Love With Volume pt1

I saw a meme recently that really hit home. Posted by someone I know and love- it was both heartbreaking and true in its statement.

“It’s hard to convince people that a God they can’t see loves them, when a church they can see doesn’t seem to even like them.”

Indicting. Damning. Heartbreaking.

And what is wild to me, is the reactions to the thought stirred up in me a variety of thoughts and reactions and responses.

Because there is a real call, in the church, to repent and change and leave behind what God calls sin for His much better righteousness. And if that makes someone think a church “doesn’t like them” because we want to see them meet Jesus and become new people, we cannot back off of that.

But how we do that, and how we engage in that conversation, to me, is more what this statement was getting at.

And it truthfully goes beyond that.

We come into church and sing about how much Jesus loves people and how He cares about them and wants to meet them at their point of greatest need, and yet so many in churches across America leave their churches and spend the rest of the week dehumanizing the very people Jesus came to save.

I have been profoundly troubled about this even prior to this series. I see far too many people who claim to be followers of Jesus engaging in this kind of dehumanizing rhetoric, or staying silent in the face of it.

And when I see this, my mind keeps going back to Matthew 23, where Jesus comes at the Pharisees with both barrels, on how their worship is fake and their religion is dead and produces death rather than life.

So as we start this series on Love With Volume, I want to invite you to take down your defenses, and really be honest with yourself- how are we falling into the trap of leaving church with worship on our lips and walking out to the world God called us to reach with nothing to offer?

Let’s start with vs 1-12.

Worship is humble. When we worship at church we are not singing our own praises. We are praising Jesus.

Matthew 2. Judgment on the Temple but Also on the Nations (23:1–25:46)

First, these Jewish leaders paraded their piety by enlarging the length and width of the tefillin and zizith which they wore. The tefillin (Greek phylakteria, “phylacteries”) were small prayer boxes containing tiny copies of the texts of

Christians are not to be prideful or arrogant.

I disagree with my more Reformed brothers and sisters on some points, but one I agree with- we have nothing to offer God and all we are is because of Him.

Christianity is not a show off contest.

The Pharisees were the opposite. They made a big show of how religious they were- vs 4-7.

But look at verse 3.

The issue was not their preaching, it was their preaching didn’t match their actions.

Matthew 2. Judgment on the Temple but Also on the Nations (23:1–25:46)

The NIV excellently captures the sense of v. 3b—“they do not practice what they preach.” The Greek literally reads they speak and do not do. This inconsistency is typified by the demands the Pharisees made of others without helping them to perform those duties

(joke about not having a fish symbol on the back of my car)

Our role as followers of Jesus is to be servants, not rulers.

Jesus is the ruler. He does not need anyone to save Him or protect Him, or defend Him. I have heard this nonsense for the past decade. No one needs to do that. If they did, Jesus is not God.

Jesus does the defending. We do the serving.

What happens when we worship the wrong things like the Pharisees?

We make false converts. Look at vs 13-15.

Matthew 2. Judgment on the Temple but Also on the Nations (23:1–25:46)

The first woe decries the ironic state of affairs that those who should be opening the kingdom to people, pointing them to a proper relationship with God, are actually closing the door. They are not in the kingdom themselves because of their wrong attitudes and actions, and therefore others who follow their teaching, seeking after the truth, are instead led astray

Jesus tells the Pharisees, you literally make converts twice as bad as you.

Why is that? They are STILL lost AND they think that they are right with God and serving God by indulging in something false.

Actual worship, produces real converts because it focuses on Jesus, not self- and that includes self benefit, advancement, and advantage.

There is a real cost to following Jesus- the gain is HIM, not some benefit in this world.

We are not building kingdoms on corners.

Further, bad worship focuses on fake priorities. Look at vs 16-22.

Matthew 2. Judgment on the Temple but Also on the Nations (23:1–25:46)

The Jews apparently reasoned that, because a lien could not be put on the temple or altar, then oaths invoking those objects were meaningless. Jesus maintains that temple, gold, altar, and gift all point to God and remain equally sacred, so that oaths taken in their name remain equally binding. In the two examples of vv. 16–21, he seems to be making the additional point that what the Jews thought was the lesser item was actually the greater. The irony of their distinctions thus becomes all the more poignant

If you follow Jesus to get something for yourself, you are not following Jesus. You are following you. And I hate to tell you this, but you are a very poor Jesus.

Real worship focuses on the priorities of Jesus.

What are those? Well look just a few verses earlier- Mt 22:37-40. Love God and love other people. And that’s agape by the way.

That means the Somali immigrant. The Muslim jihadist. The Israeli settler. The ICE agent. The far right agitator.

It also means the relative who disagrees with you. The friend who called you out on your foolishness. The child who rejected you. The former spouse who hurt you. The pastor who betrayed you.

Because people are Jesus’ priority. And hating people or demonizing them or denying they are also God’s image bearers is the furthest you can get from worshiping God.

(There is a real focus today on cutting people off who disagree with us. That is not an option for the people who follow Jesus. We stay engaged because there is a greater calling on our lives)

Worship breaks when our priorities supersede those of Jesus.

And it gets worse when we try to replace religious activity with pietistic obedience. Look at vs 23-31.

The Pharisees do all the outward things right.

We see so many people cosplaying as Christians today. They go to church. They write a check. They post a verse.

But it never gets to the heart.

Matthew 2. Judgment on the Temple but Also on the Nations (23:1–25:46)

Our Christian behavior and church appearance looks exemplary on the outside, particularly on Sundays. But how much do we spend on ourselves, indulging our material and sensual appetites and attacking others without adequate cause? If these problems could be remedied, outward appearances would take care of themselves

Worship is a matter of the heart and what is in our heart is revealed in how we treat people.

We cannot say we are worshiping Jesus and not practice justice and mercy and faithfulness.

Jesus says the Pharisees are like a dirty cup and a whitewashed tomb.

They look good on the outside but the inside is rotting.

And even worse look at vs 30-31.

Matthew 2. Judgment on the Temple but Also on the Nations (23:1–25:46)

We now reach the climax of the series of woes and return to the theme of the parables of the wicked tenants and wedding banquet (21:33–22:14). Of all the inconsistencies of these Jewish leaders, the one most serious and relevant to the immediate context of Passion Week is their rejection and martyrdom of God’s true spokespersons and, above all, of Jesus. Such hostility proves all the more horrific since “this generation” disavows the sins of their forefathers and tries retrospectively to honor them through building and decorating cemetery memorials

We play the comparison game.

Church, the only comparison for us is Jesus. He is the measure- and we always fall short- which is why we need a Savior.

So what hope is left for us? That we would not respond like the Pharisees. That we would hear the people God sends to us- like in verse 34- and repent.

God is not in the business of ignoring repentance. And He is not in the practice of rejecting worship from His people who have responded to His call to repent.

That repentance starts with acknowledging what needs to change AND turning away from what we have given to God as fake worship.

It may be painful, but Jesus is worth it.