The Beautiful Inconvenience of Your Neighbor

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We are in just a two-week series called 167 hours, and we've called it this because this is how much time you have after you log off of this sermon.

About you have 168 hours every week, and 167 of them are coming up after this sermon.

And here's what we said last week.

We said the best way to spend your 167 hours is to love God and love your neighbor.

And this comes from Jesus' greatest commandment found in Matthew 22, where he says to love God and love your neighbor as yourself.

He actually equates these two commands as the greatest thing you should prioritize across your 167 hours.

What should you be prioritizing?

What should you be doing at work with your family on your own, loving God and loving neighbor?

And we said last week, Jesus is actually, he's actually not saying anything new, which is strange.

He's actually hyperlinking us back to the Old Testament.

He's causing his original audience to read backwards and us today to read backwards, to go back to the Old Testament.

So last week we were in Deuteronomy 6.

We took the command, love God, and we looked at it through the Old Testament to see how we might uh understand it more in our current day.

And today we're gonna look at love your neighbor and we're gonna go back to Leviticus.

And I know you woke up this morning, you were like, I am hoping we have a sermon on Leviticus.

Like, this is what I'm dying to hear.

Well, your wish has come true, your prayers have been answered.

What does Jesus mean when he says in Matthew 22, 39, love your neighbor as yourself?

When he's saying that, what are the original audience members thinking?

What scripture is he hyperlinking back to?

This command, I think it's just been used a lot during this season.

I don't know if you've seen it as much as me.

Might be just a pastor thing that I've seen.

But as we navigate everything from the racial justice issues in this country, the election year, judgment over COVID practices, about mask wearing and social distancing, I have seen this command supplanted across all of those issues.

Love your neighbor regarding race issues, love your guardian your neighbor regarding public health issues.

This command has been appropriated across all of these different subjects, but it's caused me to notice this slight nuance with this command.

This slight uh temptation we can fall into when saying love your neighbor.

It has to do with the internet.

The internet has this subtle way of making everything we interact with on it about us.

Because most of our interpretation of the internet or the way we intake the information on the internet happens through personal profiles and our own IP address, our own devices.

We kind of think all the information that comes at us is about us and for us.

And so we end up kind of using the love your neighbor command in a strange, self-centering way.

And here's what I mean: it's this sneaky.

We can make major issues about how people perceive us.

A lot of people call this virtue signaling, which is the public expression of certain opinions, intended to demonstrate your own moral rightness.

Like, I'm gonna say this on the internet so that people perceive me to be a good person.

And it slowly separates the appearance of being a loving person from actually being a loving person.

There's this weird separation the internet creates where we can make people think we're loving without actually doing loving actions.

I've been thinking about this as I'm looking at this stuff that many of us are posting right now, and also connected to some stuff I've been reading, especially by this writer Gia Tolentino, who has this book of essays called Trick Mirror.

She's a writer for The New Yorker, she's not a Christian, but she says this.

She says, you don't need to have directly suffered at the hands of some injustices in order to be invested in invested in bringing that injustice to an end.

But the internet, it brings the eye into everything.

The internet can make it seem that supporting someone means literally sharing in their experience, that solidarity is a matter of identity rather than politics or morality.

This framework, which centers the self in an expression of support for others, is not ideal.

Tolentino says she's a Filipino American and she says, it's like me taking the Black Lives Matter movement and making it about my Filipino American experience.

She's like, I don't have to make it about that to really fight for justice for black brothers and sisters.

I don't need to make it about me.

But you see, the internet has this subtle way of making it about ourselves.

This is what I mean.

I've seen this trend in my generation, and I've been guilty of it.

Where the trend becomes the expression of love replacing the action of it.

See, we have to be careful to not just be expressing loving things with leaving the actions of love behind.

To appear loving has supplanted loving actions.

And also, can't there be really loving people who aren't even on social media, who aren't saying anything about being a loving person?

Can't they also demonstrate love?

You see how love your neighbor has turned into more of a catchphrase than an actual activity in our lives?

