The Heart of it All

However, as a pastor, I am also keenly aware that the Holy Spirit must drive what I share, as it truly is His message for His church, regardless of the pulpit I may be standing behind

I hope that this morning I can connect you to our work in a way that will resonate in your own life and in the life of this congregation in the mission that God has in front of you

With that in mind, I invite you to open your Bibles with me to Deuteronomy chapter 6

While you are finding your place, Iet me tell you about the Basque

The Basque are the most famous people in the world that you’ve never heard of-unless you are from Boise!

They have their fingerprints all over world history

The Basque circumnavigated the globe with Magellan- In fact, they finished the trip when he died in the Philippines

They discovered the secret of making chocolate, and were the first to bring it to Europe

They perfected ship building they learned from the vikings, and may have been the first to the New World

The Basque sailed Columbus to the new world, and built at least one of his ships

They were the masters of the famed Spanish Steel

And they had heavy roles among the early explorers and settlers of what is now California

The Basque are from a small region of Northern Spain and Southern France,across the bay from England

The Basque are genetically different than all the other peoples of Spain and France

Their language is unrelated to ANY OTHER language in the world-it may be the oldest in Europe!

They began coming to Boise in the 1800’s to herd large herds of sheep across the region

Today, there are Basque people living and working in every industry in our city

There are 16,000 Basque people living in the Boise area

Boise has the largest concentrated population of Basques outside of their homeland

Most here speak English as their first language because their families have been here several generations,

but there is a mixture of mostly Basque Americans and brand-new immigrants.

If you’ve lived in Boise long, you know that Basque food is amazing!

Yet, even here in the U.S., they remain an unreached people group

The Basque are culturally Catholic

They are born into it, but most have little to no faith practice

It is not uncommon that a Basque person identifies as being Catholic but doesn’t believe in God

To complicate things, Basque Traditional religion is syncretized with their Catholocism in ways that make true beliefe muddled

They are 0.02% evangelical, and remain a people unreached with the Gospel

These things are compelling to me. They sound like compelling reasons for us to start a church here

After all, my wife love the Basque people:

We served with the International Mission Board for four years among the Basque of Spain before life circumstances brought us home

We know the culture and have had the privilege of leading Basques to the Lord in the past

Since coming back to the U.S., the Basque have remained on our hearts

We have dreams about them often, and have prayed we would one day go back

When we first came to Idaho last Spring, we thought we were coming to meet with church planters to form new partnerships

We had heard that there was a Basque church planter working here, and we were excited to meet him

We thought that we would be able to help mentor him in their culture

We were excited to be able to lead our church to partner with this planter

We thought: this is the best of both worlds! We can live close to family in Florida AND get to work with the Basque

But when we got here, we asked to meet this man and were shocked to hear that no such church planter existed

We heard of how long you have prayed for someone to plant a church among the Basque here in Boise

We saw the need for a church, and our hearts broke for the people

We couldn’t help but see how our time involved in church planting while in seminary was colliding with the time we spent in Spain amongst the Basque and then serving in the local church in Seattle and Florida to culminate for planting this church among the Basque

We heard the voices of our children and every wise counselor we talked with, telling us it was clear that we needed to do this

But NONE OF THESE THINGS are what truly compels us to do the work that we are doing here among the Basque

As compelling as the need is, the need alone is not enough

The work among the Basque is hard

No one has ever started a Basque church before

How long will it take? No one knows!

Will we worship in English or Basque? Your guess is as good as mine

There are too many questions and reasons to doubt for us to pursue this if all that drove us was the need and our experience...

But our compulsion is found in Deuteronomy chapter 6: WOULD YOU STAND WITH ME AS WE READ GOD’S WORD TOGETHER, starting in verse 4

Deuteronomy 6:4–9 NASB95

“Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one! “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. “These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart. “You shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up. “You shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontals on your forehead. “You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

Pray

*Invite the church to be seated

And as you get comfortable again, let me ask you as stupid question: Do you love Jesus?

