Love Is Part Of His Plan

If you'll open your Bibles, please, to Nehemiah chapter 3, and then also to Matthew chapter 22.

Nehemiah 3 · chapter mention Matthew 22 · chapter mention

We're in a series called The Blueprint, God's Master Plan for Your Life.

And we began this series by looking at the literal meaning of the book of Nehemiah.

We then transitioned to where we're looking at the spiritual meaning of the book of Nehemiah.

Three weeks ago, Pastor Robert talked about the sheepgate, those strangely named gates into the old city of Jerusalem, and how the sheep gate represents that all of us are sheep and all of us need a shepherd.

Shepherds are a part of God's plan.

And then two weeks ago, Pastor Robert looked at the fish gate and how all of us are responsible to share the love of God with other people.

And so we're going to continue this study of Nehemiah and then go to some other places in God's word.

But you know, I was thinking as I prepared for this message how strange of a time it is in the course of human history, this day in which we live.

And I really believe that God has honored each one of us by allowing us to be alive today.

Sociologists tell us that people who are alive today are the most discouraged and the most medicated of people in all of human history, of anyone who's ever lived.

But I believe that there's a biblical reason for that.

Revelation 12 and verse 12 says that the devil knows that his time is short.

And five verses later, Revelation 12, verse 17 says, because the devil knows that his time is short, what he seeks to do is to cause as much misery for people as he possibly can.

Revelation 12:17

And so I believe that the way he does this the most is by disrupting and destroying human relationships.

You know, the thing that you and I hunger for most are the very thing that we were most and first created for, and that is healthy, good, strong, loving relationships.

If I were to ask each one of you today, what's your favorite memory?

Your greatest experience, the most fun that you've ever had in your whole life, doubtless all of you would tell me stories of people.

People that you were on that vacation with.

People that you played on that softball team with, people with whom you worked.

You tell me stories of people.

But if I also were to ask you, what is your most miserable experience?

Most likely you would tell me stories of people.

You tell me people that hurt you.

I don't know if it's a surprise to you that the source of both our greatest pain and our greatest joy has its location in exactly the same place, and that is in relationships with people.

And so I want to talk a little bit about relationships today.

We're going to begin our time together in God's word in Nehemiah chapter 3, if you'll begin reading with me in verse 1.

Nehemiah 3 · chapter mention

Then Elishiv the high priest rose up with his brethren the priests and built the sheep gate.

They consecrated it and hung its doors.

They built as far as the tower of the hundred, and consecrated it, then as far as the tower of Hananel.

Next to Elishiv, the men of Jericho built, and next to them Zakur, the son of Imri, built.

Also the sons of Hasanah built the fish gate.

They laid its beams and hung its doors with its bolts and bars.

And next to them Mermoth, the son of Uriah, the son of Kaz, and these are the words I'm looking for, made repairs.

Next to them Meshulam, the son of Barekiah, the son of Meshizabel, made repairs.

Next to them, Zedok, the son of Baanah, made repairs, and next to them the Tekohites made repairs, but their nobles did not put their shoulders to the work of the Lord.

Now the words made repairs are found nowhere else in all of Scripture.

But in Nehemiah chapter 3, they're found twenty-six times.

Nehemiah 3 · chapter mention

We've just read four.

If you continue reading throughout the third chapter of Nehemiah, you can find these words made repairs twenty two more times.

Now let me tell you what I believe is happening here.

Nehemiah, whose name means one who comforts, is a type of the Holy Spirit.

He's in Babylon in prison, basically, in exile.

He begins thinking about his hometown.

Our hometowns have a place of warmth in our hearts.

And this day, the city of Jerusalem looked like an absolute trash dump.

The wall was down, the gates were burned, the houses were in rubbles, it looked like a trash dump.

And every time Nehemiah thought about the city of God, no other city on earth has God said, My glory will dwell here than Jerusalem.

And every time Nehemiah thought about Jerusalem, here's what he thought.

