involved in everything as some other people. Oftentimes programs they are heavily involving the effort of two to three individuals. And while we may say we want the congregation involved in these things, and yet the reality of that is, and we know that, that, well, not all the congregation can be involved in this program. And not everybody in the congregation will be involved. And so oftentimes we just find that to be true. He found that to be true in the television program that we had here for years. Now, certainly, Brother Harkwriter was heavily involved in that program. Sister Arkwriter was heavily involved in that program. Others were involved, Mike Manier, heavily involved in that program. And we were involved in that we support that, but we also know that, well, I wasn’t putting the effort that Mike or Bob were putting into that.

We worry about our teenagers. When I was first brought in, I was brought in to help specifically even with the young people. Well, my role in the congregation changed somewhat over the years, and I’m just not able to put the time and effort into that group as I would like to, and I need to do more. I’d admit that. And so we may think, well, we’ve got a young evangelist who’s going to come and work with us for two years. And Greg can be involved in that. And certainly Greg will be involved in that, and that’s good. But what happens when Greg’s gone? You see, if we’re treating the spiritual development of our young people as a program, and we have teen weekends, we have teen devotionals, and we’re going to let Josh or Greg or whoever else that they’ll be involved in that, then what happens when those who are really putting forth the effort in that program, they leave.

That’s the problem with the program. That it only involves the effort of a few. Programs are often measured by outward results, not inward growth. And that’s just the nature of who we are. We can very well measure how many likes we get on Facebook. We can measure the number of people who come out to Bible classes into worship. We can measure the number of people who come to a new class that we may start, the 20s and 30s group, or we may measure how many people are involved in group activities. And that’s very easy to do. We can count. But does that tell the full story of what that’s doing? Can we measure the inward impact and the growth that’s happening by those things? That’s not always as easy to tell.

Programs come and go, and that’s just the nature of what they are. Our television program, again, is a great example of that. In our efforts to evangelize, we were involved in putting out a television program for many years, and then we brought it back even for a few years. But we’re not doing that anymore. And there’s reasons for that. It’s cost prohibitive. Just the amount of money that we were spending on is just not feasible in the society in which we live. Perhaps when that television program first began, and someone’s flipping through their television channels, and you can flip through 30 television channels relatively easily. But as cable has grown and more and more people have cable and satellites, and people don’t typically flip through thousands of channels just looking to see what may happen.

People DVR shows now, so most people, or a lot of people anyway, when they go to watch TV, they’re not just channel surfing. They say, no, I’ve already taked what I want to watch. And so programs come and go, and that’s good. That’s how they should. If a program’s not being effective anymore, then you move on. Then programs may not address our greater needs. Certainly we know this. The things that we were talking about last week. The spiritual needs that you and I have. There’s not going to be a lot of programs that we can put out there that say, all right, this will ensure that if someone’s struggling spiritually, that this is going to be met. That’s not how that works, is it? Again, I want to stress I’m not against programs.

But if we’re defining what we do based on the programs that we have, then we’ve lost something. Our denominational friends are finding this out in particular with their youth programs. They have spent and sunk time and money and so much effort. And yet they’re finding, just as we might even find, that they’re losing 70% of their youth when they turn 18. In spite of the fact that they put all this time and money and effort into gearing things toward them. Brother Rufus Barfield shared with several of us an article a month or so back. The article was titled Ten Surprising Reasons Our Kids Leave Church. And it was a great article. And a lot of it had to do with all this thing, all these time and effort that we’re putting into it, and yet we’re not giving them what they really need.

I’m just going to read the conclusion of that article, and then we’ll get into the Bible text, I promise. The text, the article said, our kids are smart. They picked up on the message we unwittingly taught. If church is simply a place to learn life application principles to achieve a better life in community, well, you don’t need a crucified Jesus for that. Why would they get up early on a Sunday and watch a cheap knockoff of the entertainment venue they went out to the night before? That’s addressing the idea that to get kids involved, you’ve got to have lights and shows and really, you know, give them entertainment. Well, you’re not going to give them as good of entertainment as what they could have had on Saturday night.

So why are we trying that? A middle aged pastor trying desperately to be relevant to them would be a comical cliche if the effect weren’t so devastating. So as we jettison the gospel, our students were never hit with the full impact of the law, their sin before God, and their desperate need for the atoning work of Christ. That is relevant. That is authentic. That is something the world cannot offer. But we’ve traded a historic, objective, faithful gospel based on God’s graciousness toward us for a modern, subjective, pragmatic gospel based upon achieving our goal by following life strategies. I don’t mean to imply that’s what we’re doing here. Not at all. I’m saying there’s a lesson to be learned, though. If we think, even for a minute, that if we put enough good programs into place that we’re going to achieve all the objectives that we want, we’re fooling ourselves.

