Who is my neighbor? Great question and an understanding in that bumper video showed
the entire spectrum of I think where we are in society today. Everywhere from red and
yellow, black and white. They are precious in a sight from protests to peace to division
to all of these things and as much as we could go super, super wide with it and that
probably makes a great sermon series and I know it will because it's called the book of
revelation. We will get to this. We are going to look at today the question that comes
around this idea of neighbor. Neighbor is a packed word I feel like and excited to get
back into the pulpit and actually talk about the interactions Jesus has with this idea
of neighbor. Before we get to Jesus who is going to trump all of us which is great, he
always does. When you hear the word neighbor, what comes and if you are a guest this morning
I like to ask questions, we like to have a conversation. It's one way to keep you all
awake and it keeps me from not being boring hopefully. When I say the word neighbor what
comes to mind? Mr. Rogers, that's actually real, that's in no joke in my sermon. So way
to go. And again collaborative voice on a lot of this and that's exciting. So Mr. Rogers
absolutely. Yep. No one is excluded. Wow. You went deep there, thank you. Others. Next
door, sure. A friend. We are going to go there too Mike, good Samaritan parable, absolutely.
Love, okay I heard dove. I was like I don't know maybe the chocolates that you can bring
or maybe you're, they have pet doves, I don't know. Others. Let's be honest, let's be real
when it comes to this idea of neighbor and neighboring. Yeah, in the back. Gary, Indiana,
thank you. Okay, very good. So you live in Highland so that's your neighbor to the north,
right? A fence. Now we're, yeah, thank you pink hair. Alright, fence, good. Others. I
can say that in church, right? Pain in the butt, okay that's fair, alright. Don't want
to be Wendy's neighbor. I mean it wasn't Wendy that said that. Others. I am automatically
here, get off my lawn, right? I automatically hear that for some reason when I think of
neighbor. I think of that person that just sits there and whenever someone gets on their
lawn they always just yell at them. I've had good neighbors so I'm not sure why the negative
comes out but others. Whoever's sitting next to you. Now just look at everybody at the
table with you. Yep, there you go, neighbor, neighbor, neighbor. Neighboring is a big thing
to Jesus, okay? We see not only parables but direct teachings of Jesus to those who thought
they knew Jesus and they didn't, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the scribes, that he talks
about neighboring and being a neighbor and in that time, in Jesus' kind of era and culture,
neighbors meant something kind of different. Though it all kind of means this is what you
guys talked about. It would be more get off my sand. All right, let's just turn from that.
It would be more the tribes and the cultures that surrounded the Israelites and that is
very different. And now for some of you, you may have a neighbor that is of a different
kind of tribe or culture. Maybe they're a different race. Maybe they just live an inherently
different life than you. You do have something in common. You live on the same street. But
I know and I've talked to a bunch of you that when you've had neighbors that are different
from you, it's usually one of two responses. It's an invitation that God might be teaching
you something about your neighbor or you're building up an even bigger fence. And I'm
going to go the former, not the latter, I think is the way of Jesus. Now don't get me
wrong. The Israelites had ceremonial laws and different things that had to do with how
they dealt with neighbors. Jesus came to fulfill those that we look at neighbors in a very
different way. But understanding, I think the church's mission, what we get from Jesus,
is to be neighborly. So this sermon series is going to make us all very uncomfortable.
And it was somewhat written that way because it speaks of a pretty vulnerable truth that
if you are a bad neighbor, that that actually, in my opinion, taints your witness to the
world. It's really hard to yell at someone, get off my lawn, yet invite them to come to
church. How do you think that would go? If your lawn is very territorial for you and
you make that known to your neighbor and then all of a sudden you feel maybe the Spirit's
urge or something, guilt, to invite them to church, I don't think that witness is going
to be very fruitful. But more than lawns, it has to do with our life. That how we our
neighbors to people, especially those that are different from us, says a lot about our
witness. Now there are some of you over this sermon series, you're going to try to poke
holes in this understanding and use of the word love. And understand that as we use this
word love, that doesn't necessarily mean acceptance, that doesn't necessarily mean that
you buy into everything your neighbor is selling, especially if it's like a timeshare. I've
got to get these jokes out, I've been preached in three weeks. So just let the dad jokes
go. But understand that Jesus uses the word love, so we have to use the word love and
we have to understand as best we can what he meant by loving your neighbor as yourself.