I remember kind of thinking about this like even 14 years ago, I was on a Christian college campus, and there were these banners everywhere, and the Christian college banner said, Engage the culture, change the world.

It was like their mission statement.

Now, there's some good to that, but it it kind of has me thinking, is that really the mission of the church?

To engage, quote unquote, the culture and to make it this vague statement that we must do.

You see, Andy Crouch, he's this journalist, he said this.

Our mission is actually not primarily to quote unquote engage the culture, but to love our neighbor.

And look at this: our neighbor is not an abstract collective noun, but a real person in a real place.

As much as I have posted about abstract collective nouns, about people groups that I care about, that I think the Bible cares about, by the way.

Immigrants, persecuted Christians, sex trafficking victims, these are all, as much as we can care about them, vague abstract nouns.

And we have to move away make the move of not just loving generalized groups of people that we receive from a timeline.

We have to love literally the person in front of us.

The real person in the real place.

What happens when your social media feed is reflecting liberal values, but a Trump supporter is in your family?

What happens when you've been posting critical opinions of the welfare system and then someone in your community group is benefiting from it?

What happens when a real person in a real place, then we're forced to obey this command, not just project this command into the world?

Yeah.

This is what I call the beautiful inconvenience of your neighbor.

The beautiful inconvenience of your neighbor.

As much as you can try to appear loving, at some day, some point and some time, some real person is gonna come into your life, and you'll be faced with obeying this command to love your neighbor or not.

And so as we transport back to the Old Testament, I want this in our heads that the purpose of Jesus saying this and hyperlinking us back to Leviticus is to try to activate us to actually love someone, to actually love someone that we might feel uncomfortable loving.

Love your neighbor as yourself is an invitation to make love specific and real.

Specific and real.

And so as we go back to the Old Testament, we're gonna look at three questions.

Who do we love, how do we love, and why do we love?

Let's start with who do we love?

Jesus says, love your neighbor.

Well, what is a neighbor?

Let's go back to the quote that he's actually quoting from.

It's in Leviticus 19, verse 18.

Leviticus 19:18

And if you've got a Bible, I would love for you to be in Leviticus 19, just because we're going to be marching through a pretty sizable amount of the text.

So Leviticus 19, 8, 17, and 18 says this, you shall not hate your brother.

Sounds good.

It sounds like a good start.

Not hate your brother from your heart, but you shall reason frankly with your neighbor, lest you incur sin because of him.

Isn't that interesting?

You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but look at this, you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

I am the Lord.

When Jesus was saying this command, um, it's in the Gospel of Matthew.

The Gospel of Matthew, we talked about this last week, it's primarily to a Jewish audience.

So when they heard Jesus say this, they weren't thinking this is some new teaching from Jesus.

They were like, oh, he's quoting Leviticus, which is the law.

Leviticus, if you're in your Bible, it's the third book in your Bible.

It's really early on.

Happens right after Exodus.

And it's actually, the book starts with the people of Israel at the foot of the Mount Sinai.

And they are unwilling and unable to meet with God.

They don't want to be with him because of their own stubbornness.

They want to live their own life.

And this book, Leviticus, is actually a generous set of guidelines and provisions from God to allow his people to live in his presence even amongst their own sin.

It's by obeying these laws outlined in Leviticus that the people of God have a gracious accommodation from the Lord to welcome those people into God's presence even in their own sin and unrighteousness.

This is how gracious God is and how good your Old Testament is.

In Leviticus, we see that one of the ways that the people are going to live with God in his presence, even in their own sin, is by obeying this command you've just looked at.

Love your neighbor as yourself.

As you love your neighbor, you'll be living within the presence of God.

Well, who is this neighbor?

What does this word mean in the Hebrew?

It's quite simply, your neighbor is the person nearest to you, no matter the circumstances.

And I get this definition from how broad the text is in Leviticus.

Looking through the whole chapter, chapter 19, actually, we realize that Leviticus 19, 18, what I just read to you, love your neighbor as yourself, is not an isolated solo command.

