Message: Love
Scripture: Deuteronomy 6:3-9
Talk about famous last words! That's the entire book of Deuteronomy! Moses was told he was going to die. But he wasn't sick or weak in his old age, and he WAS old! So, this book of Deuteronomy that we began reading together last Monday is Moses’ last words to Israel. The whole book is a recap of their history and laws, their rebellion and God's faithfulness. It does add some details about some of the laws, to clarify some points from Leviticus. But mostly it’s a long sermon, an exhortation to the people of God that they should live holy lives and never forget that they owe it all to God.
So probably the key passage that the whole book is centered on is this one in Deuteronomy 6. As a summary statement it's really simple. It is as simple as, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” Matthew 22:37-40.
SO simple. Yet so hard. What makes it hard is our own stony hearts. The kind of love God wants from us is only hard because we are "dead" set against it in our sinful nature! God is love, so when Adam turned away from love, his fateful action decreed that all humans shall henceforth be characterized by "unloving." The only way that changes is when people turn back to God and receive his Holy Spirit, through faith in Jesus Christ, to become "loving" again. Only union with Christ can change our nature from “unloving” to “loving.”
Until then, no matter how good or loving our behaviors looks or appears, our inner nature remains unloving, dead in sin, and worthy of nothing but condemnation. The most kind-hearted, generous and altruistic looking unbeliever you may ever meet is really only doing it for his or her own satisfaction, "It feels good to love." Or, else for his or her own salvation he’s thinking, "I must do so to be saved." Both are selfish motives! Both of those motives satisfy human pride. But they do not satisfy God's requirement of total, sacrificial, otherish love. Even a lot of people who think they’re Christians are as loving as they are for their own selfish reasons, the same two basic human motives. It’s either, “It feels good to love,” or else it’s, “I have to.” That’s of the flesh.
Romans 8:5-8,"Those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on what the flesh desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace. The mind governed by the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so. Those who are in the realm of the flesh cannot please God."
Now as soon as you read the word “hostile,” you think it’s synonymous with “angry” so you think, “Not me. I go to church like a good Christian should. I love God.” But guess what, Muslims think they love God too! And they worship their idea of God according to their customs and traditions just like a lot of Christians worship according to their customs and traditions. Hostile to God only means opposed to his will, or different from his will. God considers such indifference hostile because it leads to the death of the sinner instead of the life He desires to bestow.
But Praise be to God! We have this hope! Romans 8:10-11, "But if Christ is in you, then even though your body is subject to death because of sin, the Spirit gives life because of righteousness. And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his Spirit who lives in you."
In that Spirit, we do not have to obey the Law of Love. But joy of joys, we want to! We don’t have to love or neighbors. We get to love them! And that kind of spirit filled love goes a lot further out on a limb, to love unselfishly, or as I prefer to say, to love otherishly, a love that is truly focused on blessing the other person.
Real love for God, as an activity, is something that arises out of a deep knowledge of how much He loves you! The only proper motivation for genuine, God pleasing love, is the Spirit filled desire to offer yourself as living sacrifice in service of God and his mission to evangelize the world. You can’t manufacture that out of your own strength and determination. When we try to love God without the aid of the Holy Spirit, we end up like the lawyer who was defining his neighbors too narrowly. We are all like that by nature, or “in the flesh” as it says in Romans. We prefer to love people who will appreciate it and might love us back. We prefer to love people we can afford to love. We are not likely to give sacrificially the way the good Samaritan did.
If we believe we are loving our neighbors because we don’t have any quarrels with them, or we sometimes borrow each other’s tools, or we smile when we greet them, then our love is too shallow and too comfortable. We are letting ourselves off too easily with that kind of love. We’re fooling ourselves into thinking that’s good enough for God. Author, Ray Bakke put it this way, “Most Christians think they are living incarnationally.” You know that word, right? Jesus the incarnate Son of God, lived incarnationally among us. So, Mr. Bakke says, “Most Christians think they are living incarnationally. But in reality, they are just living in cars.”[i] That’s his funny way of pointing out how self-centered and how isolated from other humans we really tend to be.
