Series: Connections Gives Back
May 25, 2008
Last Sunday we started our mini-series on Connections Gives Back. We began looking at this foundational passage for the church, and for Christ-followers, Micah 6:8, “What does the Lord require of you? To do justly, to love mercy, to walk humble with you God.” A mission for all the people of God to guide and direct our lives- corporately as the church and individually as brothers and sisters in Christ. We got started on the first part- do justly (Notice I didn’t say we finished, because really, we’ve only scratched the surface in looking at the call to justice). Today we move on to mercy and walking with God.
Last Sunday I would have never guessed that I would be faced with one of my greatest justice issue challenges just this past week. My bike was stolen. I went out to lunch, came back, and discovered that someone cut my lock and took off with my bike. I’m not going to say I loved that bike, it was just a bike, but I REALLY liked that bike. I felt violated. I did not want to forgive this person. I wanted justice. I wanted retribution. I wanted vengeance. But of course I remembered that the bible teaches us, vengeance is mine says the Lord. SO I prayed God would take vengeance. I prayed the person would wreck and get mangled. I prayed they would get skin disease and go bald (not that there’s anything wrong with balding, I just don’t know anyone who actually wants to go bald). I prayed they would be plagued with digestive ailments. And I’m pretty much still praying this upon the person. Why, because I just preached on justice last week, and this person broke a command of God, and I think this is a situation where there has been a great injustice against me.
But I also prayed for mercy on the thief. If I meet this person today I would love to take the opportunity to tell them about Jesus. To talk to them about justice. To find out what injustices maybe had been done to them, what put them on a path of doing injustice against others. I’d love to tell them about the free offer of grace and mercy extended to us in Jesus Christ. I would love to tell them that in the big picture the bike doesn’t really matter. What does matter is justice. What does matter is that they know the mercy of God. What does matter is walking with God.
Here’s where we go from last week- we can only do justice correctly when we love mercy. Justice is really about getting what we deserve, or giving others what they deserve. And like we said last week, we really do crave and desire justice- but only when we have been treated unjustly. When we have done something in just, and been busted, we never say, oh great, you caught me, now please show me justice. No, we beg for mercy. Please please please forgive me! I’ve learned my lesson. I can see the error of my ways, so me mercy! That’s so human! It’s our gut response- mercy for me, justice for everyone else. What Micah does so masterfully is bring the two together, to begin teaching us that the two are really hand in glove- we need both. Micah taught it, but Jesus embodies it.
Case study. A group of religious leaders brings a woman caught in adultery to Jesus. They quote the bible to say that the woman should be stoned. What do you say Jesus? They’ve set him up. If he says stone her he breaks the law of Rome and they have him. If he says let her go he disregards the Law of Moses and they have him. Talk about a sticky situation. What does he do? Nothing. Actually, he does what we should do more often- he keeps his mouth shut for a while, and it appears that he stops to think, and kneels down, and begins doodling in the sand. The religious leaders keep pressing him, and finally Jesus straightens up and says, “OK, whoever has not ever sinned, you go ahead and throw the first stone.” First the old men drop their stones, and then the young ones, and soon not one is left. Only the woman and Jesus are left. “Woman, where are your accusers? The ones that wanted to condemn you?” “They’re gone.” And listen to what Jesus says, “Neither do I condemn you, now go and leave your life of sin.”
That is awesome! Jesus has done justly by loving mercy. To truly appreciate and understand mercy, we must first be confronted with justice. That’s what Jesus does so well here. That is what is always so hard- how to find the balance between justice and mercy? It's difficult. Nay, impossible, unless we can be guided through these difficult situations. Jesus was able to navigate justice and mercy because he walked with God. And likewise, we can only hope to navigate this requirement by walking humbly with God. We have to start thinking and living like Jesus, the perfect fulfillment of acting justly and loving mercy.
If we are to become the people God requires us to be we must walk with Him. How awesome that God doesn’t just want us to serve Him, but to walk along side of him. What God actually wants, what God actually requires, is for us to live in relationship with him. This is so awesome because if we only had the first two- do justice and love mercy, we would be left with a religion of works. What does God require? He requires you do these things, he requires a works righteousness, he requires a religion. But this final requirement changes the whole dynamic. The final requirement highlights the wonderful truth that ultimately God requires, God desires, that we enter into a living relationship with Him. He wants us to walk together, to walk humbly with him.
The bible is replete with the language of walking with God. From Adam and Eve walking in the garden with God in the cool of the evening, to walking the streets of God in the kingdom of Heaven. From the metaphor of walking in obedience to God, to the disciples literally walking with their teacher Jesus, to us, to the body of Christ, called to walk in step with the Holy Spirit guiding our path. What does that look like? How do we walk humbly with God? Four observations from the bible:
One, to walk humbly with God we must first acknowledge that God is in the lead. This is where it starts. You can’t even really actively walk with God until you come that that starting place to say God, I want to walk with you, and that means I’m going to follow you. Jesus, take the wheel! Take the lead.
Easily said, more difficult to do. Nearly everyone who says they are a Christian, a Christ follower, by definition recognizes that they are saying Jesus is in the lead of my life. But you know what, we say a lot of things we don’t do or believe, right. We talk a big talk all the time about a lot of things. Perhaps this is the biggest talk any of us ever say, that we’re actually going to follow Jesus. I think I can say that with some confidence because if all of us who say we are following Jesus, walking with him, were really walking with him a lot more actively, intentionally, humbly, a lot of people would live a very different life than they do today, and the world would be a lot better place than it is. Perhaps it’s time we go back to the start, back to humility, to say Jesus, God, you’re in the lead. I’ll go where you go, do what you do, be who you want me to be.
Two, to walk humbly with God, to put him in the lead, we must go in the direction he is going. This may mean changing course on our part, and we must be willing to do that. And when I say the direction God is going, I mean we have to get it aligned. You start out on a line, and say I’m going to go in the general direction of this line, but you start a just a fraction of an angle off, then you walk a few minutes, a few hours, a few days, a few weeks, and that line is no longer anywhere in sight. That’s the thing about direction- we have to get it right, because over the haul, a little off or a lot off makes no real difference, it’s just off. God is the leader, God sets the direction. We may not like it- so what. That’s why this takes humility.
In our lives we are confronted with this almost daily. But we get a lot of practice. We follow the direction of our parents when we’re young, of teachers as we grow, of bosses as we enter the work force. We even follow people in really stupid directions. WE follow people to the dumbest places in our lives, don’t we? When we think about some of the things we’ve done, the places we’ve gone, the trouble we’ve gotten ourselves into… what were we thinking? We’ll we weren’t putting Jesus in the lead, and weren’t going in his direction, because the awesome thing about the direction of Jesus, is that it will always take us to God. Always. It will take us to a cross mine you. It will take us to sacrifice, to some suffering, to giving until it cost us something. But simultaneously it will take us to joy, abundance, freedom, life. That’s just like a teaser for our Breakout series and what we’re going t be going into in-depth.
Three, to walk humbly with God we must go at God’s pace. My mom used to always complain that I would walk ahead of her, and she wanted me with her. To this day, Robin still tells me I walk too fast. If we are going on a walk, she wants to walk together. I must change my pace if I want to be with her. And so we must go with God’s pace. I know I find myself way out in front of the church, and I must stop, slow down, and pace myself with God. We may want the answer now, but it may be weeks, months, or years down the path. Of course there are times when I want to drag my heels through times of change, discomfort and disagreement. To pace ourselves with God means we move when he moves, and wait when he waits. But to get there, we must go together.
Four, to walk humbly with God we must look to the same destination. We will argue, we will fight, we will eventually split our ways if we are not agreed on the same destination. Humility says we’ll go to God’s destination for our lives. Of course, it doesn’t take much foresight to see God has a great destination- plans to prosper us and not to harm us, plans to give us a hope and a future. God’s destination, let us never forget, is his kingdom, a perfect kingdom where the streets are gold, the crops are always ripe, and no one will shed any tears. It’s an awesome destination. And that’s what gets us through the walk- because as sure as the destination is wonderful, there will be times in walk that will be difficult. There will be struggles, trials and temptations. There will be persecution. There will be sacrifice. Some will even pay the ultimate price. Never forget that Jesus path to the kingdom, to his fathers right side, took him to firs to the cross and the grave.
Micah 6:8 is for us a rubric to approach life. A rubric in literature is a heading or direction or even a rule. And that’s what God gives us in this verse. What is our heading, our direction, our rule for living? What is good and what does the Lord require of you? To act justly, love mercy, and walk humble with God. God has rubric for what we are to do, to be, and to become. Live by a verse like this and you will never go wrong- for who can argue against God’s justice, mercy and path for our lives?
So how will you live this out this week? Before you leave here today you must decide how you will obey this requirement. Where will you do justice today? Who needs to be shown mercy in your life? What direction will you change so you can walk humbly with God?
So I ask you, what does the Lord require of you? Say it with me and live it everyday….
