Love
Jeremy MacDonald · Tidal Church Moncton · December 22, 2024 · The Advent of Jesus series
Jeremy MacDonald looks at Matthew 22:36-40 and Jesus' call to love God and neighbor. Jesus shows that love for those beside us means self-sacrifice, as He laid down His life, and this Christmas we ask what love requires of us.
More from Jeremy MacDonald · The The Advent of Jesus series
Topics: Love, Relationships, Discipleship, Christmas
Transcript
[0:00] Do you know who I hate? It's kind of a strong way to ask that question. Lemme try it a different way. Do you know who I have a hard time not hating? Or people who mistreat my kids. Now, my wife and I, Chantel, we have three kids, five, six, and nine, and we've had it pretty good, to be honest. There's not actually like a lot of dramatic stories of people mistreating our kids. If you have kids, some of you perhaps, and probably have more or different stories, and you can kind of understand what I'm getting at here. Because if you've ever had somebody, and if you don't have kids, maybe you think about the person that you love significantly, a family member or somebody that's close to you.
[0:49] And, you know, when somebody mistreats them, kind of calls them out inappropriately or brings up something or, you know, somebody out in public, and they, you know, they just say something and it makes your kid sad or mad. And inside of me, something just happens. I get angry and frustrated because, you know, there's really nothing in this world that makes me more angry than if somebody does something to hurt my kids. Now, this one is, again, something that's even just so small, and yet even this small example has become something that, you know, we kind of harken to or talk about.
[1:35] But my son, Riker, who's nine, got into basketball this last summer. And so we got a basketball hoop in our yard, which is great after school. It was the classic experience. So fun. We bought him his own basketball and so he would come and he'd say, "Daddy, can we play basketball together?" And so absolutely we'd go out and we'd practice and we'd take shots together, and it was just so much fun. And so when he went to school in the fall, he was so excited to bring his basketball because then he could practice on his own. You know, he had his own basketball to shoot hoops or he could involve other people. And I'll never forget the day he came home without his basketball. And, "Mr. Riker, where's your basketball?" And he said, kind of emotionally, like, "I had it at recess and I forgot it outside.
[2:24] And when I went out at lunchtime to get it, I saw an older boy playing with it and I told him, 'That's my basketball.' And he said, 'No, it's my basketball. I lost it and I just found it.'" And so for Riker, that was kind of the end of the story. But for me, this has lived inside of my heart and my mind for many days and weeks is I am so angry at this kid. I don't even know who this kid is. I mean, there are, you know, there's probably ways I could have tracked him down, but like Chantel kind of pulled me off the ledge a little bit of like, who is this person that would harm and hurt and mistreat my little boy? And hey, and it sounds a little bit insane and crazy, and it is. But if you have kids, you know that emotion.
[3:11] There's nothing you can do for me. If you mistreat one of my kids, there's nothing that you could do to make up the relationship with me. If you hurt someone that I love, you know, you can't buy me gifts. You can't give me money to make up for it. You can't sing me songs. You can't praise my holy name. There's nothing you can do for me if you have mistreated one of my kids because your issue is you've hurt one of my kids and I want you to make restitution with them. But the reverse is true, right? Like the greatest gift you could do or gift to me, or the greatest thing you could do for me is to take up for one of my kids, to look out for them or to show them love or appreciation or help them.
[4:05] Like what a beautiful thing as a father to watch somebody that looks out for my kids or says something positive about my kids. It absolutely transforms and changes my understanding of the way that I would look at you. I just had to get that off my chest. So this morning's message is the fourth week of Advent and we're into this particular passage in Matthew that talks about love. We've tracked along hope, peace, and joy. And here we are as we anticipate Christmas, a few days away, reading this traditional, very known passage all about love and coming into Christmas. What a beautiful way to wrap up the Advent series and to talk about love. There might be a connection that you can piece together as we go.
