Impact El Dorado - Week 3: What is the Perfect Combination for Maximum IMPACT? | Luke 10:25-37

It's Pastor Jonathan, and thank you for downloading the FBC El Dorado Sermon Podcast.

In today's sermon, it's week three of our current series, Impact El Dorado.

Today we are gonna consider the story of Jesus and that expert in the law found in Luke chapter ten, verses twenty-five through twenty-eight, as we learn the perfect combination that will allow us to have a maximum impact in our community.

Later this week on Thursday night, the NFL will once again assume its place at the center of the sporting world, as fans for all of the teams will tune in for the NFL draft.

The draft always begins the same way.

The league's commissioner, his name's Roger Goodell, he approaches a podium, he makes a few introductory comments, and then this year he will say the Jacksonville Jaguars are now on the clock.

Jacksonville earned uh the first pick.

Yeah, they won one game last year.

They went one and fifteen.

The Jacksonville Jaguars, I guess you could say, are a team with uh a lot of imperfections.

So now they are on the lookout for the player who is that perfect combination.

So there's actually zero suspense about the player they have identified who possesses that uh perfect combination.

According to Las Vegas, there is a 99.01% chance that uh Jacksonville will draft the quarterback from Clemson, Trevor Lawrence.

And one scout describes Trevor Lawrence this way: he says that he is a once-in-a-generation franchise quarterback.

That same scout goes on to say that Trevor Lawrence is the perfect combination of size and arm strength, athleticism and intuition.

Now, the search for that perfect combination, it extends far beyond the football field.

It's also a search that goes on in the life of every person and in the life of every family.

All of us ask the same question.

What's the perfect combination?

In some cases, we actually think we have an answer to that.

It's why parents from their children's earliest ages they feed them peanut butter and jelly or macaroni and cheese.

Those are perfect combinations.

Or it's why your family chose your specific pet.

He's the perfect combination of size and temperament that you wanted to welcome into your home.

But in other cases, we are still searching for the answer.

It's why so many of us on a weekly basis we review our calendar.

Because we're looking for that perfect combination of work and play.

Or it's why so many of us, when we make a major purchase, it takes us a long time.

If we're in the market to buy a car, we're looking for that perfect combination of price and performance.

If we're looking to buy a new house, we're looking for that perfect combination of layout and location.

You and I, in all areas of life, we ask the question: what's the perfect combination?

We ask that question because that elusive, that perfect combination, well, it's better, it's stronger, and it's more effective than any of the other options.

But not only is every football team asking that question, not only are you asking that question, not only does your family ask that question, our church family has to ask that very same question.

We have to ask, and we have to answer the question: what's the perfect combination?

First Baptist Church, we have to ask and answer that question so that we can be better, so that we can be stronger, so that we can be more effective.

And listen, when we find that perfect combination, I promise you this.

We can have a maximum impact in El Dorado.

Today is the third installment of our current series, Impact El Dorado.

At the foundation of this series, if you joined us in week one or week two, you know this, that the foundation of this series is God's design for the local church.

That God established the church to impact the world.

That's why 1 Peter 2, verse 12 commands the church to live good lives and to perform good deeds.

1 Peter 2:12

It's why in Genesis 12 God calls his people to be a blessing to others.

It's why in Acts 1.8, the disciples are told to be a witness to the resurrection of Jesus.

God established the church in all of those ways to impact the world.

And our impact begins just right outside of these walls.

Our impact begins in El Dorado.

In week one, the words of Jesus reminded us that identity indicates impact.

That together we are salt.

Together we are light.

Again, that's one simple reason why we are passing out free hot dogs at the baseball field.

Like a simple gesture for a gathering of God's people to together be salt and together be light.

And then last week in week two, 1 Thessalonians chapter 1, verses 2 and 3 reminded us that our habits decide our impact.

1 Thessalonians 1:2

That church in Thessalonica pointed us to three habits that our church and every church needs to put into practice.

The habit of faithful work, the habit of loving deeds, the habit of enduring hope.

Today, then, as we take the next step forward in our series, here's the thing.

