Dismissing Jesus (Part 2) - Love God

Well, I want you to think with me about the last time you were at a garage sale.

I've thought that there are two kinds of people when it comes to garage sale: those who think that they're really awesome and they might find value, and those who really dislike going to garage sales.

But whatever your kind of place is, if you've been at a garage sale, you know you kind of look around and try to find an item or two that you say this would have value amongst all the other stuff.

And if you've ever hosted a garage sale, what happens is somebody will show up at your door about 15, 20 minutes beforehand, or maybe several people, and they'll knock on your door and say, Hey, I want to wait till the sale starts, but could I just look around before the sale starts?

And these pickers kind of go in and they know what has value and they start looking for the valuable things, and it's usually the one thing that you weren't sure you wanted to sell, and they'll bring it over right as the place opens and say, I'll buy this.

Because they've learned how to pick through and say, I want that, but everything else here doesn't have value.

Now, if you go to a garage sale, that approach makes perfect sense.

But I believe that in many ways, as a culture, and not just as a culture, but even within the church, we have begun to approach spirituality in much the same way, meaning that we approach God, approach spirituality, approach the Bible, approach Jesus Christ with kind of the same mindset that says, I'm going to find what's valuable for me, I'm going to take that in, and everything else I'm going to dismiss as being unnecessary.

We've begun a series that we've called dismissing Jesus.

And over these weeks, we're going to look at some of the things that Jesus said that are often dismissed, things that we pick and choose, where we have a garage sale approach to spirituality.

And the one that we're going to look at today is from Matthew chapter 22, verse 37.

Matthew 22:37

It's when Jesus quoted an Old Testament passage in Deuteronomy 6, and he said this.

He said, Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.

And when you first hear that, you probably think, well, that's not really that dismissed.

People of any kind of faith background have a notion to say I should love or be devoted to whatever my version of God or the truth is.

And so I have this idea that says I'll be kind of partial to that concept of God that I have.

And so we may not see this as being dismissed.

So what I want to do is just point out two ways that this seems to be dismissed in our culture and often even in the church today.

And the first, I'm just going to say, is we dismiss its exclusivity.

And the reason I say that is because when you first read this, you may say, well, is this just saying, love your version of God as fully and totally as you can?

But if we look at some of the other places where Jesus talked about love and talked about his relationship with the Father, what we see is that when Jesus says, love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and all your mind, he wasn't just saying love your own version of God, but he was saying you need to have a relationship with me, with Jesus Christ, that's exclusive.

Here's where we see some of this.

This is Matthew chapter 10, verse 37.

Matthew 10:37

Says, anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.

And this was Jesus talking and simply saying that if you love something or someone more than him, that then you don't really have a relationship with him.

In other words, he's equating himself ultimately with God there.

Here's John chapter 8, verse 42.

John 8:42

We read this.

Jesus said to them, If God were your father, you would love me, for I have come here from God.

I have not come on my own, God sent me.

And if you read the context around this, you would see that he's talking to a group of people who were questioning Jesus and his ability to teach, and then he says, or his authority to teach, he basically says, The Father sent me.

And he's equating himself with God.

Here's John chapter 5, verse 42.

John 5:42

A similar idea.

We read this, but I know you, I know that you do not have the love of God in your hearts.

And he was doing this when people had challenged him.

So Jesus turns around and he says, I know you, I know that you don't actually love God because of how you're treating me.

And then John chapter 14, we read this in verse 9.

John 14 · chapter mention

Jesus answered, Don't you know me, Philip?

Even after I have been among you for such a long time, anyone who's seen me has seen the Father.

And what he does here is he basically says that I and the Father are one in the same.

And then finally, John chapter 10, verse 30 puts it this way.

John 10:30

I and the Father are one.

Now the reason that I show you all of this and take the time just to look at these different verses is Jesus' concept when he says, Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, was not to say, love your own version of God, whatever that is.

He was saying you need to have a sense of knowing me if you're going to fulfill this.

Now you saw a video just a few moments ago that was taken this last week on Pitt's campus, where people were just asked their opinions of Jesus and you heard all of the different kinds of takes.

Well, I followed Jesus, I follow Muhammad, I follow Buddha, I follow all of it, or I follow none of it.