Now consider this story I read in a book about Evangelism called, “The Power of the 72.” Pastor John Teter, who wrote the book, planted a church in a very rough neighborhood called West Long Beach, CA. His team explored the needs of the community and discovered that 65 percent of students in that zip code dropped out of high school after falling behind by a grade level in math or reading. And that correlated with the high levels of gang violence, drugs and early pregnancy among drop outs. So, they figured if they could keep the elementary kids in school, that would keep them from dropping out as young teens, and that would make a positive impact on the whole culture. Their church started the Family Center ministry to tutor the younger ones. (In our neighborhood being more involved in Kid’s Hope would be a similar thing.) They saw such a great need that this small group of church planting people started that ministry even before they officially opened their church plant for public worship!
That’s is how they met Kyra, a bright eyed fourth grader who was the only student to show up for tutuoring for the whole first month. Pastor John’s wife, Becky, helped Kyra’s grades improve over the course of the semester. But something else happened too. Kyra had a difficult family situation. Her mother was a poverty stricken drug addict. One night, Kyra’s mom had wanted her to meet her at a party across town. Kyra had five dollars and an address. But at the bus stop, she was crying and looked lost. A nurse stopped to talk with her and found out what was up. She offered to give Kyra a ride and asked where she wanted to go.
Kyra wiped the tears from her eyes and said, “Please take me to Becky. She’ll take care of me.” At John and Becky’s apartment, after the nurse told the story that far, she paused and said, “My name is Esther. Who are you guys?”
Pastor John said, “We’re the local church.”
Esther said, “If you’re the kind of church that loves little girls and opens up your home on a Friday night, that’s the kind of church I want to be a part of.” And she did.[ii]
That’s a powerful example of loving your neighbor as yourself. And that’s the kind of church I want to be a part of. And that’s why I am involved in Open Table and Celebrate Recovery. I hope one day I have time to be a Kid’s Hope Mentor too. I think some of you probably have time now though. I encourage you to give it a try.
Just being nice and looking like you love God is not the same thing as actually loving God from your heart. Loving God from your heart leads you into doing ministry the way Pastor John Teter’s church does. There is an author named John Perkins, who wrote, “Justice for All.” I want to read a quote from that book that shows the importance of love. But it starts by talking about the gospel. “The only purpose of the gospel is to reconcile people to God and to each other. A gospel that does not reconcile is not a gospel at all. But in America we don’t believe that. We don’t really act like we believe that the proof of our discipleship is that we love one another.” There’s the mention of love. And here’s why he says we’re not doing that very well. The rest of the quote is, “No, we think the proof is in numbers—church attendance, decision cards. Even if our “converts” continue to hate each other, even if they will not worship with the brothers and sisters in Christ, we point to their “conversion” as evidence of the gospel’s success. We have substituted a gospel of church growth for a gospel of reconciliation.”[iii]
Perkins put it boldly, as a universal accusation for which we all share guilt. We have the right and the responsibility to discern for ourselves how true it might be in our case. I want to serve a church that really loves the Lord with all our hearts and minds and souls out of a deep gratitude for his amazing love that saves us even though we are dead in our sins. I want to be a part of a church that prays with this God, in the Spirit, and cares about genuine discipleship that leads to authentic and costly evangelism.
That kind of church really will talk about God and his ways all the time. Our children will hear about it, and more importantly they will see the power of God at work among us when they see our devotion to the cause and they see new believers born out of the harvest fields in which we work! You can’t make your children love the Lord with all their hearts minds and souls. You can’t save them from sin either. They have to choose faith for themselves And, they are most likely to do that when they see your faith in action as you love the Lord. You know what they say. It is better caught than taught.