Okay, so let's start with Luke chapter 10. Here you go Mike, good job. You want to get
up here and preach it? No, no one wants that. But understand that Luke 10, 25 says, and
behold a lawyer stood up to put him, him being Jesus to the test, saying, teacher, what shall
I do to inherit eternal life? Jesus, him said to him, what is written in the law? How do
you read it? The lawyer answered, you shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart,
with all your soul, with all your strength and with all your mind and your neighbor as
yourself. And he said to him, you have answered, what's the word Max? Correctly do this and
you will live. So you have a lawyer, right? You have a lawyer come to Jesus asking him
a question, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? Let's deconstruct that a little bit.
What shall I do, works, to inherit something given, eternal life, something you and I can't
give. We can take away someone's physical life, we can have a part in creating life,
but eternal life has nothing to do with us. This lawyer I think knew this when he's asking
Jesus. Now whether or not he knew what Jesus or who Jesus was, the Messiah, the living
God, all of those things, he's asking him a very pragmatic question. And he goes back
to the law. He goes all the way back to the Old Testament which a good Jew would. Love
the Lord your God with all of your heart, with all of your soul, with all of your strength
and with all your mind. Great. That's that vertical relation we talk about all the time,
right? If we love God with all of those things, what are we going to do with it? We've got
to love our neighbor as ourself. And I've always thought it was interesting as yourself.
Because what does that do? That puts you and me and what's going on in here and what's
going on in here under the microscope. Because what if you don't love yourself? What if you
loathe yourself? What if you are just that negative pessimistic person that battles just
being negative all the time? Someone's going to say, wow, look at that beautiful blue sky
and you walk away going, they hate blue. Like it doesn't make any sense but you know people
that are like that. Dare I say some of us might be like that. So how do you read this
verse? Hopefully it's with a pure heart, a pure mind and a pure understanding that Jesus
loves you in spite of you sometimes. That Jesus knows all the thoughts, all the words,
all the texts, all the things that you're going to do before you do them. And how many
of you as you were about to post on Facebook got struck by lightning? Nobody. Because God's
also not Zeus. But understand that we have to have an understanding of who we are in
order to understand this text. That if we love the Lord with all of our heart, all of
our soul, all of our mind and all of our strength, all that we are, nothing's left. Then loving
your neighbor as yourself, friend, shouldn't be that hard. Because if we have all this
love for God and we have that reciprocal love relationship with God that we are, we love
God and we feel that love of God, we know he has saved us, we know that we're going
to heaven when we die, we know these good things, then loving our neighbor should not
be that hard regardless of who they are. Because God's already given you the patience to deal
with the get off my lawners, right? Gives you the grace to deal with the neighbor that
doesn't pick up after their dog. All of those things that the Lord has put something in
you to love them. Because a God that brings you to your neighbors is a God that's going
to teach you to love your neighbors. Let's jump to Mark chapter 12. The great
commandment. So we're going to kind of put this on a pedestal because I believe it needs
to be. And one of the scribes came to him and heard them disputing with one another.
And seeing that he answered them well, asked him which commandment is the most important
of all? Jesus answered, the most important is this and this is the Shema.
Adonai Elohenu, Adonai Ahad, hero Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.
And you shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart, with all of your soul,
with all of your mind and with all of your strength. The second is this, you shall love
your neighbor as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these. Let's stop there
for a second. That's why I love Jesus isn't a math guy and you all know that I'm not.
That he takes the ten and then the six hundred and he boils it down to these two.
And the scribe said to him, you are right teacher, you have truly said that he is one
and there is no other besides him. And to love him with all of the heart and with all
of the understanding and all the strength and to love one's neighbor as yourself is
much more than all burnt offerings and sacrifices. And when Jesus saw that he had
answered wisely he said to him, you are not far from the kingdom of God. And after that
no one dared to ask him any questions. April leave that up there. This one's key.