Saturday, May 24, 2008
Sunday, May 18, 2008
Seek Justice
Series: Connections Gives Back
George J. Saylor
May 18, 2008
My poor wife grew up in very a very unjust circumstance- she was a Pastor’s Kid. There are actually support groups for pastors kids because to the issues they have. If you are a PK and have issues, talk to my wife, not me. My dear wife was subjected to what was called “The Calvinettes.” She tells me it was like a Girl Guides troop with a biblical twist. They would get their troop together, put on their little vests and kerchiefs, do crafts, work on earning badges, sing songs and study the bible. The Calvinettes always began with the same ritual- they would all line up and the leader would ask, “Calvinettes of Victoria, what does the Lord require of you?” And in unison the girls would shout back,
1 Listen to what the LORD says:
"Stand up, plead your case before the mountains;
let the hills hear what you have to say.
Our passage starts as a courtroom scene- God is the plaintiff, Micah the lawyer, Israel the defendant. God is about to make his case, through a man named Micah, against the people of Israel, his chosen people. Which is interesting in itself. Israel is God’s chosen nation, but they seemed to have irreconcilable differences on many occasions. So God decided to take them to court, so to speak. It’s a great scene. When I first studied this passage this really struck me, for my father was a trial lawyer. I thought about this passage, my work as a minister, and my father’s as a trial lawyer, so I called him up I told him, “You know Dad, we have a lot more in common than one might think. We both serve a client rather than ourselves; we both spend days, weeks, or months reviewing our cases, going over the facts, interviewing witnesses, taking statements and preparing our arguments. Then, when the hour comes, we go before a gathering of our peers, we present our case, and try to persuade them to decide in favor of our client. At the end of the day we let the facts speak for themselves, trusting that the truth will become plain and clear to all.” As my father reflected on that he said, “You know George, if that’s the case, then you would have made a lousy lawyer!”
Well like any good lawyer (No, that’s not an oxymoron) Micah presents the facts, plain and simple. He says God has a case against His people. They haven’t stopped to be God’s, God’s plans have not been thwarted by the failures of people. But he definitely has a case against them. He reminded the people that it was he who brought them out of Egypt, out of slavery. Then he says remember what I did for you and remember your journey from the desert to the promised land- I saved you from curses and I delivered you to the land flowing with milk and honey. He reminds them of specific instances, places and people. He goes on to remind them how it was God himself who showed them how to worship. He asks will I be pleased with burnt offerings, dead rams, rivers of oil, even the offering of a child sacrifice. Remember, in the time and context of God’s dealing with the people of Israel this was the ultimate expression of worship, the ultimate offering to many of the so-called gods- offering a human, a child sacrifice.
God has reminded the people that it is he who is good and who has done good to them. He freed them and fed them, he lead them and loved them. So when he asks the question, “What is good and what does the Lord require of you?” All he has to do is point them back to what he has already done. For the Lord has already shown them. The Lord has acted with justice, and so he asks in response for his people to act justly. He has loved and shown mercy, so the people of God are to love mercy. He has walked humbly with his children, and so they are to walk humbly with him.
If want to please God, if we want to do what he would require of us today, then we are called to act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with God. So lets’ look at what living this out could look like.
First, God requires that we act justly. That is, God cares about we do, and he has shown us, by his own doing, what justice looks like. For Israel this meant that God brought them out of slavery, out of an unjust system of oppression and government. God fleshed that out for Israel through the commands, decrees and laws. What is a great starting place to know how to do justice? We should know the 10 commandments- Worship God alone, do not worship any idols, honor His name, honor the Sabbath and keep it holy, honor your parents, do not murder, commit adultery, steal, lie, or covet. I believe we should actually have the commandments memorized. We should also memorize an even simpler form, a way that Jesus summarized justice for us.
Therefore, if we are going to do justice in and through our lives, we are going to have to be saturated with God’s Word- we are going to have to know the law, and more importantly, the spirit of the law. We have to become biblical ethicists. Otherwise, we will become situational ethicists.
These are the only two ways to approach justice- we have our ethics and they guide and direct our lives. Or we let our lives guide and direct our ethics. Clearly we see, from God’s actions, from God’s laws, from the example of Jesus Christ that we must live by the Bible’s standard.
Now I’ll be the first to say that this is difficult. It’s not always clear cut. Which is exactly why we have to think about and pray about our ethics in advance. The biblical ethicist looks deeply at the situation and determines the ethics that are appropriately exercised. The situational ethicist simple reverse the order. They say that what is ethical or true in one situation might not be the same in another. But here’s the thing- both positions look at the situation, one determines strictly from the situation how it is to be handled. The other seeks to apply what is timely and eternal- and that is God’s justice. We have to know the bible and allow it to guide us so that when we come into difficult ethical and justice situations we will have a reference point to begin working with.
We must study the justice issues of our day in light of God’s Word. As Abram Kuyper once said, the pages of our Bible must be smudged with the ink of our newspaper. What are the justice issues of our day? What are the issues we are trying to navigate through? What does the Bible speak to them? Euthanasia, abortion, divorce, war in Afghanistan and Iraq, genocide in the Sudan, the arms race, cyclones in Burma, earthquakes in China, Olympics in China, land claims in Canada, and the list goes on. And if you think that these issues are not addressed in the bible, you haven’t read the bible. The bible tells it like it is. The major justice issues of humanity, all of them, are address in the stories of scripture. Because our God is a God of justice who longs for justice to be done.
All people, and all the world, longs for justice. But if we are going to do God’s justice we must know His Word, look at the situations, and apply justice with love and mercy. Which leads us to our next requirement: love mercy. Which will lead us into the final step in following God’s requirements- to walk humbly with him. But that will have to wait until next Sunday. Because this issue of justice can’t be tackled in one service. Not in two services, and not in our lifetime I suspect. In fact, we know that justice will not finally roll down like a river, as the prophet Isaiah described, until Jesus comes again in a victory of justice. But it is precisely because of the promised victory over injustice in our world that we can become agents of justice today. We can become people of justice and a church of justice, and we can worship a God of justice today.
George J. Saylor
May 18, 2008
My poor wife grew up in very a very unjust circumstance- she was a Pastor’s Kid. There are actually support groups for pastors kids because to the issues they have. If you are a PK and have issues, talk to my wife, not me. My dear wife was subjected to what was called “The Calvinettes.” She tells me it was like a Girl Guides troop with a biblical twist. They would get their troop together, put on their little vests and kerchiefs, do crafts, work on earning badges, sing songs and study the bible. The Calvinettes always began with the same ritual- they would all line up and the leader would ask, “Calvinettes of Victoria, what does the Lord require of you?” And in unison the girls would shout back,
“To do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God, Micah 6:8.”To this day my wife still points to this as one of her life verses- one of those verse that provides for her a handle to grasp the Christian life, a ruler to gauge her lifestyle, and a goal for her to try to attain. Those are the hallmarks of a great and worthwhile mission- this verse gives us the direction to set our lives and the tools to get there. It calls us to something greater than just ourselves and our own wants and desires. It gives us something to live for, and something worth dying for. It really is a mission worthy of our entire life.
1 Listen to what the LORD says:
"Stand up, plead your case before the mountains;
let the hills hear what you have to say.
2 Hear, O mountains, the LORD's accusation;
listen, you everlasting foundations of the earth.
For the LORD has a case against his people;
he is lodging a charge against Israel.
3 "My people, what have I done to you?
How have I burdened you? Answer me.
4 I brought you up out of Egypt
and redeemed you from the land of slavery.
I sent Moses to lead you,
also Aaron and Miriam.
5 My people, remember
what Balak king of Moab counseled
and what Balaam son of Beor answered.
Remember your journey from Shittim to Gilgal,
that you may know the righteous acts of the LORD."
6 With what shall I come before the LORD
and bow down before the exalted God?
Shall I come before him with burnt offerings,
with calves a year old?
7 Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams,
with ten thousand rivers of oil?
Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgression,
the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?
8 He has showed you, O man, what is good.
And what does the LORD require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God.
Our passage starts as a courtroom scene- God is the plaintiff, Micah the lawyer, Israel the defendant. God is about to make his case, through a man named Micah, against the people of Israel, his chosen people. Which is interesting in itself. Israel is God’s chosen nation, but they seemed to have irreconcilable differences on many occasions. So God decided to take them to court, so to speak. It’s a great scene. When I first studied this passage this really struck me, for my father was a trial lawyer. I thought about this passage, my work as a minister, and my father’s as a trial lawyer, so I called him up I told him, “You know Dad, we have a lot more in common than one might think. We both serve a client rather than ourselves; we both spend days, weeks, or months reviewing our cases, going over the facts, interviewing witnesses, taking statements and preparing our arguments. Then, when the hour comes, we go before a gathering of our peers, we present our case, and try to persuade them to decide in favor of our client. At the end of the day we let the facts speak for themselves, trusting that the truth will become plain and clear to all.” As my father reflected on that he said, “You know George, if that’s the case, then you would have made a lousy lawyer!”
