We Value Holy Love pt. 2

Introduction

Tonight, I want to speak on part two of our third core value, HOLY LOVE: Loving Everybody Like You Love You..

The text that we’ll be focusing on is what is known as the Great Commandment.. Found in Matthew 22, Mark 12, and Luke 10. Last week, we focused on Mark 12. This week, we’ll be studying Luke 10.

Luke 10:25 And behold, a lawyer stood up to put him to the test, saying, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” 26 He said to him, “What is written in the Law? How do you read it?” 27 And he answered, “You shall 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 your neighbor as yourself.” 28 And he said to him, “You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live.”

29 But he, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” 30Jesus replied, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half dead. 31 Now by chance a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him he passed by on the other side. 32 So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. 33 But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion. 34 He went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he set him on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him. 35 And the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, ‘Take care of him, and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back.’ 36 Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?” 37 He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” And Jesus said to him, “You go, and do likewise.”

Prayer - 1-Speak through me. 2-Be here with us. 3-Let whatever I say be perceived as you intend. 4-I pray that lives are changed tonight by the power of your Word. 5- Above all, may this message bring honor and glory to your name.

The greatest two commandments are to love God and love people. To love God with our everything, like we talked about last week… and to love everybody like we love us - that’s what we’re going to learn about tonight. So let’s dive into the text..

So this lawyer (an expert on Mosaic Law - most likely a Pharisee) is asking Jesus what he has to do to inherit eternal life, probably not to actually learn from Jesus but to try to trap Him in a way where He’s hoping Jesus will contradict the law. And Jesus tells him, in short, “keep the great commandment - love God with your everything and love others like you love you, and you’re in.”

Let’s revisit, for a minute, what we talked about last week because this is very important. Inheriting eternal life, like we talked about last week, is synonymous with being known by God. Jesus said that on the day of judgment, many will say ‘Lord, Lord… I did all these things in your name’ and He’ll say, “Depart from me. I never knew you.” Because they did those things for others to see or for their own benefit, not out of a place of genuine love for God. Remember, we’re not just here to check boxes and do these things that look good to everybody who sees us. We’re here to have an intimate relationship with Jesus, which is rooted in a true love for Him. And naturally, if our love comes from a place of intimacy with God, then Godly things, Godly works will follow. Jesus said that those who love Him do what? They keep His commandments - and the greatest commandments are loving God (with our everything) and loving others like we love us.

In this story, we see three individuals with three different titles (social standings). Each had their own response to this man in need…and their individual responses revealed something very important about each of them.

Priest Direct descendant of Aaron, the first high priest Admired in the religious community Very well-versed in religious ceremony, even well-versed in the Word of God. Passed by the man Did he love his neighbor as himself? NO Levite Member of the tribe of Levi Assistant to the priest, well-versed in & knowledgeable about the things of God. Passed by the man Did he love his neighbor as himself? NO Samaritan Despised by Jews. No religious standing or admiration. Had compassion on the man Did he love his neighbor as himself? YES

GOD IS CONCERNED ABOUT OUR HEART - HOW WE LOVE HIM AND LOVE OTHERS. He doesn’t care about our status.

And this text gives us the perfect example of 1) Who our neighbor is… and 2) What it looks like to love our neighbor as ourselves.

Who is our neighbor? Anyone we come into contact with.

This whole dialogue is between Jesus and a religious leader, a Jew. That’s important because Jesus reveals to this man that loving your neighbor doesn’t just mean loving your own people. Your neighbor, Jesus is telling this Jew, includes the Samaritan.

That’s important for us because it means that our neighbor is anyone that we come in contact with. That’s those who are in the church and those who are not… those who love us AND those who hate us.

And our duty is to love our neighbor, our friends and our enemies, the same way that we love ourselves.

What does loving our neighbor as ourselves look like? Having active compassion.

What I mean by active compassion is we aren’t just called to feel sorry for others; we’re called to help them. For all we know, the priest and the Levite may have felt bad for the man in need, but the Bible says that they just passed by. The good Samaritan had compassion AND helped the man out.

So for us, loving our neighbor as ourselves means that we should actively help anyone in need that we can… Pretty simple, right?

But loving our neighbor can and should go deeper than simply helping someone out in a time of need. If we are in Christ, then our number one mission is to do what? Fulfill the will of God. We talked last week about how if we claim Jesus as Lord and call ourselves His follower, then our eyes are totally fixed on His will; we’re living the 6:33 life. Matthew 6:33 is our purpose here on earth - Seek FIRST the Kingdom of God.