In the kind of church that I am talking about and praying for, the commandments that God gave us will be on our hearts. They will be impressed upon our children. We will love talking about God’s Law of love when we’re at home and when we’re out and about along the road, when we lie down and when we get up. It will be almost as if these words are literally tied as symbols on your hands and bound on our foreheads. Even better, these words will be inside, impressed upon our hearts where they can never be removed. And it’s not a bad idea to post and hang scripture verses all over your house too. “Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.”
But how close to that are we right now? Have you all really gotten to the place at some point in your life, where even if you were a very well-behaved person on the outside, you realized that it was all either because you wanted to look good or because you thought you really had to obey to get saved? How many of us have really been to the cross, where we had nothing to offer other than a broken sinful life that needs God’s grace, mercy and forgiveness? How many of us have deeply felt that poverty of Spirit that makes us grieve and mourn over our failure to live as we ought?
The only love that God really accepts is a humble, grateful love that is the only correct response to God’s great love for us. The words to Charles Wesley’s hymn fit in right here. But I don’t want to sing it. I want to read these words to you and I hope you really hear them.
And can it be that I should gain an interest in the Savior’s blood? Died He for me, who caused His pain—For me, who Him to death pursued? Amazing love! How can it be, That Thou, my God, shouldst die for me?
’Tis myst’ry all: th’ Immortal dies: Who can explore His strange design? He left His Father’s throne above—So free, so infinite His grace—Emptied Himself of all but love, And bled for Adam’s helpless race: ’Tis mercy all, immense and free, For, O my God, it found out me!
Long my imprisoned spirit lay,Fast bound in sin and nature’s night; Thine eye diffused a quick’ning ray—I woke, the dungeon flamed with light; My chains fell off, my heart was free, I rose, went forth, and followed Thee.
No condemnation now I dread; Jesus, and all in Him, is mine; Alive in Him, my living Head, And clothed in righteousness divine, Bold I approach th’ eternal throne, and claim the crown, through Christ my own. Amazing love! How can it be, That Thou, my God, shouldst die for me?
There is another, newer song that speaks of our response to God’s amazing love. The song is by Jason Gray and called, “It’s More Like Falling in Love.” The words there are:
Give me rules, I will break them. Show me lines, I will cross them
I need more than a truth to believe. I need a truth that lives, moves and breathes to sweep me off my feet. It's gotta be more like falling in love than something to believe in, more like losing my heart than giving my allegiance.
Give me words, I'll misuse them, Obligations, I'll misplace them. 'Cause all religion Ever made of me was just a sinner with a stone tied to my feet. Religion never set me free. It's gotta be more like falling in love than something to believe in, more like losing my heart than giving my allegiance
Love, love, love, deeper and deeper. It was Love that made me a believer.
In more than a name, a faith, a creed, falling in love with Jesus brought the change in me. Caught up, called out, come take a look at me now! It's like I'm falling in love!
If you remember falling in love with Jesus, that’s your first love that is spoken of in the book of Revelation where it says, “Return to your first love.” Maybe you’ve been raise in church and a faithful Christian all your life as far back as you can remember. But there also ought to be present in your memory what it feels like to be loved by God even though you know you don’t deserve it. Sure, love is an action word that calls forth what we see described in 1 Cor. 13. But God wants us to feel it too. God gave us emotions so we could literally fulfill our main reason for being, to enjoy God forever! It is why we sing and dance for joy in his presence. Our loving response to his love gives him glory! And it is the true source of our life in him that fulfills his command to love the Lord your God with all your heart, body mind and soul and to love your neighbor as yourself.
Make it more and more so Lord, Help me to crucify the flesh on the cross of Christ! Fill me with your Holy Spirit to love you more and my neighbors better. In Jesus' name, amen.
