Thursday, September 1, 2016
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I'm really not too excited about the fact that a lot of the commercials on television are for beer. And, unfortunately, a lot of them are pretty well done and hard to forget. I remember some years ago, actually, there was one that had a punch line in it that people would jokingly quote all the time. The problem is that it inadvertently portrayed how alcohol does make some people act. Maybe you'll remember it. This guy said to his Dad in this kind of sensitivity that the new man is supposed to display, "I love you, man." At which point his Dad says, "You're not getting my beer." Okay. And who wants it? In another commercial the same loser is telling a girl, "I love you." But she also knows he's saying that just to get her beer. Why? Anyway, now, the guy is saying all the right words, but it's to get something. In this case, something he shouldn't have in the first place.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Love Without the Taking."
Our word for today from the Word of God comes from 1 Timothy 5:2, and it's instructions to younger men. Listen to this: "Treat younger women as sisters with absolute purity." There's the designer blueprint for male/female relationships by the Designer of males and females. It's called love without an agenda, especially without a physical agenda. Oh, a lot of guys will say the cheap little words, like the guy in the commercial, "I love you." But they're using their words to get something. That's taking. That's not giving and it's not love.
A lot of women have fallen for those words because they're so desperate to hear them. But, the man who says, "If you love me, you will" is the last man who is going to give you love. He is on the take. I recommend that women answer that classic line this way, "If you love me, you won't ask me to."
God, here, is suggesting a pattern for authentic manhood, not a man who proves he's a man by conquering a woman, but he proves he's a man by conquering himself Here's the relationship with the women in his world. It's the one of unselfish, undemanding, put her first love. "Treat them as sisters" it says. Well, I know from our family. We had two brothers and a sister. I know how brothers love a sister. It's like, "Anybody hurts you, I'm going to hurt them. Nobody's going to hurt my sister. I'm taking care of my sister." A brother's love for his sister is protective love. "I'll protect you from anything, Sis, or anyone that might hurt you or diminish you."
That's how male love for women is always supposed to be: protecting them from any thing that will hurt them, even if – especially if – it's me! A real love is one who loves a woman with a pure love, one that seeks to guard her purity, guard her worth, guard her specialness, and it's a love that comes without a physical agenda. Not "How far can I go with her?" or "How much can I get from her?" but "How can I keep her safe? How can I keep her pure? How can I keep her special?" This then lays the ground work for a designer marriage!
Ephesians 5:25 says, "Husbands love your wives just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, to make her holy, cleansing her." See, that's self-sacrificing love. For men in an age that suggests a sexual agenda for every male and female relationship, self-sacrifice takes on a very practical dimension: sacrificing any pursuit of a physical relationship with this woman. God's man sacrifices his passions and his self-satisfaction to have pure, no scars, no regrets relationships with the women in his world.
No cheap "I love you". No, not from the lips of a real man. He's in the giving business, not the taking business. And that is a man that a woman can truly love and totally trust.