Commanding Love
Notes
Transcript
Welcome again
Welcome again
Thank you for having me.
Pray. “May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing to you, our Rock and our Redeemer.”
A Simple Message
A Simple Message
The message this morning is simple, the “big idea” sits right on top of the text. Love God, and everyone you see with everything you’ve got!
Inoculation
Inoculation
Let me start with this though.
We’ve been hearing a lot lately about vaccines and inoculation haven’t we. How does inoculation work? They implant a small bit of the virus into your system, and it allows your body to develop anti-bodies to kill it and prevent you from getting the virus again.
Here’s something to think about. I want to make a small point here, just something to think about. Sometimes in our Christian walk we can go through seasons where we become almost inoculated to the radical, stupendous, breath-taking truth of Jesus and his message to us. We hear small bits over and over and we cease to feel the affects of the Spirit in our lives. Another way of thinking about it is that we become numb. We say this text every Sunday morning! Look at page 106 in the BCP: The Summary of the Law.
Radical Message
Radical Message
While the message to Love God with everything you’ve got and love everyone you see may seem simple, we must remember that it is RADICAL! What Jesus is commanding runs against the grain of the World outside of us and the hearts within us.
Consider these passages concerning the human heart:
The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?
For from within, from the heart of people, come evil plans, sexual immoralities, thefts, murders, adulteries, acts of greed, malicious deeds, deceit, licentiousness, envy, abusive speech, pride, foolishness.
Listen to what the Bible says about the World:
Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him, because everything that is in the world—the desire of the flesh and the desire of the eyes and the arrogance of material possessions—is not from the Father, but is from the world.
And do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, so that you may approve what is the good and well-pleasing and perfect will of God.
The message of the Bible, the message of Jesus, is radical! AND It it radically, breath-takingly good!
Jump into the passage
Jump into the passage
What is happening here?
Jesus has entered into Jerusalem as the Messiah King (Palm Sunday)
He has cleansed the temple. He’s the True High Priest
He tells three stinging parables that rebuke the hypocritical religious leaders in Israel. He is a, THE Prophet.
These three parables are followed by three challenges from the religious leaders. Look at verse 15, these tests were not from pure hearts. They were trying to trap him so they could destroy him.
Look how three very different (and competing) groups come together to conspire against YHWH and his Anointed (Ps 2:2).
The Pharisees: The conservative fundamentalists who were really concerned with the outward appearance of religious piety, but had lost sight of the inner realities of what God was doing.
The Herodians: People who where loyal servants of the puppet king of Israel. At this time it would be Herod Antipas.
The Sadducees: Liberal religious political party that wanted to get in bed with Rome. A part of the religious leadership body in Israel called the Sanhedrin.
Look how Jesus is bringing people together (JOKE!)
So now to our text, the third of the three challenges.
“a legal expert” or a “lawyer” is a guy who supposedly knows the Torah like the back of his hand.
“test him” is the same phrase used of Satan in Matt 4!
Jesus quotes Deuteronomy!
The question of the greatest commandment was a popular one in Jesus’ day. Many answers had been put forward by famous Jewish leaders.
ALL your heart, soul, mind = your whole being, everything you have.
But Jesus then quotes Leviticus, and so doing stitches the command to love others on to the command to love God!
In the Sermon on the Mount and in the parable of the Good Samaritan, Jesus expands exclusive understandings of “neighbor” to mean a more inclusive idea of everyone (even your enemy) you encounter.
But hear is the simple reality: You cannot love God without loving others, or vise versa!
Is that how you think of Leviticus? If you were asked to quote the greatest, most important part of Scripture, would your mind jump to Leviticus?
In fact, would it even jump to the OT? Jesus says that loving God with everything you’ve got and loving everyone around you is the foundational reality of the whole OT!
Law & Prophets is shorthand for the whole OT.
The OT is a book of love, about a God of love who is sending a King of love to the world. The NT is about the arrival of that loving king and his inauguration of a Spirit-filled kingdom of love here on earth.
In his famous passage on love, Paul says that love never ends. Prophecies will end, knowledge will end, tongues cease, but three things remain, faith hope and love, but the greatest is love! The next two words are “Pursue love!”
He also says that the very first fruit of the Spirit is love.
John says it flat out that God is love!
Commanding Love?
What does it mean to command love?
We’ve noted that Jesus is the King of Love. He’s NOT a tyrant. He’s come to lay down his own life, in a selfless act of divine love, so that people won’t perish but have eternal life. He’s not like human kings or governments.
But he does command love!
Love is more than emotions. This is sometimes hard for us today, but if you think about it you know it’s true. This is a little sticky hear, but it’s worth thinking about because Jesus is commanding love. True love is manifested and embodied in our behaviour. An act of love towards someone is not always accompanied with lovey-dovey feelings, it often is, but I can love you without knowing the slightest thing about you.
I don’t want to dig too deep hear this morning. I just want us to observe that the Creator of the universe is a King of Love, and as a King, he commands his royal family, his kingdom citizens, to love. The highest and greatest virtue in Jesus’ eternal Kingdom is love for God and love for others.
The Good and bad news
Remember what the Bible says about the human heart?
The bad news is that following Jesus’ (and the whole OT) command is impossible on our own.
The good news is that Jesus has given us his Spirit so that we can obey our great King. The fruit of the Spirit is love!
The OT knows we can’t fulfill this greatest commandment on our own, and so it speaks to a time when God will pour out his Spirit and write these commandments on our new hearts!
John’s Thoughts
Let me close with an extended quote from the Apostle John (who heard Jesus talk about the greatest commandment)
And this is his commandment: that we believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he commanded us. And the one who keeps his commandments resides in him, and he in him. And by this we know that he resides in us: by the Spirit whom he has given to us. Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to determine if they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God, and this is the spirit of the antichrist, of which you have heard that it is coming, and now it is already in the world. You are from God, little children, and have conquered them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world. They are from the world; therefore they speak from the world and the world listens to them. We are from God. The one who knows God listens to us; whoever is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the Spirit of truth and the spirit of deceit. Dear friends, let us love one another, because love is from God, and everyone who loves has been fathered by God and knows God. The one who does not love does not know God, because God is love. By this the love of God is revealed in us: that God sent his one and only Son into the world in order that we may live through him. 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. Dear friends, if God loved us in this way, we also ought to love one another. No one has seen God at any time. If we love one another, God resides in us and his love is perfected in us. By this we know that we reside in him and he in us: that he has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent the Son to be the Savior of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God resides in him and he in God. And we have come to know and have believed the love that God has in us. God is love, and the one who resides in love resides in God, and God resides in him. By this love is perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment, because just as that one is, so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear, because fear includes punishment, and the one who is afraid has not been perfected in love. We love, because he first loved us.