The Word of Love - Part 1

Thanks for joining us here today on Pastor Rick's Daily Hope, the audio broadcast ministry of Pastor Rick Warren. Today we continue in a series called the Seven Greatest Words of Love. There are seven words in particular that Jesus spoke during his final hours on the cross that hold the keys for finding fulfillment in your life, relationships and even your career. Right now, here's Pastor Rick with part one of a message called the Word of Love.

The single most important lesson that you have to learn in life is this, how to love like Jesus, learning to love like God loves you. The whole reason God put you on this planet is not to make money, not to retire, not to just have a lot of fun and die. God puts you here on this planet to learn how to love. And if you don't do that, you miss the point of life. He puts you here to learn how to love God and to love your neighbor as yourself. Otherwise God could have just created you and taken you instantly to heaven. But he puts you on this planet for 60, 80, 100 years so you can learn how to love. And if you don't learn that, you've just missed it. Now for three weeks we've been in this series that I'm calling the seven Greatest Words of Love, where we're looking at the seven last statements of Jesus on the cross. And the first week we looked at the Word of Forgiveness where the first thing Jesus says from the cross is father, forgive them, they don't know what they're doing. Last week we looked at the word of Assurance where he says to the thief on the cross to today you'll be with me in paradise. If you missed that message, you really need to hear it. It's an important message to how to absolutely know for sure, under no condition, no doubt, that you're going to heaven when you die. You need to hear last week's message. This week we come to the third word, which is the word of love. And it's a word that he said to his mother Mary, who's standing at the foot of the cross as Jesus died, and to his best friend John the Apostle, who's standing next to his mother. Now let me set this up a little background. Before even Jesus went to the cross, he was exhausted and fatigued from all of the blood loss in the past 24 hours. When they arrested Jesus, they took him through six sham trials, three Roman trials, three Jewish trials. Every one of them were illegal cause it was against the law to have a trial at night. And they did them all at night just to rush him through so he hadn't had any sleep at all. And then after they arrest him, then they torture him. They put the crown of thorns on his back, they beat him, they mock him, they spit on him. The Bible says they pulled out his beard just to be mean to him. And the Bible says they scourged him. Scourging is more than a whipping. It's a whip with nine cat o' nine tails in the end. So every time you WHIP it leaves nine wounds. And he got 39 stripes, which means he had about 280 so scars on his body. Before he goes to the cross, his back is one bloody pulp. And from the loss of sleep and the loss of blood, Jesus is stumbling up the hill. On top of that, the crowd is mocking him. All of his disciples have left him except one. They've all scattered because they're afraid they're going to be arrested. And at the cross, all of his friends aren't there, they're all gone. The only people who show up are the women. And we're not actually sure whether there were four or six of his friends and relatives who were women there because so many of them were named Mary. And so we don't know if it's a duplication of who the Marys were. But Jesus looks down at his grieving mother and his best friend and he quietly says the third word. Let me read it to you, John, chapter 19, verse 25. Near the cross of Jesus stood his mother, that's Mary, and his mother's sister, and Mary the wife of Clopas and Mary Magdalene. And when Jesus saw his mother there standing at the foot of the cross and the disciple John, whom he had loved standing nearby, he says to his mother, this is the third word from the cross. Dear woman, dear woman, here is your son. And he's pointing, he's motioning to John and he said to the disciple John, who's writing this? John won't even admit his name cause he was humble about it. And he says to the disciple, here is your mother. And from that time on, this disciple John, who wrote this book, took care of Mary, took her into his home. Now Mary we know by this time was a widow. Joseph had died a long time earlier. Mary is a widow. And tradition tells us that after Jesus died on the cross that she lived about 12 more years. And during that 12 year period, John the Apostle took care of Jesus. Mother, because of this statement, Jesus looks down from the cross and he says, mother, this is your new son. And John, this is your new mother. And you're to take care of each other. Now, this may seem like an unimportant phrase from the cross. He's mom, here's your new son, John. I want you to treat her like your mother. It may seem pretty unimportant, but Jesus never says anything unimportant. And what he is doing here is showing the deep concern of Jesus Christ and the deep concern of God for you when you're in pain and when others are pain. It shows God's compassion. It shows his sensitivity. It shows his attention. It shows his tenderness. It shows his love. It shows his concern. And what do we learn from this phrase? We learn two things. First, we learn what it means to