3. God’s Approach: Rooted and Grounded in Love

And that’s way God, that’s the reason why God’s way is always better. What is God’s way? What is God’s approach? I want you to turn again in your Bibles to Ephesians chapter 4, and we’re going to be camping out here for a little while. It’s a passage in the text that we’ve used oftentimes, and I’ve spoken about it oftentimes. But I want to focus on something a little bit different this morning. Ephesians chapter 4, beginning in verse 11, there we read in the text that he gave some as apostles and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers for the equipping of the saints, for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ. Until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ.

As a result, we are no longer to be children tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness and deceitful scheming. But speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, even Christ. From whom the whole body being fitted and held together by what every joint supplies according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love. Again, we’ve talked about this passage before. And the simple point that I’ve made from this passage many times, and others have made from this passage, is that this shows you how God’s body, Christ’s body, is going to grow.

That which those apostles and prophets and evangelists and pastors and teachers were giving. And that truth is taken in by the saints, and that equips them to do what? To sit there? No. It equips them to minister. We’re all ministers, brethren. Let’s never forget that. So we take the truth of the gospel in. It equips us in our lives. We can therefore minister to each other, and that causes the body to grow. Here’s the point I haven’t focused on before. You’ll note that closing phrase that just seems kind of tagged on there at the end of verse 16. In love. Now that phrase is significant because it’s found throughout the book of Ephesians. Go back to the first chapter. Chapter 1 and verses 4 and 5.

If you’re reading from the King James or New King James, the punctuation here is a little bit different. But I’m reading from the New American Standard. Speaking of just how He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him. This is the biblical doctrine of predestination. This is that, yes, that God chose it. Those who are in Christ, that they are to be holy. That those who come to Him in Christ are holy. They are blameless. Not the choosing of individuals, but the choosing that those who would come to Him in Christ, that they are in Him, this is what they are. Well, the New American Standard places the period there, and I believe that is where the period is supposed to go.

The fact that it then says in love. Carries on to the next verse. In love, he predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to himself. According to the kind intention of his will. In his love, what did he do? He did not have to bring us back. The point that Rob was making even in our Lord’s Supper talk this morning, that we sinned against Christ, and yet what did Christ do to reconcile us to himself? Our God did not have to bring us back to him. But in love, he predestined. He said that those who come to me in Christ, they will be my adopted children. So that’s the first use of in love in the book of Ephesians. That God, in his love, did this for us.

That’s why this whole point in Ephesians chapter 1, beginning in verse 3, is talking about how great and how blessed the name of our God is to be. Because this is what he’s done for us. In love, he did this. He made us his children. Continues on in chapter 3 and in verse 17. This really coming toward the end of the first major point in the book of Ephesians. The major point being that this is what God has done for us in Christ. And you go throughout chapter 2, and we see that whereas we were once dead in our sins and our trespasses, he made us alive. By his grace, we’re saved. And because of God, now that we were once separated from him and alienated, now we’re brought back to him.

And that’s why, as Paul is kind of wrapping up this argument, he says in chapter 3 and in verse 17, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, and it’s you being rooted and grounded in love. Let me tell you, you don’t have to define in love here subjectively. In love is objective in the book of Ephesians. In love, God has done all this for you. And Paul is saying, if you will simply just reflect, if you’ll simply just consider all that God has done for you in Christ, adopting you to himself, forgiving your sins through the blood of his son, saving you by his grace through faith, that will root you. That will ground you. That will cause you to live for him and to walk for him.

Then you come to the fourth chapter. Fourth chapter, beginning some practical application of that. If you really acknowledge who God is, who Christ is, what they’ve done for you, if you’re rooted and grounded in that kind of love, then you’re going to do something about it. The first mention of in love is found in verse 2. With all humility and gentleness, with impatience, showing tolerance for one another in love. Okay? So if you’re rooted and grounded in the fact that God loves you, we recognize, we know from even the words of Jesus Himself, if we love him, we’re going to love each other. If we’re rooted and grounded in that love that God has for us, then we’re going to act in a certain way toward each other.