Scripture: Deuteronomy 6:3-9
Talk about famous last words! That's the entire book of Deuteronomy! Moses was told he was going to die. But he wasn't sick or weak in his old age, and he WAS old! So, this book of Deuteronomy that we began reading together last Monday is Moses’ last words to Israel. The whole book is a recap of their history and laws, their rebellion and God's faithfulness. It does add some details about some of the laws, to clarify some points from Leviticus. But mostly it’s a long sermon, an exhortation to the people of God that they should live holy lives and never forget that they owe it all to God.
So probably the key passage that the whole book is centered on is this one in Deuteronomy 6. As a summary statement it's really simple. It is as simple as, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” Matthew 22:37-40.
SO simple. Yet so hard. What makes it hard is our own stony hearts. The kind of love God wants from us is only hard because we are "dead" set against it in our sinful nature! God is love, so when Adam turned away from love, his fateful action decreed that all humans shall henceforth be characterized by "unloving." The only way that changes is when people turn back to God and receive his Holy Spirit, through faith in Jesus Christ, to become "loving" again. Only union with Christ can change our nature from “unloving” to “loving.”
Until then, no matter how good or loving our behaviors looks or appears, our inner nature remains unloving, dead in sin, and worthy of nothing but condemnation. The most kind-hearted, generous and altruistic looking unbeliever you may ever meet is really only doing it for his or her own satisfaction, "It feels good to love." Or, else for his or her own salvation he’s thinking, "I must do so to be saved." Both are selfish motives! Both of those motives satisfy human pride. But they do not satisfy God's requirement of total, sacrificial, otherish love. Even a lot of people who think they’re Christians are as loving as they are for their own selfish reasons, the same two basic human motives. It’s either, “It feels good to love,” or else it’s, “I have to.” That’s of the flesh.
Romans 8:5-8,"Those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on what the flesh desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace. The mind governed by the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so. Those who are in the realm of the flesh cannot please God."
Now as soon as you read the word “hostile,” you think it’s synonymous with “angry” so you think, “Not me. I go to church like a good Christian should. I love God.” But guess what, Muslims think they love God too! And they worship their idea of God according to their customs and traditions just like a lot of Christians worship according to their customs and traditions. Hostile to God only means opposed to his will, or different from his will. God considers such indifference hostile because it leads to the death of the sinner instead of the life He desires to bestow.
But Praise be to God! We have this hope! Romans 8:10-11, "But if Christ is in you, then even though your body is subject to death because of sin, the Spirit gives life because of righteousness. And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his Spirit who lives in you."
In that Spirit, we do not have to obey the Law of Love. But joy of joys, we want to! We don’t have to love or neighbors. We get to love them! And that kind of spirit filled love goes a lot further out on a limb, to love unselfishly, or as I prefer to say, to love otherishly, a love that is truly focused on blessing the other person.
Real love for God, as an activity, is something that arises out of a deep knowledge of how much He loves you! The only proper motivation for genuine, God pleasing love, is the Spirit filled desire to offer yourself as living sacrifice in service of God and his mission to evangelize the world. You can’t manufacture that out of your own strength and determination. When we try to love God without the aid of the Holy Spirit, we end up like the lawyer who was defining his neighbors too narrowly. We are all like that by nature, or “in the flesh” as it says in Romans. We prefer to love people who will appreciate it and might love us back. We prefer to love people we can afford to love. We are not likely to give sacrificially the way the good Samaritan did.
If we believe we are loving our neighbors because we don’t have any quarrels with them, or we sometimes borrow each other’s tools, or we smile when we greet them, then our love is too shallow and too comfortable. We are letting ourselves off too easily with that kind of love. We’re fooling ourselves into thinking that’s good enough for God. Author, Ray Bakke put it this way, “Most Christians think they are living incarnationally.” You know that word, right? Jesus the incarnate Son of God, lived incarnationally among us. So, Mr. Bakke says, “Most Christians think they are living incarnationally. But in reality, they are just living in cars.”[i] That’s his funny way of pointing out how self-centered and how isolated from other humans we really tend to be.
