Last week we looked at the question to start, who is my neighbor?
But then Jesus kind of transposed it and reverses it to whose neighbor am I?
That is the question we all left with last week is what kind of neighbor are you to the
people in your life?
Not always wanting to look at, oh my neighbor this, my neighbor that, but what about you?
What about the neighbor that you are to people?
We looked at many different scriptures that Jesus really talks about as far as what does
it look like to love God with everything and loving God by loving others.
Jesus puts it on there that all the law and the prophets hang on those two things and
I think that's a lot has to do with how we neighbor and do we neighbor well.
But we're going to look at another aspect of not only the love side of this, but also
the law side of this because there is a law of love in the scriptures and that might be
weird for you to hear.
It might be weird to think of the love that you have for people is actually a law given
to us by the Bible and the reason why we don't like it is because we don't like that word
law.
That word law brings a lot of things out in us.
When you hear the word law, what comes to mind?
If you're new, I ask questions, we talk, we have a nice discussion for the most part.
You hear the word law, what comes to mind?
Rules, absolutely.
Police, sure.
Consequences, okay.
Obedience.
Punishment, and then up here.
Order, absolutely.
Jail, yeah, okay.
Maybe there's a testimony there about law with that individual, who knows.
Law, it's an interesting word because law meant something extremely important in the
Old Testament to the point where you had a whole religious system based on the laws,
the Levitical laws, the Ten Commandments, over 600 laws of the who, what, when, where,
why we worship, what we eat, how we dress, how we act, how we act negatively to other
people, consequences of certain sins, and all of these things, that it was a law that
was given.
And a lot of people don't like that about Christianity, that it's just this law.
But if you're in the Old Testament, the law was life.
The law breathed life into you, the law took life from you, that everything was the law.
It brought order.
It brought justice.
It saw the widow and the orphan, that is in the Old Testament and how when we get to the
New Testament, it's been, I'll just use the word perverted, by the rabbis into a money-making
scheme, which is exactly what part of the world believes about the church, that they
think that the law is now made profitable by the church.
I just saw a couple weeks ago, there's a church, I believe it's in, well, I'm not even going
to call it a church.
There's an organization claiming to be a church that is selling almost like timeshares in
heaven.
Right?
Yeah, that's my thought.
Like, you can secure for only $19.95, or whatever it is, hopefully heaven costs more than that,
but you know, maybe it's on sale, but understand that $19.95 and you can buy your spot in heaven.
That is straight up heresy.
You can't do, that's not how it works, but the church has gotten so off course of what
I think Jesus kind of set it up to do, and a lot of that has to do with money, a lot
of that has to do with authority, a lot of that has to do with kind of the rules around
church, but I guarantee you that's not what drew Scott to Munster Church.
It wasn't because we had all these laws, because once you get to know Scott, that actually
makes him really uncomfortable, but understanding that the religiosity of the church, the clubness
of the church will always be there, there needs to be a foundation, but how we step
forward from that tells a lot about what we understand of the Bible, namely, Jesus' words.
And so what we're looking at today is how love completes the law, that the law that
we live out, right, let's just say the Ten Commandments, because we're not going to go
through all 600 of all the other laws, ceremonial and food and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,
but let's just say the Ten Commandments.
I've said this before, right, you can't say that I'm going to be a believer, but I'm going
to murder a little bit.
It doesn't work that way.
You can't do both.
You can't have your heavenly cake and eat it too in the worldly way.
It doesn't work, but what Jesus is saying is that to walk out the law through him, which
Christ it is, it needs to be done with love.
But I know that some of us here grew up in churches where that was probably not experienced,
that it was mainly law-based.
It was the do's and the don'ts, and if you did the don'ts, you did it in the basement
where no one saw, okay?
Then you could go up and down through all of the different traditions of the church.
I'll just take the Christian Reformed Church.
Are they consistent?
Not really.
Do people follow some of them?
Sure.
Do they follow all of them?
No.
