Don't Miss the Point

A woman is riding on a two-seater aircraft when the pilot has a fatal heart attack. She radios the tower which assures her that they are experienced and will be able to help her get to the ground. They as for her height and position and she responds, “I’m 5’4” and in the front seat!”

A guy shows up late for work. The boss yells, “You should have been here at 8:30!” The employee replies, “Why? What happened at 8:30?”

A police officer pulls a guy over and the guy has two penguins in the backseat. The officer says, “you can’t drive around with endangered penguins. You need to take them to the zoo.” The guys says he will, and the officer lets him go. The next day, the officer pulls the same guy over and the penguins are in the backseat again, only today they’re wearing Hawaiian shirts and sunglasses. The officer says, “Hey! I told you to take those penguins to the zoo!” The guy says, “I did that yesterday. Today we’re going to the beach!”

These people have clearly missed the point and it is funny. But you know what is not so funny? When Christians miss the point of what the church is all about. Jesus said to His disciples in John 13:34-35 “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.”” We read in Acts 1:8 “But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.””

From these two passages we cannot miss the point that believers in Christ are called to be witnesses of Christ. What is the witness? “By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another”. The witness is love for one another, not just any kind of love, but Jesus is specific. He said in John 13:34 “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another.”

This witness is significant in at least three ways. First, it is the only way that Jesus indicates He will be known to the world. Jesus said, “by this will all know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another”. Second, it reveals association. Loving one another as Jesus loved us identifies us as belonging to Him. “By this will all know that you are My disciples...” Third, it is the key to ushering in the second coming of Christ. Matthew 24:14 “And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come.”

The end will come when this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness. Notice that in John 13:35 Jesus speaks of a global witness. He said “by this will ALL know that you are my disciples...” And in Matthew 24:14 He again refers to the global witness “this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in ALL the world as a witness...” Don’t miss the point. The thing that Jesus wants the world to know is the love of God. It is this love, the love of God, expressed between believers that is a demonstration of the gospel and the witness of Christ. And Jesus said when this is preached, that is, when the love of Christ is demonstrated, proclaimed by the church, then the end will come.

In the book Christ Object Lessons by Ellen G. White page 69 “When the character of Christ shall be perfectly reproduced in His people, then He will come to claim them as His own”. Notice something with this statement. It is not world events, political crises, cataclysmic disasters that usher in the end of the world and the second coming. Jesus said it Himself in Matthew 24:6-8 “And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not troubled; for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. And there will be famines, pestilences, and earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginning of sorrows.” The main catalyst and trigger for the coming of Christ and the end of the world is when the character of Christ is reproduced in His people. What is the character of Christ? 1 John 4:8 “... God is love.”

Richard Rice wrote in Ministry Magazine June 1984 “The consummation of the plan of salvation awaits a manifestation of Christ’s love for others in the lives of His people. Only this will attract the world to what they have to say and enable them to complete their mission”. In the book Acts of the Apostles by Ellen G. White we read on page 1 “the church is the repository of the riches of the grace of Christ; and through the church will eventually be made manifest, even to the principalities and powers in heavenly places, the final and full display of the love of God”.

A minister decided that a visual demonstration would add emphasis to his sermon. Four worms were placed into four separate jars. The first worm was put into a container of alcohol. The second worm was put into a container of cigarette smoke. The third worm was put into a container of chocolate syrup. The fourth worm was put into a container of good clean soil. At the conclusion of the sermon the Minister reported the following results: the first worm in alcohol, dead. The second worm in cigarette smoke, dead. The third worm in chocolate syrup, dead. Fourth worm in good clean soil, alive. So the Minister asked the congregation, “what did you learn from this demonstration?” A woman sitting in the back quickly raised her hand and said “as long as you drink, smoke and eat chocolate, you won’t have worms!” That pretty much ended the service.

Are we too missing the point of why Christ came to this world? Are we missing the point of what He is saying by the life He lived and the ministry He conducted? Are we looking at some things without seeing the whole picture? As Seventh-day Adventist Christians we are often mesmerized by world events and the fulfillment of prophecy. We watch to see things unfold and try to connect the dots to see if we are on the cusps of Christ’s coming. Yes, Christ did say that we should watch. Matthew 24:42 “Watch therefore, for you do not know what hour your Lord is coming.” But are we busy looking at the signs without watching our character? In Matthew 24:45 Jesus talks about the faithful and wise servant. In Matthew 25 He gives three parables in which He talks about the wise and foolish virgins who went out to meet the bridegroom (v.1-13), the faithful versus the wicked and lazy servant (v.14-30) , and the righteous or cursed followers of Christ (v.31-46) and the main point is what kind of person are you while you watch? We may be missing the point.