But if we're going to take Jesus seriously, one of the things that we need to do is we need to take his command to say, love the Lord your God with all your heart, as being an exclusive command to saying, there aren't a lot of pathways, but there's one.

There's a story that's been told many times to try to kind of illustrate our cultural idea of truth.

It's the story of several visually impaired individuals who come upon an elephant.

And the first one goes up and feels the elephant's trunk and says, it's kind of like a large airborne snake.

That's my version of an elephant.

The next one feels the tail and says it's kind of bushy and squashes around.

The next feels the leg and says it's massive, it's like a big tree.

The next comes to its side and feels it and says, it's so large you can't get around it in any way.

And usually when this story's told, it's told with the idea of saying, truth's a little bit like that.

We each come with our own ideas, our own versions, and we see part of the truth, but the whole truth is much bigger than all of us could even begin to see or understand.

Leslie Nubigan wrote about this years ago in his book, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society.

Here's what he said.

He said, there's an appearance of humility in the protestation that the truth is much greater than any of us can grasp.

But if it's used to invalidate all claims to discern the truth, it is in fact an arrogant claim of a kind of knowledge which is superior to all others.

We have to ask, what is the absolute vantage ground from which you claim to be able to relativize all the absolute claims of these different scriptures?

And here's what he's saying.

He's saying, it appears humble to say, well, I just have a piece of the truth, and the truth is much bigger than anything else, but it's actually arrogant because what you're doing is you're saying, I actually know more than everybody else who believes any of these individual claims.

I know more than the people who've been religious throughout all the history of the world and whatever it is that they believe, because I now stand here in my Western culture, my Western moment, and I say, I know better than everybody else.

And Jesus' claim here to say, I want you, or command to say, I want you to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind, was his way of saying, Listen, there is one God.

And you see, there's a difference between the religious claims.

If you were here last week, we talked about the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and at the center of Christianity isn't just a teacher who teaches some good moral teachings, but there's a God who came to this earth, went to the cross, died as a perfect being, as a substitute on behalf of people who are not perfect.

And then he rose back to life.

And that central claim is either true or it's false.

And if it's true, then Jesus isn't just another option in the middle of all the options, but he is the God.

And when he says, love the Lord your God with all your heart and mind and soul, he's saying, I want you to recognize me as the God, not as just one.

See, there's also a difference between how Christianity, biblical Christianity, talks about God and how other faiths do.

Other faiths say, God has taught you some things, and if you keep those things, those standards well enough, then you get kind of in.

Christianity says, God has taught you things, but you won't keep it.

And Jesus is the one who's done for you what you can never do.

And so this claim or this command to say, love God, is actually a very exclusive claim, and we tend to dismiss it, especially in our culture, because we want to kind of be part of the group that says, I just am following my own version of God.

You follow your version, I follow mine, and we'll all just get along.

Now, clearly, people should get along who have different ideas of God.

But the first part of that, that they're all equally valid misses and misunderstands and dismisses Jesus and is having a garage sale mentality with Jesus that says, I'm just gonna pick and choose.

Jesus can't be a great teacher and then just forget about his claims to be God.

So that's the first thing that I think we dismiss here.

Here's a second thing, and that is I'm going to say that we dismiss its totality.

And the reason I say this is when Jesus quotes the passage in Deuteronomy in Matthew 22, and he talks about this idea of saying, love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind.

What he's doing is he's saying, I want your devotion to be complete.

And so often, what we do is we think that God grades on a curve.

And so we look around and we say, Well, relative to that person or that group of people, I'm pretty good.

So, so so my my devotion to God is good.

Or, even if we think that it's a on an absolute scale, what we tend to do is we tend to say, Well, I'm doing pretty well.

I'm 85% committed, I'm 90% committed, I'm 95% committed.

That would get me an A in any classroom in America.

But 95% commitment to Christ is still 5% short.

And Jesus doesn't say, love the Lord your God with 95% of your heart, with 95% of your soul, and with 95% of your mind.

He says, love the Lord your God with all of who you are.

And sometimes that's a challenge to us.

I mentioned, if you were here last week, about having a kingdom in my house.

It's my study where things are generally the way I want them to be.

I forgot that I actually have another kingdom in my house.

I have a box under my bed that is part of my kingdom.

And it's a box that my wife and I have debated for years.