It's actually the summation and the climactic moment of an entire body of text talking about how to love another person.

In other words, it's the summation of many commands, not a solo command.

And what we see throughout all of Leviticus 19 is that there's all these different Hebrew words for neighbor that's just repeated, and it's almost like the author is like grabbing at all these different words to try to help you understand.

You need to love literally everyone.

I'm just going to give you a few of them.

They'll be right below me on the screen.

Fellow citizen, sojourner, neighbor, people, person, brother, all through Leviticus 19, as you read those different English words, those are also different Hebrew words just grasping at different kinds of people you'll run into.

And then as it builds and builds and builds, the verses I read to you earlier, 17 and 18 of Leviticus chapter 19, that closing section, the author deploys four of those six words that are used across the entire chapter as almost this literary, climactic, theological moment to say, love everybody.

Leviticus 19 · chapter mention

It doesn't matter who's in front of you, it doesn't matter what they are, it doesn't matter where they come from, if they're a fellow Israelite or not, if they are your literal next door neighbor or some random person you run into.

If it's a family member, if it's not a family member, love your neighbor as yourself.

It's this massive climactic moment to say, your neighbor, man, it is the person nearest to you, no matter the circumstances, that's who you love.

There is no one that you will come across that you are not to love.

Everyone is welcome to your loving action.

So if that's the who, then what's the how?

How do we love?

And that's where we have to jump before this passage.

Because that's the quote, and I like I said, it's not an isolated command.

And so you're if you're in Leviticus 19, 18, just jump back to verse 9, and you'll see that the first provision for how to love a neighbor is all the way back a couple paragraphs in verse 9 when it says you're going to give generously.

How do you love?

Very first and foremost, it's about giving.

It's not about withholding, it's not about posturing, it's not about bringing to these things, uh, all these things to be about yourself.

When you love another person, it's going to involve giving.

It's going to involve moving out of yourself to provide for somebody else.

Look at Leviticus 19 9.

It says this.

When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of the field or gather the gleanings of your harvest.

Do not go over your vineyard a second time or pick up the grapes that have fallen.

Look at this.

No, leave them for the poor and the foreigner.

I am the Lord your God.

Now, you might be like me and have no idea about agricultural societies, but it's also pretty simple if you just read this, that the profit of a farm is not to be taken a hundred percent.

In fact, the uh instructions here are that you should not take everything that you have, that actually everything you produced is not for you.

And this is now uh to us today.

Everything you do and work for, the rewards you get from it, the extra time and the extra money is not all for you.

Instead, it's to be used to give to your neighbor.

You know, when you love someone, if you love your neighbor, your money will go where your mouth is.

Jesus put it very simply in the Gospel of Matthew, 6 21.

It says this, where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

So again, if you're on social media saying, love your neighbor, but you're not moving your treasure towards any of those particular neighbors, Jesus would argue, Old Testament would argue, the witness of the Bible would argue, you don't really love your neighbor if you're not giving generously.

This is gonna look like a lot of different things, but can start as simply as tithing to awakening, to the church, to the local church, whatever local church you're part of.

We hope it's us here at Awakening.

But here's why.

You see, when we give to the church, it's an act of loving our neighbor.

Do you know, right?

We talk about all the good that we get to do together.

Foster the Bay, the work we get to do with Del Mar, Haiti, the homeless outreach, our care team, even just the funds we're able to use to help some of you during the seasons of the fire and during COVID.

Like, we get to put our money together to love our neighbors together.

That's why giving to a church is so powerful and good, is because the vision of the church is not to just collect money to build an empire, but to collect money to demonstrate the love of God to all people everywhere.

And you and I get to join in on that.

That's one level that it might look like.

Another level might be donating to particular causes and nonprofits that are going towards these people groups that you say you love on social media.

If you actually love them, your treasure will be there as well.

It also just might have a next door level, right?

It will mean that your personal time and money will go towards the people that literally live near you.