Do you love Jesus? How much do you love Jesus?

Do you love Him more than your family?

Do you love Him more than your home?

Do you love Him more than your money?

More than your career?

More than your country? More than your rights as an American?

Do you love Jesus more than your freedom? Do you love Him more than your life?

Do you love Jesus everyday or just on Sunday?

These questions are not rhetorical: they are questions that this morning you need to answer:

How much do you love Jesus?

The question is jarring, and it seems like the answer should be simple

but simple does not mean easy!

Remember, the bench pressing heavy weight is simple, but it is really hard.

These verses from Deuteronomy have a special name among the Jews

They are called the Shema, which literally means “HEAR” in Hebrew

All of God’s Law is important, but when God spoke the Shema to Israel, He wanted to be sure they were listening with their full attention

In fact, the Shema is the most important of all God’s commandments. The Jews knew it already, and Jesus confirmed it for them

You see, one day, Jesus was teaching the people. He was telling them stories, like He always did

And a large crowd had gathered around.

Some of them were His followers, His disciples, and those that went with Him place to place

Some of them wanted to hear His teaching and the wonderful things that He would say

Some of them were just hoping to see a miracle

And in the middle of His teaching, a group of sadducees came up to Jesus

The sadducees were like lawyers. They were looking for a way to trap Jesus in His words

They wanted to embarrass and discredit Him, and so one of them asked Him, “What is the greatest commandment in the Law?”

And in Matthew 22, verses 37-40, Jesus answered them:

Matthew 22:37–40 NASB95

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.’ “This is the great and foremost commandment. “The second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ “On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets.”

Do you know what I’ve always found interesting about this passage? There is no response

The Sadducees have nothing to say. The lawyers ready to pounce are caught with no response.

WHY? BECAUSE THIS IS THE VERY HEART OF EVERYTHING

You see, it is one thing to say that you love Jesus, it is another thing to actually love Him

The Jews knew it, but few of them actually did it!

THE GREATEST COMMANDMENT IN ALL OF SCRIPTURE is that we are to love God with everything that we are

Our love for Jesus is to consume our very lives

Our love for Him drives us getting out of bed in the morning and our laying down at night

As we go through our day, He is to always and forever to be what we are talking about

Our love for Jesus is to be our motivation in everything that we do

We have another day to live for Jesus because we love Him

We go to work so that we can glorify Him and share Him with others because we love Him

We love our families and lead them to Him because we love Him

We take care of our bodies and are good stewards of His gifts to us because we love Him

This is not a one-time teaching, either. It isn’t lip service. It is the very center of who we are supposed to be as followers of Jesus

Listen to a few things that Jesus said in regards to our love for God

Luke 14:26 NASB95

“If anyone comes to Me, and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be My disciple.

Matthew 12:50 NASB95

“For whoever does the will of My Father who is in heaven, he is My brother and sister and mother.”

Matthew 10:39 NASB95

“He who has found his life will lose it, and he who has lost his life for My sake will find it.

When I was in Spain, my Spanish teacher was a Basque woman named Gurutze

I was sharing the Gospel with her one day, as I often had

We were reading through the Romans road

When I got to Romans 6:23, that the wages of sin is death but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus, Our Lord, she stopped me.

AH HA! She said. I’ve got you. God’s gift to us isn’t free. Salvation isn’t free

Yes, it is! I said. It says so right here.

“Yes,” she said. “But if I want to follow Jesus, I will have to change everything.”

And in that moment, I realized that she got it. She understood the Gospel better than many people who would claim to follow Jesus

Because to follow Jesus, loving Him must completely and utterly consume your life.

This is why Jesus warns us that following Him will mean counting the costs

Luke 14:28–32 NASB95

“For which one of you, when he wants to build a tower, does not first sit down and calculate the cost to see if he has enough to complete it? “Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who observe it begin to ridicule him, saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish.’ “Or what king, when he sets out to meet another king in battle, will not first sit down and consider whether he is strong enough with ten thousand men to encounter the one coming against him with twenty thousand? “Or else, while the other is still far away, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace.