And so there's this basis of what we can make this system be, the right and wrong, the do's
and the don'ts.
But what Jesus is saying is if you understand him, you understand his love for you and the
way you're supposed to live out that love, it's not a scoreboard.
It's not a pros and cons.
It's not a walking through the day going, well, that person hurt me, so I'm going to
hurt them.
No, no.
No.
That love not only fulfills but completes the law should be actually freeing for all
of us.
And we're going to start with a section of Scripture all of us know for the most part,
if you've been in church even a little bit.
A lot of times we hear these verses at weddings.
It's 1 Corinthians 13.
This is Paul writing to a church that was really messed up, really lost its way, all
having to do with the gifts.
We talk about spiritual gifts a lot and in the chapters prior to chapter 13, he's talking
about how we can love others using our gifts.
The teachers teach, the preachers preach, right?
The coffee makers make coffee.
All of the giftings are for the church to move forward in love.
Yet in the church of Corinth, it was, well, my gifts are greater than your gifts.
I have all the gifts.
You have none gifts.
You're not good at your gifting.
I am the gifting genius.
That's all the stuff that was going on in Corinth at that time.
So Paul has to set them straight and he starts in the beginning, verse 1 of chapter 13.
If I speak in tongues of men and of angels but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a
clanging cymbal.
And if I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge and if I have
all faith as to remove mountains but have not love, I am nothing.
If I give away all that I have and if I deliver my body to be burned but I have not love,
I have gained nothing.
Leave that up there for a second.
It really makes you look at nothing differently, doesn't it?
That if I'm not, if I don't have love, all of these great spiritual things, but if I'm
not walking them out in love, I am nothing.
So let's kind of back into this.
So what does that even look like?
I mean, prophetic powers and understanding all the mysteries and knowledge, having a
PhD level understanding of God's Word, how does that walk out without love?
There's a reason why Paul's saying it this way because people were doing that.
They were doing all of these things and not having love in their heart for their neighbor,
not having maybe even love for God in their heart, but they're walking all of that out.
How does that look?
How does that even work?
It comes with ultimate judgment.
And I think we all would agree the church does a great job of that, and I mean that
sarcastically.
That we all believe or we've been taught that we have the opportunity to judge the world.
Yet in the scripture it says, judge and ye be judged because one day we all are going
to be.
And it's going to be the judge that matters and that is God.
Yet we like to be and have little judgments all over the place, and it's really the judgments
that lead us to not love that individual, to not see that individual.
And really I think where the church gets it wrong, and I think that's what Paul is talking
about.
That if we are as a church, let's just use Buntzer Church, if we are known for judging
others without any kind of relationship, without any kind of discipleship, without knowing
anybody, we're just a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.
I remember I was at Lansing Christian this past year and I did it at Southwest Christian
and I had kids, I think three or four of them, as I started to read this section of scripture
I just had them yell.
And it was, Nikki was there, it was deafening, right?
They were loud.
And then what we talked about was if I'm not loving in my heart toward that person, even
someone that's different from me, maybe someone I'm even uncomfortable with, but if I'm going
to come at them with judgment, if I'm going to come at them with hatred, if I'm going
to come at them as you are a project that I need to fix, all they're going to hear is
a junior high kid yelling.
But friends, there are churches that immediately when the churches open their mouth, it's just
clanging cymbals and gongs.
And I don't know about you, but that's painful.
That what Paul is saying here is that if we have all of this understanding, then we would
be getting to this love place.
And I said it last week, I'll say it again this week.
I'll probably say it next week.
Love doesn't necessarily mean that you accept all things, but it also means you're not going
to place yourself over that person.
That there's a way to come alongside those people that are very different from you in
life, even in some grandiose ways, and still love them as a person.
I'm pretty sure that's what Jesus did last week.
That is what the good Samaritan did to someone who he culturally should have hated.
We talked about that.
They hated each other.
Those relationships were not built on anything good, but he had compassion for them.