And that goal of a maximum impact, it's what forces us to ask and to answer the question what's the perfect combination?

What must be so perfectly combined in the life of a church?

In the life of this church, so that we will impact our community in a way that far surpasses anything we could have dreamed of, but an impact that God always intended.

According to Jesus, that perfect combination.

The combination you and I are searching for, it has two parts.

And here it is.

Here's the perfect combination.

Love your God and love your neighbors.

The perfect combination.

Part one, love your God.

Part two, love your neighbors.

Listen to the story told to us by Luke in chapter 10 of his gospel.

This is Luke chapter 10, verses 25 through 28.

Luke 10:25–28

Luke writes this.

He says, On one occasion, an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus.

Teacher, he asked, What must I do to inherit eternal life?

What is written in the law?

He replied.

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

And love your neighbor as yourself.

You have answered correctly, Jesus replied, Do this, and you will live.

Last week when I when I sat down with those four verses, the first thing the Holy Spirit began to highlight to me is what is left unsaid in those four verses.

Luke doesn't tell us where, and he doesn't tell us when this happened.

This is just one occasion in the life of Jesus.

And maybe Luke leaves out those details because he wants to focus our attention on another detail.

He wants to focus our attention on the who.

Who is Jesus talking to?

And on this one occasion, Jesus is talking to an expert in the law.

That title indicates that this man is a scholar of the highest order.

He knows the Old Testament, its story, its laws, its principles, its commands, from front to back.

This man, he he can interpret and apply the Old Testament.

He can interpret and apply even the most difficult parts of the Old Testament with the greatest of ease.

He is an expert.

Now, what do we know about experts?

Experts have all the answers, right?

They purport to have all the answers.

So isn't it a little fascinating that when this expert in the law approaches Jesus, the first thing he does is he doesn't give Jesus the answer.

Instead, he asks Jesus a question.

What must I do to inherit eternal life?

That man, he he asked Jesus a question because throughout the gospels, these experts in the law, they've been keeping a close watch on Jesus.

They've been following his every step, they've been monitoring his every word.

These experts in the law, they are suspicious of Jesus.

And so this one expert in the law, on this one occasion, he he goes to Jesus and he asks Jesus this very weighty and this very significant question.

What must I do to inherit eternal life?

He asked him that question in order to trip up Jesus.

In order to trick Jesus, in order to um test Jesus.

Because he knows that if Jesus falls for the trap, if he fails the test, if he falls into the trick, everybody's gonna know who Jesus really is.

If Jesus can't get this right, we know Jesus is a fraud.

He asked Jesus this question because he wants to expose Jesus.

He wants to expose Jesus for being some sort of pretender.

Jesus, though, he's well aware of that man's motives.

Jesus, he he like immediately reverses position on the man.

Jesus, he immediately begins to be the one who's leading the dance.

And he takes over because instead of answering the man, he asked the man.

Jesus asked the man two of his own questions.

What is written in the law?

And how do you read it?

With those two questions, uh, Jesus implies, he suggests that this so-called expert, he already knows the answer to the questions he's asking.

This so-called expert who has letters after his name, right?

He's earned the degree, he's received the training.

Surely, after all of that time in school, you learned something.

What about the Old Testament?

What's written there?

How do you read it?

How do you interpret it?

And as it turns out, this man had learned a thing or two.

He had learned about that perfect combination.

Love your God and love your neighbors.

In the Old Testament, there are 613 laws.

That's a lot of law to read, to memorize, to interpret, and to apply.

And the weight of that law, the burden of that law, the rabbis were well aware of it.

And so they had long sought how to perfectly summarize the law.

And they decided that uh the perfect combination that encompassed the entirety of the law was to draw on two principles.

One found in Deuteronomy 6, verse 5, and one found in Leviticus 19, 18.

Deuteronomy 6:5

Deuteronomy 6.5, it's part of a greater passage of scripture called the Shema of Israel.

It's the basic confession, the basic prayer that a Jew would offer every single day of their life, the basic uh catechism a parent would present to a child.

And it contains the imperative to what?

Love your God.

