Love God, Love Others

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Welcome: REC ladies are at the Women’s retreat

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Next week right after church: Financial update (we will have all April numbers by then)

Lastly if your here and you want to give financially to the ministry then there are a few ways to do that

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Physical giving in the wooden giving boxes at all the exits

Blessing of the service Dogs

The New International Version Chapter 4

9 But God said to Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry about the plant?”

“It is,” he said. “And I’m so angry I wish I were dead.”

10 But the LORD said, “You have been concerned about this plant, though you did not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died overnight. 11 And should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left—and also many animals?”

Prayer of Blessing:

Lord we thank you for these animals who bring joy and comfort to humans. Somehow you have made it so that these service animals perfectly pair with their human partners to calm anxiety, and to bring hope and joy to others. We ask that you would bless these animals and their owners so that they would jointly share the love of Jesus together. Amen

VIDEO

Core Value Recap

Ok we have been on a series that we are very creatively calling “Core Values”

These are the values that are core to us as a church

Like I had said the first week of this series if you were to drill down to the core of REC and pull out a sample…what would you find? We think you would find these core values

So Incase you were not here or you are just visiting us for the first time here are our core values so far

On Screen:

Biblical Authority

The Bible is God’s Holy word. It is the highest source of written authority regarding God's plan for His people. It reveals how to live out that plan, individually and corporately. Beliefs, practices, priorities, and our mission are to be anchored in clear biblical teachings. (Psalm 19:7, 2 Timothy 3:16, Luke 24:44, Luke 4:18-21)

Transformational Discipleship: Discipleship is the ongoing process of becoming more like Christ. A disciple actively imitates both the life and teaching of Jesus. It is the unique job of the church to make and equip disciples. (Psalm 1, Matthew 7:21-23, Matthew 28:16-20, John 20:21)

Love God and Others: When Jesus was asked what is the most important thing in the Bible his response was:  “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” It is our strong conviction that we honor God by loving others.  (Deuteronomy 6:4, Leviticus 19:18, Matthew 22:37-40, Luke 10:25-37)

So our third core value is love God and others

So there are a number of ways that this is expressed in the new testament but I want to hi-light this one verse with you today before we get to Jesus’ admonition to love God and others.

Galatians 5:6 NIV

For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.

So this is the apostle Paul talking and what he is telling the church is this....

Following Jesus isn’t about your faith making you look like a good religious person....

Following Jesus is all about your faith revealing itself in love

This is truly what counts

I have to tell you that I am truly shocked when I walk into a church and there is just this cold feeling where no one talks to each other or people look angry.

I’ve been around the church for a while…I have guest spoken at many churches and have just been shocked many times…like where is the love of Jesus here?

But I’ll tell you what…I never missed how religious those cold places were.

My faith must express itself in the action of love, this is what truly counts.

Why does this count more than looking and sounding religious

Well looking and sounding religious is for you

Faith expressing itself through love is for the world

Jesus didn’t come and die for your sins so that you could look like a good religious person. Jesus came and died for your sins so that you could experience his forgiveness and love and then tell someone else about it...

So that takes us to Jesus famous Love God and love people statement...

And I want to talk about that today because that is at the heart of why we chose this as a core value of our church...

When Jesus was asked what the most impotrant command was this was his answer:

So we are going to look at this...

First I actually want to look at it in the gospel of Mark because we were just in Mark

Mark 12:28–31 NIV

One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?” “The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”

So what is happening here is that chapter 11 in Mark starts this showdown at the temple. Jesus comes riding in and in Chapter 12 all of the temple establishment comes to Jesus to test him...

Should we pay taxes to Cesar...

The sadducees ask Jesus about the resurrection and then finally

the scribes come out and say ok Jesus what is the most impotrant commandment...

The sense of the question is not which is the most important commandment, but rather which commandment supersedes everything and is incumbent on all humanity—including Gentiles

So this is a big question

Especially when you consider that The rabbinic tradition counted 613 commandments in the Torah, 365 prohibitions, and 248 positive commands

The question is what is the one thing! is a hard question!

The interesting thing is though that The Mishnah and Talmud preserve a number of answers from famous rabbis to such questions.

Twenty years before Jesus, Rabbi Hillel summarized the Torah in a negative version of the Golden Rule:

So everyone is wondering how this famous rabbi will teach and of course Jesus says

Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with your soul your mind and strength.

So Jesus is saying that the first thing we are to do is to actually be lovers of God..

With our entire being our whole bodies…all who we are....

And then Jesus goes the extra mile and gives the second command

to love your neighbor as yourself

So I wanted to start with the Mark version of this because Jesus actually says it...