He loved that individual and then gave more money to make sure that they were taken care
of.
Paul's continuing to walk through what Mark 12 was talking about.
We'll put Mark 12 up here just so we get a little refresher.
The scribe said to him, you are right, teacher.
You have truly said that he is one and there is no other beside him, talking about God.
To love him with all of our heart and with all our understanding and with all our strength
and to love one's neighbor as yourself is much more than all the burnt offerings and
sacrifices.
So this understanding of what the law actually means should actually give you a little indication.
This is a little bit of a rabbit trail, why they wanted to kill Jesus so bad because Jesus
was taking everything that the scribes, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the temple had made
the law and he's kind of turning it up on its head.
The church then was looking at people with dollar signs and authority and power.
Jesus came to be counter-cultural that way and say, no, no, no, no.
It's all about the kingdom that is on earth as it is in heaven and you have a part to
play, that you are a part of the kingdom of God.
And there's things that we need to do.
So if we have the greatest commandment, love God, love people, and we see the way of love
is going to be how we kind of should walk out this life, then why is it so hard?
Why is loving people so hard sometimes?
Because I'll just offer a suggestion, this is going to make everybody uncomfortable and
that's okay, it's because we think we're better than people.
Because we have a prejudice against people.
It's part of our sin nature.
If sin is so wrapped up in a life for anybody to be against God, then it's not going to
be for anything, really.
But if we have that active sin in our life and that depravity, which we as reformed believers
believe we all have, depravity, a life bent against God, then really we hate anything
that God's created.
And namely us.
Because we are created in God's image and if we are depraved people that want to hate
God with everything, then we're going to hate his creation.
Now I don't ever hear people come into my office and say, pastor, I hate trees.
Nope, never hear that.
But I'll get people that say, I can't stand, now a lot of times people won't say hate because
I won't come into a pastor and say that they hate somebody else, they're smarter than that.
But they may talk that way about another person.
Notice that in love and understanding the law, like we talked about last week, being
created in God's image, we have a job to do.
Our job is to reflect Christ, reflect the cross in our life and we need to do that by
ways of love.
So understanding being a good neighbor means we should be a loving neighbor.
Now some people take this idea of love into being a doormat.
Well, if I'm supposed to love everybody, I can't stand for anything.
You are missing the point.
The understanding of following God, following Christ and what he is saying in the scripture
that I am called to love regardless if it makes me comfortable or not is to be just
that, a person that people can rely on, a person that people can go to.
Because if you guys are the ones making up the church, guess what?
The church would be a place that people want to come to, that they can rely on, that they
can go to for guidance.
But if all they get when they come into the doors is a bunch of banging gongs and cymbals,
I don't think they are staying.
Let's be honest, we are not staying if that is all we are going to experience.
What Paul is really getting at is first and foremost, those that call themselves believers
need to love other believers.
That one of the things Paul is talking about in the church in Corinth is churches that
are just divided.
A house divided cannot stand.
A lot of people attribute Lincoln to that, but Jesus said it first and I think he is
more important.
But it is talking about the church.
For some of us, you may think this sermon series doesn't apply because I don't know
anybody in my life that doesn't know Jesus.
I am going to lovingly say you have to get out a little more, you have to meet some people,
understand that how people see the church could be their first and only understanding
of who Jesus is.
Is how the church behaves, how the church treats others.
How the church treats others that are different than the majority of people in the seats.
That is what Paul is getting at.
Paul is getting at the fact that if Christians aren't getting it, how in the world is the
church going to get it?
If the church is the bride of Christ standing on the foundation of the gospel, yet we fail
to love others, to recognize and see them, then what are we doing?
Then how can the church be advanced?
Paul pulls in the book of Timothy, he pulls an understanding of what kind of healthy and
unhealthy churches look like and it is from 1 Timothy 1.
As I urge you when I was going to Macedonia, remain at Ephesus so that you may charge certain
persons not to teach any different doctrine nor devote themselves to myths and endless
genealogies which promote speculations rather than stewardship from God that is by faith.