Well like any good lawyer (No, that’s not an oxymoron) Micah presents the facts, plain and simple. He says God has a case against His people. They haven’t stopped to be God’s, God’s plans have not been thwarted by the failures of people. But he definitely has a case against them. He reminded the people that it was he who brought them out of Egypt, out of slavery. Then he says remember what I did for you and remember your journey from the desert to the promised land- I saved you from curses and I delivered you to the land flowing with milk and honey. He reminds them of specific instances, places and people. He goes on to remind them how it was God himself who showed them how to worship. He asks will I be pleased with burnt offerings, dead rams, rivers of oil, even the offering of a child sacrifice. Remember, in the time and context of God’s dealing with the people of Israel this was the ultimate expression of worship, the ultimate offering to many of the so-called gods- offering a human, a child sacrifice.
God has reminded the people that it is he who is good and who has done good to them. He freed them and fed them, he lead them and loved them. So when he asks the question, “What is good and what does the Lord require of you?” All he has to do is point them back to what he has already done. For the Lord has already shown them. The Lord has acted with justice, and so he asks in response for his people to act justly. He has loved and shown mercy, so the people of God are to love mercy. He has walked humbly with his children, and so they are to walk humbly with him.
If want to please God, if we want to do what he would require of us today, then we are called to act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with God. So lets’ look at what living this out could look like.
First, God requires that we act justly. That is, God cares about we do, and he has shown us, by his own doing, what justice looks like. For Israel this meant that God brought them out of slavery, out of an unjust system of oppression and government. God fleshed that out for Israel through the commands, decrees and laws. What is a great starting place to know how to do justice? We should know the 10 commandments- Worship God alone, do not worship any idols, honor His name, honor the Sabbath and keep it holy, honor your parents, do not murder, commit adultery, steal, lie, or covet. I believe we should actually have the commandments memorized. We should also memorize an even simpler form, a way that Jesus summarized justice for us.
“Do to other as you would have them do to you,” the Golden Rule in Mathew 7:12.We are all born with this kind of internal justice sensor. It’s a bit skewed, but it’s there- this internal longing that we be treated justly. And whenever we are treated, or believe we’ve been treated without justice, our hearts and voices scream out. Think it’s not true- I invite you to come to my house, off my kids a cookie, then when you break it in half, and give each half. If one of those halves has one microscope speck of more cookie, the other going to scream- it’s not fair! We’ve about got the point in my house where we’re going to buy one of those super sensitive scales to help us dish out bowls of ice cream. We are wired to want justice for ourselves. That’s the given. But we must learn to offer to others as well.
Therefore, if we are going to do justice in and through our lives, we are going to have to be saturated with God’s Word- we are going to have to know the law, and more importantly, the spirit of the law. We have to become biblical ethicists. Otherwise, we will become situational ethicists.
These are the only two ways to approach justice- we have our ethics and they guide and direct our lives. Or we let our lives guide and direct our ethics. Clearly we see, from God’s actions, from God’s laws, from the example of Jesus Christ that we must live by the Bible’s standard.
Now I’ll be the first to say that this is difficult. It’s not always clear cut. Which is exactly why we have to think about and pray about our ethics in advance. The biblical ethicist looks deeply at the situation and determines the ethics that are appropriately exercised. The situational ethicist simple reverse the order. They say that what is ethical or true in one situation might not be the same in another. But here’s the thing- both positions look at the situation, one determines strictly from the situation how it is to be handled. The other seeks to apply what is timely and eternal- and that is God’s justice. We have to know the bible and allow it to guide us so that when we come into difficult ethical and justice situations we will have a reference point to begin working with.
We must study the justice issues of our day in light of God’s Word. As Abram Kuyper once said, the pages of our Bible must be smudged with the ink of our newspaper. What are the justice issues of our day? What are the issues we are trying to navigate through? What does the Bible speak to them? Euthanasia, abortion, divorce, war in Afghanistan and Iraq, genocide in the Sudan, the arms race, cyclones in Burma, earthquakes in China, Olympics in China, land claims in Canada, and the list goes on. And if you think that these issues are not addressed in the bible, you haven’t read the bible. The bible tells it like it is. The major justice issues of humanity, all of them, are address in the stories of scripture. Because our God is a God of justice who longs for justice to be done.
All people, and all the world, longs for justice. But if we are going to do God’s justice we must know His Word, look at the situations, and apply justice with love and mercy. Which leads us to our next requirement: love mercy. Which will lead us into the final step in following God’s requirements- to walk humbly with him. But that will have to wait until next Sunday. Because this issue of justice can’t be tackled in one service. Not in two services, and not in our lifetime I suspect. In fact, we know that justice will not finally roll down like a river, as the prophet Isaiah described, until Jesus comes again in a victory of justice. But it is precisely because of the promised victory over injustice in our world that we can become agents of justice today. We can become people of justice and a church of justice, and we can worship a God of justice today.
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Mother's Day
George J. Saylor
May 11, 2008
I have to admit that part of me hates to do a mother’s day sermon. It worked out that we ended the Signs series last week and we have the Jacob Moon event next weekend, so I was kind of stuck. This hang up definitely comes from my childhood and the fact that I was abandoned by my mom and raised by Gypsies (kidding of course). I grew up always visiting my great aunt for Mother’s Day. Not sure why, it was just the tradition. I don’t remember the pastors name, but I remember the gist of what he said every year- none of you are as good a mom as my mom because my mom was the best mom ever! You think you’re a good mom- well you’re a pathetic excuse for a nurturer! You probably shop at grocery stores- my mom grew all our vegetables, threshed wheat by hand, hunted wild game while nursing, cooked over an open fire, from wood she split, with her bare hands! She made our clothes by hand, she washed our clothes by hand, she spun the thread and collected berries and hand dyed the fabric.
I think he actually had noble intentions, but it just came off bad. It ended up making all the moms present feel lousy, and made him look like he had an Oedipus complex. So I assure you that today I want to do just the opposite- I want to praise mothers, encourage mothers and inspire mothers, and help us all to appreciate more the high calling of motherhood. And I assure you I don’t not have an Oedipus complex. I mean, so last week I admitted that I had a thing for art chicks in college, and my mom just happens to be an art teacher- purely coincidental I tell you.
Actually, it’s not. It just goes to show that parent really does have a huge affect on kids (profound insight for the day!) To deny the profound effect that parenting has on children is to simply be in denial. So a mother’s day message is relevant in that this is common ground- some of us are parents, some of us want to be parents some day, all of us have parents. It’s pretty universal. I look forward to doing a series on parenting in the near future; today I just want to prime the pump.
Now before I go any further let me be clear that this is not to diminish those women not called to be mothers, or who cannot have children, or women who are not even called into marriage. Jesus never married. Jesus never had children, but Jesus was the most fully alive and truly fulfilled person to ever live. Our greatest value, our greatest worth, is not found in being parents or in being spouses. Our greatest value according to the bible is actually in being children- in being and embracing our identity as children of God. If you get that right, then you are set. You know who you are and whose you are, and everything else is icing on the cake.
But this is to affirm that motherhood, and parenting in general, is a divinely ordained and blessed calling in life. And should you be one of the women called into motherhood, that becomes your first and foremost work for the Lord. If you ask me who I am, first I’m going to say I am a child of God, loved by my Father in heaven, redeemed by my Lord Jesus Christ, filled with the Holy Spirit. Then, if the person hasn’t run away totally freaked out, I’m gonna say second, I’m the husband of Robin. Third the father to Eden, Karis and Justin…so far. Fourth, I am called to be the pastor of Connections Community Church- the most rocking church in London! I hope I’ve made my point- being a mom, being a parent, is the end all and be all of life, but it is really really remarkable.
Hannah’s story is remarkable. Hannah was dearly loved by her husband Elkanah. But Hannah was unable to fulfill her greatest longing in life- to be a mother. She was unable to have children. Elkanah could have simply kicked her out of his home, but he loved Hannah. And while he appears to have been a Godly man, he went the way of the world around him, and took a second wife that could bear children. Peninnah was her name, and as you might image, having two wives under the same roof made for just a bit of drama. Sort of like Desperate housewives, 1000 B.C. edition. Let’s just say there was drama.
On one occasion, after what must have been a terrible dinner party for Hannah, she goes to the temple to pray, weeping before the Lord in bitterness of soul the Bible tells us. She prays, “Lord Almighty, look upon your servant in misery and remember me. Give me a son and I will give him back to you for all the days of his life!” She’s making such a scene that an old priest named Eli comes along and scolds her for begin drunk so early in the morning. She tells him she wasn’t drunk at all, but was in misery. He never even gets the details of her story, never even finds out she was barren and wanted a son, but he sees the sincerity of her prayers and says go in peace and may the God of Israel give you what you’ve asked of Him.”
And nine months later she gives birth to a boy, and names him Samuel, which roughly means, “God heard.” God heard her prayer, and answered it.