[4:53] Matthew records this in verse 36 of chapter 22. It's an interaction between Jesus and the teachers of the religious law, the Pharisees in particular, but it's a larger conversation that's been going on. If you know Jesus of Nazareth, the story of Christmas is, of course, of His birth. And then as He grew up, He didn't stay as a baby, but He grew up, He became this rabbi, this teacher that was heralding and talking about this new kingdom as the fully God and fully human person that Jesus was. He was reshaping and reframing people's understanding of who God was and what He was here to do. And so for the people around Him, they were so fascinated the way that He spoke with authority about the texts, the Old Testament, the law and the prophets.
[5:39] He was a Jew and it was the God of the Israelites that Jesus was referencing. And so the religious leaders, they say, "Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?" Now this question is a common question. It actually would often happen if you were gathering around with religious people, you would wrestle through what is the greatest commandment? We've got 613 or so different laws in the law and the prophets. The Israelites kind of carried these through. And so they would take time trying to understand them, and filter them through this kind of question because of all of the laws, you want to keep them all, but what's the heart behind all of them? And you get this because at some point, if you've told somebody or tried to teach somebody, like in our house, we talk about, hey, it's important to be kind to one another.
[6:28] But then when you tell that to a 5-year-old or a 6-year-old, you spend the rest of the time trying to explain what kindness actually is. No, it's not throwing that toy at your sibling even though you thought it would be kind, because then you would get their attention. It's like, no, that's not kindness. Let's articulate a little bit more of what kindness is. No, screaming at them isn't kind even though you think they weren't paying attention. So no, kindness looks a little bit different. And so you spend time with kids trying to help articulate what it means in this simple kind of way to be kind. And then the religious leaders would do the same thing. There's these commandments, but what's the heart behind them? What's God trying to do? And to be honest, the way that you could maybe frame this up and you do it and I do it, and our world does it, if you have any kind of belief in an overarching authority or power, or if you have a worldview of some kind, you can kind of filter through this particular question.
[7:23] And it's simply this, it's, what must I do or believe to make things and keep things right between God and me? And so in this place we talk about the God of the Scriptures, but for other religions, people wrestle this question to the ground all the time. And even those without a faith in the Christian God have a sense of their own worldview. And you have to contend with, am I living to the code that I've kind of committed to? Am I living into what I'm supposed to do or to be, what must do? What must I do to keep or to make things, and keep things right between God and me? This is at the heart of the question, what's the greatest commandment? What can we do to make sure that God is happy? And so this question comes to Jesus and Jesus answers it, which is wonderful for the people in front of Him and even for us to this day.
[8:14] But the answer has dramatic implications. And this passage that we've read earlier, this is what I think we have to wrestle with as people heading into this Christmas season. Jesus says this, into this leader, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind." Now, this is a particular, a very common passage and a common commandment in particular. You know, it's even a prayer, you know, for the Old Testament, for the Jews, often referred to as the Shema, this call to live and to invite, you know, love of God in our entire being. And this was a portion of what that looked like. So it wasn't odd for Jesus to go back to this particular passage.
[9:03] This is very straightforward and in lots of ways, if you're a religious person, love of God with your entire being, that would make a lot of sense. And so Jesus says, this is the greatest and first commandment and the second is like it, but you're like, He just asked for the greatest, Jesus is giving him two. And there's a reason for that. He says, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." This isn't also an odd commandment to bring up. In fact, it would've been a perhaps very common one. But the way that Jesus links these together is the thing that for centuries people have pondered on, 'cause He says, "On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets." These two commandments together form the ethic and the calling of God.
[9:53] Everything you could funnel through the heart of these two things. And Jesus would use the rest of His ministry, and even before this, to articulate examples and explain as much as it is for me to say to my family, "Hey, we should be kind to one another." And then I spend time trying to explain that Jesus would showcase and explain what it means to do these two things together in the midst of life, your life and my life. And the fascinating thing, at least for me as I read these two passages, as common as they might be, and for somebody, you know, I grew up in church and so I've heard these kinds of things. Often, if you've been through Advent seasons, you've heard these read as people light the love candle. They're very beautiful, common passages.
