|
 |
Love Means Obedience
Matthew 22: 34-40
Agatha Burgess is 87 years old and
lives in the small mill town of Buffalo, South Carolina. She gets up
every morning at five o'clock and begins cooking, and she has been doing
this for over twenty years. She gets up and cooks for the local Meals on
Wheels. At 11:00 A.M. volunteers come by her house and take the food she
cooks to elderly people who can't cook for themselves, or for other
needy folks.
By noon, another group of people come to Agatha's house for lunch. Mill
workers, judges, truck drivers, anyone who comes at noon gets to fill
their plates and go back for seconds. Agatha runs an all you can eat
kitchen. For all this, they pay $ 2.75. She knows that's too much for
some of the folks who come by, so if they don't pay she doesn't say
anything.
A Newspaper reporter was doing a story on this remarkable woman and
asked her the obvious question, why? Why do you do this 5 day a week
every week? I need you to listen to Agatha’s reply because it is the
heart of our message tonight. She said “I do this because I love it. I
always wanted to be a person that lived by the side of the road, and
could be called a friend to man. She said that she would continue to do
this until she died because this is what she lived for, and these people
coming everyday mean so much to her.
Agatha Burgess probably knows more about our text tonight than I do, but
she isn't here, so you are stuck with me. Let's read it, and then let's
pray.
Matthew 22: 34-40
(Prayer)
We have heard this passage our whole life but have you ever stopped to
ask yourself what it means to love God with all your heart and all your
soul and all your mind?
The passage we just read was first spoken in Deuteronomy 6:5 there it
reads this way: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and
with all your soul and with all your might.
So to understand what it means to love God with heart, soul, mind and
strength, we need to know what those things meant to the ancient
Hebrews.
To the Hebrew these three places in the body meant something.
The heart was the place where decisions were made, where emotions were
felt, where thinking was done, where secrets were hidden, where desires
came from. You could decide with your heart, feel with your heart, think
with it, hide things in it, and desire with it.
The soul was the place where decisions were made, where emotions were
felt, where thinking was done, where secrets were hidden, where desires
came from. You could decide with you soul, fell with your soul, think
with it, hide things in it, and desire with it.
And guess what you do with your mind? Decide, think, feel, hide, and
desire. Heart, soul, and mind are used interchangeably in the Bible.
All three of these parts referred to the same thing. So what's the point
of the passage then?
When the Bible says that we are to love God with all of our heart, soul,
mind, and strength, it doesn't mean that there are three or four
different aspects of our existence, all of which must love God. It means
that we are to love God with all that we've got. It means total
commitment. It means total obedience to God.
A professor of theological ethics opened his class for the semester by
reading a letter from a parent to a government official.
The parent complained that his son, who had received a good education,
gone to all the right schools, and was headed for a good job as a
lawyer, had gotten involved with a weird religious sect. The father
continued that the members of this sect controlled his every move, told
him whom to date and whom not to date, and had taken all of his money.
The parent pleaded with the government official to do something about
this strange religious group.
Then the professor asked the students, "Who is this letter describing?"
There was quite a debate, with the class discussing some off the wall
group cults, like the Branch Dividend’s, or those who were going to join
the spaceship at the tail of Haley’s Comet. After about 15 minutes of
discussion the Professor revealed that the letter was from a third
century Roman parent concerned about a group of people called....
Christians.
It doesn’t sound so weird now does it?
The greatest Command of loving God with everything you've got means that
we've got to be willing to follow our freely chosen master to whom we
give total and complete allegiance, attention, and adoration. When the
command to love God this way was first given, it was surrounded by a
context that demanded obedience.
Deuteronomy 6:1-9 says: “Now this is the commandment, the statutes and
the rules that the Lord your God commanded me to teach you, that you may
do them in the land to which you are going over, to possess it, that you
may fear the Lord your God, you and your son and your son’s son, by
keeping all his statutes and his commandments, which I command you, all
the days of your life, and that your days may be long. Hear therefore, O
Israel, and be careful to do them, that it may go well with you, and
that you may multiply greatly, as the Lord, the God of your fathers, has
promised you, in a land flowing with milk and honey. “Hear, O Israel:
The Lord 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. And these
words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach
them diligently to your children, 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. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they
shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the
doorposts of your house and on your gates.
You see love means obedience. I bet you thought that I was going to tell
you that since Jesus came, love means something different; some
touch-feely emotion, some warm and fuzzy feeling. Well I'm not going to
tell you that, I can’t. To Jesus, love meant the same thing it meant in
Deuteronomy.