This first piece of the perfect combination.

It describes a love that captures a whole person's life and puts that person's life in service to God.

It's the sort of love that drove Paul to write these words in Philippians 3.

I want to know Christ.

Yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so somehow attaining to the resurrection from the dead.

The apostle Paul knew what it meant to love your God.

He knew what it meant to love God with all that he was and all that he had.

What does he say?

Paul loves God with all of his heart.

Because that love of God has shaped the desires of Paul's heart.

What he truly wants to receive, what he truly wants to experience in life.

It's clear that Paul loves God with the entirety of his soul.

Because that love of God has determined the destination of Paul's soul.

And it's clear that Paul loves God with all of his strength.

Because he gives that strength over to God and says, I'm willing in my strength to suffer for Jesus Christ.

And it's clear that Paul loves God with all of his mind.

What's he say?

I want to know Christ Jesus.

I want to know him.

Love your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind.

But that's just the first piece of that perfect combination.

You must also love your neighbors.

For that expert in the law, he thought that his neighbors were his simply his Jewish brothers and sisters.

They were his ethnic kin.

They were those who worshiped the same God.

He worshiped the ones who followed the laws as he followed the laws.

And he knew he must be willing to sacrifice something for them at a moment's notice.

It's why you have those strange laws in the Old Testament about if an ox falls into a ditch, what should you do?

You should help him out, right?

Help get the ox out of the ditch.

That's how you are a good neighbor.

And those two laws, love your God and love your neighbors, those two laws perfectly summarize the entire law.

Because here's the thing: those two laws, what they do is they remind us that at a basic foundational level, your life and my life is a network of relationships.

All of life is a network of relationships.

And that network begins with a vertical relationship with God, a primary relationship with our heavenly father.

And that vertical relationship with our heavenly father then drives us into horizontal relationships with our neighbors, with one another.

So we love our God and we love our neighbors.

Those neighbors, those are the people we impact when we love our God and it overflows into the love of neighbors.

That's the perfect combination.

Now listen carefully.

Without those two pieces working perfectly together, in a perfect combination, equal parts, rightly combined, without that perfect combination, the impact of your life and the impact of our church will not achieve the level that God intends.

If we are a church that simply claims we love our God, we love our God, but we loathe our neighbor, we will be no better than that Pharisee Jesus talks about.

You know him, you've heard about him, the Pharisee who stands on the street corner, beating his chest, pointing at all the neighbors around him, just saying, I'm so glad I'm not like them.

We'll be self-righteous, we'll be hypocritical.

Or if we are a church that works hard to love our neighbors while our love for God grows cold, we will become arrogant and self-congratulating.

We will begin to believe that it's due to our own strength and our own creativity that we can solve any problem we face in the world.

We are the answer to the world's problems.

But if we possess that perfect combination, we are positioned for a maximum impact.

It's why, listen, it's why after Jesus hears the man make that statement, what does he do?

He nods in agreement.

Yes, do those things and you will live.

Do those things and you will possess eternal life.

Now, Jesus isn't suggesting you can earn eternal life.

Remember, the two commands are commands to love, and love is against earning.

Love is opposed to earning.

Love is something that receives.

Because love, listen, is rooted in a relationship.

To truly love God, a person, to have this uh love of God that is uh integrative of our soul and our heart and our mind and our strength, that means we trust that God is who He says that He is.

And that sort of love, trusting God, that's an act of faith.

That's an act where we lay our feet under the mercy and grace of God, trusting that only He can give us the gift of eternal life.

So, what is Jesus then saying with that nod of agreement?

He's saying this.

That perfect combination, here's why it positions you to make a maximum impact.

That perfect combination is a leveraging point for a maximum impact.

It positions you for that maximum impact because you possess eternal life, which the world desperately needs.

We think of going to heaven for an endless duration of time.

But when you survey the New Testament and you look at how the concept and the phrase of eternal life is used, more often than not, eternal life is not naming a quantity of time, it is naming a quality of life.

Eternal life describes the kind of person, a church who has been united with Jesus Christ in the here and now.