The aim of your charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and
a sincere faith.
Certain persons by swerving from these have wandered away into vain discussions, desiring
to be the teachers of the law without understanding either of what they are saying or the things
about which they make confident assertions.
Leave that up.
This is how churches fall apart.
They stray from the preaching of the word.
The preaching of the word, yes, it is not always comfortable, it is not always easy, but it
is pretty clear that if we are called to love God with everything, heart, soul, mind, strength,
and love our neighbor as our self, then all of that should be what we draw to every Sunday.
In your personal devotions, that is what you should draw to.
Your devotion should not be politically cited at all.
They should be the pure preaching and reading of the word.
Because look what happens.
When you start to give people in authority the opportunity to teach and they don't have
a clear understanding of scripture, then they are trying to give what they don't have.
And that is how churches go astray.
That is how families go astray.
That is how households go astray.
That is how organizations go astray.
Maybe you are sitting here today and you are in the upper management of your job.
And if you didn't know what you were doing or you didn't understand that organization's
kind of vision and mission, then you can very easily take your group away from the organization.
It's when people come into organizations with agendas, they come in not fully understanding.
What I love what he says, they have wandered away into vain discussions.
Discussions that don't mean anything.
But when we have an agenda, when we have a point of view that we want to hammer home,
we will just keep talking until no one is there listening.
And then we think we have won.
No.
Could not be farther from the truth.
What Paul is talking about and what he is writing to Timothy is to be careful what you
allow in but also be careful that it doesn't replace loving others.
And we can do that all day.
And culturally, different generations brought different things into the church and the church
had positive responses and negative responses to all of those things, to all of those ideas.
How do we know?
Look at the amount of denominations we have.
Numerations that broke apart because we wanted to go to chairs, not pews.
All right.
We will start our own church.
Oh, we just want organ music.
We want drums.
No.
We can't coexist.
We can't be in the same place.
We can't be in the same family.
You all know this.
I have three boys.
They are all very different.
They all love different kinds of music.
Does that mean that when one gets his choice of music being played, the other ones leave?
No, they endure.
And what are we to do in the church?
We are supposed to endure with one another.
We're supposed to work towards compromise.
We are to work towards reconciliation and working it out in love, never compromising
the word of God, but maybe our understanding, not so much our understanding of it, but our
understanding of how we walk alongside people.
Because that's what the church is meant to do.
It's not all of you come to us.
Be just like us so we all look the same.
I don't want to pastor that church.
I don't think you want to go to that church.
But the church is meant to get out and to be neighborly.
The church is put in a neighborhood for a reason.
We're not over in some industry area where it's just a bunch of industrial.
No, we're put right here, Ridge and Holman.
We have houses there, there, there, all over the place.
So how does the church neighbor?
It neighbors well when the leaders lead.
It neighbors well when people with those giftings are working in those giftings.
It loves and neighbors well when all of those spots are filled, when people are working
in their gifted area and they're doing it in love.
Because these don't work, churches don't work, programs don't work when all it is is banging
gongs and clanging cymbals.
To finish up that thought from Timothy, now we know that the law is good if one uses it
lawfully understanding this, that the law is not laid down for the just but for the
lawless and the disobedient, for the ungodly, the sinners, the unholy and the profane.
That is what the law is given.
The law is given to change those people.
Now for some of you that just made you uncomfortable.
So wait, what I believe in the Bible has to change my life?
Yeah, it better because you have that little sin thing in you that the Holy Spirit comes
in, blows that up and you now have a daily fight against it with someone at your back.
At the cross oversees that.
They see that transformation.
That's why just because Scott got baptized today doesn't mean that tomorrow is going
to be everything great but he has that perspective of Christ.
He has that perspective of opportunity to go out and love people.
Getting baptized and having faith is more than just hell insurance.
I learned it that way that you pray the prayer, right?
You get the Bible or the certificate because now you're not going to go to hell.