You're gonna realize people in your neighborhood have children that might need to be watched, that you can use the time and care for those children.

Or even somebody has a need that's in your neighborhood that you can supply, give them a dinner, or help them out when there's times are hard, pay for something if they need it.

These acts of generosity demonstrate love for neighbor.

You know, we talked last week about groups, and that's one of the fun ways of being a part of a group.

When you're in a midweek group and somebody has a prayer request and there's a need, it's so cool when someone else in the group is able to go, I can actually meet that need.

Man, you need help with that?

I actually have the resources and the money to do that.

And that's how the church can work together to love one another.

The first mark of loving your neighbor is to give generously.

The second that Leviticus outlines is a life of integrity.

You're going to live with integrity.

Integrity means that all the pieces of your life fit together.

There's no incongruency in your life.

This is what it says in Leviticus 19, 11, just the next verses after it talks about uh the practice of generosity.

It says, do not steal, do not lie, do not deceive one another, do not swear falsely by my name, and so profane the name of the Lord your God.

I am the Lord.

Integrity is about, like I said, the pieces of your life fitting together.

And one way, one practical way to love people in real time is to develop a character that is like Jesus Christ.

Biblically, you know, there is a deep connection between the formation of a person's character and the formation of a nation.

Like, I think in America, we don't always see that.

Like who you are personally, if you are greedy, that somehow that will affect the general culture.

We kind of think we'll do our own thing and we will have no effect on the general culture of the nation.

But the Bible doesn't see it that way.

It sees a deep connection in who you are becoming and who you're and what kind of city is being developed as well.

Catherine of Siena is a 14th century, she was a 14th century Italian mystic.

Here's what she says.

She says self-centered love destroys the city of the soul.

I love that.

And also destroys and overturns our earthly cities.

Nothing has so divided the world, turning people against one another, as has self-centered love, from which injustices have sprung and still spring.

She wrote that in the 1300s.

That could have been written today.

The injustices you see in this world, they are a result of harbored sin and maligned character.

Bad character.

It corrupts cities.

The health of your soul, do you notice that the health of your soul is connected to the health of your city?

That who you are and who you are becoming is deeply connected to a just world.

You will not just happen upon a just and generous life, and we will not just happen upon a just and generous country.

We have to become the people God has called us to be by obeying his commands and submitting his ways.

You know, my generation, the millennials, I think we want social justice without personal holiness.

Like we want political rightness, but not individual character development.

And so that's why we get so frustrated and angry, and we're posting about all these things and we're freaking out and we're lobbying our own opinions out there, ignoring the things that God is trying to work in us.

Uh patience instead of anger, prudence instead of getting things off of my chest, or withholding opinions when we are even allowed and have the freedom to express them.

Those kinds of things develop an interior character that will help develop and flourish a culture and a nation.

And I just got to tell you, are you committed to the health of your soul?

Are you committed to the personal rightness that you have?

We divorce God's biblical justice from personal holiness.

And we think we can live whatever kind of sex life we want, we think we can live whatever kind of financial life we want, we think we can live whatever kind of life we want, and the people in Washington should just figure it out.

You know that the people in Washington, the world, the culture, the politicians, these are all abstract nouns.

And it also abdicates us from the personal responsibility of being the kind of person God is calling us to be.

Yeah, the call of Jesus when he says, love your neighbor.

When he says love your neighbor as yourself, what kind of self do you have?

What kind of soul are you forming during this season?

This is our time to dedicate to personal holiness and integrity, not cutting corners at work, but being the right person for a right society.

And that's actually where the text goes next.

After it talks about not stealing and remaining a person of integrity, it talks about executing justice.

You see, when we live with integrity, we will actually explore opportunities to do justice in this world.

Leviticus puts it this way do not defraud or rob your neighbor.

Just look at this list of commands.

I've highlighted some things here.

Don't hold back wages, don't curse the deaf or put a stun stumbling block in front of the blind.

In other words, respect.