So if we love God with everything, vertical relationship, and we love people with
everything, ooh that's hard, then we're not far from the kingdom of God. Friends
think about that. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
We teach our kids that. We were taught that that is the Lord's prayer. I've said it
before. I'll continue to say it until we're all with Jesus face to face. You may be
the kingdom come for somebody else. So how does that shape? Get off my lawn. It
doesn't shape it very well. So we have to understand that as we work through this
life, as we love through this life, we're going to have people in our lives that
are different from us. People that try our patience. People that test that last bit
of sensibility we have. People that are going to make us fly off the handle. And
there are going to be other people outside of the people in this church.
Because we can be that for everybody here. And if we don't know how to love people
here, then how are we going to do it out there? If this is just a love club and
that's all we do here, but we don't actually take the words of Jesus and we'll
get to those in a little bit deeper today and then the rest of the month, what are
we doing? It doesn't make any sense. You're taking Jesus' words and you're
basically leaving 90% of it there. But if the greatest commandment is to love God
and love our neighbor as ourselves, then what does that look like in times of
struggle? What does that look like in times of brokenness? What does that look
like when your neighbor, your family member, your coworker, your boss just lit
you up for whatever reason? What does that look like to be able to work through
that in here and in here first before we go here, here, or here? Let me do that
so those were blocked by the podium. Let's go to and work on that with God
here and here first before we go here, we go here, or we go here. But we don't do
that or at least we don't do it well. But if Jesus is going to jump on the fact
that all the law and the prophets, everything in the Old Testament hangs on
these, let's go to something in the Old Testament. Let's go to Leviticus 19. You
shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but
you shall love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord. All throughout the Old
Testament you see that declaration from prophets and kings and priests. I am the
Lord. Guess what, he's the only one that can say that. Now, the closest we get is
maybe to our children when you get that three-letter word straight from the pit
of hell when you tell a kid to do something, one of your kids to do
something, and they ask why. And we say because, what was that? Because I said so.
Kids, if any of your parents ever say I am the Lord after something like that,
please call your district elder. Don't call me, call your district elder.
Because we're not allowed to say that. That's not for us to say. God can say
that because he's God. The best I can is because I say so. Now, how many of you
have kids that are 30s, 40s, or 50s? Raise your hand. Does that still work?
Jim, do you say that to Seth if he talks back to you and you say, well, because
I'm your father because I said so? No, it doesn't work. Because we are, this is
something we like to do in inside of ourselves. We like to actually take that
God piece, that judgment piece, that condemn piece, and go, ooh, I'm going to
throw that on whoever I disagree with, anyone that's different from me. We're not
allowed to, friends. And it's hard. The struggle is real. You shall not take
vengeance or bear a grudge against your sons of your own people, but you shall
love your neighbor as yourself. I am the law. And if all the law and the prophets
kind of all hang on these two things, love God, love people. I would say, love
God by loving people. Love God by loving God. Awesome. And you guys do that a lot.
And I think we do really well with that, but there's not a condition from him to
us, but from us to him. We need to love his creation too. Love God by loving
people makes a lot of sense. Why? Because there are two things that we kind of
have to understand about our way of love, our way of being a neighbor. When Jesus
says that these two things hang on all the law or all the law and the prophets
hang on love God, love people, right, it's about two things. They're about giving an
offering, right? These passages are about offerings. It's about offering yourself,
offering your love, your time, your talents, all of those things to God and to
people. Because as we're going to see over the coming months, love is action
driven. That these offerings are action driven. It's by putting out an olive
branch, maybe the hand of hospitality. Maybe it's the hand of just not yelling at
your neighbor anymore or showing patience, showing grace. Because you know
that one time that you go on their lawn, they have every right to say get off it.
I really don't have anything against lawns. It's just what comes in my head when I
think about neighbors. And I've had good neighbors, right? We've had good, well
except for the one in Crown Point. We won't talk about her. But understand, it
wasn't so much her, it was her dogs that I wanted to lovingly end. But understand
that both passages have to do with us offering stuff to God but also to other
people. And these passages have to do about the purity of the law. There's
purity in the law. But that's so hard to get to because we're really dirty people.