That's not the best.
That's not the best understanding because that happened when I was in junior high.
I was saved in junior high.
Way to go.
But life's not over in junior high, is it?
Right?
You get to high school, you get to grown-upsville, you go do all the adult things but you have
that perspective.
You have a conviction.
When you're about to enter that sin area, you have a conviction.
You may fall, you may not.
You may fight successfully against sin but there's grace.
There's forgiveness.
Do you understand, do junior highers, Nikki, understand all this by seventh grade?
No.
Do adults always understand this by 50?
Probably not.
But we work at it together.
We neighbor well as the church.
I want to jump, Claire, let's jump to that 1 Corinthians 13.
And now we get these verses.
You hear them a lot in weddings and if you had it in your wedding, that's awesome, right?
It's not really what Paul meant but it's still beautiful language.
I get it.
But we all know this or we've heard it.
Love is patient and kind.
Love does not envy or boast.
It is not arrogant or rude.
It does not insist on its own way.
It is not irritable or resentful.
It does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth.
Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never ends.
As for prophecies, they will pass away.
As for tongues, they will cease.
As for knowledge, it will pass away.
Leave this one up.
This, and I may have said this before here or not.
I don't know.
This is always for me a good gut check of how I'm doing in this life as a believer,
as Christian Jim or Jim the Christian.
This is a great reminder because where you see love, the word love, I put my name in.
And that's something you can do every day.
That if I'm going to live out my Christianity the best I can on this side of glory, then
Jim must be patient.
Jim must be kind.
Jim must not envy or boast.
Jim's not arrogant or rude.
Jim does not insist in his own way.
Jim is not irritable or resentful.
Jim does not rejoice in wrongdoing but Jim rejoices in the truth.
So hopefully Jim can bear all things, believe all things, hope all things, and endure all
things.
Now it kind of falls in on itself where Jim never ends.
That we will all at one point end.
But you understand what I'm trying to do.
You understand what I think Paul is reminding us, taking the words of Christ to a very practical
way.
But some of you need more visuals and that's fine.
We got them.
I would love to challenge the entire congregation, there's some up here, there's some in the
back, to take this sheet this week and really work on it.
What this sheet is, and you can put that up there with all the lines, is a daily reminder
or an exercise for you.
So Wendy, if you take this sheet, you fill it out for Wendy.
You don't fill it out for the person next to you or the person in front of you.
This won't go well if husbands, you take this and fill this out for your wives and vice
versa.
Won't go well, alright.
Kids, fill this out as well.
This might be a great way to help you start that kind of mindset for school.
I will be more patient with.
I will be more kind with.
I will be more happy for.
I will celebrate the victories of.
I will be more supportive of.
I will do what is asked of me by your parents.
That's for the kids.
I will forgive.
I will endure the things unintentionally done by.
I believe the best of.
I will hope for the betterment of.
I will step in and help if bad things are happening too.
I will rejoice in the truth with.
It takes it from the words on the page and puts it in your hands and your feet.
Because if we are looking at this through the biblical eyes that we are meant to, this
should be the mission of the church.
If it is the mission of the church, then it's the mission for you and your house, it's for
me and my house.
It's for you and your company.
It's for me and this organization.
It's for you and your neighborhoods and in your families.
Because I wonder if we all did this and took this seriously, how many of these people or
how many of those blanks would actually be family members?
I wonder if it would be people here in the church.
Again, if the church isn't going to get it, if the church isn't going to show the love
of Christ, then what are we doing?
Because 1 Corinthians 13 ends with this one simple verse.
So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three.
The greatest of these is love.
Because by loving with the love of Christ, even in the midst of disagreement, even in
the midst of people that are very different from you and me, if we can love them, then
the faith and the hope comes with it.
One day guys, we are going to be face to face with God and we don't have to worry about
all this stuff.
But what we need to take away is that we are called to love others.
We love God by loving others and that I think is something that the world desperately needs
to see more in the church.
Let's pray.