Combustible Love and the Fire of God

Last week was a paradox for me. On one hand, I don’t know that I’ve ever left our church under greater conviction than I did last week. As I wrestle with how often I love the forgiveness of God and the rewards of God and the gifts of God and even the temporal, fleeting pleasures of earth more than I love him with all of my heart and all of my soul and all of my mind, and I realize that I’ve never kept the Great Commandment perfectly for five seconds in my entire life, it’s devastating. It’s devastating to bring that type of self-centeredness and that perversion of love into the presence of perfect love and holy God. But then, on the other hand, I don’t know that I’ve every left our church more certain of the presence of God than last week. I looked at your faces, and I saw a church that wants to love God. And, I thought, “How rare! This is a sermon that can get you fired! And yet, my people, they receive and they love it because they genuinely want to come before God with a purer love and greater love that only He can provide by his grace in the Kingdom Gospel!”

And, this is the type of paradox we should find ourselves in every week when we gather with God’s people. It’s one of the reasons we should aim to come every week. We should on one hand find ourselves convicted by the Spirit through word of our sin that we might be ever more in the image of Jesus, and yet we should leave always encouraged and excited because Jesus is sufficient for our weakness and failings, and the Gospel never leaves us in despair! And so, this morning, I ask you: How have you done with the Greatest Commandment this week? Have you sought to find all of your happiness in God and to center the entirety of your calendar and energy and budget around him this week? Did He consume your thoughts as a healthy obsession, captivating you so that you could see his kindness and be aware of his presence, even in the most mundane of moments? Brothers and sisters, let us not be a church that leaves the sermon at church but that applies it when we leave, and it is in the application of this Great Commandment that Jesus takes us yet deeper this morning.

“Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” So, if you’ll remember back to last week, we’re still on Tuesday of Passion Week, and we’re still in the midst of this smear campaign where the leaders of Israel are working to turn the crowds against Jesus so that they can have him arrested and ultimately executed. And, it’s not going very well. The Sadducees have just failed, and the Pharisees are tired of failing so they send in one of their big guns, an expert, their Matlock, their super lawyer. And, it was a common question in that day to ask, which law out of all the laws was the very weightiest law? Out of all 613 laws, which law was the heaviest, the weightiest, the most important? That is, what is man’s greatest duty before God? Now, it’s most likely that it’s his goal to show that Jesus, by his answer, doesn’t believe or uphold God’s law and that instead Jesus has come to abolish God’s. It was a common charge against Jesus leveled at him by the Pharisees, and if they could get that charge to stick they would have him dead to rights. No Jewish crowd would be able to tolerate a prophet, a teacher, and certainly not a Messiah who abolished God’s law.

Depend ALL the Law and Prophets

“You shall love the Lord your God” But, Jesus answers without hesitation and in a way that Matthew tells us silences every listener. He quotes the law that every Jew was most familiar with. The very one they and their children quoted every morning and every evening. “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” You see, Jesus reminds them that they only had the law because God loved them and was their God and obligated himself to them, and if they loved him back then their own definition of love, their own commitment to the covenant they made in response to God’s love would compel them in obedience to all of God’s law. This wasn’t about begrudging, meticulous law-keeping. This was about passionate, joyful love which led to obedience.

“And a second is like it” But then, Jesus does something strange. Jesus answers a question that wasn’t asked. Jesus goes for extra credit. Now, I want you to think about this setting. They’re asking Jesus this series of perfectly crafted questions for the purpose of tripping Jesus up and causing him to say something that is off center. If I’m Jesus, I would look straight ahead and give strict yes and no answers. But, here’s Jesus expounding on the questions that He’s been asked! He’s like, “I’ll do you one better! I’ll not only tell you the greatest commandment, but I’ll tell you the second greatest also!” And, do you notice what He says about it? He says that it’s ‘like it.’ That is, it’s almost just as great as the first one. This duty is ‘like’ the duty that you have to love God with all of you heart and all of your soul and all of your mind. Let that sink in. This isn’t some social activist saying this. These are the words of Jesus, God incarnate! For Jesus to compare anything to your love of God is radical and extreme to the highest extent. This is our cue that if we’re going to follow Jesus we better listen up and buckle up. There are difficult and radical words to follow.