And here’s what happened next…
If ever there was a woman who would have wanted to hold onto her child it would have been Hannah. She knew the pain of being childless. She knew what it was to long for a baby, and yet month after month to be disappointed again. She knew what it was like to hear the laugher of other children, but never her own. She knew the sting of people’s words. She knew their niceties turned to pity turned to gossip and lies. She knew the mockery of other women. She knew what it was like to be the last one still praying for a child when everyone else had given up, said get on with your life, find a career, find a purpose, get a life. Samuel was no accident. Samuel was not a mistake. Samuel was the answer to tearful years of prayer.
But either way, whether after years of prayer, or a night of passion, when we have children, we are to give them to the Lord. And the thing about giving your children to the Lord, the thing that Hannah knew so well, and did so sacrificially, is that you can’t to it part way. You must give your children over completely. You can’t split the baby in half and give one part to God and the rest to the world. Children literally do not survive being divided that way. They cannot be torn between two worlds. Their delicate little souls can’t bear it, and one or the other will win the day. Our children need to know that this is our prayer, our desire, and their destiny.
Which in no way means we become disconnected from their upbringing. On the contrary, we become all the more involved, all the more aware that our children are not our own, but belong to God. But God has given us the responsibility to raise these kids in a Christ centered home. A home that is decorated with scripture. A home that is filled with songs and psalms of praise. A home that itself is grounded on the word of God. A home that revolves around the church and the fellowship of believers. A home that begins and ends its day in prayer. A home built on the Rock, Jesus Christ.
When we give our children over to God it means we start to move past the nice, benign things we so often say about our children, the obvious things. I just want my kids to be healthy- well congratulates on not wishing illness on you offspring! I just want my kids to be happy- really I wanted my kids to be miserable, I’m gonna have to evaluate that. Of course, we want our kids healthy and happy and all that. But are we going to start praying and building more things into their lives- I want my kids to be Godly. I want my kids to be holy. I want my kids to be respectful. I want my kids to be chaste. I want my kids to be smart and wise and to make incredibly wise decisions. I want my kids to do great things for God. I want my kids to change the world- to seek justice, to love mercy, to eradicate poverty, to fight evil, to cure sickness…
Hannah gave Samuel to God completely, but here’s the thing, when we give our kids to the Lord, he turns right around, hands them back to us and says raise them for me. Hannah was still a part of Samuel’s life. She continued to visit him. Three times every year the family when to worship, and there we can picture the reunion and joy they must have felt. And once a year we know that Hannah brought Samuel a new robe, made by hand, made with love and care and prayers woven into every stitch. She was still a part of providing for her sons needs.
Likewise, we must cloth and cover all our children’s needs. First and foremost we must provide for their spiritual needs, grounding them in Christ. And then providing for all their other needs as our service to God- caring for their physical, emotional, intellectual and creative development.
Now let me be clear on providing for our children’s needs. I’m not talking about paying our kids off, providing them with every wish and desire, clothing them in the best and most fashionable, taking them on the most extravagant vacations, buying them the car of their choice at age 16. There’s a real difference between providing for our children in ways that harm them, and in ways that build them up. And if you don’t know the difference, you need to pray about that, and read about that, and do some serious soul searching. Have you seen the show, “My Super Sweet 16.” You wouldn’t admit it if you did. It’s messed up. It’s about messed up families that drop 100 grand on a sweet 16 party, and the girls are never satisfied. They throw hiss fits and tantrums, which is ridiculous at 16, but more so because it’s over a Beemer that’s black but they wanted red. None of us gets it perfect, but some people really mess it up. So if you don’t have your priorities together, do yourself and your kids a real favor, and get them straightened out.
Finally, the most important lesson we learn from Hannah is that mom’s must learn the prayer of each of their children. Or to put it the way the scripture puts it, mothers must learn the song of their children. Every mother must search her soul, and know her child, and be able to sing that child’s song. We find in scripture a pattern of mothers from Hannah to Mary that sang out a prayer over their children.
Let me read for you part of Hannah’s song of prayer...
1 Then Hannah prayed and said:
"My heart rejoices in the LORD;
in the LORD my horn [a] is lifted high.
My mouth boasts over my enemies,
for I delight in your deliverance.
What’s the song of your child? Of your children? Write it down and sing it aloud. Sing for joy over your children. Let them know that they are a gift from God, and answer to prayer. Sing a song over your children, let them know they are uniquely and wonderfully made. Sing a song over your children so they will start to know who they are, made in the image of God, dearly loved children of God, known by and redeemed by Jesus Christ their Lord. Sing a song over your children so they will be inspired to be great and do great things for God. Sing over your child because no one else can sing that song like you can mom. Dads, were pretty awesome, and kids need their dads every bit that they need their moms, we are equal in this task of parenting. But moms, you sing the song that will begin to shape their life.
Share it with them. Tell it to them. For when you give your children over to God, your don’t give up responsibility for them- you take on even more. For now you are part of raising your children on God’s behalf, and God charges us with the responsibility of teaching rebuking, correcting and training our children in righteous so they may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.
And so we end with a song. One that we can all sing together- to sing over children, and to sing over our own lives. It’s and oldie but a goody, time tested and from the scriptures, it’s called “Take My Life.” And it’s about giving God our lives, and the lives of our children. Sing it loud, sing it proud, sing it as if your life depended on it, as if you are really giving your life, and your children’s lives to God. Because really, we can, and we are called to do nothing less.
Here am I all of me
Take my life it's all for Thee
Verse 1
Take my life and let it be consecrated
Lord to Thee
Take my moments and my days
Let them flow in ceaseless praise
Take my hands and let them move
At the impulse of Thy love
Take my feet and let them be
Swift and beautiful for Thee
Verse 2
Take my voice and let me sing
Always only for my King
Take my lips and let them be
Filled with messages from Thee
Take my silver and my gold
Not a mite would I withhold
Take my intellect and use
Ev'ry power as You choose
Verse 3
Take my will and make it Thine
It shall be no longer mine
Take my heart it is Thine own
It shall be Thy royal throne
Take my love my Lord I pour
At Your feet its treasure store
Take myself and I will be
Ever only all for Thee
May 11, 2008
I have to admit that part of me hates to do a mother’s day sermon. It worked out that we ended the Signs series last week and we have the Jacob Moon event next weekend, so I was kind of stuck. This hang up definitely comes from my childhood and the fact that I was abandoned by my mom and raised by Gypsies (kidding of course). I grew up always visiting my great aunt for Mother’s Day. Not sure why, it was just the tradition. I don’t remember the pastors name, but I remember the gist of what he said every year- none of you are as good a mom as my mom because my mom was the best mom ever! You think you’re a good mom- well you’re a pathetic excuse for a nurturer! You probably shop at grocery stores- my mom grew all our vegetables, threshed wheat by hand, hunted wild game while nursing, cooked over an open fire, from wood she split, with her bare hands! She made our clothes by hand, she washed our clothes by hand, she spun the thread and collected berries and hand dyed the fabric.
I think he actually had noble intentions, but it just came off bad. It ended up making all the moms present feel lousy, and made him look like he had an Oedipus complex. So I assure you that today I want to do just the opposite- I want to praise mothers, encourage mothers and inspire mothers, and help us all to appreciate more the high calling of motherhood. And I assure you I don’t not have an Oedipus complex. I mean, so last week I admitted that I had a thing for art chicks in college, and my mom just happens to be an art teacher- purely coincidental I tell you.
Actually, it’s not. It just goes to show that parent really does have a huge affect on kids (profound insight for the day!) To deny the profound effect that parenting has on children is to simply be in denial. So a mother’s day message is relevant in that this is common ground- some of us are parents, some of us want to be parents some day, all of us have parents. It’s pretty universal. I look forward to doing a series on parenting in the near future; today I just want to prime the pump.
The impact of parenting in many ways, and in many cases, sets the course of a child’s life. It certainly couldn’t be more true than in the case of Hannah, the mother of a boy named Samuel. Hannah rocked the cradle of her son Samuel, and he grew up to be the king maker of Israel. Not the king mind you, but someone with more power and responsibility- the one who installed, advised, and in many ways even ruled over the kings of Israel.
The old saying of William Ross Wallace really is true, “The hand that rocks the cradle is the hand that rules the world.”
Now before I go any further let me be clear that this is not to diminish those women not called to be mothers, or who cannot have children, or women who are not even called into marriage. Jesus never married. Jesus never had children, but Jesus was the most fully alive and truly fulfilled person to ever live. Our greatest value, our greatest worth, is not found in being parents or in being spouses. Our greatest value according to the bible is actually in being children- in being and embracing our identity as children of God. If you get that right, then you are set. You know who you are and whose you are, and everything else is icing on the cake.
But this is to affirm that motherhood, and parenting in general, is a divinely ordained and blessed calling in life. And should you be one of the women called into motherhood, that becomes your first and foremost work for the Lord. If you ask me who I am, first I’m going to say I am a child of God, loved by my Father in heaven, redeemed by my Lord Jesus Christ, filled with the Holy Spirit. Then, if the person hasn’t run away totally freaked out, I’m gonna say second, I’m the husband of Robin. Third the father to Eden, Karis and Justin…so far. Fourth, I am called to be the pastor of Connections Community Church- the most rocking church in London! I hope I’ve made my point- being a mom, being a parent, is the end all and be all of life, but it is really really remarkable.
