Weekly Sermon Overview

Message Date: July 6, 2014 Message Title: Love the Church

OVERVIEW Last week, we spent some time discussing what Jesus calls the great(est) commandment: “The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel , the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with al l your heart and with al l your soul and with al l your mind and with al l your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself . ’ There is no commandment greater than these.” -Mark 12:29-31 In doing so, we spent the majority of our time on the first half of Jesus’ answer: Love God. This is the fundamental commandment, the one upon which all others stand, without which life with God is simply not possible. And, this is one of two reasons why our constant refrain throughout this series has been, “Just get as close to Jesus as possible.” Each week as we’ve studied the “words of life” seeking to learn from them, from Jesus, how to live, we’ve found our discussions to be both inspiring and daunting. To be certain, there is life there, but on our own, that life seems entirely beyond our capacity, a burden too heavy to bear. However, as we follow Jesus and inevitably fall in love with Him—we cannot help but—we are shocked to discover that the weight that once seemed immovable is now an “easy yoke” a “light burden”. Love makes obedience possible, even desirable. “Come to me, al l you who are weary and burdened, and I wil l give you rest . Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart , and you wil l f ind rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is l ight.” -Matthew 11:28-29 The second reason that we have been urging our church to follow Jesus as closely as possible is that Jesus is always pressing single-mindedly and relentlessly toward the cross. While it is our love for Him that enables obedience to His commands, it is, as we discussed last weekend, His love for us that enables our love for Him. See, we don’t fall in love with Jesus in a radically life-altering way simply because He is interesting or clever or powerful or authoritative, though He is certainly all of those things. We fall deeply, desperately in love with Him at the foot of the cross.

This week we will begin explore the other side of the coin, the second great commandment: “Love your neighbor as yourself .” -Mark 12:31a When Jesus places this command second in the hierarchy, He does so not to demean its significance but to demonstrate that it is entirely dependent upon keeping the first. In other words, loving our neighbors is just as fundamental to God’s law as loving God Himself. Just as we cannot obey God’s law without a deep love for God, neither can we live the life that God intends for us to live without loving our neighbors. The point Jesus is making in ordering the commandments as He does is that true agape love for neighbor is impossible unless it is a reflection of an agape relationship with God. However, when we love God with heart, soul, mind, and strength, as people who have received His vast love, we will find ourselves, through no power of our own, drawn to and able to love our neighbors as ourselves. Over the course of the next three weeks, we will spend time talking through the practical implications of loving our neighbors. In Luke 10, an “expert in the law” attempting to justify himself in front of his friends asked Jesus a limiting question: “But, who is my neighbor?” For the next few weeks, we will deal with that question, not in the narrow sense that the lawyer intended but in the tremendously broad way in which Jesus defined it—everybody—but we will break everybody in three specific categories: the Church, the world (not the Church), and our enemies. This week, via John 17, we begin our conversation with the Church: “I have revealed you to those whom you gave me out of the world. They were yours; you gave them to me and they have obeyed your word. Now they know that everything you have given me comes from you. For I gave them the words you gave me and they accepted them. They knew with certainty that I came from you, and they believed that you sent me. I pray for them. I am not praying for the world, but for those you have given me, for they are yours. All I have is yours, and al l you have is mine. And glory has come to me through them. I wil l

remain in the world no longer, but they are st i l l in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name, the name you gave me, so that they may be one as we are one. While I was with them, I protected them and kept them safe by that name you gave me. None has been lost except the one doomed to destruction so that Scripture would be fulf i l led. I am coming to you now, but I say these things while I am st i l l in the world, so that they may have the ful l measure of my joy within them. I have given them your word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world. My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evi l one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of i t . Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world. For them I sanctify myself , that they too may be truly sanctif ied. My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who wil l believe in me through their message, that al l of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one—I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world wil l know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world. Righteous Father, though the world does not know you, I know you, and they know that you have sent me. I have made you known to them, and wil l continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them.” (John 17:6-26) Throughout the series to this point, we’ve spent a good deal of t ime addressing the question: “What does Jesus want from us?” And, as good as that question is , what’s most fascinating and excit ing about this passage is the fact that, while there is clearly an expectat ion that Jesus has of His fol lowers here, the question with which this prayer is