Which means eternal life is not reserved just for the future.

It's for right now.

Eternal life is not for somewhere over the rainbow out there.

Eternal life is for right here.

An eternal life that is demonstrated by our willingness to love our God and love our neighbors, that kind of eternal life impacts our earthly life.

And so if we claim to have eternal life and it's not impacting earthly life, there's a disconnect in us.

We either don't love our God or we don't love our neighbors or we don't know eternal life in the first place.

But it's that gift that positions us for our maximum impact.

And when we possess that perfect combination, listen, our impact cannot be contained.

Think about it this way.

So that this white powder can symbolize our love, our love of God.

And this clear liquid can symbolize our love for our neighbor.

Now you keep them separate and they're contained, right?

They're not moving, they're static, they don't grow.

But when you combine them together, well that's the sort of impact that God envisions for his local church.

Sort of impact that can occur when we love our God and love our neighbors.

It's an impact, listen, that cannot be contained within these walls.

It's an impact that cannot be confined to two days a week.

It's an impact that cannot be limited to one part of town.

Our impact cannot be contained when we love our God and love our neighbors.

And that's when we begin to get a little uneasy.

Remember, I said that Luke wants us to focus not on the when or the where, but he wants us to focus on the who.

He wants us to focus on the fact that Jesus is talking to this religious leader, this expert in the law.

And I think this is especially applicable for you and I.

We actually have a lot in common with that guy.

Luke wants us to pay attention to him because he wants us to see ourselves in him.

To know that, yeah, kind of like him, we know a lot about the Bible.

We know how to read and interpret and even apply the Bible and how to do that with some of its most difficult passages.

And just like that man, we also have the exact same question when we realize how those two commands work in perfect combination for a maximum impact.

We have the same question as that religious leader.

Who is my neighbor?

If we're gonna have this impact of a maximum level, an impact that cannot be contained, then who will I be required to love?

Jesus heard that man's question, and he knows that some of us are asking it this morning.

And then he tells one of his, if not his most famous parable, the parable of the Samaritan.

You're probably familiar with it.

The story goes something like this: that there's a man who's traveling the road uh between Jerusalem and Jericho.

He's going about his day all by himself, and out of nowhere he's attacked by a group of men.

They beat him up, they take all of his money and all of his possessions, and they leave him clinging to life on the side of the road.

Jesus then tells us about two different religious leaders who pass the man.

They pass by, they see the man, but they don't stop and help the man.

They just keep going.

They're good religious folks.

They're religious leaders.

And think about it, isn't it interesting?

Jesus is talking to a religious leader, and then he talks about religious leaders who don't do what they're supposed to do.

Interesting.

He's a clever teacher, Jesus.

Those two people, they stood on the other side of the road.

They maybe had things to do, appointments to keep, a schedule that couldn't be adjusted.

But I think the point in Jesus' test is fairly obvious.

They failed the test.

They did not live a life of a perfect combination.

Well, then a Samaritan passes by and he helps the injured man.

Of course, what's important to remember is that Samaritans and Jews they shared this mutual hatred for one another.

But the Samaritan, he sees and he stops and he helps.

That Samaritan, he is living proof that 1 Corinthians 13 is true, that love never fails.

That love can overcome even the darkest hatred in a person's heart.

The Samaritan, he bandaged the man's wounds, he loaded him on his donkey, he takes him to the infirmary, and he pays his medical bills.

So, with that story, Jesus doesn't give us a direct answer to our question, who is my neighbor?

But he actually asks a different question.

How can I be a neighbor?

Right?

I think Jesus' point is this.

If you truly love God, then why would you ever look for an excuse to withhold neighborly love from someone that God puts in your life?

Jesus doesn't want us to ask the question, who is my neighbor?

Because that can put a limit on love.

Instead, he wants us to ask the question and answer the question, how can I just be a neighbor?

A year before Martin Luther King was assassinated, he gave a famous sermon based on the parable of the Samaritan.

Dr.

King makes this observation about those two religious leaders.

He says that they ask this question if I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?

What will happen to me if I cross this road and stop?

When you ask the question, who is my neighbor?

