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Matt 22.34-40
Matthew 22:34-40 (ESV)
34 But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. 35 And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. 36 “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” 37 And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbour as yourself. 40On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”
Prayer
The Love of God as it is poured into the hearts of men and women.
Story : Rings on Flight Simulator
This in a way illustrates the Christians journey through life. If we were left to go alone, we would crash land, in fact we would not even be able to fly! But we’re not left on our own. We don’t have to rely on our own devices through life’s journey. God God gave us guides to help us live the Christian life. God sent us Christians to follow, even more: He sent Christ himself.
Bible compares Christian’s life to a walk.
[Genesis 6:9] Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation. Noah walked with God
[Deuteronomy 5:33] You shall walk in all the way that the Lord your God has commanded
[Philippians 3:17 Brothers, join in imitating me, and keep your eyes on those who walk according to the example you have in us.
Christian life = journey, walk in the park. NB to think correctly, there are right and wrong ways to think about the Christian journey. Some Christians view it as their success, their spiritual fitness, their skill that allows them to achieve spiritual success.
Christians who hold to this, fall in the trap of legalism. Actually 3 kinds of legalism:
1. Most dangerous by far. People who practice this kind of legalism believe that you can by fulfilling law, by working hard enough at it, earn God’s favour and God’s salvation. This type of legalism stresses that I must DO something to gain God’s favour.
2. Second kind is more like the Pharisees. It goes something like this: they would say: This is law of God and his precepts, but we will add a few more to make sure it is that the right way is clear. The Pharisees:said if you do what God says And you do what we say, you will be OK
3. Know G saved. But they think like this: G saved me, now it is time for me start doing something to repay him for what he did for me. The Bible says: Pray , so I pray, the bible says tithe so I tithe, the bible says witness so I witness. I do what the Word says Their concept of the Christian life is: God did something for me, so now I must do something from my side.
A great deal of the popular Christian books that you would find in bookshops today follow this line of thinking. Full of techniques and tools to live a proper Christian life
5 ways to form edifying friendships
6 ways to become a godly leader
7 ways to a spiritually fulfilled marriage
8 ways to a better prayer life
After they gave given you a list of tools and tips, they also give you a list of the afflictions of our current society, and they say: it is time for you to stop downward spiral that inflicts us. It is time for you to do something, to get to work, to assume responsibility, it is time for you pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and resolve to go and sin no more.
Says: Some of you are doing bad things – stop it. Some of you are doing good things keep it up for rest of life. Furthermore if you are doing bad things, resolve to stop, get up in the morning, pray, commit yourself to him, give yourself 100% to him, and you will be on right path.
To certain extend this is correct. We should commit yourself to God. We should pray in the morning and everything else. Problem = most Christians already know this. They know that they should give themselves to God. And the relentless stress what you and I OUGHT TO DO obscures the fact that Christian life is not that of essentially lawkeeping but one essentially of love. When you stress that you and i should do and do and do, why it is that some do not get up and pray. It is because we don’t want to! Why it that we do not succeed in resolving to stop sinning? It is because we like to sin! Whys is it that we do not succeed is following God 100%? It is because we like to be double minded and not to focus on God. We like to have little areas of our lives where we do not want God to enter. We like to lead the life we lead.
Problem with these books are that it is full of good advice but it lacks nearly any reference to the importance of grace.
Law., law, law and little or nothing about grace.
It says if you want to be a good Christian , be perfect But then if you don’t succeed you feel defeated, Law becomes a burden, you fail, land in despair.
But: God has a better way. It is true that he gives us laws and that we have to submit to them. It’s true that obedience is important. But obedience is only one facet of Christian life, and not even the first facet. Gods love and G’s grace always precedes his commands. What does John say? He says in 1 John 4:10
In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
Paul says: it is the love of Christ which compels us to live not for ourselves but for God. Elsewhere Paul says: It is the grace of God (not the law of God) it is the grace of God that teaches us to say no to unworldly passions.
I want you understand this clearly, we need the law of God. The law of God is necessary for us to know our sin. But the Law of God, by itself does not change people; it is only God through his grace that changes lives.
Business world: commands, rules can’t change people. Rules can only change behaviour. They will obey rules in the office because they fear if they don’t, the will get fired. Rules can’t change people, only God can change people.