We’re going to tolerate each other and be patient with each other in love. And then he carries that point on. Not only is this an attitude, a disposition, this is an active work that we’re involved in. As we take in that teaching. And as we’re equipped for the work of ministry, and we minister to one another, and that body is growing. And so he says in verses 15 and 16, speaking the truth in love. So we’re using that word of God. We’re speaking the truth. We’re edifying one another. We’re equipping each other in love. We are to grow up in all aspects into him who is the head, even Christ. From whom the whole body being fitted and held together by what every joint supplies according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love.

Finally, and we’ll come back and make a point of this. He says in chapter 5 and in verse 2, we’re to walk in love. Why? Walk in love, just as Christ also loved you and gave himself up for us an offering and a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma. Again, he’s not being subjective here in what he’s saying about walking in love. He’s objective.

So you start with chapter 1, defining the fact that in God’s love, he has done this for us. He adopted us, he forgave us, he made us his children. And therefore, if we are therefore rooted in and grounded in love, we will in love act toward the benefit of each other. We will in love do whatever we can in the work of ministry as we are equipped to the word of God and in love, therefore, the body will grow because we’re walking in love just as Christ loved us. So watch God’s approach. Love him. Love him. With every fiber of your being, love him. And if you will love him with every fiber of your being, then you will also love his people because they belong to him too.

4. Love Utilizes All and Makes Programs Effective

And you’ll treat each other in the way that he says, you’ll act and you’ll grow and you’ll work for each other and the building up of the body because you love him and therefore you love each other. Now, let’s contrast that with the program approach. That utilizes the efforts of everyone. All can love. And all are to love. And all are to turn that love into active participation and involvement and the growing of the body. Again, verse 16 of chapter 4. From whom the whole body. Again, if we’re just going to talk about programs, then we’re probably only talking about a few. But if we’re talking about how we really want this body to grow, then you’ve got to talk about love. From whom the whole body being fitted and held together by what every joint supplies, again, we recognize we’re not all going to be involved in everything, but if we will all love each other and apply ourselves into doing what God has given us and using that for the work of ministry, then every part works, every part does what it’s intended to, and his body grows in love.

That utilizes the efforts of all. Not a few. That achieves inward and outward results. That’s the whole point of this, what Paul is saying. This is so that in verse 13, we attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God to a mature man, to the measure, the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ. That’s why it’s hard when we talk about, you know, can we really measure how much we love each other? Well, maybe not. But if this is what we’re emphasizing, if we are emphasizing time and time again that this is who our God is and why we ought to love him, and therefore that translates into our activity and our love for each other, we can guarantee that not only will we experience outward results, but that members and saints grow inwardly.

They grow in their appreciation of God, they grow in their love and care and affection for each other. That never changes. Again, we will institute new programs as time goes on. Things don’t work anymore as they once did. We will try something new. But this is what makes those things effective anyway. Love never changes. That attitude and that disposition we’re to have to God and then to each other, that’s not going to change. That addresses every need. And finally, again, that’s what makes our programs effective and beneficial. Not critical of programs. We’ve got some great programs. We’re going to talk about our Bible classes or groups or whatever you may want to talk about. Those are some great things. What makes them effective? Love. That I love my God, and I love my brothers and sisters enough, and I love others enough that I want to be involved and I want to work.

Social media or what other evangelistic program or tool we might talk about, those are great. But they are useless. They are useless if I don’t love others enough to share the gospel with them. Otherwise, it’s just a program that a few people are involved in. What I need, what you need, what we all need is that same attitude that Paul had towards the world. He talks about in Romans chapter 1, and beginning in verse 14, when he says that I am under obligation, both to Greeks and to barbarians, both to the wise and to the foolish. So for my part, I am eager to preach the gospel to you also who are in Rome. For I’m not ashamed of the gospel, it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.

For in the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith, as it is written, but the righteous man shall live by faith. That’s the only way evangelism works. Everything else is tools. But if I don’t love my neighbor and those in my community and those in my family, if I don’t love them enough to recognize they need the gospel, then I’m not evangelistic. I may belong, quote unquote, to an evangelistic church because we’ve got some evangelism programs, but if I don’t actually love people enough to utilize the tools and the efforts that are made, then what profit was it? Groups. Other means that we edify each other can be wonderful tools. But they mean nothing. If I don’t abide by what John says in 1 John 3 and in verse 14, we know that we have passed out of death into life because we love the brethren.

He does not love abides in death. Whatever we want to talk about means and ways in which we can edify each other. It is all contingent on do I actually love you enough. You can even apply that to worship. Let me tell you, we didn’t move from five to nine just because we thought it’d be easy. This was so that we can come together, and for this period of time, we can love each other. And let me tell you, we need to stop thinking about nine and eleven as being two different services. I’m just starting to say we mean from nine to noon. Because what we’re doing here is we’re saying we are coming together to show an appreciation of God and the love that we have for him and that we can mutually edify each other because we love each other.