When people in that region see the city, they think to themselves, what kind of a broken down old God would dwell in a city like that?

And it was the reputation of God, I believe, that caused him first to go back and to say, we've got to rebuild.

I wonder if when people around the world see the church today, if they think a similar thing about the church.

You see, as we talk about rebuilding the church of God and making repairs where things are broken, I believe it's important that we start where Jesus started.

Now I want to grant you, we could talk about any one of a number of things as we talk about making repairs today.

We could talk about faith.

We could talk about hope.

1 Corinthians 13, 13 says, But the greatest of these is love.

And Jesus says a similar thing in Matthew 22.

If you'll begin reading with me in verse 34.

But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and then one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question, testing him, and saying, Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?

Now listen, this was a very good question.

No doubt those standing around who sought to test Jesus would have thought to themselves, I think we've got him this time.

There were a lot of laws.

Six hundred and thirteen, to be exact.

What they did, the Jewish rabbis of that day did, is they counted up the Hebrew characters and the Hebrew giving of the Ten Commandments.

In other words, my name is Marcus.

There's six characters in my name.

And so they counted up the ABCs of the Hebrew text of the Ten Commandments.

They counted six hundred and thirteen characters.

And so the Jewish rabbis thought to themselves, well then there will be six hundred and thirteen laws.

And here's what they did: they divided them up into two hundred and forty-eight positive laws, or thou shalt.

One for every part of the body that they knew about at that time.

365 negative laws, or thou shalt not, one for every day of the year.

Now they commonly made distinctions in the laws.

There were some laws were heavy, others light, some were great, and some less.

All were inspired and good and true, but not all carried the same weight.

And so they asked Jesus of the law.

Which is the greatest?

It's really a good question.

And so Jesus responds in verse 37 this way.

He says, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.

This is the first and great commandment.

And the second is like it.

You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

In other words, if you don't understand love, the rest of the Bible will make no sense to you.

But if you understand love, you can understand what God is saying.

Jesus went on to say in Matthew in John 13, verse 34, he says, A new commandment I give to you.

John 13:34

This would have been startling to those listening.

God gave us ten.

You're giving us a new one.

Jesus says, A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another.

As I have loved you, that you also love one another.

By this we'll all know that you're my disciples.

If you have love for one another.

Now the church was founded on love one another.

And I believe with all my heart that if we will ever repair the church of God so that it becomes everything that God dreams it to be, that we will begin to make repairs in how we love each other.

Now, before we get into the heart of this message, I want to share with you one of the most chilling and one of the most haunting scriptures in all of God's word to me.

Just before the crucifixion of Jesus, he began to share with those that he loved about what would immediately precede the end of all human history.

And here's what Jesus says in Matthew 24, verse 12.

Matthew 24:12

He says, Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold.

And that word for grow is actually the Greek word for evaporation.

It's not something that happens quickly, it's something that happens over a course of time.

And I wonder if it's possible today that without our being aware of it, that our understanding of the love of God has drifted away from what the Word of God actually says about it.

And so I want to share with you what I simply went to dictionary.com, typed in the word love.

Alright?

There were 20 or 30 definitions that came up there, and a full third of them were sexual in nature.

There's another sermon there, by the way.

But I want to share with you the first two because the first two formed the heart of all the definitions.

Here's what dictionary.com says the definition of love is.

Number one is this a profoundly tender, passionate affection for another person.

The second is like it.

It says love is a feeling of warm personal attachment or deep affection as for a parent, child, or friend.

Now, I want you to notice something very peculiar about both of these definitions.

Both of these definitions have primarily to do with the feelings of the one doing the loving.

Now, there are those that who have said in the past, well, love is not a feeling.

Well, I want you to know that I strongly disagree with that.

I believe that any time we authentically love another person, that our feelings will very much get involved in that process.

But I just refuse to believe that love boils down to a feeling.

And the reason why is because if my love for you comes down to the way I feel and my feelings change, then our relationship will by necessity change.