“Love your neighbor as yourself” So, here’s what he says: Love your neighbor as yourself. That is, seek after the well-being of your neighbor with the same intensity and the same ferocity as you seek after your own well-being. Seek after your neighbors’ happiness as your seek after your happiness. Seek after your neighbors’ place in the world as you seek after your place in the world. Seek to eliminate your neighbors’ loneliness as you seek to eliminate your own. With the same passion and with same zeal and with the same study and with the same intensity that you take care of you and you seek after what is best for you; seek after what is best for your neighbor! Love your neighbor as yourself. This is radical, but it isn’t new. You’ll notice in verse 40 that Jesus says that all of the law and prophets “depend,” or “hang” on these two. If you take the ten commandments and you divide them, the first four have to do with your relationship with God and the final six have to do with your relationship with others. If you take the whole of God’s word, that is, everything that God has ever said, it will literally fall into one of two categories, your relationship with God or your relationship with people. So, Jesus had not come to abolish the law, Jesus had come to fulfill the law, in fact to unite the law, as the true Mediator of the Law, as the One who could bring people into perfect relationship with God and with one another forever as the One who is entirely God and entirely man!

Why would Jesus make it a point to go a step further in answering a question that wasn’t asked? It could be that Jesus wanted to be certain to show that there was not a single dot or iota of the Law that He did not uphold or fulfill, and this is likely part of the reason. But, I think there’s more to it than that. Because, you see, in the Temple complex one of things that had made them so upset with Jesus had been his refusal to send away the blind and the lame but to instead welcome them with love and compassion and to heal them. And, this was a legacy that his disciples would carry forth as they were establishing his Kingdom on this earth. And so, I think Jesus was showing this Pharisee proof and evidence that the love of God was not in his heart even though the love of the Law was. Because just like you can love forgiveness and not God, you can love the Law and not God, but you can’t see a love for God, can you? You can’t see what’s in a man or woman’s heart, can you? We could drive around our community today, and it would be very difficult to find many people that would say they don’t love God, even if there is no fruit. But, you see, these two commandments are so interlocked that you cannot have one without the other. The second greatest commandment is the clearest fruit and the clearest evidence of the first. You can’t see it, and you can’t measure it, but when a man or woman loves God, combustion happens in their hearts. There is an internal combustion beneath the surface of new passions and new hungers and new affections and new attitudes. And, you can’t see this combustion. It’s a smoldering wick in the heart of the believer. But, do you know what happens? It sets everything around them on fire! Their relationship with their wife changes. They change at work. They change in the way they relate to their kids. They’re much quicker to seek forgiveness. They used to be stingy, but now their generous with others. And so, you can’t see the combustion in the heart, but you can see the fire in the relationships. This is why Jesus brings it up.

But, this doesn’t come easy, does it? The biggest issue with loving our neighbor as ourselves is that we feel responsible to ourselves, and we fill like that we've earned our generosity and we deserve our kindness. After all, we're the ones that put in the long hours at work and diligence to put money away and to invest wisely. We are the ones that do all of those things; so, we are the ones who deserve to be rewarded. Our neighbor has not done any of those things. Our neighbor doesn't wake up early or work late. Our neighbor isn't the one doing without what they'd like to have so that they can save and invest. Our neighbor isn't the one working the overtime. Our neighbor isn't the one with chaotic work schedule and the 60 hour week and tee ball practice to boot. So, if they need something, if they need help, they're going to have figure something out; they should have prepared better; they need to call family or their church; or maybe, I'll throw them some of my scraps and grumble the whole time. Because they just don't deserve it; I do.

APPLICATION: Do you treat people as Jesus treated them? Do you have time for them? Do you put them at ease? Do you send away their accusers and offer them friendship? Do you rebuke the self-righteous and comfort the afflicted? Do you take on other peoples' messes and bear other peoples' burdens? Do you inconvenience yourself for the good of others? Do you get up early to pray for them? Are you willing to tell them about eternal life? Are you both gentle and truthful? Are you compassionate and receptive? Are you patient? Are you sacrificial and generous? Are you willing to go them, even if they won't come to you? Are you willing to have your day interrupted? Are you willing to forgive your betrayers or restore relationships with those who have hurt you deeply? Are you willing to teach those who won't listen or to keep teaching those who don't seem to get it? Are you willing to see past all of the labels and obstacles that society has built regarding race and class and gender?