People with disabilities.

Don't pervert justice.

Don't show partiality to the poor or favoritism to the great, but judge your neighbor with fairness.

Don't go about spreading slander.

Look at this last one.

Don't do anything that endangers your neighbor's life.

I am the Lord.

Biblical justice, it's a little different from worldly justice.

Worldly justice tends to either highlight the victim or highlight the perpetrator.

Biblical justice is interested in protecting the victim, but also bringing consequences to the perpetrator.

It has actually has a weight to both sides of the crime.

Biblical justice, uh worldly justice might talk a little bit more about fairness, everyone being uh treated the same.

We think equality is sameness.

The Bible sees equality as equity.

Equity means not to treat everyone the same, but to treat everyone with justice.

In other words, if you're given little, we should pay closer and more special attention to that person.

And if you're given much, we will allow you to have that much to leverage it for the benefit of other people.

You know, we're not to sp to show partiality to anyone because of their socioeconomic um position.

It's very clear here in this text, but we are to have special concern for the powerless, Isaiah 1.17, Psalm 41.1, if you want to look these passages up.

This is not a contradiction, though.

You might think, well, if we're not supposed to show partiality, then why have special attention to the poor?

Well, the Bible doesn't say speak up for the rich and powerful, because they don't need you to speak up for them.

You see, that's justice.

Justice is recognizing who has a voice and who doesn't.

Justice is recognizing who has power and who doesn't, and helping people leverage the opportunity of their power to help the powerless.

The playing field is not level, the Bible says.

And if we don't advocate for those that don't have much, well, we won't be led to equity and justice.

And I think if the millennial generation, which I was kind of talking about in the last point about personal integrity, if the millennial generation wants social justice but not personal integrity, I think some, and hear me carefully here, some older generations, they want the personal holiness without the social justice.

The Bible marries the two.

The Bible says we will both live personal holy lives and public social justice lives that advocates for those in need.

That's how we will love our neighbors.

Because we will, in meeting our real neighbor in a real place, be led to different kinds of political action.

And biblical justice fights for the social protection and the welfare of those who lacked the natural protection from family and land.

If people lack that natural protection of a family or a nation, the Bible asks for particular provisions for people like that, like widows, orphans, immigrants.

These are commonly talked about people groups in the Bible.

If you want to read more on this, in the notes section on the website, you can go to our website.

I put a lot of Old Testament there to just read through.

I remember a seminary professor of mine just saying, read through the biblical passages of law and justice and allow your heart to be warmed by its material.

You cannot fully love your neighbor without pursuing biblical justice.

And it's going to happen at a national level of like voting legally, submitting to authorities, but also protesting and boycotting when people's rights are taken.

But it's going to happen on the next door level too.

Like the local level, employee-employer relationships will require fair treatment.

And we will care for the people in our neighborhoods that are more vulnerable.

The single moms, the widows, the elderly, the disabled.

That's what it means to love your neighbor is to show special concern for the people that don't have the natural protections you do.

And finally, the way we're going to love our neighbors, we're going to open our heart.

We're going to open our heart.

And here's the verse we started with is Leviticus 19, 17, and 18.

We've gone all the way through, right?

We've gone all the way through, and we're here at the climactic end of love your neighbor as yourself.

But notice right at the beginning it says this don't hate your brother in your heart.

Don't hate your brother in your heart, but love your neighbor as yourself.

You know, I've gotten this far in the message without asking you a very simple question, which is this Do you know your literal neighbor?

What's their name?

What are their family members' names?

Do you know the people on the floor of your apartment building?

Do you know the people around the corner from you?

Do you know what they need?

Do they know who you are?

Have you had longer conversations with them than the head nod as you're walking to your car?

And I think about my neighbors when I'm thinking about these questions.

I think about this guy, Peter, around the corner from me.

You know, him and his family have owned the land there for a hundred and ten years.

A hundred and ten years they've owned that land in the Bay Area.

That's gotta be a world record.