You get to be at the center of the question.

You get to determine what is in it for you.

What uh parameters and boundaries you can erect.

Because that love may impact me.

I don't know if I'm willing to give it up.

Dr.

King then makes this observation about the Samaritan.

And he reverses the question.

He says, This, if the Samaritan asks, what will happen to this man if I do not stop to help him?

Do you see what the Samaritan's question does?

It reverses it.

Instead of me being at the center, he is at the center.

Instead of my needs and my worries and my being at the center, his needs, his fears, and his worries are at the center.

If you truly love God, why would you ever withhold neighborly love?

That, listen, that idea of never withholding neighborly love because we truly love God.

That positions a church to make a maximum impact in the world because then that church is truly walking in the way of Jesus.

You see, Jesus was the one who first did what?

Loved God.

Jesus always submitted his desire and his wills to the desire and wishes of his heavenly Father, our God.

And then Jesus, he does what?

He always is looking for an opportunity to love his neighbor.

Today I want to love my neighbor, blind Bartimaeus.

Tomorrow I want to love my neighbor, the man with leprosy.

Tomorrow I'm gonna love my neighbor, the man who is uh crippled by demons every day.

Love his neighbor, love his neighbor, love his neighbor, no matter what it cost him.

And then there was the day when he not only loved a neighbor, he loved all the neighbors, he loved the world.

And he goes to the cross.

And again, the cross is just a picture of what?

A life of Jesus that has lived what?

In love of God and in love of neighbor.

And what Jesus did perfectly now is his church, we just desire to do imperfectly in the power of the Spirit.

Because listen, you think, man, that perfect combination, it oversimplifies life.

Life is much more difficult.

It can't be answered that way.

Like, we have to, it has to be more to it when it comes to impacting the world.

Who's had a greater impact on the world than Jesus Christ?

I'm gonna take that as no one.

Good.

Good.

You passed the test.

That was my test for the day for you.

And if Jesus impacted the world simply because above all else, he did what?

He lived in a life of perfect alignment, perfect combination.

He loved God and he loved his neighbors, then maybe we shouldn't overthink it.

Maybe we should just go back to the basics.

Because if Jesus did it, then I sure think that is the desire.

That is the path that the church of Jesus must walk down every single day.

And if that's our life, we will impact our world in the exact way that God dreamed and intended from the very beginning when he planted this church over a hundred and seventy-five years ago.

Let's stand together for a time of prayer.

Right now, just close your eyes and bow your head.

And simply ask God through the power of the Holy Spirit to kindle within you a love for Him.

A love for God.

A love for God's word.

Oh, how I love your law, Psalm one nineteen says.

That, as Paul says, you count everything else in your life as worthless, as trash, as a heap of rubbish compared to loving and knowing your God.

And now I want you to pray for your neighbor.

It may be your next door neighbor, your neighbor at the office, the person who shares the cubicle next door, the neighbor who sits next to you in biology or physics class.

Pray for that person by name.

Pray for the neighbors in our community that you are going to meet in an out-of-the-ordinary way, out of the ordinary place.

And then just ask the Lord to open doors so you can share neighborly love.

Almighty God, I pray for our church.

Holy Spirit, in your power, instill within us this perfect combination.

Nurture within us this perfect combination of love for God and love for our neighbors.

Father, we confess that often our love for you grows cold.

So instill within us a desire, a hunger for your word, a willingness to listen and to obey.

And God, we pray for our neighbors.

The neighbors we already know and the neighbors we're gonna meet this week.

God, I just pray we wouldn't be a people who never withhold neighborly love.

That we don't leave a need unaddressed.

That when we don't stay on the opposite side of the road, unconcerned and worried what it may cost us.

God, let us just put that person first.

As Jesus put us first.

God, may we be known.

Above all else, as people who love you and love our neighbor.

That there would be no limits on our love for you or for our neighbor, that we would love sacrificially, that our love would take risk, that our love would drive us out of comfort zones, God.

Because we desire to see a miraculous impact, a maximum impact in our community.

In Christ's name we pray.

Amen.