Hannah’s story is remarkable. Hannah was dearly loved by her husband Elkanah. But Hannah was unable to fulfill her greatest longing in life- to be a mother. She was unable to have children. Elkanah could have simply kicked her out of his home, but he loved Hannah. And while he appears to have been a Godly man, he went the way of the world around him, and took a second wife that could bear children. Peninnah was her name, and as you might image, having two wives under the same roof made for just a bit of drama. Sort of like Desperate housewives, 1000 B.C. edition. Let’s just say there was drama.
On one occasion, after what must have been a terrible dinner party for Hannah, she goes to the temple to pray, weeping before the Lord in bitterness of soul the Bible tells us. She prays, “Lord Almighty, look upon your servant in misery and remember me. Give me a son and I will give him back to you for all the days of his life!” She’s making such a scene that an old priest named Eli comes along and scolds her for begin drunk so early in the morning. She tells him she wasn’t drunk at all, but was in misery. He never even gets the details of her story, never even finds out she was barren and wanted a son, but he sees the sincerity of her prayers and says go in peace and may the God of Israel give you what you’ve asked of Him.”
And nine months later she gives birth to a boy, and names him Samuel, which roughly means, “God heard.” God heard her prayer, and answered it.
And here’s what happened next…
21 When the man Elkanah went up with all his family to offer the annual sacrifice to the LORD and to fulfill his vow, 22 Hannah did not go. She said to her husband, "After the boy is weaned, I will take him and present him before the LORD, and he will live there always."After about three years, when Samuel was weaned, Hannah took him to Eli and told him the story of what had happened. Then she gave Samuel to Eli, saying for his whole life he will be given over to the Lord. Hannah’s story is remarkable, and it teaches us about motherhood specifically, parenting in general. Basically it’s this- God loves moms who give their children to him. God loves and honors mothers who know that their children are a gift from God and ultimately belong to God.23 "Do what seems best to you," Elkanah her husband told her. "Stay here until you have weaned him; only may the LORD make good his [d] word." So the woman stayed at home and nursed her son until she had weaned him.
24 After he was weaned, she took the boy with her, young as he was, along with a three-year-old bull, [e] an ephah [f] of flour and a skin of wine, and brought him to the house of the LORD at Shiloh. 25 When they had slaughtered the bull, they brought the boy to Eli, 26 and she said to him, "As surely as you live, my lord, I am the woman who stood here beside you praying to the LORD. 27 I prayed for this child, and the LORD has granted me what I asked of him. 28 So now I give him to the LORD. For his whole life he will be given over to the LORD." And he worshiped the LORD there. 1 Samuel 1:21-28
If ever there was a woman who would have wanted to hold onto her child it would have been Hannah. She knew the pain of being childless. She knew what it was to long for a baby, and yet month after month to be disappointed again. She knew what it was like to hear the laugher of other children, but never her own. She knew the sting of people’s words. She knew their niceties turned to pity turned to gossip and lies. She knew the mockery of other women. She knew what it was like to be the last one still praying for a child when everyone else had given up, said get on with your life, find a career, find a purpose, get a life. Samuel was no accident. Samuel was not a mistake. Samuel was the answer to tearful years of prayer.
But either way, whether after years of prayer, or a night of passion, when we have children, we are to give them to the Lord. And the thing about giving your children to the Lord, the thing that Hannah knew so well, and did so sacrificially, is that you can’t to it part way. You must give your children over completely. You can’t split the baby in half and give one part to God and the rest to the world. Children literally do not survive being divided that way. They cannot be torn between two worlds. Their delicate little souls can’t bear it, and one or the other will win the day. Our children need to know that this is our prayer, our desire, and their destiny.
Which in no way means we become disconnected from their upbringing. On the contrary, we become all the more involved, all the more aware that our children are not our own, but belong to God. But God has given us the responsibility to raise these kids in a Christ centered home. A home that is decorated with scripture. A home that is filled with songs and psalms of praise. A home that itself is grounded on the word of God. A home that revolves around the church and the fellowship of believers. A home that begins and ends its day in prayer. A home built on the Rock, Jesus Christ.
When we give our children over to God it means we start to move past the nice, benign things we so often say about our children, the obvious things. I just want my kids to be healthy- well congratulates on not wishing illness on you offspring! I just want my kids to be happy- really I wanted my kids to be miserable, I’m gonna have to evaluate that. Of course, we want our kids healthy and happy and all that. But are we going to start praying and building more things into their lives- I want my kids to be Godly. I want my kids to be holy. I want my kids to be respectful. I want my kids to be chaste. I want my kids to be smart and wise and to make incredibly wise decisions. I want my kids to do great things for God. I want my kids to change the world- to seek justice, to love mercy, to eradicate poverty, to fight evil, to cure sickness…
Hannah gave Samuel to God completely, but here’s the thing, when we give our kids to the Lord, he turns right around, hands them back to us and says raise them for me. Hannah was still a part of Samuel’s life. She continued to visit him. Three times every year the family when to worship, and there we can picture the reunion and joy they must have felt. And once a year we know that Hannah brought Samuel a new robe, made by hand, made with love and care and prayers woven into every stitch. She was still a part of providing for her sons needs.
Likewise, we must cloth and cover all our children’s needs. First and foremost we must provide for their spiritual needs, grounding them in Christ. And then providing for all their other needs as our service to God- caring for their physical, emotional, intellectual and creative development.
Now let me be clear on providing for our children’s needs. I’m not talking about paying our kids off, providing them with every wish and desire, clothing them in the best and most fashionable, taking them on the most extravagant vacations, buying them the car of their choice at age 16. There’s a real difference between providing for our children in ways that harm them, and in ways that build them up. And if you don’t know the difference, you need to pray about that, and read about that, and do some serious soul searching. Have you seen the show, “My Super Sweet 16.” You wouldn’t admit it if you did. It’s messed up. It’s about messed up families that drop 100 grand on a sweet 16 party, and the girls are never satisfied. They throw hiss fits and tantrums, which is ridiculous at 16, but more so because it’s over a Beemer that’s black but they wanted red. None of us gets it perfect, but some people really mess it up. So if you don’t have your priorities together, do yourself and your kids a real favor, and get them straightened out.
Finally, the most important lesson we learn from Hannah is that mom’s must learn the prayer of each of their children. Or to put it the way the scripture puts it, mothers must learn the song of their children. Every mother must search her soul, and know her child, and be able to sing that child’s song. We find in scripture a pattern of mothers from Hannah to Mary that sang out a prayer over their children.
Let me read for you part of Hannah’s song of prayer...
1 Then Hannah prayed and said:
"My heart rejoices in the LORD;
in the LORD my horn [a] is lifted high.
My mouth boasts over my enemies,
for I delight in your deliverance.
2 "There is no one holy [b] like the LORD;
there is no one besides you;
there is no Rock like our God.
8 He raises the poor from the dust
and lifts the needy from the ash heap;
he seats them with princes
and has them inherit a throne of honor.
"For the foundations of the earth are the LORD's;
upon them he has set the world.
9 He will guard the feet of his saints,
but the wicked will be silenced in darkness.
"It is not by strength that one prevails;
10 those who oppose the LORD will be shattered.
He will thunder against them from heaven;
the LORD will judge the ends of the earth.
"He will give strength to his king
and exalt the horn of his anointed."
What’s the song of your child? Of your children? Write it down and sing it aloud. Sing for joy over your children. Let them know that they are a gift from God, and answer to prayer. Sing a song over your children, let them know they are uniquely and wonderfully made. Sing a song over your children so they will start to know who they are, made in the image of God, dearly loved children of God, known by and redeemed by Jesus Christ their Lord. Sing a song over your children so they will be inspired to be great and do great things for God. Sing over your child because no one else can sing that song like you can mom. Dads, were pretty awesome, and kids need their dads every bit that they need their moms, we are equal in this task of parenting. But moms, you sing the song that will begin to shape their life.
Share it with them. Tell it to them. For when you give your children over to God, your don’t give up responsibility for them- you take on even more. For now you are part of raising your children on God’s behalf, and God charges us with the responsibility of teaching rebuking, correcting and training our children in righteous so they may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.
And so we end with a song. One that we can all sing together- to sing over children, and to sing over our own lives. It’s and oldie but a goody, time tested and from the scriptures, it’s called “Take My Life.” And it’s about giving God our lives, and the lives of our children. Sing it loud, sing it proud, sing it as if your life depended on it, as if you are really giving your life, and your children’s lives to God. Because really, we can, and we are called to do nothing less.