Every time we clean under the bed or rearrange anything, she's always like, Can't you get rid of this box?

It's full of, and and she says it's full of crap.

Um and uh and and I like my box because in my box are some things that have this like sentimental value to me and and things that that I think have some future use, although they have no present use.

And and so for me, I I look at that and I say, no, I I like this box.

Now, in marriage, uh, in my estimation, sometimes it's okay to have a box that your spouse wants you to get rid of and just say, no, I'm keeping my box.

Okay, okay, so this don't don't take this too far in any way.

Um, and I know you may say, you need marriage counseling.

Yeah, I I may, but um um I married a marriage counselor, so you know, as it kind of happens all the time.

And I have this this box.

Now, now, if I I think about this in a in a different way, if I say, what if I said to God, no, I have my box.

Look, I'll be devoted to you in every other area of my life.

You can have rule of the rest of the house, but I have my box.

And my box is where I'm going to do things the way I want to do them, not the way that you tell me to do them.

I'm gonna do it my way.

Now, now, again, beyond the marriage analogy here, you start to say, well, that wouldn't be surrendering to God.

And the reason I say sometimes in marriage you may want to keep your boxes, sometimes you just want to say, you know what, it's okay that I have something that that's kind of my deal here.

But but when it comes to spirituality, if we're in a pick and choose mindset, what we tend to do is we tend to say, Well, I'm gonna keep some of these things in my own will.

God, I'll surrender to you in every area of my life, but my sexuality, I'm gonna keep that one to myself.

God, I'll surrender to you in everything, but but don't tell me anything about what to do with my money.

God, I'll surrender to you in every area of my life.

As long as you don't ask me to be too missional and too involved in the concern of other people because right now I'm comfortable.

I've got my life the way I want it.

So don't you ask me to sacrifice for anything more.

God, I'll I'll surrender to you as long as I can run down a certain person or group of people when I'm with some friends because I just don't want to give that up.

It's in my box.

You see what happens sometimes is we get this box and we just say, I'm gonna park something here, and this is off limits to you, God.

And what we know just from other scriptures again is that when we do this, that what we're doing is we're in essence saying to God, I don't really want to love all of you.

Here's what we read again in Matthew chapter 10, verse 37.

Matthew 10:37

I read this earlier, but just notice this again.

It says, Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me.

Anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.

Now notice those are good things.

He's not saying these are bad things.

So sometimes the things that we want to keep and put in our box are wonderful things, the best of things, but we're saying, I want this more than I want to be devoted to you.

And he's saying, if that's your approach, then you aren't really loving me with all your heart, with all your soul, and all your mind.

What you're doing instead is you're saying, I want the benefits of being in relationship with you, but I want to be in charge of me.

That's what we're doing.

In John chapter 14, verse 15, we see this.

John 14:15

Jesus again talking.

He said this.

He says, If you love me, keep my commands.

Now, sometimes what happens when we read that is we equate obedience and love, and I don't think that's what this verse is doing.

I don't think it's saying that love and obedience are necessarily the exact same things, but what I think it's doing is it's saying that you can't separate your actions from your emotions.

That your actions and emotions are tied together.

It might be like this.

If you're married or you have a friendship or a parent or somebody who has a right to ask something of you, and they say, Hey, could you do this for me?

And it was a fair, reasonable, good request.

And you simply said, I love you, you're awesome.

And then you just ignored their request?

Would they feel loved?

What if they came back another time and said, Hey, would you take care of this?

Oh, I love you, you're awesome.

You're great.

But you just ignored their request?

Would you say, Oh, I feel loved?

And then they come back another time and say, Hey, would you take, ah, you love you, you're awesome.

You're great.

And what Jesus is saying when he says, if you love me, obey my commands, is he saying, Don't just tell me how much you love me, but but but love me by aligning your life around me.

That's what he's saying.

See, it's really easy sometimes to come into church, sing the song, praise Jesus, and then say, but I've got a box, and Jesus, you don't touch my box.

I do what I want with what's in my box.

Oh, I love you.

You're great.

Praise the Lord.

I'm gonna do my own thing.

And what Jesus is doing here is he's saying, he's saying, I want you to love me with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.

You see, God, if he's really God, will cross your will.

He will cross my will.