We think things, we say things, we send things, we type things, we do all of these
things that love God by loving people. If the church did that well, guess what? Our
churches would be chock full. We'd need all of the churches in the Ileana area.
But when the church doesn't do that well and they just kind of make a mess of it,
we lose the offering side, we lose the purity side because it's not, people
don't see that. You may think in your mind, oh but I love God enough to condemn
that person to hell. That's not a thing. We've made that a thing in the church.
We've made denominations that build themselves around that. You are not God.
I am not God. God doesn't bring offerings to himself. God is ultimate purity.
This is for us, the muck and mire of people. What Christ is saying in these
passages about treating our neighbors is that to be holy is to love your neighbor.
To love God who cannot see means loving the people that we can see. To love God
who is, yeah, to love God who we cannot see means loving the people we can see.
Have you ever looked at your neighbor as a creation of Christ, as a creation of
God? Or are you still condemning them for the week of 4th of July? Why are you
celebrating 245 in the morning? Nobody does that, not even Europe. Yet you're
still holding that. Yet when they say hi to you, you go, under your breath.
Or you're cursing them in their head. Or you wish they would have blown their
hand off so they don't do it again next year. However you want to think about it,
that's not bringing an offering of love to God's creation, nor is that a purified
understanding of what it means to love other people. But if we're going to be
potentially the kingdom come for somebody else, whoo, that's a responsibility.
Wow. And shouldn't that like pause, make us pause? I know it does for me. It
terrifies me at times. Right? And maybe it's just like, well then I'm just not
going to go outside. I know for some of you introverts you're like, yes, he's
talking my language. No, you have to because Jesus also says go. Go and make
disciples. How are we going to make disciples? Ah, by throwing holy water on
everyone, by gonging all of their sins, by doing all of the things. No, go and make
disciples. Get into a relationship. Baptize them in the name of the Father,
Son, and Holy Spirit, teaching them everything I have commanded you. What did
you just command us? Love the Lord your God with all of your everything and your
neighbor as yourself. So how does this come into play? Luke 10 helps us
understand this. Jesus replied, a man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho. He
fell among robbers who stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half
dead. Now by chance a priest was going down the road and when he saw him, he
passed on the other side. That other side is like, I'm just not about this today.
And a lot of us do that. That on our way to go do Jesus' things, we forget to do
Jesus' things. So likewise, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him,
Levite, so Pastor Jim came, let's just call for what it is, right? Then Pastor
Jim came to the place and saw him pass by on the other side. But a Samaritan who
they hated each other. I mean this is deep, deep rivalry. This goes beyond
Cub Sox, this goes beyond Bears Packers, this goes beyond US Australia. All of
those things, this was cultural hatred, systemic hatred for generations as he
journeyed came to where he was. And when he saw him, he had compassion. Guess what?
If you don't have love inside of you, if you've not received God's love in your
life, you can't have compassion without love. It doesn't work. And some of you may
fight me on that and bring it on after I get back from vacation. This week, call
your elder. He went to him, bound his wounds, pouring on oil and wine, things
that cost money. He spent resources in his compassion. Then he set him on his own
animal and brought him to the inn and took care of him. And the next day he took
out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper saying, take care of him and
whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back. Which of these three do
you think proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers? Well, the
Samaritan. And then Jesus says, go and do likewise. So maybe the question, friends,
maybe the question isn't who is my neighbor? Where it's us doing the things,
doing the pointing, doing the judging, doing the looking. Maybe, just maybe, and
let's walk this together for a couple weeks, maybe the question is, whose
neighbor am I? Because that really changes the question. That really changes what
goes on in my heart. That's what goes on in my soul. Because I can walk out of the
house asking who is my neighbor and have judgment go, yeah, we have 15, 16, we like
them, yeah, 15, 18, 15, 19, well, yeah, we could do, but what if we woke up, we
walked out of our days asking the question, whose neighbor am I? Because we
love to take the high position, right? I would get up on this, but I guarantee you
I'd fall. We'd love to get up there and be, it's called didactic, right? It's how
preaching was taught and still is in some seminaries that the pastor needs to be up
here didactically, we're going to preach down there. You go to the East Coast, you
go to a lot of those kind of first churches, where's the pulpit? Up in that
corner. Part of me thinks that would be awesome. Part of me thinks that would be
great. High enough and you can soar, never mind. But understand the reason why is
because the pastor, the priest, whatever, was up there with the high, lofty words
of God, Yahweh, thus saith the pastor, and we're just going to didactically
throw it on the people. One of the best things, and you may disagree with it, that
I love about this sanctuary when you all did the remodel is lowering the stage.