Here am I all of me
Take my life it's all for Thee
Verse 1
Take my life and let it be consecrated
Lord to Thee
Take my moments and my days
Let them flow in ceaseless praise
Take my hands and let them move
At the impulse of Thy love
Take my feet and let them be
Swift and beautiful for Thee
Verse 2
Take my voice and let me sing
Always only for my King
Take my lips and let them be
Filled with messages from Thee
Take my silver and my gold
Not a mite would I withhold
Take my intellect and use
Ev'ry power as You choose
Verse 3
Take my will and make it Thine
It shall be no longer mine
Take my heart it is Thine own
It shall be Thy royal throne
Take my love my Lord I pour
At Your feet its treasure store
Take myself and I will be
Ever only all for Thee
Sunday, May 4, 2008
Sharing God's Love
Series: Signs of Belonging
May 4, 2008
George J. Saylor
This morning we come full circle. We draw to a close our series on Signs of Belonging by talking about Sharing God’s Love. Every one of us, every one who puts their faith and trust in Jesus is then called to share in the life and ministry of Jesus. And let me be abundantly clear on what I mean by that- God showed us the ultimate love by sending his Son Jesus into the world to be our savior. The ultimate love we can experience is in accepting the gift of that salvation, that life, in Jesus. The ultimate expression of love is in sharing this love, sharing Jesus, telling others about Jesus, inviting others to know Jesus. When I say share God’s love, I’m not talking about some vague concept or feeling- I’m mean we tell people about God’s love for us in Jesus. We tell them who Jesus is and we invite them to give their life and faith to Jesus.
We should share God’s love for two reasons- first, because Jesus commanded it. Simply put- Jesus said go out into all the world and make disciples. Second, we should do so because we are compelled to share the best news and the best thing that’s every happened to us. Jesus commands us, and our own experience of Jesus compels us to share the best news the world has ever heard- there is forgiveness, there is freedom, there is peace, there is a God who loves you. It’s the most amazing news the world has ever heard. That’s it, and that’s what we’re talking about today.
Let me begin by making three observations.
First, we did not make this stuff up. We did not invent these signs of belonging. We did not pull them out of the air because they sounded good, or because they made a cool memorization trick by all starting with the letter S. These signs all come directly from commands in Scripture, and I almost hate to say it, but they are nothing new or novel or extraordinary. In fact, they couldn’t be more ancient, more foundational, more time tested and time honored than just about anything in the life of the Jesus follower. Simply put, these are our signs because they are the life-blood of the church. Without these signs, with these things, it’s lights out on the Jesus movement. Without the church lifting up and living these signs, the whole thing falls and dies. That’s how important these are.
My second observation is this: because each of these is a command for us, they are all deeply interconnected and interdependent with one another. There is a thread that ties them all together. They feed off of one another. And together they can do infinitely more than they ever could alone. They have this synergistic effect on each other.
Does worship seems stale? Embrace your identity to be a steward and take your worship into all of life. Invest your time, a talents, put something in the offering. Honestly, it’s amazing how much more we care for a church when we give to the church. It’s simple kingdom economics. You’re not sure how to be a steward, read the bible. Your reading of the bible seems a bit out of place, try doing some service. Your service still leaves you empty? Maybe you’ve gotten to the point where your serving people quietly, but inside you are chomping at the bit to tell them about Jesus, well, it’s time to share God’s love with someone. The more you engage in one, the greater your love and desire for the others will grow. You can’t continue in one sign without naturally be drawn into the others. And the converse of this is true as well. If you resist some of the signs, some of these practices, the ones you do practice will become vacant and meaningless.
Now here’s the third and final thing: nowhere is the synergistic effect of the signs more evident than in the sign of sharing God’s love. It works like this: There should be a sort passive sharing of God’s love flowing through your life if you are practicing the other signs. If you are practicing worship, and stewardship, and reading the bible, and serving folks, your are going to be a great witness for Jesus. You are sharing God’s love. You will have eyes to see, ears to hear. You will have the words to say and the lifestyle to back it up. You will have everything in place in your life to be the kind of person that God can use to share His love with your neighbors. If you did nothing but live the first four signs, you’d have opportunities to live out the fifth. It would simply become unavoidable.
But sharing God’s love becomes so much more when we actively begin looking for opportunities and ways tell people about Jesus. And when we actively start telling people about Jesus, when we start inviting them and bringing them to church, we’ll be drawn back into the other signs. If you are sharing your faith, sharing God’s love, you will be drawn to worship, because you will need your spiritual batteries charged. You’ll start reading your bible because you will need guidance and wisdom. People are going to ask you tough questions, really tough questions, like why is their suffering in the world? Does God really love everyone? What does God think about homosexuality? What about all the other world religions, or people with no religion at all? You’ll be asked questions that rock your world, and all the sudden, reading the bible is going to make a lot more sense. You will engage in service, because you won’t want to be a hypocrite! As you seek to meet the real spiritual needs of people, you will be compelled to meet their physical, emotional and relational needs as well.
I can promise you this:
Jesus knew this. Jesus lived this. This is why loving others, sharing God’s love, was so vital important to Jesus. This is Jesus sure fire, never miss plan for personal growth, and teh growth of the church.
Jesus’ command is for you to love one another. Let me break that down for you because I realize here that this command can be very confusing, like so much of Christianity and so many of Jesus’ commands. First he says, “You.” Now let’s just make sure we’re all still on the same page, because I think right out of the gate is where a lot of us mess up. Now we have to ask ourselves, “Who is you?” Now I want everyone here to look to the person to your right, say good morning. I realize some of you on the ends are talking to a wall. Either way, that’s not you. Look to you left- that’s not you either. Now think about the most wonderful loving person you’ve ever met or know- maybe it’s your mom, you remember her caring for you when you had the chicken pox. Maybe it’s your dad, taking out hiking and biking and swimming and fishing. I don’t know who it is, but whoever it is, that other person also isn’t you. Who does you apply to in this command? YOU. That’s right. This command that you love one another applies directly to you.
Now if the first part is confusing, I realize that this next part in nearly impossible for someone without theological training to grasp and carry out. But we'll still try. Ok now, remember a few moments when you looked at the person to your right, and the person to you left, the person behind you, the person in front of you. Hold onto your hats now- those people, they are one another. It’s true. They are the one another! I know, WOW. Really, it’s so complex maybe you should just leave this to professionals like me.
Jesus continues- “love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” This is love- you, willing to lay down you life, willing to do anything, for the person next to you. Jesus says I’m not going to even bother trying to explain or define love for you. But I’ll do something even better. I’ll show you what love it. I’ll live the ultimate love for you. And that’s exactly what Jesus did. Jesus laid down his life for his friends, for us.
John, the man who wrote these words from Jesus, was so transformed by them, so transformed by Jesus that he actually began to live it out. We find him later devoting his life to living out this command. He wrote 3 other letters in his life that made it into the bible. In that first letter he writes primarily about this command. He rhetorically asked the question, “What is love?” And he gave the answer- God is love. Not that we first loved God, but that God first loved us, and sent his son, Jesus, as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we ought to love one another. And this is how we know what love is- Jesus laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for one another.
This command isn’t radical in its originality, in it’s depth or insight. It’s only radical in its application. This command is radical when it’s lived out. It’s radical when it moves from our heads, to our hearts, to our hands and feet. That’s worth saying again- it’s only radical when it moves from our heads to our hearts- as the old saying goes, the journey of 18 inches is the longest journey of all- getting things from and idea, to a value; from a concept, to a conviction, from this teaching, to the actual application to our lives. Because only when it does that, only when it gets to our hearts, will it get to our hands and feet. And if it doesn’t go to our hands and feet, well it hasn’t gotten to our hearts. Because the heart effects everything else. Just as the heart pumps the blood that flows to every part of our body, so the heart will pump this command to love one another, to every part of our body.
So all I want to do for the rest of this morning is get this from our heads and into our hearts, so that when we leave here we are compelled to share God’s love with our hands and feet, with our words and actions. I want you to get the love God in your heart, because it’s the most wonderful thing that has ever happened to me. And if you get the love of God in your heart, I know you share it with others, because you won’t be able to do anything less. Because while Jesus calls this a command, the truth is that we are only compelled to live this out when we’ve experienced the love of God. When we’ve experienced the love of God we can do nothing less than want to share it with everyone.
When I was engaged in full time campus ministry I made it a habit to meet people in the food court. It was central, public, and just downstairs from my office. I would meet with students, or just try to meet more students. One day a girl approached me said, “Hey, Christian guy, what’s your name?” I must admit that I was taken a bit off guard both by her comment and appearance, as I had never meet or talked with her, or noticed her, because she was, if anything, noticeable. I think I just said, “Uh, I’m George, who are you?” She said her name was Mandy, and without any prodding she told me that she was a Neo-socialist, ethnically Jewish, but religiously agnostic, lesbian art major (yes, I was so surprised to hear she was an art major), and one other thing, she was putting herself through school working as a stripper. I said, “But really Mandy who are you?”
It was great- she cut through about a month of chit-chat and conversation in the first 30 seconds.