There's no way that I can have a sense of of God where that God agrees with me all the time.

And so at some point I have to say, if God is God, that God will see some things that I don't see and demand some things that I may not want to give.

Now, you may ask this question.

You may say, well, how does God command me to love?

Isn't love an emotion?

Don't I love who I love?

I mean, how do I, how do I choose to love if love is an emotion?

The Bible actually commands our emotions often.

Here are just a few examples.

It commands us to have joy, Philippians 4.4.

It commands us to have hope in Psalm 42, 5.

It commands us to have peace, Colossians 3.15.

It commands us to have zeal in Romans 12.15.

It commands us to have desire in 1 Peter 2.2.

And we're commanded to be compassionate or tender-hearted in Ephesians chapter 4, verse 32.

Ephesians 4:32

And that's just a few.

In other words, the Bible is very comfortable commanding people like you and me to have an emotional response.

Sometimes that doesn't feel like it fits.

I was driving the other day in my car and my ox cord had stopped working, so I couldn't choose my music.

I had to listen to the radio.

I felt like so 1999 or something in that moment.

And as I was listening to the radio, I was flipping between the channels, and I came to 94-5, which is the classic rock station in Pittsburgh, and they were playing a song that as I heard it, I said, You can play that on the classic rock station, but that doesn't make it classic rock.

It was an ABBA song.

It was like ABBA is not classic rock.

I don't care that it's old, it just is not classic rock.

It doesn't belong in that genre.

So so I have this moment where I'm saying, you can tell me what you want to tell me, but it doesn't make it so.

And some of us, what we do when we hear this, love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind, can say, You can tell me what you want to tell me, God, but you commanding me to love doesn't make it so.

So what good is this?

But the Bible is very comfortable in commanding our emotions.

And what I think the Bible is actually doing in this instance is it's not just simply saying, saying, Here, muster up some fake feeling.

As much as it's saying, pay attention to what it is that helps you to actually feel certain things.

In Revelation chapter 2, there's a challenge to the church at Ephesus.

Revelation 2 · chapter mention

And the church at Ephesus had abandoned its first love.

And the challenge there is to say, you've abandoned your first love.

I want you to repent.

It actually uses that word to mean turn and go a different direction.

It says, Do what you did at first.

In other words, go back to the things that helped you to feel the sense of love.

Now, some of you may say, Well, I've never felt a big sense of love for God.

It's always felt more like duty.

And that's understandable to a point.

Or maybe you've never really come to grips then with what it means to be a sinner who's saved by grace, by the work of Jesus Christ on the cross, by the work of another.

Maybe the reason you have never felt an overwhelming sense of God's love is because what you've always believed is I'm pretty good, and because I'm pretty good, then God's gonna like me and let me kind of be part of his eternity because of how good I've been, rather than coming to grips with the fact that you have offended a holy God and you need a substitute in your behalf.

Because when that becomes our experience, and we keep coming back and celebrating that, what happens is then our heart is turned outward once again.

Philip Yancey wrote a book years ago, and in it he talked about going to Yellowstone Park and sitting at the cafe that overlooks Old Faithful.

And he said every you know time that the that the old faithful would start to spew its water, he said, everybody would get up and go over and look out at the at the display and just marvel at it.

Except, he said, the people who worked in the cafe.

He said they didn't even look.

They just went and cleared the dishes and put more water in the glasses.

And he said, I wonder how long it took them to stop noticing the spectacular sight that was right outside their window and just carry on.

And his point was, this is what happens to a lot of people of faith.

You've got this amazing sense of what God has done.

And yet we just go on about our days.

You see, the point of loving God totally is not to say, what are the things in which I'm disobedient and are in my box, so I need to add them to my list of things to change, although changing them is part of repenting and turning, but it's to love God more.

Here's what Paul David Tripp says.

And what he is responding to is this notion that we all love something.

And that the reason we do what we do is because of love.

The reason we decide what we decide, the reason that we prioritize what we prioritize is because we love something.

And here's what he says: he says, here's the tragedy.

Sin causes us all, in some way, to turn our backs on the love of God and to give the principle love of our hearts to someone or something else.

We seek to fill our hearts by love for something other than God.

We run from thing to thing, hoping that our hearts will be content in love.