Remember today we talked about what John wrote in John 14:15 he said,
"If you love me, you will obey what I command."
When I was in high school and college I was really big on the counter
culture. I dressed differently, acted differently; listen to music that
I knew would drive my parents bonkers, I even wore two different color
shoes just so I could get a reaction. My mom used to walk into a
clothing store and find the ugliest thing in the store and buy it for
me, she knew I would love it.
In College I had a moment of reality. Some rebellious friends of mine
and I were at a youth rally, and we were goofing off during a break and
this older man came walking by staring at us. I knew what was going to
happen, it happened all the time, he would make some derogatory comment
about how he didn’t know what this world was coming to and we would say
something spiritual like, well Jesus loves us anyway.
But this time that’s not how it happened. When he got to us he said,
“Hey guys do you want to be rebellious, counter-cultural, unusual,
distinct, extraordinary, and down right weird?” No one had started this
way with us before so he had my full attention. He then looked at us
smiled and said “If that’s what you want love God with all your heart,
soul, and mind. The world just won’t get it.”
You know he was right. When we love the Lord with all we’ve got, we will
definitely be counter culture, and people will think we are a little
off. But I would rather be off from the world then at odds with God.
Well if the greatest command is found in John 14:16, "If you love me you
will keep my commandments."
Then the second must be found in John 15:12; "My command is this: love
each other as I have loved you."
It would seem from reading the scriptures that the best way to love God
is to love God's children. To be, as Agatha Burgess put it, a person who
lives by the side of the road - someone who is a friend to people.
You guys understand this better than you think you do.
When I was in college I spent a summer working with the Leonard Street
Church of Christ in Pensacola Florida, as a youth intern. It was a
wonderful summer and I got to live with the Rene’ family. My parents
came down for my birthday and when they arrived, the first person my
mother hugged wasn't me, but Mrs. Rene’.
She stood there for the longest time thanking her for taking care of her
son, for worrying about him, for holding him accountable, for making him
keep his room straight, for loving him. My mother felt loved by that
family because that family loved me.
The best way to show your love to someone is to love their kids. I
didn’t understand it that summer day in Pensacola, but I do know. You
want to win my friendship, my affection? Be good to my boys. And I
believe the same could be said for everyone here.
When Jesus was asked which is the greatest commandment, he didn't
hesitate. "Love God with everything you've got." But then he added
something which wasn't asked. He told the questioner the second greatest
commandment.
There were hundreds of commands from which Jesus could have chosen. But
the one He chose was the one that requires us to love God's children. I
think the reason He chose that one is because it’s the best way of
loving God himself.
In 1 Corinthians 3: 16 - 17 Paul explained why the way we treat each
other is so important to God.
"Don't you know that you yourselves are God's temple and that God's
Spirit lives in you? If anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy
him; for God's temple is sacred, and you are that temple."
In Matthew 25 Jesus said it this way; when you feed the hungry, you feed
me.
When you house the homeless, you shelter me.
When you visit the imprisoned, you visit me.
For some strange, inexplicable reason, God identifies so closely with us
that our pain becomes his, when we are loved, he is loved. We are his
body, he is our soul.
I think sometimes we have a hard time believing that God identifies with
us. That God loves us so much he feels what we feel. Some of us just
can't believe that God would want to be so intimate with someone so, so
... what's your adjective?
Dirty? Shamed? Broken? Worthless? Hopeless?
James says that the word of God is like a mirror. We stand before it
soul-naked and see ourselves as we really are. No pretence. No masks.
Nothing to hide the wounds and scars of sin.
Some of us tonight feel like Peter in the High Priest's courtyard,
nailed by the piercing eyes of Jesus right in the middle of denying that
we know him.
Some us feel like David caught in Nathan's narrative trap, guilty as we
can be and nowhere to hide.
Some of us feel like old Noah, hung-over and shamed by our reckless
behavior.
Some us feel like Elijah standing outside the cave with the wind of God
ripping the rocks apart and carving up the landscape, scared to death
that his judgment might fall on us.
Could God love something so filthy? Would He really allow us to come
into His presence?
Let me ask you this. Why would Jesus tell us that the first and greatest
commandment is to love God with everything we've got, if God doesn't
first love us with everything He has?
Why would God call us to love each other, if love isn't what He already
feels about every one of us?
Even in your sin God loves you. Even in your brokenness he comes along
side and offers a shoulder to lean on. Just as you are he invites you
into his everlasting arms where he will hold you forever.
And that’s what He invited you it tonight. Do you need a place to lean?
A place to find comfort and stability? Lay your burdens down at the feet
of the one who first loved you.
|