She said to me something like, "I’ve seen you around here a lot and I get a really positive vibe from your spirit." At this point I assure you I was no longer the “evangelist” making others feel uncomfortable around me. I was pretty much freaked out. At that point on the outside I’m trying to act totally cool, like I have this conversation everyday of my life, I mean, I can hardly keep track of how many artistic agnostic lesbian Jewish socialist strippers I hang out with. Inside I was praying dear God, I’m going to need you help on this one. Whatever it is your doing wherever else in the world, you are going to have to stop, focus on me for a moment, and lend me a hand. Because here’s why God, as if you didn’t know this- there’s a girl sitting her with me who you love, who you died for, and she is crying for help. She just put it all on the table with me because somehow she knows I’m a Christian. Somehow she knows this about me, and she was the one who walked across the room to me, and opened a door for me, and right now God, I think I’m standing in here as your man. I think right now I’m your representative. And I really don’t want to mess this up. I really want to be available right now, right here, for something, even something miraculous.
It must have been an awkwardly long silence for me to think all that. I must have said something really smooth, like, “Wow,” but we struck up a conversation, and a friendship. We began to get together on occasion to talk. She just jumped right in and started asking tons of questions. Most I couldn’t answer. Some I think I handled pretty well. And I listened to her story. And it was quiet a story.
I’d like to tell you that Mandy had a radical conversation. That she came to put her faith in Jesus, she accepted the love and grace and the relationship offered to her in God through Jesus. She broke free of some of the very dangerous and self-destructive habits she addicted to. But you know what, she never came to our campus worship service. She never came to a small group. She never really engaged with other Christians as far as I know and she never made it back to school after that first year. And we lost touch. But she gave me the privilege, the privilege, to share my beliefs, and my deepest conviction that life can only truly be found in Jesus. Was that a failure? Did I fail in sharing God’s love? How would you even gauge success and failure? I think by the end of that year Mandy knew I would be her friend no matter what she said or did or didn’t do. I think she heard things about God no one else had ever told her. I think she saw the unconditional, unbounded love of God in a small way in our friendship. Ad she knew I believed in God who would love and accept her without condition.
There’s a Mandy in your life. Will you share God’s love with Mandy? There are Mandy’s all around us. We brush shoulders with her everyday. Someone who’s crying out for love and looking for relationship, and desperate for direction? Maybe as I say this, you know exactly who that person is. Is it someone at work, someone who serves you coffee, someone who lives in the same development, someone in you family? Is there someone who needs to know the love of God? Of course.
The question isn’t, does God love them? They question isn’t, did Jesus die for them? The question is, are you the one who might get the privilege of showing it to them? Are you the one who gets the thrill, who gets the joy, who gets the honor, who gets the blessing, of just taking the time to love them? Will you just take the time to share God’s love? Tell them about Jesus. Invite them to worship. Even better, bring them. One thing I’ve noticed is the huge difference between saying, I’d love you to come to church with me sometime, and saying, would you come to church with me this Sunday?
I don’t know if this is a good thing or a bad thing, but I’ve been told on numerous occasions that I’m a natural salesman. But I don’t think I’m a natural salesman. I actually know I’m horrible at it. But I’m a natural sharer. There is something in me that can’t keep great news and great things bottled up. If I get a great pair of shoes, I’m all running around, man check out my shoes, I love my shoes they are the best shoes I have ever had, you gotta get yourself a pair of these shoes, can I take you to the store so we can get you a pair of these shoes? We share great news all the time- we’re always telling each other about great restaurants and sales and shows.
But do you want to know what the greatest thing I’ve ever experienced is? Greater than any pair of shoes, greater than any restaurant I’ve eaten at, greater than any show I’ve ever seen? It’s the love of God in Jesus. It’s the relationship I have with Jesus simply by accepting the gift of love he offers me. The gift of forgiveness, of freedom, of life.
But finally, I realize this- before I can ask you to share the love of God, I have to first ask you, have you experienced the love of God? Because I bet there are some Mandy’s here today. And I just want to tell you, that God loves you. He loves you enough that he sent his son to us. And his son, Jesus, loves us enough that he gave his life for us. That’s love. And because of that love we can know God. We give our lives to Jesus, we put our faith in him, and he comes into our life.
This is the love of God- it’s not a definition, it’s not a three step program, it’s Jesus, it’s the relationship he invites us into. It’s the forgiveness he offers us. It’ the freedom he gives us. In Jesus we have a living example of perfect love. In Jesus we look into the eyes of love. In Jesus we see the invisible God of love. The God who made us, the God who came to us, the God who died for us, the God who redeems us, the God who gave himself for us and offers us his life. Friends, this morning I’m not going give you a definition of love. I’m going to try and do you one better. I just want to point you toward the God who is love, and invite you to start a relationship with him.
May 4, 2008
George J. Saylor
This morning we come full circle. We draw to a close our series on Signs of Belonging by talking about Sharing God’s Love. Every one of us, every one who puts their faith and trust in Jesus is then called to share in the life and ministry of Jesus. And let me be abundantly clear on what I mean by that- God showed us the ultimate love by sending his Son Jesus into the world to be our savior. The ultimate love we can experience is in accepting the gift of that salvation, that life, in Jesus. The ultimate expression of love is in sharing this love, sharing Jesus, telling others about Jesus, inviting others to know Jesus. When I say share God’s love, I’m not talking about some vague concept or feeling- I’m mean we tell people about God’s love for us in Jesus. We tell them who Jesus is and we invite them to give their life and faith to Jesus.
We should share God’s love for two reasons- first, because Jesus commanded it. Simply put- Jesus said go out into all the world and make disciples. Second, we should do so because we are compelled to share the best news and the best thing that’s every happened to us. Jesus commands us, and our own experience of Jesus compels us to share the best news the world has ever heard- there is forgiveness, there is freedom, there is peace, there is a God who loves you. It’s the most amazing news the world has ever heard. That’s it, and that’s what we’re talking about today.
Let me begin by making three observations.
First, we did not make this stuff up. We did not invent these signs of belonging. We did not pull them out of the air because they sounded good, or because they made a cool memorization trick by all starting with the letter S. These signs all come directly from commands in Scripture, and I almost hate to say it, but they are nothing new or novel or extraordinary. In fact, they couldn’t be more ancient, more foundational, more time tested and time honored than just about anything in the life of the Jesus follower. Simply put, these are our signs because they are the life-blood of the church. Without these signs, with these things, it’s lights out on the Jesus movement. Without the church lifting up and living these signs, the whole thing falls and dies. That’s how important these are.
My second observation is this: because each of these is a command for us, they are all deeply interconnected and interdependent with one another. There is a thread that ties them all together. They feed off of one another. And together they can do infinitely more than they ever could alone. They have this synergistic effect on each other.
Does worship seems stale? Embrace your identity to be a steward and take your worship into all of life. Invest your time, a talents, put something in the offering. Honestly, it’s amazing how much more we care for a church when we give to the church. It’s simple kingdom economics. You’re not sure how to be a steward, read the bible. Your reading of the bible seems a bit out of place, try doing some service. Your service still leaves you empty? Maybe you’ve gotten to the point where your serving people quietly, but inside you are chomping at the bit to tell them about Jesus, well, it’s time to share God’s love with someone. The more you engage in one, the greater your love and desire for the others will grow. You can’t continue in one sign without naturally be drawn into the others. And the converse of this is true as well. If you resist some of the signs, some of these practices, the ones you do practice will become vacant and meaningless.
Now here’s the third and final thing: nowhere is the synergistic effect of the signs more evident than in the sign of sharing God’s love. It works like this: There should be a sort passive sharing of God’s love flowing through your life if you are practicing the other signs. If you are practicing worship, and stewardship, and reading the bible, and serving folks, your are going to be a great witness for Jesus. You are sharing God’s love. You will have eyes to see, ears to hear. You will have the words to say and the lifestyle to back it up. You will have everything in place in your life to be the kind of person that God can use to share His love with your neighbors. If you did nothing but live the first four signs, you’d have opportunities to live out the fifth. It would simply become unavoidable.
But sharing God’s love becomes so much more when we actively begin looking for opportunities and ways tell people about Jesus. And when we actively start telling people about Jesus, when we start inviting them and bringing them to church, we’ll be drawn back into the other signs. If you are sharing your faith, sharing God’s love, you will be drawn to worship, because you will need your spiritual batteries charged. You’ll start reading your bible because you will need guidance and wisdom. People are going to ask you tough questions, really tough questions, like why is their suffering in the world? Does God really love everyone? What does God think about homosexuality? What about all the other world religions, or people with no religion at all? You’ll be asked questions that rock your world, and all the sudden, reading the bible is going to make a lot more sense. You will engage in service, because you won’t want to be a hypocrite! As you seek to meet the real spiritual needs of people, you will be compelled to meet their physical, emotional and relational needs as well.
I can promise you this:
if you obey the command to share God’s love and seek to engage in sharing your faith with others, your relationship with Jesus will become alive and active in ways you’ve never imagined. Sharing your relationship with Jesus with others, sharing the love you have for him, will do more to energize your faith and your life than anything else.