Now, does that sound like the way of the Lord to you?

I think God has a better plan for us than that.

One man wrote his ex-fiance a letter.

He says, Dear Susan, I want to apologize from the bottom of my heart for breaking off our engagement.

Words cannot express the depth of my regret.

Will you please come back to me?

Your absence has left a space that no one can fill.

Please forgive me so that we can start all over again.

I need you so much.

Yours forever, Bob.

P.S.

By the way, congratulations on winning that million-dollar lottery.

You know, really, that's the kind of love that all of us are used to.

That's the kind of love that we're most familiar with.

The kind of love that has an agenda.

Most of us are way too familiar with that.

And so, to set the context for our time together today, I want to give you a working definition for the word love.

So if you're taking notes, I want you to write this down.

If you're not taking notes, I want you to write this down.

Here's the definition for love.

It's when the wants and needs of another become more important to me than my own.

When the wants and needs of another become more important to me than my own.

I want to give you two significant ways, not the only ways, but I believe two significant ways that our love for others is expressed.

And the first is this, it's in your notes, that love honors the dignity of others.

And we're going to read a portion of the Sermon on the Mount from Matthew chapter 5, and I want you to hear the great contrast that Jesus says exists between God's way of love and the world's way of love.

Matthew 5 · chapter mention

Listen to what Jesus says, beginning in verse 38.

You have heard that it was said, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.

But I tell you not to resist an evil person.

But whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also.

If anyone wants to sue you and take away your tunic, let him have your cloak also.

And whoever compels you to go one mile, go with him too.

Give to him who asks you.

And from him who wants to borrow from you, do not turn away.

You've heard that it was said, You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.

But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven.

For me he makes his son to rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.

For if you love those who love you, what reward have you?

Do not even the tax collectors do the same?

And if you greet your brethren only, what do you do more than others?

Do not even the tax collectors do so?

Therefore you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect.

Now let me ask you.

I mean, give me a break here.

Seriously, who can do this?

Who can do this?

I'll tell you who can do this.

God can do this.

And God's the only one who can do this.

But the way God does this is by doing it through you.

And if you and I do not understand what God is doing, then when God calls us to love someone in a way they don't deserve, it will be exactly opposite of what we had planned to do.

Let me tell you something about your enemies.

You may not want to hear this, but God loves your enemies exactly as much as He loves you.

You know why people hurt you?

The reason people hurt you is because of a wound in their own heart.

People are operating out of their own woundedness.

And that is the reason that people hurt you.

And God's plan to heal them is to honor their dignity by loving them better than they deserve.

And it may well be that the only way God has to get to them is through you.

The truth is, friends, is that we will either give our lives as a reaction to people or as a reflection of God.

God's love does not have to wait on the performance of another person.

But what I have learned firsthand is this that something supernatural begins to happen to us on the inside when we begin to love like God on the outside.

Listen to what 1 Corinthians 13.

I want to read four little verses out of what's called the love chapter.

1 Corinthians 13, beginning in verse 4.

Paul says this love suffers long in its kind.

Love does not envy, love does not parade itself, is not puffed up, does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil, does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth.

Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Now natural ability can get us partway down this road.

You and I do have the ability to endure some things, to not behave rudely every time, and to usually be kind.

But if we will ever lay hold of God's kind of love, only the Holy Spirit can impart this to us and through us.

Only contrast God's way of love with the world's way of love.

Let me give you quickly three characteristics of the world's way of love.

The first is judgment.

That if you don't do what I want you to do, I'm going to judge you.

Secondly, is rejection.

I will reject you for failing to perform to my expectations for you.

And thirdly, I will manipulate you.

And the reason I'll manipulate you is because I want you to do what I want you to do.

And the way I'll manipulate you is by withholding my affection from you, hoping that your desire for my affection and friendship will be great enough to cause you to do what I want you to do.

And what I'm actually doing is trying to get you to find your satisfaction in me rather than in God.

But let me contrast that quickly with three characteristics of God's kind of love.