love like Jesus, what it means to love like Jesus when we fully understand what he said. And second, we learn what Jesus does when we're in pain. And when you're in pain, you can know that God does this with you. Now, I wanna warn you that what I'm gonna teach you this weekend, you can't possibly do on your own power. You can't love like Jesus by yourself. You don't have it in you. I don't have it in me. You can only do it by God's power. We'll come back to that at the end. But you can't love other people in the same way that God loves. Without God's power in you, you can't do it on your own. It's humanly impossible. But in order to learn to love like Jesus, I have to do four things. Let's write these down. Number one, the first thing, this one's pretty obvious, is if I'm gonna learn to love like Jesus, I must care for my own family. I must care for my own family. Love is not just something you say, it's something you do. It's a choice. It's an action. And in the middle of all of Jesus pain, he does three things for his mother. He notices her, he calls her out by name. He honors her. He provides for her practical needs, and he gives her emotional support. Let's look at these real quickly. These are the same things that God expects you to do with your family. Let's look at them. If I'm gonna learn to love like Jesus, number one, there are three ways I do this. First, by paying attention. The first way you learn how to love like God loves you is by learning to pay attention to the people in your life. Specifically, in this case, your family. Attention is one of the greatest gifts you can give your family. Attention is far more important than money. You can always get more money, but you can't get more attention. I remember when my kids were little and I'd be reading a paper and Amy would come up and say, daddy. And I said, yeah, honey. And she'd go, daddy. Yeah. Yeah, honey, what do you need, babe? Daddy? Yes, babe, what do you need? And she'd grab the paper and pull it down and grab me by the face, say, daddy, look at me. Look at me. Attention is the greatest gift you ever give anybody. Why? Because your attention is your life. When I give you my attention, I'm giving you my time. And my time is my life. I'm never gonna get that time back. I can always get more money. I can always get other things. I. I can't get any more time. And if I give you my time, I've just given you a part of my life. It's the most important thing you can give somebody. Far more important than money. Now I just imagine this scene, kind of like in a movie where there's this big crowd scene. Jesus is on the cross. Mary, the mother of Jesus, is down at the foot of the cross. And all of a sudden, in this giant crowd and all of the chaos and hubbub that's going on, two people's eyes lock on each other. And Jesus is looking into the eyes of his mother as his life is draining out of him. And Mary is looking into the eyes of her son as the life is draining out of her son. And there's a laser focus. And at that moment, nobody else in the crowd matters. We are locked on to each other, locked onto each other. And that is attention. Now, there's another word for giving attention to your family. It's called respect. If you don't pay attention to somebody, it means you don't respect them. Now, you may say you respect your wife, but you never pay attention. You don't respect her. You may say you respect your husband, but if you don't pay attention to him, you don't respect him. If you're tuning them out all the time, heard it all, been there, done that, you honor people when you pay attention. Now, Jesus, the first thing he does, the first way he shows love, is by caring for his own family. And he does this by paying attention. And in all of this pain and all of this hubbub, he looks down at his mom and he notices her. By the way, one of the reasons women. The women could get close. See, none of the disciples were close except John, because they were afraid they'd be arrested in those days, Women were treated as things. They were not even given the dignity of being treated as equals in humanity. And so no Roman soldier would be paying attention to a poor woman standing at the foot of the cross. They would be oblivious, they wouldn't even be noticing these women because in that culture, they were in essence, just property. Jesus always raised the status of women. And in this situation, he honors his mother in front of everybody else. Now you know that Exodus 20, verse 12 says this. Honor your what, father and mother? That's not an option, friends. It's a command. And by the way, in the Ten Commandments, it's the only commandment with the promise. Now, it doesn't say honor what your father and mother have done because they might have done some really bad things, but it says you are to honor your father and mother because God chose them. They had just the DNA to create you. They may have been a good parent, a bad parent, an indifferent parent. You maybe never knew your parent, but the Bible says you were to honor them because God used them to make you. And if God hadn't used them, you wouldn't exist. So it has nothing to do with their parenting skills. You are commanded, it's not optional, to honor your father and mother. And by the way, there's no statute of limitations on that command. It doesn't mean only honor them. When you're in the fifth grade, if they're still alive and even after they've died. You are