The gospel witness that ushers in the end and the coming of Christ is love for one another as Christ has loved us. There are some really vital points in what Jesus has said that I think are important for us if we are going to take Him seriously about loving one another. Notice again what He said in John 13:35 “By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.”” Most versions render it this way. Some says “if you love one another” but most say “if you have love for one another” and I think this rendering is vital to our understanding of how we can love one another. But what is the difference? To “have” is to possess something. In this case, it is love. The other rendering “if you love one another” focuses on action towards another.

I think that before telling us to love one another Jesus points to the source of how that happens. He said “if you have love for one another”. This means that before I can love you I have to have love for you. To give love we must possess love. The second thing I want to highlight from this text is that love is relational. Jesus said “have love for one another”. This love is meant to be expressed towards another person. So what is this love? The Greek word is agape. The Lexham Theological Workbook defines it as a strong positive emotion of regard and (non-sexual) affection. Dictionary.com says “to have a profoundly tender, passionate affection for (another person)”.

Jesus calls us to have a strong positive emotion of regard and affection towards one another. Why? Because it is then that we will be moved to do loving things towards each other. But first we must have the love. Here is where we must be honest with ourselves. Ask yourself, do I have the love for the people in this room that Jesus has demonstrated for me? Do I have a strong, positive emotion of regard and affection for the people in this room that Jesus has for me? Well, how do you know if you do? Look at Jesus. Let’s go back to John 13 and start at John 13:1 “Now before the Feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that His hour had come that He should depart from this world to the Father, having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end.”

Why does it say this “loved them to the end”? Perhaps because all throughout Jesus’s ministry these disciples often were confused, self centered, egotistical, vengeful, competitive, and clueless and despite this Jesus loved them to the end. When they walked into the upper room usually there is a servant to wash feet, none of them were willing to do it but even at the end Jesus did not abandon them, he washed their feet. Even while knowing they would betray Him, deny Him and abandon Him, He still gave Himself for them. That’s love. What about us? We so often give up on each other as soon as a few offensive words are said or we don’t like how something is done. Jesus said we are to love one another as He has loved us. It is clear from the way we treat each other that we do not have this love.

So how do we get it? Romans 5:5 “Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us.” We can possess the love of God through the Holy Spirit. But don’t we have the Holy Spirit? At Pentecost the Holy Spirit was poured out. So why isn’t there more love demonstrated in the church? What is missing? Ephesians 4:15 “but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head—Christ—” . The apostle Paul said in 1 Corinthians 13:11 “When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.” These texts call us to maturity. We are to “grow up in all things...” We are to leave infancy, childhood, adolescence and become adults in every area of our lives. God is interested in our complete development; physical, social, mental, spiritual and emotional. We often emphasize the physical and spiritual when we speak about the health message; NEWSTART stands for Nutrition, Exercise, Water, Sunshine, Temperance, Air, Rest and Trust in God. We emphasize the mental development by stressing education and Bible Study. We emphasize social through our outreach programs and social activities but what about the emotional? There are many who are spiritually mature but remain infants, children and teenagers emotionally.

In John 13:35 I think Jesus makes a link between discipleship and emotional maturity. We are His disciples if we have love for one another. This love that we are to have for one another is the love Jesus has demonstrated towards us. So we cannot be mature Christians without having and expressing this love. There is another link I want to make and it is found in Matthew 28:19-20 “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Amen.” We are called to make disciples. Now if a disciple is one who has love for his brethren then we must do more than give head knowledge when preparing a person for baptism, we must make sure they receive the Holy Spirit and teach them how to love. What we are called to do is not merely go through a series of Bible lessons but to love people into Christ and the church and to show others how to love as Christ loved. This is true discipleship.

I think we have missed the point. We have reduced the mission of Christ down to having head knowledge of truth (education, seminars etc), preaching truth (evangelism series, giving Bible studies, literature distribution) and skill development (how to win souls, serve in church office, discover spiritual gifts, how to pray and study the Bible) all the while our hearts and motives are selfish, absent of love and feeling for others. The Great Commission includes a great omission. Love. For the next few sermons I want to talk about our emotional health and how we can grow and become true disciples. Because none of what we do matters without love. Isn’t that what the apostle Paul said? 1 Corinthians 13:1-3 “Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing.”

To call yourself a Christian and not have this love is being a false witness. Have you been a false witness? I so often have been. So in the meantime there are three things I am calling us to do. First, we need to be honest with ourselves and confess the truth. Do I have the love of Jesus in my heart for my brother and my sister? Second, we need to pray for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on our hearts. I need to say “Lord I need Your love in me. Please Holy Spirit pour the love of God into my heart”. Third, have a ready attitude to grow in this area of your life. Are you willing to do this? Please stand with me if you are serious about it.