Number one is commitment, that our love for them is not dependent upon the way they act.

Number two is forgiveness, that we're going to walk in forgiveness whether they have asked for it or not.

And the reason why is because the relationship is more important to us than what they said or did that hurt us.

Thirdly, is understanding.

We're going to live with other people according to understanding, allowing them to be themselves, and not penalizing them for what they did.

Now, I want to be crystal clear about one thing.

I am not talking about some gooey, sappy kind of love that does not know how to confront sin.

One of the chief characteristics of love is this that I love you too much to idly sit by while you make decisions to ruin your life.

I will get all up in your Kool-Aid if I see you doing that.

Trust me.

And the reason why is because I love you.

Not going to sit by while you do that.

My wife and I tell our children, if you make decisions that will help your life, we'll support you with all of our resources.

You make decisions to hurt your life, we will oppose you with all of our resources.

That's the way God treats us.

That's the way God treats us.

That's the way we treat each other.

We tell our children, you will never be in trouble for doing the wrong thing with the right heart because the love of God always recognizes the difference between ignorance and rebellion.

It's possible to hurt someone and not mean to.

About five years ago, in fact, I was thinking just yesterday, five years ago, I was invited onto the staff at Gateway Church.

I've been here five years.

And at that time in my life, I had made a decision that I was leaving ministry.

I'd already told God, I'd already, you know, made my declaration, this is not for me anymore.

I'm just, I'm going to go on with my life.

And we started coming to Gateway Church, and uh Robert is uh such a great friend.

And when he began talking with me about the possibility of coming on staff, there were a lot of issues involved in that.

But probably the one thing that caused me to say yes to his offer above everything else was this.

It has to do with the commitment to relationship.

Here's what he told me.

He said, Among our eldership and among our staff, anytime there's a conflict or a disagreement, here is the agreed-to principle that rules that.

We kill the issue to save the relationship.

Rather than killing the relationship to save the issue.

Now, I'd never walked with anybody like that before.

Most of the people that I know kill relationships constantly to salvage their little issues.

I liked what I heard, frankly, I wasn't sure that I would see it.

But in the last five years, I've never seen it fail.

I have seen it play out over and over and over again.

As men and women of God who disagree decide to put down their issues and love each other.

I want to read a portion of a sermon from Martin Luther King that he preached at Ebenezer Baptist Church just shortly before his assassination.

And I want you to hear the power of these words.

Here's what Dr.

King said.

He said, I've seen too much hate to want to hate.

I've seen hate on the faces of too many sheriffs, too many white citizens' counselors, and too many clansmen of the South to want to hate, and every time I see it, I say to myself, hate is too great a burden to bear.

Somehow we must be able to stand up before our most bitter opponents and say, we shall match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering.

We will meet your physical force with soul force.

So do to us what you will, and we will still love you.

Throw us in jail, and we will still love you.

Bomb our homes and threaten our children, and as difficult as it is, we will still love you.

Send your hooded perpetrators of violence into our communities at the midnight hour and drag us out on some wayside road and leave us half dead as you beat us, and we will still love you.

Send your propaganda agents around the country and make it appear that we are not fit culturally and otherwise for integration and we will still love you.

But be assured that we will wear you down by our capacity to suffer, and one day we will win our freedom.

And we will not only win our freedom for ourselves, but we will so appeal to your heart and conscience that we will win you in the process, and our victory will be a double victory.

Amen.

Hallelujah.

That's a strong word.

That's a strong word.

Love honors the dignity of other people even though they don't act in dignified ways.

That's the definition of love.

The second significant way that our love for others is expressed is this that love invests in the destiny of others.

1 Samuel 18, beginning in verse 1, says this.

Now when he and he's talking about David, had finished speaking to Saul, the soul of Jonathan was knit to the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul.

Saul took him that day and would not let him go home to his father's house anymore.

And then Jonathan and David made a covenant because he loved him as his own soul.