But you see, if I don’t love you, then everything else is just a program. It doesn’t matter what you do. Teen weekends, studies, they’re fantastic. But the purpose of anything that we do has to be to instill the love of God in them. And that doesn’t happen by me buying them pizza. Now we might do that. I’m not saying I won’t ever buy them pizza, but I’m not going to buy some of you guys pizza because I don’t know how much you eat. Not saying I wouldn’t ever do that. But the point is, what they need is me to give myself to them. And so if we’re concerned with the welfare of our young and those who are growing, then the idea is not, well, let’s make sure we’ve got a better program.

Conclusion

The idea is let’s make sure I love them. And then whatever programs we institute will be effective because it’s a manifestation of that we love these kids and we want the best for them. And so, if there is application to be made, then this is it. Don’t let your love wane. This is the challenge. Paul, in writing to the Ephesians, has reminded them five times. In love, in love, in love, in love. And even though it’s a different writer who writes the book of Revelation, I think our Lord is coming back to that point because what does he say? You left your first love. Paul is exhorting them to be rooted and grounded in love. Jesus says in Revelation 2, you left your first love. Now you’re still active in works.

And you’re not tolerating false teaching. But you left your first love. And so we’ve got to ask how healthy are we? If we define our health by the quantity or even the quality of our programs, we could be fooling ourselves.

And if I’m going to define our health by the love of each saint, I’ve got to start with me. And so I’ll close with three questions that I’d ask you to ask yourself to examine. Am I rooted and grounded in love? Let me tell you, you’re going to hear a lot about this in the future. A lot.

Because the cure for what L’s us in this society is a greater knowledge and appreciation of what God has done for me. Everything starts from that. Obedience, faithfulness, everything starts with what my God has done for me. That has to be first and foremost in our minds. And so if I’m going to be healthy, and if I’m going to help God’s body, and I’m going to help God’s people, the question I first have to ask myself is, how rooted and grounded in that love am I? And let me tell you, this goes back to what we were talking about last week. If you’re looking at yourself and you’re saying, I’m having some struggles here, it’s time to open up and ask some brethren for some help.

Let them explain to you why they love God. Let them explain to you what God has done for them and for all of humanity. You grow in that love. You be rooted and grounded in that love. You be involved in personal Bible study, and you look at what God has said in his word about how he loved us, even when we were sinners. You be impressed and brought to your knees every Lord’s Day as we come to remember what our Lord did for us. You be rooted and grounded in love. Talking about love is not for whims. Let’s get that straight. We are talking about the principle that defines us and moves us. So, how much affection do I have for my God and for his son?

How rooted and grounded in that am I? Will I walk in love as he loved me? That walk is a life principle. If I recognize this great love that my Lord had for me, then he is saying to me, you live in that. You live, letting that be the characteristic of who you are. That’s why love covers the matters of, am I obeying and following God? If I love him, I will. And it also covers how we treat one another. Because again, if I love my God, then I’ll treat you in the way that God has said. And not only that, I’ll work for the benefit of you. I’ll minister to you. I’ll help you grow and we’ll be edified. And then the final question would be will I in love then use my talents and the abilities that God has given me.

Will I take his truth in so that it equip me for the work of ministry so that good will come to his body? That’s the questions we have to ask ourselves. And then we can look at the programs we’ve got, and we can say, Well, I’ll be working in that. Or I may not be working in a program at all, but I’m going to use what God has given me. And in love, I’m going to minister to his body.

The Lord sees all. All is laid open and bare before him. And that is true of me, and that is true of you. The Lord knows now if you love him. And let me just simply end today by saying, you ought to love him. I can’t make you love him. He couldn’t make you love them. But oh, how we ought to love him. The one who died for us. And our great God and Father who adopted us as children to him through his son. So love him. And in doing that, walk in love. You’ll love him, you’ll respond to him. You’ll say, I will do, Father, what you have asked me to. I’ll repent of my wrongs. I’ll believe in Jesus as your son. I’ll be baptized so those sins may be forgiven.

And I can be a part of you, and I will live in love. And that’ll affect your life in your family, your life in your community, and it’ll certainly affect your life among his people. So is there some way we can aid you this morning?

Or maybe you do need the prayers of the saints, or maybe you just need to go to a brother or sister when we’re dismissed this morning and talk about love of God. But if we can aid you in some way, even publicly this morning, we invite you to come as we stand and as we sing.