[10:39] Love your neighbor. How wonderful is that? But for us to take a step back and pause and recognize that Jesus is framing things in a way that we need to pay close attention to because it's a calling and a commandment to us that if we're not careful we lose sight of easily because we've just heard it so often. And so if I can try to walk around this idea a couple different ways, it might bring into light what the invitation for each of us could be. So lemme start with this. The Jesus model of religion, the Jesus model of faith, the Jesus model of what it means to live out this worldview as a Christian centers on the you beside you.
[11:28] The Jesus model centers on the you beside you. Quite literally, if you came with somebody today, the you that is beside you is your neighbor. The coworker that you work alongside of throughout the week is the you beside you. The neighbor in the house beside you is the you beside you, the person sitting next to you in the airplane taking all of your elbow space. And the armrest is the you beside you. You have neighbors throughout your life that Jesus has given you a very specific call to action about. And the Jesus model of faith and religion centers on your interactions with that particular person and loving your neighbor is a very articulated and very specific kind of thing.
[12:24] It's not just this, oh, I feel kind and wonderful about them. It's like, no, no, no, no, no. There's actually specific things that we're called to do. If you're gonna actually love somebody, we have to understand what it means to actually love someone as Jesus has asked us to love them. So one of the commentators on this particular section of Scripture, he says this, Michael Wilkins, "Loving her neighbor as herself or loving your neighbor as herself means that she gives herself to other humans to help them live as God designed life to be lived, so that she helps them in their own transformation." This is like more than just, oh, I feel something about them.
[13:10] This calls us to action and to do something for the people around us. It's very specific and sometimes very, very costly. But what Jesus would do is He would help us understand, okay, what do You mean? What, what Jesus, what do You mean by love? And again, like I said, throughout His ministry He would explain it. For example, right before the crucifixion, He's gathering around Passover with His closest followers, His disciples. And in that moment, they may not have fully understood what He was doing, but He hearkens back to this particular conversation and He tells them something really specific. He says, "Now I'm giving you a new commandment," which I'm sure for the disciples we're like, oh, this is great. This is an A tea, our teacher, our rabbi, something new is kind of interesting.
[13:56] Like we've had kind of the same thing for a while. You know, our book hasn't changed much. And so like, something new is kind of fun. Something new is maybe different. Something new is like, are we gonna, you know, take over? Are we gonna do something? And Jesus says, "I'm giving you a new commandment and that is love each other." To which somebody in the back was like, "Jesus, that's not new. Like we've heard that one before. We've heard it a lot. We've memorized it, we've talked about it." But Jesus adds a little qualifier to this that would reshape and change our understanding and the early church and the way that Christians have and lived their lives for 2000 years.
[14:43] And it's predicated on this follow up explanation. Jesus would say, "Hold on, love each other just as I have loved you." You should love each other. And in that moment, their understanding of love was being expanded, because just a few moments earlier, Jesus had washed their feet, which was so odd for them, because He was the person of honor in that setting. He was the teacher, He was the rabbi, He was the most important person in the room. And yet He got down and did the actions of the lowest person in the room to wash their feet. But then within the week they would watch this person give up His life for them as an act of love.
[15:41] And as they would reflect back on these words in this call of Jesus, they would realize, as they connected the dots, just as Jesus has loved them and us in being willing to die for them, that that's the level of love that you are called to and I am called to if we live our lives in service of Jesus. And that is a much higher stake than most people think about when they think to love their neighbor, to love the people even next to them, to be willing to lay down our life for them. Like, what if they're not willing to lay down their life for me? And Jesus would say, exactly.