Jonathan took off the robe that was on him and gave it to David with his armor, even to his sword and his bow and his belt.

Now Saul is the king of Israel.

Jonathan is his son.

And so when Saul dies, Jonathan has the right to the throne.

And so when Jonathan takes off his mantle, his coat, and he gives it to David, he's not saying, hey, this is a nice jacket.

I think you'll really like this.

Here's what he's saying.

I see the call of God on your life.

I see the destiny of God on your life.

And I choose to make an investment in your destiny.

Here's what he's saying.

I'm in this relationship not for what I can get from you, but for what I can give to you.

And verse 4 says he gave him his armor, his sword, his bow, and his belt.

He became defenseless and vulnerable and transparent.

You ever tried to love someone who still had their armor on?

As hard as you try, there seems to be something that says you can come this far and no closer.

It's very difficult.

What we don't understand is that what is intended to protect us from harm can actually hurt us if we don't know when to take it off.

David had proven to Jonathan that he would not harm Jonathan.

So maybe it really is true that perfect love casts out fear.

I want you to know that when God's love does not rule your relationships, the only other option is your happiness.

There's no third option.

What rules every one of our relationships is either the love of God or our own happiness.

Where God's love will often choose to suffer for another person, if my happiness rules my relationships, I would never choose to suffer for you unless there was something greater in it for me in the long run.

Which is, by definition, selfishness.

You see, your happiness was never intended to be the goal of your relationships.

Your happiness was intended to be the byproduct of your relationships.

Happiness makes a great byproduct.

And God wants you to be happy in all your relationships.

He really does.

It's just not the goal.

Because if your happiness is the goal of your relationships, then I'm not happy becomes the reason for everything you do.

And you will end up destroying the very relationships that God gave you to heal you.

About four years ago, my wife and I were uh, well, I'm I'm uh searching for a good clean word for fight, but I can't find one, so I'll just tell you, we were in a fight.

It was one of those fights for the ages.

In fact, you know that passage in Ephesians 4 that says, Don't let the sun go down on your anger?

We disobeyed it three days straight.

This was a fight.

And our our battle lines had been drawn, and we had amassed our troops at the border, and both of us had drawn our lines in the sand and decided, I'm not backing off of this one.

And so I was distracted.

I went to work and I went through the motions, but I couldn't really work because I was planning my next move.

And so on the third day, I figured out a way to win this fight.

And what I decided I would do is to go home and ask Lexa one of those questions that doesn't have an answer.

It's one of those impossible questions.

You know what I'm talking about?

And so I'm driving home that afternoon, and I'm rehearsing my lines.

Radio's off.

I'm sitting at a red light, and I'm plotting how this thing's gonna go, and I begin to feel the presence of the Lord.

And I'm thinking to myself, here comes the heavenly high five.

Alright?

This Dod's about to come say, you know, I should have made you a lawyer.

I knew that I missed it on you.

You're really something.

And here's what God says to me.

He says, Marcus, would you let any man speak disrespectfully to Lexa?

And I sort of, I sort of bowed up, you know, I gripped the steering wheel a little tighter.

And I said, No way.

And he says, then who will protect her from you?

Ever notice that God doesn't need a lot of words?

And I realized in that moment that the only reason God had given me to my wife was to nurture and protect what God had dreamed of when he created her in his own image.

Anything else is a complete abuse of my authority.

You see, I had loved my wife with a love that I had not learned from God.

I had loved my wife in a way that I had built this little box for her to live in.

This is the way you need to act, and these are the things that you need to do.

And it didn't work.

Listen, when I began to love my wife with God's kind of love, I found a love in God that I had never known before.

And what I learned was that what I refuse, what we refuse to give away, we will never acquire for ourselves.

What we really want is unconditional love.

Here's the order of it.

You give it away first.

You give it away first.

Whenever there's an opposition between two people, the least important question is who's right.

The most important thing to realize is that right there in that moment is an opportunity to come to know God and to express his love in a way that you may have never had before.