We're all spiritually promiscuous, running from lover to lover, giving loyalty of our hearts, giving the loyalty of our hearts to things other than God.

Do you know what he's saying here?

He's saying that what we really do as people is we believe that these other things will be the things that will ultimately satisfy us, and so we we keep running from thing to thing to thing instead of looking to what is eternal to satisfy the deepest longings of our soul.

And that the way that we love God more is not by making a big to-do list and saying, I'm gonna do all these things, but it's by, as Colossians 3.1 says, setting our minds on the things above, where Christ is seated at the heavenly, at the in the heavenly realm.

And what we do in that moment is we say, I am going to encounter the amazing goodness of God.

And that's what will make me want to love fully.

You know, I was thinking about this, and if you think about a marriage again, you can get a little flavor for this.

Any marriage, any good marriage has some rules, some unstated rules.

And what I mean by that is you have some things that you agree on about how you live over time that it's just understood, that these are the ways that you function together, and they become kind of your norm.

For some couples, maybe one of those is something like, like we're going to go to bed together any possible night that we can go to bed at the same time.

Now, that doesn't have to be anybody's rule.

There's no moral uh kind of equivalent to that, but but for some couples, that's their deal.

Now, there are two ways that you can break relationship.

One is you can say, I'm not going to bed with you tonight.

I know we normally go to bed together, we never talk about it, but I know that's our deal, but I'm mad at you, so I'm not coming to bed.

That's one way.

There's another way, though.

And that is you can say, I'm keeping the rules, and I'm just keeping the rules because that's what you want me to do, but I don't really love you tonight.

I'm not really interested in pleasing you or being with you tonight.

And this is why I say that keeping standards or rules is not ultimately the answer, because what you'll do, now neither is breaking the rules, don't misunderstand me, but but what you'll do if you simply say, okay, what are all the areas?

Here you go, God, there, I did it, is a little bit like saying, there, I came to bed tonight.

What's your problem?

Why are you still mad at me?

Instead of saying, I want to be in relationship with you, and I know the depth and the beauty of the love that we share, and I don't want anything to break it.

And what happens when you approach God like that is then you begin to say, the God of the universe has prescribed some things for my good because of his love for me.

His love is expressed in Jesus Christ having come to the cross and given his life for me.

And because he's given his life for me, and I can trust him in something that grand, then I can trust him in the things that seem maybe to just cross my will.

One of the things that I've come to see over years of parenting is that as a parent, you love people who love your kids.

If somebody loves on your kids, you can't help but but appreciate and love them back.

And when people are kind of indifferent to your kids, it's kind of like, eh, okay.

But but when somebody loves your kids, you can't help but love them back.

You see, what helps me, what helps you to come to a place of saying, I'm gonna love God totally, isn't by saying, saying, what's in my box and I need to give it up because God demands I give it up, it's saying, look at the love of God is expressed in Jesus Christ.

Look at how much He's loved me and how fully that love has been expressed.

Why wouldn't I want to align my life with the God of the universe?

And if I can come there, if you can come there, then we won't dismiss the totality of Jesus.

Claim to say, love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.

Instead, we'll come and say, God, you've loved me so fully, so completely in Jesus Christ.

How could I do anything other than say, God, have your way in every area of my life?

So today we're going to respond by participating in communion.

If you're a follower of Jesus Christ, we invite you to come.

If not, we encourage you just to consider the claims and the idea that the exclusive claim of Christ may make a claim to your life today.

You can cross from being a non-follower of Jesus to a follower by simply acknowledging your sinfulness and saying, I trust that Jesus is my substitute.

And as you come to communion, there's communion tables here in the front and the back for the balcony, there's prayer rails that you can pray at.

Come and maybe you just dunk the the bread in the wine and you take it, and you just simply say a prayer today that says, God, thank you for loving me so much that you sent your son.

And today I will love you with all my heart as best I can.

As just an act of commitment.

So I'm going to pray and then we'll invite you just to participate with the team.

Father, we ask today, very simply, that you would help us not to be people who pick and choose.

That we wouldn't set aside a box and say, this is an area you can't touch.

But that we would take all that you've said and realize it's for our good.

And then love you in response to your love for us with all of our hearts.

And we pray this in the name of Jesus Christ.

Amen.

Would you stand and respond with the team?