[16:31] Because in that room was Peter, who would deny Jesus. He told them, "He's gonna deny me three times." And sure enough, Peter denied even knowing Jesus. And Jesus died for that Peter, who was not willing to reciprocate. In the moment you're like, well, what if people walk all over me? And Jesus would say, yeah, do you know how they walked all over me as they drag me out to that hill on Calvary? And yet that love, that self-sacrificial love is what we talk about when we say to love your neighbor, because that's what Jesus has said. And this is a challenge and this is a heavy, and it's a hard thing to actually carry through.
[17:16] And writers have kind of wrestled with this all throughout the centuries, because that kind of love leaves us exposed as people. Like, as you wander into your Christmas week, if you actually love the people around you that way, it's perhaps gonna cost you. And at the very least, it's gonna cost your heart a little bit, because people don't always receive or reciprocate that kind of extensive love. C.S. Lewis would say it this way, "To love at all, to love at all is to be vulnerable." And you've experienced this because where you have extended love, sometimes it breaks your heart. "Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken."
[18:01] But this is what Jesus has called us to. And this is what Jesus embodied. And this is what happens with Jesus as He extends the most extensive love possible and for people to not reciprocate and to look to Him as their King, it breaks His heart. And so this is the calling for the Christians. The church would contend with this and, like, wrestle this to the ground and try to articulate it. And it's interesting to watch, kinda, what happens to their theologies. You watch the gospel accounts as they're written, and so they try to explain things and as time goes on, you know, the writings and the way that they shape and their understanding of what Jesus has actually called us to. And in 1 John, in the epistle 1 John, this is kind of explained and, again, maybe even a little bit more articulated, that might be helpful for you and it might be even helpful for me.
[18:50] And 1 John writes this, he says, "For this is the message you heard from the beginning, we should love one another," which is, yes, that's what we've heard, not just from obviously the beginning of their lives and ministry growing up, is, you know, often many of them, you know, Jewish men and women and boys and girls, that they would've heard that message, but then they would've heard this consistently as part of the Christian movement, we should love one another. But he explains it. He says, "We know that we have passed from death to life because we love each other," which is this interesting way to articulate the change that happens when we live into this calling of Jesus. That when you step into self-sacrificial love, that's actually where you experience some of the greatest parts of life.
[19:38] This is what we actually have been made for. And the reverse also happens if you look at somebody that lives super selfishly, and maybe for you, and that's been a part of your season, you can think about those times in your life when you've been like the most selfish person in the room. And that could honestly be described as death. Like, if you've interacted with those kinds of people, you kind of wonder, like, man, it seems like there's just in that world, that person's life, like there's not much hope or joy or peace, like they're just so far from life. And this is what happens when we disengage from what God's called us to, we experience, simply put, death.
[20:26] As opposed to when we give up ourselves in self-sacrificial love, we actually get to experience the life that God has called us into. And this is what John's trying to help us understand. "We know that we've passed from death to life because we love each other. Anyone who does not love remains in death." And so even to the Christians, if you don't live this way that Jesus has called us to, you're missing out. You're missing something critical about life here and now. And he goes even to explain, and this is, if you're here this summer, we walked through the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus really does this wild job of helping us understand these commandments and takes them to a level that most people, you just think, I can't imagine even being able to measure up to that.
[21:16] And so he says, "Anyone who even hates a brother or sister is a murderer. And you know that no murderer has eternal life residing in him." And this is from Jesus. He equates even our internal struggle in our own hearts, hatred towards somebody else, that that is death even in and of itself. And so John explains what we already know because of Jesus' words. "This is how we know what love is," what is love when we wanna love our neighbor as ourselves? What is it? And he says, "Jesus Christ laid down His life for us. And so we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters."
[22:04] So if you go back to that very first, what's the greatest commandment? What could I do to make God happy? What could I do to demonstrate my love for God? If I wanted to take steps in my relationship with God, what's a good next step for me? And Jesus would say, and John would say, and the Christians through the centuries would say this, that your devotion, your devotion to God, is illustrated and demonstrated and authenticated by your love for others. And that is hard and difficult. And for some of us, and for some of you, it's the most difficult this coming week, because this is Christmas and he's there and she's there and they're not the easiest people to love.