Jesus knew this. Jesus lived this. This is why loving others, sharing God’s love, was so vital important to Jesus. This is Jesus sure fire, never miss plan for personal growth, and teh growth of the church.
"A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another." John 13: 34-35
Jesus’ command is for you to love one another. Let me break that down for you because I realize here that this command can be very confusing, like so much of Christianity and so many of Jesus’ commands. First he says, “You.” Now let’s just make sure we’re all still on the same page, because I think right out of the gate is where a lot of us mess up. Now we have to ask ourselves, “Who is you?” Now I want everyone here to look to the person to your right, say good morning. I realize some of you on the ends are talking to a wall. Either way, that’s not you. Look to you left- that’s not you either. Now think about the most wonderful loving person you’ve ever met or know- maybe it’s your mom, you remember her caring for you when you had the chicken pox. Maybe it’s your dad, taking out hiking and biking and swimming and fishing. I don’t know who it is, but whoever it is, that other person also isn’t you. Who does you apply to in this command? YOU. That’s right. This command that you love one another applies directly to you.
Now if the first part is confusing, I realize that this next part in nearly impossible for someone without theological training to grasp and carry out. But we'll still try. Ok now, remember a few moments when you looked at the person to your right, and the person to you left, the person behind you, the person in front of you. Hold onto your hats now- those people, they are one another. It’s true. They are the one another! I know, WOW. Really, it’s so complex maybe you should just leave this to professionals like me.
Jesus continues- “love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” This is love- you, willing to lay down you life, willing to do anything, for the person next to you. Jesus says I’m not going to even bother trying to explain or define love for you. But I’ll do something even better. I’ll show you what love it. I’ll live the ultimate love for you. And that’s exactly what Jesus did. Jesus laid down his life for his friends, for us.
John, the man who wrote these words from Jesus, was so transformed by them, so transformed by Jesus that he actually began to live it out. We find him later devoting his life to living out this command. He wrote 3 other letters in his life that made it into the bible. In that first letter he writes primarily about this command. He rhetorically asked the question, “What is love?” And he gave the answer- God is love. Not that we first loved God, but that God first loved us, and sent his son, Jesus, as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we ought to love one another. And this is how we know what love is- Jesus laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for one another.
This command isn’t radical in its originality, in it’s depth or insight. It’s only radical in its application. This command is radical when it’s lived out. It’s radical when it moves from our heads, to our hearts, to our hands and feet. That’s worth saying again- it’s only radical when it moves from our heads to our hearts- as the old saying goes, the journey of 18 inches is the longest journey of all- getting things from and idea, to a value; from a concept, to a conviction, from this teaching, to the actual application to our lives. Because only when it does that, only when it gets to our hearts, will it get to our hands and feet. And if it doesn’t go to our hands and feet, well it hasn’t gotten to our hearts. Because the heart effects everything else. Just as the heart pumps the blood that flows to every part of our body, so the heart will pump this command to love one another, to every part of our body.
So all I want to do for the rest of this morning is get this from our heads and into our hearts, so that when we leave here we are compelled to share God’s love with our hands and feet, with our words and actions. I want you to get the love God in your heart, because it’s the most wonderful thing that has ever happened to me. And if you get the love of God in your heart, I know you share it with others, because you won’t be able to do anything less. Because while Jesus calls this a command, the truth is that we are only compelled to live this out when we’ve experienced the love of God. When we’ve experienced the love of God we can do nothing less than want to share it with everyone.
When I was engaged in full time campus ministry I made it a habit to meet people in the food court. It was central, public, and just downstairs from my office. I would meet with students, or just try to meet more students. One day a girl approached me said, “Hey, Christian guy, what’s your name?” I must admit that I was taken a bit off guard both by her comment and appearance, as I had never meet or talked with her, or noticed her, because she was, if anything, noticeable. I think I just said, “Uh, I’m George, who are you?” She said her name was Mandy, and without any prodding she told me that she was a Neo-socialist, ethnically Jewish, but religiously agnostic, lesbian art major (yes, I was so surprised to hear she was an art major), and one other thing, she was putting herself through school working as a stripper. I said, “But really Mandy who are you?”
It was great- she cut through about a month of chit-chat and conversation in the first 30 seconds.
She said to me something like, "I’ve seen you around here a lot and I get a really positive vibe from your spirit." At this point I assure you I was no longer the “evangelist” making others feel uncomfortable around me. I was pretty much freaked out. At that point on the outside I’m trying to act totally cool, like I have this conversation everyday of my life, I mean, I can hardly keep track of how many artistic agnostic lesbian Jewish socialist strippers I hang out with. Inside I was praying dear God, I’m going to need you help on this one. Whatever it is your doing wherever else in the world, you are going to have to stop, focus on me for a moment, and lend me a hand. Because here’s why God, as if you didn’t know this- there’s a girl sitting her with me who you love, who you died for, and she is crying for help. She just put it all on the table with me because somehow she knows I’m a Christian. Somehow she knows this about me, and she was the one who walked across the room to me, and opened a door for me, and right now God, I think I’m standing in here as your man. I think right now I’m your representative. And I really don’t want to mess this up. I really want to be available right now, right here, for something, even something miraculous.
It must have been an awkwardly long silence for me to think all that. I must have said something really smooth, like, “Wow,” but we struck up a conversation, and a friendship. We began to get together on occasion to talk. She just jumped right in and started asking tons of questions. Most I couldn’t answer. Some I think I handled pretty well. And I listened to her story. And it was quiet a story.
I’d like to tell you that Mandy had a radical conversation. That she came to put her faith in Jesus, she accepted the love and grace and the relationship offered to her in God through Jesus. She broke free of some of the very dangerous and self-destructive habits she addicted to. But you know what, she never came to our campus worship service. She never came to a small group. She never really engaged with other Christians as far as I know and she never made it back to school after that first year. And we lost touch. But she gave me the privilege, the privilege, to share my beliefs, and my deepest conviction that life can only truly be found in Jesus. Was that a failure? Did I fail in sharing God’s love? How would you even gauge success and failure? I think by the end of that year Mandy knew I would be her friend no matter what she said or did or didn’t do. I think she heard things about God no one else had ever told her. I think she saw the unconditional, unbounded love of God in a small way in our friendship. Ad she knew I believed in God who would love and accept her without condition.
There’s a Mandy in your life. Will you share God’s love with Mandy? There are Mandy’s all around us. We brush shoulders with her everyday. Someone who’s crying out for love and looking for relationship, and desperate for direction? Maybe as I say this, you know exactly who that person is. Is it someone at work, someone who serves you coffee, someone who lives in the same development, someone in you family? Is there someone who needs to know the love of God? Of course.
The question isn’t, does God love them? They question isn’t, did Jesus die for them? The question is, are you the one who might get the privilege of showing it to them? Are you the one who gets the thrill, who gets the joy, who gets the honor, who gets the blessing, of just taking the time to love them? Will you just take the time to share God’s love? Tell them about Jesus. Invite them to worship. Even better, bring them. One thing I’ve noticed is the huge difference between saying, I’d love you to come to church with me sometime, and saying, would you come to church with me this Sunday?
I don’t know if this is a good thing or a bad thing, but I’ve been told on numerous occasions that I’m a natural salesman. But I don’t think I’m a natural salesman. I actually know I’m horrible at it. But I’m a natural sharer. There is something in me that can’t keep great news and great things bottled up. If I get a great pair of shoes, I’m all running around, man check out my shoes, I love my shoes they are the best shoes I have ever had, you gotta get yourself a pair of these shoes, can I take you to the store so we can get you a pair of these shoes? We share great news all the time- we’re always telling each other about great restaurants and sales and shows.
But do you want to know what the greatest thing I’ve ever experienced is? Greater than any pair of shoes, greater than any restaurant I’ve eaten at, greater than any show I’ve ever seen? It’s the love of God in Jesus. It’s the relationship I have with Jesus simply by accepting the gift of love he offers me. The gift of forgiveness, of freedom, of life.
But finally, I realize this- before I can ask you to share the love of God, I have to first ask you, have you experienced the love of God? Because I bet there are some Mandy’s here today. And I just want to tell you, that God loves you. He loves you enough that he sent his son to us. And his son, Jesus, loves us enough that he gave his life for us. That’s love. And because of that love we can know God. We give our lives to Jesus, we put our faith in him, and he comes into our life.
This is the love of God- it’s not a definition, it’s not a three step program, it’s Jesus, it’s the relationship he invites us into. It’s the forgiveness he offers us. It’ the freedom he gives us. In Jesus we have a living example of perfect love. In Jesus we look into the eyes of love. In Jesus we see the invisible God of love. The God who made us, the God who came to us, the God who died for us, the God who redeems us, the God who gave himself for us and offers us his life. Friends, this morning I’m not going give you a definition of love. I’m going to try and do you one better. I just want to point you toward the God who is love, and invite you to start a relationship with him.
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