Now, you made it a little bit high because you didn't know what you're going
to call the sure pastor, but understand that it's a little more comfortable,
right? Because the minute you take that high, elevated position against your
neighbor, you're a bad neighbor. Oof. Oh, it's just the beginning, friends.
Because when we do this, when we put it all on who is my neighbor, when we put
what they're bringing to me, that what they're going to do is going to change
my opinion of them, puts us in the driver's seat. And guess what? We love
that. Oh, if I can be in the driver's seat of my life, it's great because it's
everyone else's fault. It's the way that myself and my wife drive, right? See,
I took it with you, okay? It's everyone else's fault. I may have cut you off,
but you shouldn't have been there, right? I use it as stoptional and almost hit
you. Why did you stop? We can put it on everybody else. It's just like our
neighbors. We throw so much stuff on our neighbors that our neighbors don't even
know. Now, take the word neighbor and put person on the other side of the aisle of
the church. Put it on someone in leadership. Put it on your coworker. Put
it on if all I'm doing in my life is sitting there going, what is this? What?
And maybe this is some of you. What is this person going to do now to
disappoint me? Is that a fun life to live? I try to be an eternal optimist to the
point where it's annoying. You can say amen, Carrie. I get it. But a lot of us
tend to do that. I know I can do that. People call you on the phone. People come
into your office. There's a battlefield of the mind. Sometimes it's like, oh, I'm
so excited to hear this testimony and this story. The other time it's like, again?
We do the same thing. And who are we to put ourselves in that position? Because
when we're doing that, then we're missing the basic needs of people. We're putting
ourselves in a high lofty place where you don't have to worry about all the junk
down here because I'm going to be way up here. One of the things I love that I
know for years was kind of supposed to be taken out of the pastorate is this idea
of psychology because, you know, psychology can be woke. It can be liberal.
It can be all of these things. Psychology is a study of how we think and do things.
Psychology, sociology fascinate me. I may be bad with math, but I love and I think
I'm decent at understanding how the brain works in a way that we connect to
certain things. But I also take my cue from Jesus as we all should because
Matthew 25 sums up in this verse, and the king will answer them. This is the sheep
and the goats. Remember that? And the king will answer them, truly I say to you,
as you did for the least of these, my brothers, you have done unto me. And what
is he talking about? Feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, clothing the
naked, visiting those in prison. When you've done to the least of these. Guess
what? If we're sitting up here on our high horse, who are the least of these?
Everybody that's not me. When we become that egotistical, narcissistic, all of
those things, when we think that all that we do is great and holy and godly, and we
love to put it on our social media so everybody knows, the least of these
probably is everybody then, right? But Jesus really is talking about the least
of these by meeting their needs. One of the things you learn is the basic needs
of people actually break down to five different things. It's called the, it's
the Maslov, I always get his name wrong, hierarchy of needs. Okay? The basic needs
of people, right? The kind of physiological needs. Food, water, warmth,
and rest. Are those needs being met in your life, regardless of the temperature
of the sanctuary? Are those needs being met? You all look pretty fed, right?