To love our neighbors as ourselves is to want for them what we want for us - and we want to know God’s will and do God’s will. SO, the full display, in the Christian life, of loving others as ourselves is doing everything in our power to see the will of God fulfilled in their lives. LOVING OTHERS AS YOURSELF = HELPING THEM SEE GOD’S WILL FULFILLED IN THEIR LIFE. If I truly love you, then above all else, I want to see you walk in God’s will. This is why loving God with our everything is priority #1 over loving others… because when we align our hearts with God, then He shows us the way in which we should love others. And remember, our neighbors include unbelievers and believers alike, so I want to look first at what it means to love unbelievers as ourselves, then what it means to love our brothers and sisters in Christ as ourselves. First, unbelievers…

Loving Unbelievers as ourselves means doing everything we can to get them to Jesus. (because that’s the will of God)

E. 2 Peter 3:9 The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.

According to this scripture, it’s not God’s desire that any would live and die without coming to a saving faith in Christ. Now, according to God’s sovereign will, He knows that many will not reach a place of repentance, and as a result, will perish, will not have eternal life.

But according to this scripture, it is clearly God’s preference that none would die without coming to Christ. John 3:16 says that “God so loved the WORLD (not that God so loved this group or this group), “God so loved the WORLD that He gave His only son, that WHOSOEVER believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.” When the Bible uses the words “world” and “whosoever”, God means anybody and everybody who would repent and believe the Gospel. The whosoever includes me, it includes you, it includes the best Christian you know and it includes those who are currently living a life of unrepentant sin…if they come to a place of genuine faith, then they are just as saved as the best Christian you know. The WHOSOEVER includes your best friend, and it includes your most distant neighbor.

And our role in loving our unbelieving neighbor is, by the love of God within us, is doing all that we can to see them go from just an unbeliever in the world to one of the whosoever that believes in Christ. And if the love of God is within us, then it has the power to bring people to Jesus. Let me give you an example…

A few of us attend a men’s Bible study on Thursdays at Pine Lakes, and there’s an old man who attends named Carl. Carl has to be in His mid-70s. But God has called Carl to help Christians around the world in need. Last week he told the story of how he recently traveled to Laos (a country between Thailand and Vietnam) to dig a well for this small Christian community. Why would Carl and his group travel across the world to do this? Because they’re filled with the love of God and have a love for people. The next well was very far away from this community, so non-Christians who needed water asked if they could draw from the well, and all these people did was love them and say yes, of course you can have some of this water. So they would come back and bring friends, and being surrounded by other believers, would hear the Gospel, then they’d bring back more friends… and they’d hear the Gospel. Carl said that at the time that he came back home, there were 20 new converts from this tiny village, now in their church.

And what brought them to Christ? The love of those who are in Christ. They saw genuine love, and in that these believers had an opportunity to share the Gospel… and as a result, eternity was changed for 20 souls (and likely many more)… because these Christians chose to love their neighbors just like they love themselves.

But you don’t have to travel across the world to love your neighbor in a Godly way. Sometimes, you may just have to travel across the street. Loving our neighbors as ourselves can mean helping a neighbor with yardwork…it can simply mean being nice and having a nice conversation. It can mean sending an encouraging text or facebook comment.

Remember, we talked about last week how if we’re in a real intimate relationship with God, then His love will flow into every part of our lives, including our interactions with unbelievers.

And if you are in-step with God, if you’re Spirit-led, then you are Holy, you are different… and it’s noticeable to others. 1 Peter 3:15 says Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.

If you walk in love and active compassion toward unbelievers, I promise you that you will have an opportunity to share Jesus with them. And that’s our job - to plant seeds of the Gospel every chance we get until those seeds fall on a heart that’s ready to receive Christ. Just keep planting those seeds, even when it’s difficult, even when it may be awkward or uncomfortable, and trust God to take care of the rest.

Because that’s what it means to love our unbelieving neighbors as ourselves…leading them to Jesus through love.

Now, loving our brothers and sisters in Christ as ourselves is going to look a little bit different…

Here’s the last point, and it’s the most important one for a church family to hear.

Loving fellow Christians as ourselves means doing all we can to keep them in God’s will.

This faith walk is by no means a cake walk. Being a Christian, living the life that God has called us to, can be a challenging task…and it’s one that we’re not intended to walk alone. Remember when we studied loving God last week, we learned that Jesus, when talking about how we’re commanded to love God with our everything, was quoting scripture out of Deuteronomy. The heart of God does not change from one generation to the next, or even from the Old Testament to the New Testament. God’s character and God’s will are the same yesterday, today, and forever. So it makes sense that when Jesus talks about the second commandment, “loving others as ourselves” He’s quoting scripture again, that at the time was over 1,000 years old.. This time out of the book of Leviticus.

Leviticus 19:18 You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD.