most concerned is not, “What does Jesus want from us?” but, “What does Jesus say about us” and, based on that, “What does Jesus want for us?” In this amazing prayer Jesus defines the Church in the most remarkable way, and on the basis of that definit ion, prays that God wil l give us some wonderful gif ts . He begins by saying that the Church is a gif t , hand-picked, chosen, by God the Father, for His beloved Son. We can hear in these verses an echo of the bride/bridegroom language that made i ts way into several of Jesus’ parables and would play a signif icant role in the theology of both Paul and John (to say nothing of Old Testament prophecy). Being the Father’s gif t to the Son, the bride of Christ , we see that we are completely redefined—more than redefined—remade. We are cal led out of the world, no longer of i t any more than He is, and given His name as our inheritance and protection. And, as heirs of His name, we are also heirs of His glory, which Paul describes in the most stunning detai l in 2 Corinthians 3-4 (“the l ight of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ”) . We also see in this prayer that sharing in the glory of Christ is not only a future event but a present real i ty: And we al l , who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord's glory, are being transformed into his image with ever- increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spiri t . -2 Corinthians 3:18 Being, then a people defined, here and now, by the glory of God, Jesus says that we become, in His stead, ambassadors of that glory. Filled with the Spirit of Christ, we are sent out into the world as witnesses of what we have seen and know. And, this is both glorious and difficult. It means, on one hand, that we are invited to participate with God in the restoration of all things and, on the other hand that, we will face hardship as those no longer of the world but still in it. There will be those in the world, Jesus says, who like things the way they are, who are not interested in the restoration of all things, and at their hands—both spiritual and physical—we will suffer just as our bridegroom did. It is with this in mind, then, that Jesus asks the Father to give us three remarkable gifts: holiness, joy, and, on the basis of the first two, unity. It will be through our unity, Jesus says, through the way we, as a community,

experience and participate in the love of the Trinity that the Church will thrive and that the world will see God in us. This is why it matters that we love one another. “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone wil l know that you are my disciples, i f you love one another.” -John 13:34-35 The command to love the Church is one of the most constant refrains throughout out the New Testament (and is more than sparsely present in the Old Testament). Every time Jesus or, following His lead, one of the New Testament writers, encourages us to, commands us to love “one another”, this is a specific kind of love or, more appropriately, a specific audience for our love. We have to remember that, throughout most of the Gospels, Jesus is speaking with His disciples, and all of the Epistles are written, not to the unbelieving world, but to the Church. In that light, the reflexive command, “love one another”, is clearly given to the Church for the Church. This does not exempt us from loving the world, as we will discuss next week; it is not a license for us to cloister ourselves in a holy huddle. It is simply a recognition that, just as our love of neighbor is dependent upon our love of God, so too is our love of the world dependent on our love of the Church. The negative implication of John 13:35 is staggering: “If you do not love one another, no one will know that you’re with Me.” The question, then, that we need to consider with the majority of our time this weekend is, “How do we love the Church?” Jesus words in John 13:34, “As I have loved you, so you must love one another”, viewed through the cross, demand that we dedicate the whole of our existence to loving one another for the sake of the glory of God. So, this will have very practical implications for every area of our lives. It will change the way we think about our resources, it will redefine family, home, and country, it will revolutionize our marriages, it will change the way we talk with and about one another, it will affect our “online presence”, it will open our eyes and our hearts to the global body of Christ. It will change everything about us. Author: Josh Harrison REFLECTION QUESTION

1. It might be easy to just assume that you love the Church because you attend a service or keep involved in some capacity. But when you think deeply about what it means to love the Church – is there evidence in your life that shows that you truly, and in a biblical sense, love the Church?

NEXT STEP RESOURCES (Check out these resources for additional reading on this topic.)

1. Who Is This Man: The Unpredictable Impact of the Inescapable Jesus by John Ortberg

2. The Jesus I Never Knew by Phillip Yancey