[23:07] But that's what we're called to do as Jesus people. Listen, if you're not a Jesus person, if you're not a Christian, you don't have to do any of this stuff. I mean, I think you should. I think that actually you'd experience this kinda life. I think surrendering yourself to Christ is the ultimate best thing that you could do. But for you, if you haven't signed on to this, it's not this perhaps the same, but for anybody that's committed their lives to Christ, our love for our neighbors is this kind of love. And so we have to check our hearts every once in a while, 'cause sometimes we kind of miss it and we end up experiencing maybe things just slightly off of what we should. And so here's a couple examples. For example, if you feel guiltier about missing Mass or church than mistreating somebody at work, you need to wrestle with this message.
[24:01] You need to see what's kind of residing in your heart, because your love for God is connected to your love for those around you. Or how about this one? If you believe that there's a ritual that makes you right with God and removes your responsibility to make restitution to somebody you have harmed, you need to spend some time understanding this Christmas message that Jesus brought this love for all people. Man, what is it calling me to even today? It's this fascinating thing that the God of the universe would say to you and would say to me, "Hey, if you mistreat one of My kids, it's not something that I'm looking for you to do for Me.
[24:53] I want you to change how you interact with them. That's what I want more than anything." Isn't that interesting? And yet, isn't that baked into our DNA, that God looks at His children and wants us to be able to love one another in the most profound kinds of ways? How about this one? If you wonder how close you can get to sin without actually sinning, you need to take a step back and wonder and wrestle with what does it mean to be living self-sacrificially? Not for the service of my own indulgence and my own self-interests, but instead, would I sacrifice myself for the sake of loving others? Or simply put this way, what does love require of me today?
[25:47] What does love require of me this week? What does love require of me at this dinner table? What does love require of me at work or in this situation? Because when you ask yourself that question, my guess is the Holy Spirit can help you answer that pretty easily. It's not like it's gonna be easy to do what you know you're meant to do. But if you had so much as take a step back and ask yourself that question in light of the people that are next to you, you can realize that God is inviting you to experience something really profound. It's the love for your neighbor that Jesus has exemplified and embodied and has asked us to live out.
[26:40] That's the love of Christ. And that kind of love will change and transform your world and change and transform your life and change and transform your experiences. But that kind of love is difficult because it's the love that sent Jesus to the cross. It's the love that sent Jesus to this earth. It's the love that requires us to take action. And so what I'd love to do is just to pray for you, because in this season of Christmas and love and all of the good emotions and all the good things, as much as it's wonderful and as much as it's nice to think about it, a lot depends on a group of people being willing to live sacrificially into this kind of thing.
[27:28] The reason that Christmas is a magical time of year is because of the sacrifice of many. And so would we be the kinds of people that would ask this question of ourselves and then live into the answer so that for the world around us, and when I say world, I mean the people around us, not like everybody, like the people in your home or in work or in the car ride home, that they would experience life differently because of your self-sacrifice. And that is a beautiful message of Christmas. Love that I think we can all bring. We pray to You, Heavenly Father.
[28:13] It's easy to say, incredibly hard to live out the consequences, but God, would You bring to our minds here, even this morning, the response of what love requires of me to the person that's next to me here, even in this room, God, for the person that I'm gonna have lunch with, God, for the person that I'm going to spend time with next week, God, for the person that I'm gonna end up on a phone call with, God, would You give me the wisdom to know what does love require of me? And then, God, would You give us all the courage to actually do what we know You've called us to do?
[29:05] And would You give us Your power? 'Cause without Your power, we're powerless to do it. But with Your power and with that courage, could we love the people around us as You have loved us. In Jesus' name.