Root of Christian living is God’s prior love awakening in us our returning love. It is the fact that god loved us first, that creates in us the ability to return this love to him!
Obey not in order to gain his favour but because of his favour. Because he loves we obey.
Before God gave is commandments to the Israelites, he first said remember how I loved you, how I brought you out of Egypt. Because I did this, because I loved you, because I carried you through the desert, Now hear my commandments. Now obey me! Then you will be my treasured possession.
It goes like this: God’s love and redemption, then God’s commands then love and redemption again.
Now all of this may be somewhat familiar to everyone here. We all had certain reasons about why we obey god.
Reasons for obedience
1, Way of wisdom. Sensible. God created all, made me, so surely it is wise doing things his way.
2, Way of trust. God loves us and will never mislead us we should obey as he directs and He will make it work.
3. Way of gratitude. God has done so much for me and I because am grateful, I am now I should do something in return, give myself.
These three are no as bad as these two reasons:
4, Way of merit. I’ll do something good so I will get something good in return. If you do not have quiet time in the morning, your day will go bad! If I obey God, God will bless me. R100 notes on the street.
5. Way of fear. If I don’t do things the way God want’s me to, he will make bad things happen to me.
Bernard Clairvaux in the 12 century Book “On loving god”
Considered the person reluctant to obey God.
"We cajole the unwilling with promises and rewards, not the willing. Who offers men rewards for doing what they want to do? Do we pay hungry men to eat? So then, if we demand benefits to obey God, perhaps we love the benefits rather than God." The soul that loves God, seeks no other reward than the God whom it loves. Were the soul to demand anything else then it would love that other thing and not God.” In Other Words we should obey God not for what we get out of it but for pure love for him.
Let me illustrate it in another way..
Ask runner the Q: Why do you run?
- father and grandfather died early
- When I run I can eat anything I want and when I run I sleep so well.
- smile , when I run my legs fly over the road wind blows on my face, I fell like I am floating!
Which one loves running? 1st Loves his life 2nd loves his tummy and his bed. 3rd loves running! .
Same with obedience to God: Some people obey God out of fear, some because they believe that they may gain something from obeying God and then some obey God because of their love for God. That is what the Lord seeks from us!! That we love him for his sake!
Now again don’t misunderstand me: There are rewards for obedience. Good things do come to those who obey God. But that should not motivate us.
I am not trying to tell you to work out a pure love for God in your heart. I believe God has given that love to you. All we have to do is to nurture it. Tell we love him, spend time in his presence.
Now again I don’t want you to understand me wrong: I do not say that if you love God you will never sin again.
The description: “Man of God” ascribed to David. He loved God. His whole life showed that he was a man after God’s heart. But he was far from perfect. Just take the incident of his adultery with Bathsheba – (broke all 10 commandments). Deserve to die. And yet, God showed him mercy. After the Prophet Nathan rebuked him, he showed deep remorse. There were no excuses, he didn’t say I did it because most of my wives does it. Did not put blame on others; Didn’t say it was her fault because she bathed naked in front of his window. Or blamed god by saying: “You put her there”
No excuses; just: I sinned against the Lord. Full stop. Period. An then the prophet said the Lord took away your sin.
So the Man of God or woman God, loving God, can still be a sinner. We still sin daily, you know how easily things come between us and god, how we argue with people around us, how we loose our tempers in the traffic, how we hurt people around us. And when we turn to God for grace we must admit that sometimes our confession is somewhat tainted, that we are almost too glad that God has covered our sin and that we are not enough sad that we have committed the sin. But that is OK. Because it is not the quality of our faith that makes us right with God, but the object of our faith: The God who loves us and awakens in us enough love that we can live lives of love. Imperfect, yes, but still lives of love. Loving our fellow man, loving God from our hearts.
What we need in able to lead loving lives is the not advice, but deliverance. We do not need flying lessons, we need the ability to fly, which God has granted us through his grace. We need to be remade by God, by his grace. And we know that he is remaking in to his image, by his Spirit. We should love God for his own sake to the best of our ability flawed though we are, knowing that his love awakens in us the ability to love.
Prayer:
Heavenly Father. Help us to love you and those around us fully. Thank you that you have given us that love through your Son Jesus Christ.
Amen