to honor your father and mother. And so you pay attention. That's one of the ways we show love, is by paying attention. Second way that we show love, like Jesus to our families is by meeting practical needs. And Jesus does that here. Here we have Jesus last will and testament. He's meeting the practical needs of his mom. The last earthly task that Jesus Christ does when he's dying on the cross is provide for his mother. That says something pretty significant. As I said, Joseph had died, Mary's old, Mary's poor, Mary's a widow. And what does Jesus have to give to his mom? Nothing. Jesus has nothing to he's not rich, he has no wealth, he has no home. He doesn't even have any clothes except the clothes he's wearing on his back. So what can he give his poor aged mother? Cause he doesn't have any inheritance or anything to leave to his widowed mother. What does he have to give? All he has is a friend. And he entrusts his mother to the care of his closest disciple, his closest friend. Now it is interesting to me, by the way, I'll just throw this in here. Mary was a great woman. She was a godly woman. The Bible says she was a righteous woman, but she was not God. You just need to understand that Jesus is on the cross. And Jesus did not pray to Mary. In fact, he knew she needed help. And he's providing for her. She's not providing for him. He's providing for her. He knew that after he died, she would need others protection, others care. And that's why he says, john, I want you to take care of my mom. I want you to take care of my mom. Now here's what the Bible says about meeting practical needs in your family. First Timothy, chapter five, verse three and four show respect for widows who are really all alone. But if a widow has children or grandchildren, they. He's talking to the church here. He says the church should show respect to all widows and take care of them. But he says if that widow has children or grandchildren, they, those kids and grandchildren should learn first to carry out their religious duties toward their family. Circle the phrase religious duties. Did you know that you have religious duties to your family? And in this way, in caring for the practical needs of your family, in this way we repay their parents and grandparents because that is what pleases God. You wanna please God, take care of your elderly father? You wanna please God, take care of your elderly mother. Now we all know we're supposed to take care of our kids. Did you know that the Bible says you're supposed to take care of your parents? Many of you are now in that situation because people are living longer and longer. Love begins at home. Look at this next verse, 1 Timothy 5:8. If anyone does not provide for his relatives and, and especially for his immediate family, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever. Uh oh, that's a powerful verse. He's denied the faith and he's worse than an unbeliever. If you're not taking care of your aged parents, do you realize this is how you learn to love like God? Loving like God is taking care of people who can't take care of you, who can't give you anything back at that point. You know, I honor my wife for how I watched her take care of both of my father and her father in their last days, who both died of cancer. And my sister was involved in that. And I remember watching my wife nurse and care for my father and nurse and care for her father and you know, doing exactly what God says to do. And I honor for doing that. I remember when Burt, right before Bert died, Kay's dad, I brought him and I brought his wife, Bobby, my mother in law, into the room and I sat down and I said, pop, I know you are worried about what's going to happen to your wife after you die. Cause he knew it was that. And I said, I promise you before God, I will take care of your wife as long as she lives. And I have, and I have. And I have provided for her since that time. Why? That's what God wants us to do. To learn to love like Jesus and to take care of it. Now listen, some of you, you're gonna have parents who get dementia or they get Alzheimer's. And you're gonna have to tell them the same thing 15 times over and over and over. And that may get frustrating. But when you show patience and when you're loving, even when you've told them 15 times, you're being like Jesus, you're being like Christ. We show love like Jesus in honoring our families. How? By paying attention. By meeting practical needs. And then there's a third way. Write this down. By giving emotional support. By giving emotional support. And God wants us to learn how to do this, just like he does with us. Now this is a very tender scene when you actually think about Jesus and his mother in his final moments of life. He's hanging on the cross. Mary is brokenhearted. She's watching her son suffer incredible agony. Can you imagine being a mother and watching your child and hang on the cross? Standing with her is John, Jesus best friend. He is in agony, not understanding why Jesus, he knows Jesus is the son of God. Why does he have to go through all this pain? Why does he have to put up with this ridicule, all of this torture, all this suffering? And not only that, when you think about it, Mary's entire life was a life of emotional pain. We don't think about that. But her entire life was a life of emotional pain. First, she has an unexplained birth and she has to say to her fiance, whom she's never had sex