Now consider this story I read in a book about Evangelism called, “The Power of the 72.” Pastor John Teter, who wrote the book, planted a church in a very rough neighborhood called West Long Beach, CA. His team explored the needs of the community and discovered that 65 percent of students in that zip code dropped out of high school after falling behind by a grade level in math or reading. And that correlated with the high levels of gang violence, drugs and early pregnancy among drop outs. So, they figured if they could keep the elementary kids in school, that would keep them from dropping out as young teens, and that would make a positive impact on the whole culture. Their church started the Family Center ministry to tutor the younger ones. (In our neighborhood being more involved in Kid’s Hope would be a similar thing.) They saw such a great need that this small group of church planting people started that ministry even before they officially opened their church plant for public worship!
That’s is how they met Kyra, a bright eyed fourth grader who was the only student to show up for tutuoring for the whole first month. Pastor John’s wife, Becky, helped Kyra’s grades improve over the course of the semester. But something else happened too. Kyra had a difficult family situation. Her mother was a poverty stricken drug addict. One night, Kyra’s mom had wanted her to meet her at a party across town. Kyra had five dollars and an address. But at the bus stop, she was crying and looked lost. A nurse stopped to talk with her and found out what was up. She offered to give Kyra a ride and asked where she wanted to go.
Kyra wiped the tears from her eyes and said, “Please take me to Becky. She’ll take care of me.” At John and Becky’s apartment, after the nurse told the story that far, she paused and said, “My name is Esther. Who are you guys?”
Pastor John said, “We’re the local church.”
Esther said, “If you’re the kind of church that loves little girls and opens up your home on a Friday night, that’s the kind of church I want to be a part of.” And she did.[ii]
That’s a powerful example of loving your neighbor as yourself. And that’s the kind of church I want to be a part of. And that’s why I am involved in Open Table and Celebrate Recovery. I hope one day I have time to be a Kid’s Hope Mentor too. I think some of you probably have time now though. I encourage you to give it a try.
Just being nice and looking like you love God is not the same thing as actually loving God from your heart. Loving God from your heart leads you into doing ministry the way Pastor John Teter’s church does. There is an author named John Perkins, who wrote, “Justice for All.” I want to read a quote from that book that shows the importance of love. But it starts by talking about the gospel. “The only purpose of the gospel is to reconcile people to God and to each other. A gospel that does not reconcile is not a gospel at all. But in America we don’t believe that. We don’t really act like we believe that the proof of our discipleship is that we love one another.” There’s the mention of love. And here’s why he says we’re not doing that very well. The rest of the quote is, “No, we think the proof is in numbers—church attendance, decision cards. Even if our “converts” continue to hate each other, even if they will not worship with the brothers and sisters in Christ, we point to their “conversion” as evidence of the gospel’s success. We have substituted a gospel of church growth for a gospel of reconciliation.”[iii]
Perkins put it boldly, as a universal accusation for which we all share guilt. We have the right and the responsibility to discern for ourselves how true it might be in our case. I want to serve a church that really loves the Lord with all our hearts and minds and souls out of a deep gratitude for his amazing love that saves us even though we are dead in our sins. I want to be a part of a church that prays with this God, in the Spirit, and cares about genuine discipleship that leads to authentic and costly evangelism.
That kind of church really will talk about God and his ways all the time. Our children will hear about it, and more importantly they will see the power of God at work among us when they see our devotion to the cause and they see new believers born out of the harvest fields in which we work! You can’t make your children love the Lord with all their hearts minds and souls. You can’t save them from sin either. They have to choose faith for themselves And, they are most likely to do that when they see your faith in action as you love the Lord. You know what they say. It is better caught than taught.