You're all, you're all so clothed, and we appreciate that, we follow the same thing
as Burger King, no shoes, no shirt, no service. You all have water to drink, or
you will, and it'll be coffee. You're all fairly warm, and you're all, maybe you
didn't have the best sleep, but you have areas to rest. People that don't have
that, think about that from their point of view. If those are things that they
don't readily have, where are they at in life? I think they kind of are the least
of these. It's another reason why we want to develop missional relationships with
organizations that meet these needs. I know they hate when I spotlight them, but
Smedberg's deal with it. You guys do a really good job at this. Follow their
social medias. They're feeding people all the time. If they go to the farmer,
are they going to get fed? Wake up. Okay, yeah, okay, yeah, they're going to get
fed. See, they're resting. They're meeting their physiological, no they're not.
They weren't asleep. The second basic needs, safety and security. I can, I'm
preaching to a group that has this, but if you don't, what is life like? And for
some, maybe we don't feel safe in our relationships. Maybe there's an area in
our life we don't have safety. Don't you think about that all the time? Isn't it
hard to actually go through and live life if you don't feel safe and secure
regardless of a system you may have in your house or you carry or not? If you
don't have, these are basic human needs. So let's go a step further. Our
psychological needs is a belonging and love need. Having intimate relationships,
having friends, it's important to have those. I'm going to say you can have them
online. I'm still not sold that solely online relationships are good because I
do think it meets, I think there's something about meeting with someone
face-to-face, but we're not going to get into that today. But belonging and love.
Isn't this the church? Or maybe, let me change the question. Shouldn't this be
the church? Shouldn't the church from the top down or from the yellow down? I think
that should be your missions committee. That should be your outreach. That should
be most of your ministries should be meeting some of those needs, if not all of
them. Something to think about. The next one, esteem needs. So prestige and feeling
a sense of accomplishment. I don't know the data for this. My guess is there's a
percentage of people that never get there. Because how in the world, if you're
struggling to eat or stay warm or have water, you feel no safety and security,
you have no intimate relationships, are you ever going to feel esteem about
yourself? Are you ever going to have a feeling of accomplishment if you go
without food? No. Again, the church. Or basic human decency. And go one more.
Self-actualization. Achieving one's full potential, including creative activities.
You know who uses systems and tables like this? Places like Habitat for Humanity.
Ministries like This Way Ministries in Christ Church. I'd like to think there's a
section of Munster Church that would like and does do some of this. But forget the
church. Forget those organizations. What about your address? What about your
household? What about the Holland owner house? What about the Skutt house? What
about the Nadeberg house? A lot of your last names are completely blanking in my
mind. But what about your house? Does your house care about this? Or you do
expect the church to do it. Or you know Habitat for Humanity is doing it. Or
This Way Ministries is doing it. So we're good. We're just going to give money.
And that's not inherently bad. Right? Even people need to buy Paul's tents to
have Paul continue in his ministry. But if Jesus says to the least of these,
you've done unto me, I think there's something here. It's not going to be the
last time we see that. And next week what we're going to do is we're going to take
it in a little bit more active way. Right now we're building a baseline. And not
only are we building a baseline, we're building an understanding that Jesus
reminds everybody he talks to about being good neighbors to go and do. Not go
and think, not go and wish, not go and plan, but never do. Go and do likewise.
So maybe friends it's not so much my neighbors. It's more of how am I a
neighbor. We're going to close with Fred Rogers. Mr. Rogers' neighborhood.
Fred Rogers, a Methodist pastor I believe, said this, love isn't a state of
perfect caring. It is an active noun like struggle. To love someone is to strive to
accept that person exactly the way they are right here and right now. And here's
the rub. I know there are some of you that struggle with this because of where
we find ourselves in our culture today. Because that exactly the way they are
right now we immediately want to go to. But they're living a life of sin, ergo
they need condemnation. And friend, though that may be true, it's not your job to do
it. But what would that look like if we actively loved, because if we follow
God's word, and this is getting into sermon number three and four, doesn't
everyone deserve this? Doesn't everyone deserve to learn this and to understand
what this has to speak into life? Oh, I would love my neighbor if they were
exactly the way I want them to be. Friend, it doesn't work. But let us in this month
take this journey to recognize the needs of the people around us and to go and do
likewise. Let's pray.