Many Christians think of Leviticus as an extremely boring book because of its emphasis on all these laws that God gives His people, but it actually goes way deeper than that.. The overarching theme throughout the book of Leviticus is holiness. That’s why God gave the Levites all these strict ceremonial laws, so they would stand out, so they would be set apart from the rest of the world – HOLY. And when Christ came, He fulfilled the ceremonial law and established a new covenant, meaning we can eat what we want and so forth.. That ceremonial law is gone, but moral law remains, meaning we are still called to love one another in this way. That is why our third core value is not simply “love”; it’s HOLY LOVE. The way we love looks different than the way the world loves. Like these ceremonial laws made the Israelites holy, set apart from the rest of the world…the love of a Christian makes us HOLY, set apart from the rest of our world.

So let’s take a look at what God’s Word says about holy love.

For a better understanding, let’s back it up a verse: Leviticus 19:17 ‘You shall not hate your brother in your heart. You shall surely rebuke your neighbor, and not bear sin because of him. 18 You shall not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the children of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord. (NKJV)

Now, for context, this word is written to a community of believers as an example of how we should love fellow believers. This is a specific word for how believers should love believers.

This scripture, the one that Jesus quotes in the great commandment, is saying that loving our brother or sister means keeping them from sinning; it means keeping them in God’s will. Out of a place of love, we are called to play an active role in keeping our fellow Christians in the will of God.

When the Bible says “You shall rebuke your neighbor”, that’s obviously not the only way we show love to our brothers and sisters in Christ. We pray for them, we lift them up in times of need, we encourage them… We’re called to do all those things.

But “You shall rebuke your neighbor” is a command that God gives us for brothers or sisters in sin for two reasons: 1) That sin pulls them out of the will of God.. and 2) When their sin is not addressed, it can cause resentment to build up within us or can cause us to conform to sinning the same way they are. The Bible says that bad company corrupts good character. When we idly stand by when our friends are going down a destructive path, not only do they fall into the trap of sin, but we go with them. That’s why it’s so important for us to build each other up, lift each other up, and help keep each other in step with God.

And there IS a Biblical way to do that Galatians 6:1 says Brothers and sisters, if someone is caught in a sin, you who live by the Spirit should restore that person gently. But watch yourselves, or you also may be tempted.

In other words, when we have to correct a brother or sister in Christ, we let them know that we love them, and that we want to see God’s best for them. We want to see God’s will fulfilled in their lives. And we don’t do it out of a place of superiority; we do it out of a place of love.

Those who are closest to me have an invitation to correct me, to rebuke me, when they see any pattern in my life that may pull me out of the will of God. And they don’t need permission because they have the authority of the Word of God. 2 Tim 3:16 says that All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness.

Holding each other accountable to the Word of God is the only way we help carry each other toward the will of God.

If someone we claim to love is headed down a destructive path, drifting away from God and drifting into sin, and we do nothing about it…then we’re no different than the priest or the Levite who passed by the man in need on the other side of the road. LOVE ISN’T ALWAYS CONVENIENT AND COMFORTABLE. It wasn’t comfortable for the Samaritan to give up his time, money, and resources…but loving our neighbor in a Holy, Biblical way has to take priority over our convenience and our comfortability.

Let me give you one final illustration of Holy love, of doing all we can to help our brothers or sisters walk with Jesus.

Mark 2:2 many were gathered together, so that there was no more room, not even at the door. And Jesus was preaching the word to them. 3 And they came, bringing to him a paralytic carried by four men. 4 And when they could not get near him because of the crowd, they removed the roof above him, and when they had made an opening, they let down the bed on which the paralytic lay. 5 And when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven.”

These four men knew that their friend, the paralytic, needed to get to Jesus. There was no way into the door, so they literally tore off the roof to get to Him. The paralytic is not the only one who needs Jesus. We all desperately need Jesus, to walk in relationship with Jesus. To love our brothers and sisters in Christ like we love ourselves is to be like one of those four, to do everything we can to get our friend to Jesus…to do everything in our power to make sure our friends are walking in the will of God - as friends, as professionals, as parents, and as spouses.

And we are ALL capable, because we have a flesh that we contend with, of getting to a place where we need to be brought BACK to Jesus by our brothers and sisters. I have many brothers (more than 4) in this room, who want to see the will of God fulfilled in my life, and they will do what’s necessary to make sure that happens. I have a great desire to see the will of God fulfilled in your life. That’s why I harp on it every week.. That’s my job as pastor.

My encouragement for you tonight, first, is to surround yourselves with people who will do whatever it takes to see you walk in God’s will. Men, surround yourselves with men, and women, surround yourselves with women, who will sharpen you, who will make you closer to God. And if you don’t feel like you have those people in your life, then this room is a great place to find them.

And lastly, love others in such a way that you’re like one of those four who literally tore the roof off to get their friend to Jesus. Be the friend that loves so deeply that you’re going to do whatever it takes to see the will of God fulfilled in their lives. Because that is what Jesus meant when He commanded us to love others like we love ourselves. Amen?