In the kind of church that I am talking about and praying for, the commandments that God gave us will be on our hearts. They will be impressed upon our children. We will love talking about God’s Law of love when we’re at home and when we’re out and about along the road, when we lie down and when we get up. It will be almost as if these words are literally tied as symbols on your hands and bound on our foreheads. Even better, these words will be inside, impressed upon our hearts where they can never be removed. And it’s not a bad idea to post and hang scripture verses all over your house too. “Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.”
But how close to that are we right now? Have you all really gotten to the place at some point in your life, where even if you were a very well-behaved person on the outside, you realized that it was all either because you wanted to look good or because you thought you really had to obey to get saved? How many of us have really been to the cross, where we had nothing to offer other than a broken sinful life that needs God’s grace, mercy and forgiveness? How many of us have deeply felt that poverty of Spirit that makes us grieve and mourn over our failure to live as we ought?
The only love that God really accepts is a humble, grateful love that is the only correct response to God’s great love for us. The words to Charles Wesley’s hymn fit in right here. But I don’t want to sing it. I want to read these words to you and I hope you really hear them.
And can it be that I should gain an interest in the Savior’s blood? Died He for me, who caused His pain—For me, who Him to death pursued? Amazing love! How can it be, That Thou, my God, shouldst die for me?
’Tis myst’ry all: th’ Immortal dies: Who can explore His strange design? He left His Father’s throne above—So free, so infinite His grace—Emptied Himself of all but love, And bled for Adam’s helpless race: ’Tis mercy all, immense and free, For, O my God, it found out me!
Long my imprisoned spirit lay,Fast bound in sin and nature’s night; Thine eye diffused a quick’ning ray—I woke, the dungeon flamed with light; My chains fell off, my heart was free, I rose, went forth, and followed Thee.
No condemnation now I dread; Jesus, and all in Him, is mine; Alive in Him, my living Head, And clothed in righteousness divine, Bold I approach th’ eternal throne, and claim the crown, through Christ my own. Amazing love! How can it be, That Thou, my God, shouldst die for me?
There is another, newer song that speaks of our response to God’s amazing love. The song is by Jason Gray and called, “It’s More Like Falling in Love.” The words there are:
Give me rules, I will break them. Show me lines, I will cross them
I need more than a truth to believe. I need a truth that lives, moves and breathes to sweep me off my feet. It's gotta be more like falling in love than something to believe in, more like losing my heart than giving my allegiance.
Give me words, I'll misuse them, Obligations, I'll misplace them. 'Cause all religion Ever made of me was just a sinner with a stone tied to my feet. Religion never set me free. It's gotta be more like falling in love than something to believe in, more like losing my heart than giving my allegiance
Love, love, love, deeper and deeper. It was Love that made me a believer.
In more than a name, a faith, a creed, falling in love with Jesus brought the change in me. Caught up, called out, come take a look at me now! It's like I'm falling in love!
If you remember falling in love with Jesus, that’s your first love that is spoken of in the book of Revelation where it says, “Return to your first love.” Maybe you’ve been raise in church and a faithful Christian all your life as far back as you can remember. But there also ought to be present in your memory what it feels like to be loved by God even though you know you don’t deserve it. Sure, love is an action word that calls forth what we see described in 1 Cor. 13. But God wants us to feel it too. God gave us emotions so we could literally fulfill our main reason for being, to enjoy God forever! It is why we sing and dance for joy in his presence. Our loving response to his love gives him glory! And it is the true source of our life in him that fulfills his command to love the Lord your God with all your heart, body mind and soul and to love your neighbor as yourself.
Make it more and more so Lord, Help me to crucify the flesh on the cross of Christ! Fill me with your Holy Spirit to love you more and my neighbors better. In Jesus' name, amen.
[i] Teter,
John, “The Power of the 72,” IVP, 2017. P. 37.
[ii] Teter,
John, “The Power of the 72,” IVP, 2017. P. 38-39.
[iii] Teter,
John, “The Power of the 72,” IVP, 2017. P. 45.
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