Luke has a scribe saying it and the question is slightly different:

But lets go there right now

Luke 10:25–29 NIV

On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” “What is written in the Law?” he replied. “How do you read it?” He answered, “ ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” “You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.” But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”

So this is very similar to the account in Mark except for Luke records a scribe asking about eternal life and the scribe saying love God and your neighbor not Jesus

So this text is different enough that I wanted to show you the mark one first

So that Jesus could give us an example of what love looks like:

So Jesus gives a parable

Luke 10:29–37 NIV

But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” In reply Jesus said: “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he was attacked by robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, brought him to an inn and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper. ‘Look after him,’ he said, ‘and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.’ “Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?” The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.” Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.”

Ok just to give you an idea of the feud between samaritans and Jews…just so we understand how radical it was that Jesus was saying what he said…Here are a couple of impotrant points

-There are ancient texts that the people who were alive back then read but are not the bible…In one book called the Ascension of Isaiah, A Samaritan named Bilkirah mistreated the people of israel and captured Isaiah and was responsible for his death

-One text we have says that the Jews used to make signal fires to signal a new year but the samaritans would light so many other signal fires just to confuse the Jews.

In 9 ad, the Samaritans scattered human bones all over the temple grounds at passover so that the Jews couldn’t have passover that year and they were, including the temple, ritually impure

One Sanhedrin ruling (ruling 57a) said that any Jew isn’t liable to the death penalty for killing a Samaritan and it is fine to withhold wages from a a Samaritan

The samaritans were not considered Jews because they were the people that Assyria brought to the region, so they believed in the books of Moses but that is it and the Jews looked down on them because they were sort of half gentile

So my point is that there is a long history of hatred between the Jews and the Samaritans

And many of you know the parable that Jesus taught its famous…it’s where we get the phrase “Good Samaritan” this would be an oxymoron in Jesus day...

The point of this parable is that the Jewish priests and levites walked to the other side of the road…they valued purity over mercy.

see coming from Jerusalem, you were ritually clean and pure. So if you were to go help a bloody man then you would be ritually impure again...

You’d have to go back, wait 7 days…become ritually pure...

Helping this beat up man would have been so inconvenient

So their value of purity won out…And they passed by the other side ignoring the blatant fact that there is a man dying on the ground by himself

Church. May we never put purity over mercy!

But this Samaritan used all of his resourced on this man…His donkey, his oil, his money his compassion

The scandal of this story is that there is a parallel to what Jesus will do for us.

That We are the one dying on the side of the road in our sin and Jesus saw that, and took our sin to the cross and he used his whole life to pay for our sins

That we were once the people in need of mercy

The point of Jesus’ story and the point of this whole sermon today is this:

Our faith in Jesus must result in actionable love

I want to bring up an impotrant point that I feel like sometimes gets lost in this parable...

Jesus and the religious establishment both agreed that love was the highest command

So any disagreement between Jesus and his contemporaries was not over the significance of the love commands but over their application and extent.

How far does love of neighbor reach?

This parable is evidence of what is obvious elsewhere: Jesus will not allow boundaries to be set so that people may feel they have completed their obligation to God.

Love does not have a boundary where we can say we have loved enough

nor does it permit us to choose those we will love, those who are “our kind.”

With the parable Jesus in effect says, “You should know already from Lev 19:34 that the love command extends to the stranger (or traveler) in your midst.”

See all of human nature is to draw distinction and boundaries. This is what is so scandalous about the love of Jesus

What I love about this story is it is a parable about his own ministry…It is a parable about the work that he is doing with Israel.

In his time…Religious society said

Don’t mix with samaritans

Don’t mix with gentiles

Don’t associate with prostitutes

Don’t eat with tax collectors

Do not touch a leper

Don’t touch a woman who has been bleeding for 12 years

The list goes on…And Jesus systematically upended the societies boundaries so that the love of God can break through to these people

Jesus treated everyone with love

It is no wonder that the Apostle Paul wrote in Galatians 3:28

Galatians 3:28 NIV

There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

In Jesus all boundaries of race, gender, class are all broken down

The love of Jesus breaks these things down.

We have such a diverse church.

We have Chinese people, Filipino, Mexican people, Nigerians, African Americans, White, European, Japanese, South pacific islanders, we have Russian and Ukrainian people…

But the love of Jesus breaks though all of these barriers and long narratives of hate and suspicion...

So that we are all one in Jesus..

In this parable Jesus calls his followers to have a never-ceasing selfless love of others because he first loved us.

With that I want to invite up my friend Mr. Quincy Jones Sr…To share his story with us

Quincy Testimony:

Jesus ends with Go and do

Love is actionable

love breaks down barriers