To follow Jesus, we must all our love for Him to completely consume our lives

And how is your life to be consumed with loving Him?

John 14:15 NASB95

“If you love Me, you will keep My commandments.

1 John 5:3 NASB95

For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments; and His commandments are not burdensome.

The way that we express our love to God is by doing what He has commanded us to do

This is where the second greatest commandment comes in-loving others as yourself.

What Jesus means by that is that you are to love other people as if they were you, and not just people like you

In Luke’s account of this encounter with Jesus, Jesus tells us a story to clarify who our neighbor is

A man was going down the road from Jerusalem to Jericho when he got mugged and beaten nearly to death

And as he lay on the side of the road dying, a priest came along

And when the priest saw him, he crossed to the other side of the road and hurried by the man

Later on, a man of the priestly class, the super-religious came by.

And when he saw the man, he too crossed to the other side of the road and hurried by

But even later still, a Samaritan man came by

Now the Jews hated and mistreated the Samaritans

But this Samaritan saw the dying man and he stopped to help

He cleaned and treated the man’s wounds with bandages

He put the man on his horse and walked him into town

He took the man to a hotel, and paid the innkeeper a considerable amount to take care of the man, promising to return and pay him anything more that might be owed for the man’s stay.

Luke 10:36–37 NASB95

“Which of these three do you think proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell into the robbers’ hands?” And he said, “The one who showed mercy toward him.” Then Jesus said to him, “Go and do the same.”

This, my friends, is why my family is here in Boise

We are here because we are compelled by our love for Jesus to love others more than ourselves

It would have been easy to stay in my hometown, pastoring a great church

living in my dream home across the street from a beautiful lake and great fishing

But Jesus commands us to love HIM with everything, and to abandon everything else

Jesus defines our love for Him as our choice to be obedient, and His command for us is to make disciples

Matthew 28:18–20 NASB95

And Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”

All of life, everything that we are to be about comes down to just two simple things: Know Jesus and Make Him known

Know Jesus-live in relationship with Him. Don’t make Him a part of your life, make every part of your life about Him

Know Jesus-and Make Him known-Tell others about Him. Live your life alongside others and show them what it means to follow Him

Do you know, this passage doesn’t say, let the missionaries go make disciples, and baptize them, and show them how to be obedient

It doesn’t say let the church planters go make disciples, and baptize them, and show them how to be obedient

It doesn’t say let the pastors go make disciples and baptize them, and show them how to be obedient

It says to all of us who are followers of Jesus: you go and make disciples, and baptize them, and show them how to be obedient

This singular thought has consumed me, and it compels me.

And my family is here to work among the Basque because that is how God has called us to obey this commandment

The Basque are our neighbors that we are called to love-and what better love can I share than Jesus!

And as I love them and show them how to follow Jesus, I will be doing so in loving obedience to my Father

I will be knowing Jesus and making Him known-because you can’t really show others how they are supposed to follow Jesus unless you are following Him yourself!

That is how I am stepping out in obedience. And my question for you this morning is how are you obeying His command?

For me, it all came down to a singular moment:

I was listening to worship music in our kitchen in Florida, and reflecting on all I was going to have to give up to follow Him here in reckless, all consuming loving obedience

And the song asked the question “is He worthy? is He worthy? of all blessing and honor and glory? Is He worthy of this? HE IS!

I don’t know what specific call God has placed on you this morning:

Maybe your call isn’t to the Basque, maybe your unreached people group is your neighborhood

Maybe your mission field is your middle school or your office building

Perhaps you are here this morning, and you have never known what it means to know the love of Jesus and to love Him with all that you are.

But wherever and to whomever Jesus is calling you, you are called to go. You are called to know Jesus and to make Him known

And before you this morning is the question: Will you choose to love Him with all of your heart, with all of your soul and with all of your mind? Today, I invite you to count the costs, and to choose for yourself that He is worth it.