Except that every bit of that type of thinking is anti-gospel, anti-cross, and anti-Jesus. You see, that's the thinking of a Pharisee's heart. That's the thinking of a legalist's heart. "I'm doing A + B + C so I deserve D. My life is built by my faithfulness and my sweat and my goodness." And, it flies in the face of the Greatest Commandment that says, He is the Lord YOUR God, and He is the One that has given you all that you have and all that you will have, and He is the One that will provide for you today and tomorrow and forever. So, love him with your, your soul, and your mind by trusting him with everything. You see, the Gospel says that you didn't deserve God's love or God's provision or God's kindness, but in Christ, He pursued you and came to you and gave it all to you. And so now, you love your neighbor, not in proportion to how much or how little your neighbor deserves to be loved, but you love you love your neighbor as the Lord your God has shown you love. And by loving people in a way that is so radical and so far beyond what the world expects or believes that they deserve, you paint a picture of the gospel of Jesus Christ that is visible and tangible for our community to see.

APPLICATION: Do you treat people as Jesus treated them? Do you have time for them? Do you put them at ease? Do you take on other peoples' messes and bear other peoples' burdens? Do you inconvenience yourself for the good of others? Are you willing to tell them about eternal life? Are you willing to forgive your betrayers or restore relationships with those who have hurt you deeply? Are you willing to teach those who won't listen or to keep teaching those who don't seem to get it? Are you willing to see past all of the labels and obstacles that society has built regarding race and class and gender?

You know, we’re bare minimum people when it comes to others, but indulgent people when it comes to ourselves, but this commandment introduces us to a new question: How would I want to be loved if that were me? It’s the Golden Rule, and in reality, it’s a call for us to remember the cross. It’s a call for us to remember the self-giving, self-denying, sinner-loving cross where Jesus gave himself for us, and it rips us away from our bare-minimum, self-indulgent love so that we might love others as we would want to be loved.

Here in , Jesus is teaching it will be apparent that you will know whether or not a man is serious about loving God if his love for God is actuated in a radical, self-sacrificing love for others. And, you see, in Acts and the early church, it was this radical love that gave credibility to the radical message that they preached. The clearest evidence our neighbors have of how much we love God is by how well we love them and one another. The Church in Acts teaches us what it means to love our neighbor as ourselves by showing us at least three neighbors through three statements:

The Church - “I’m willing to sacrifice my standard of living so that I can raise yours.” Our greatest responsibility is to love our neighbor as ourselves is within our church family. This is where it starts. The early church was an ever expanding church with an ever expanding membership and ever expanding needs. If your circle of friends doesn't expand as your church expands, then your circle of friends has become exclusive and not inclusive, and it is no longer indicative of the type of gospel community that is to be modeled in the life of the church. As new people have come into the life of the church family, has your circle of friends expanded? Remember the love your neighbor question: if you were new in a church family, wouldn't you want a circle of friends to be a part of? Oh church, what an opportunity to bring joy into someone's life! How would you want to be loved if it was you?

The Community - “I’m willing to be rejected by you so that you can know that God loves you.” Most people think of Alabama as being the Bible belt, and I wonder if that has made us complacent. With a population of just over 4.5 million people in our state, did you know that over 2 million are unreached. And, if we're honest, we know that the number is probably much higher of than that of those who are probably truly not born again. Our community is a young community and the younger you go that more unreached they are. Do we want forgiveness for them as badly as we want it for us? Are we loving our neighbor as we love ourselves? Your kids friends and their parents. The people on your street and that work beside you everyday. Waitresses are your neighbors. The guy at Best Buy, and the customer service employee at Sam's. Unloving and unconcerned churches going through the motions living as unloving and unconcerned neighbors will not make a dent in the 2 million+ unreached in our state. How would you want to be loved if it was you?

The Nations - “I’m willing to die so that you can be my brother or sister.” We live in a global neighborhood, and we have global neighbors. Jesus sought out our suffering and alleviated it. He sought us out. We didn't seek him out. He came to us; we didn't go to him. We should be in the business of seeking out suffering and alleviating it in the name of Jesus. Concern for the nations is not a calling that may eventually come from God; it is a command that has come from God already. How would you want to be loved if it was you?

Combustible Love and the Fire of God

Introduction

God’s Word

Read

Which Law is the Greatest?

Extra Credit

Love Your Neighbor as Yourself

The Combustion of the Heart

I deserve It, They Don’t

Do You Treat People As Jesus Treated Them?

Do You Treat People Like Jesus?

How Would You Want to Be Loved?