with, honey, I'm pregnant, but I've never had sex with anybody. And by the way, the baby is the son of God, right? Would you believe that? And you imagine all of the ridicule, all of the gossip, all of the shame that was heaped on her in her village, because who would believe such an outrageously fanatical story? So just. Even the announcement of Jesus birth, He hadn't even been born yet. She is bearing enormous pain. And then the Bible says that after the baby was born, they took Jesus to the temple in Jerusalem to be dedicated. And Simeon the wise priest comes out and he blesses and he dedicates Jesus as a little baby. And then he takes Mary aside and says, by the way, I need to tell you something. Your baby's gonna suffer, serious suffer. Major. Oh, and by the way, you're gonna go through it too, and it's gonna pierce your heart. How'd you like as a new mother, first child, be told your baby's gonna suffer throughout life. And by the way, you will too. And then when Jesus is just a couple years old, the king of Palestine, Herod, decides, I don't want this Messiah to be around. So we're gonna kill every baby under two. And Mary has to flee her home country with Joseph and a 2 year old and flee to Egypt knowing that babies are being killed because of her son. How'd you like to carry that pain? How'd you like to carry that pain? And then as Jesus grows up and he begins his ministry and we see all of the criticism that he gets and all of the angry hometown crowd where one time in his hometown, they try to throw Jesus off a cliff. How'd you like to be his mom at that point? How would you talk to your neighbors after that? How would you talk to your neighbors who just tried to kill your son? That's painful. That's painful. She saw the crowd turn against him. Even in spite of all the miracles and the resurrected dead and now this. He's tortured as a criminal now. A gory, gruesome, bloody death. And Jesus has nail pierced hands. But Mary has a nail pierced heart and she is in emotional agony. And she felt those nails that only a mother could feel as she watched her son slowly die. She needed emotional support. The Bible says this. Proverbs 17, 17. Friends love through all kinds of weather and families stick together in all kinds of trouble. Circle the word, stick together. That's the third way you show Christlike love in your family. You stick together. You show up, you stand up and you hold up. And like a great mom, Mom, Mary is there when everybody else flaked out. She was there when everybody else deserted her son. She's there. That's real love. I mean, think about this. Do you do that with your kids? Do you show up? Do you stand up? Do you, do you hold up? Do you speak up? Where are you when your kids are being crucified at school? Do you say, oh, brush it off? Or do you get in there and stand up and Speak up. Are you there when your kids are being crucified? Are you there when they're in trouble? While we're at it, since we're talking to family, let's talk to the guys for a minute. Look at this verse on the screen. Husbands, love your wives. How? Just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her folks, I flunk at this one. I'm not real good at it. I love my wife. I love her to death. I really do. But I can't say that I love her like Jesus Christ loved the church. And I doubt there's any husband here who can say that. But that's what God wants us guys to learn. You know, some people are real upset that the Bible makes it real clear that in a marriage the husband is to be the leader of the family. That doesn't mean they're not equal. It doesn't mean they're not of equal value. Just. You can't have two leaders. And the Bible says the husband is to be the leader. But what does a leader do? The leader gets to sacrifice the most. Not once in Scripture is a woman or a wife told to lay down her life for her husband. Not once. My wife is not commanded to lay down her life for me. I am commanded to lay down my life for her. That's what leadership's all about. Leadership leads the sacrifice. I am to sacrifice more than her. She's not supposed to sacrifice more than me. The Bible doesn't command that. It commands that. Me as a leader. Leaders lead by serving. Leaders lead by sacrificing. That's learning to love like Jesus. And I would say to you, husbands, does your wife know you'd die for her? You say, well, yeah, I think. Does she know you'd take out the trash for her? That might be harder. That might be harder. I do know this, and I'm trying to learn in this area, I do know this, that the more I love Jesus, the more I love my wife. And God gave me my wife to learn Christlike love. And God gave you your spouse to learn Christlike love. They don't exist for your benefit. The purpose of marriage is not to simply make you happy, but to make you holy, to teach you to grow up, to teach you to be unselfish. And unfortunately, a lot of people would rather divorce than give up unselfishness. Now, if I'm gonna learn to be like Jesus, the first place it starts is not on a peace trip. The first place it starts is not in the peace center. The first place it Starts is not in some ministry at the church. The first place real love shows up is is in the home. Jesus in the middle of his pain. He pays attention to his mom. He meets her practical needs, he provides for her, and he gives her the emotional support she needs in that moment.

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