Do you think that affects in how I think about like rental prices and just things like housing prices in there?

Yeah, it really does, because I know Peter.

Or what about like JT, who lives across the way from us?

We found out she actually works near my wife at Stanford.

We got to connect over vocations that my wife and her share.

Or Hugo, who lives next to her, he came to the United States from Mexico in 1981.

That has affected the way that I kind of think about uh a lot of issues in our culture.

Or my favorite neighbor is my next door neighbor, Keith.

He's just the best.

He's awesome.

You know, he says um, he calls my little son Jude, he he calls him his nephew.

He told me when I first moved in, he goes, anything you need, we're family now, bro.

We're family.

And Keith has taught me a ton.

You know, he's a black man who was born in Alabama, he's older, he has incredible wisdom and insight.

And I've just been learning when I talk with my neighbors that when you listen to your neighbors, they will tell you how to love them.

They might not say it explicitly, but if you are listening, they will show you how to love them when you listen to your neighbors.

And this is why I just want to start with this very easy and simple command.

Love your neighbor literally.

Love your neighbor literally.

That's what we are to do.

Literally, who's next door to you?

Find out their name, find out who they are and love them.

I love some of you know this woman in our church, Shadi Khalili.

Man, she's the best.

She is literally loving her neighbors.

I just heard through Nassim and like that, she was just baking goods, showing up for people.

And then she told me I was texting her with her earlier, she said, Yeah, I've even been like doing some yard work for my neighbors, and I don't think they know yet.

And I was like, that's so cool.

And she's like, you know, she's just doing this because she's trying to show a literal love to her neighbor, giving generously of her time, having the personal integrity to show up and not want the credit for it, and understanding their needs.

She's like, I know they're working, they've got two kids, like she knows their story, and she's able to practically deploy that love to them, and they don't have to even know.

Right?

Literally loving your neighbor.

How could you maybe do do something like that to show up for someone?

What can you do tomorrow for someone next door?

What could you do?

Like, what could you do next hour for someone next door?

Maybe it just requires you going, I'm just gonna bring something over, some food and just say hi.

Man, we've just lost this in our age of social media proclamation.

We've lost the art of loving the person right in front of us.

We are to demonstrate generosity, integrity, and justice to this world.

And it's not as complicated as writing the narratives through proper speech.

It's going to happen through loving the person that's given to us right in front of us.

That's how we're going to change this world, quote unquote, engage this culture, quote unquote.

No.

Love the neighbor and watch the city change.

As we do that, we'll be reminded why we love.

Why do we love?

Well, as your neighbors and you get to know each other and you practice this love, I want you to remember the most repeated phrase in this whole section.

We just went through a ton of Old Testament in Leviticus 19.

But the most repeated phrase is not love.

It is not neighbor.

It's not any of those other words I was telling you about.

The most repeated phrase throughout this whole text of scripture is I am the Lord.

I am Yahweh.

Repeated over and over again.

Why do I love my neighbor?

Why am I spending 167 hours focusing on other people and not myself?

Not because I need to be a good person, not because I have to be a good Christian.

We do this because he is God.

He is Yahweh.

You know, he uses his name here.

I am Yahweh.

In other words, he's saying, I'm not just some divine being.

I'm not just some lowercase G God.

I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

I am the one who freed you out of slavery.

And as you sit at Mount Sinai and as you hear my instructions here in Leviticus, the way that you are going to engage with me and know me is by loving other people.

I'm not just some God.

I am the God who has come and will come again, has rescued you and will rescue you again.

Look at this quote from Chris Wright, Old Testament theologian.

The primary, compelling, and repeated reason why, if you had been an Israelite, you were supposed to observe this compassionate law was that this is the way God had actually behaved towards you when you were in similar conditions.

Deuteronomy 24, 18 says, You shall remember that you were a slave in Egypt, and that the Lord God redeemed you from there.

Therefore, I command you to do this.

I'm commanding you to do this, God says, because I have done something for you.

You see, the gospel, the gospel is this.

When we see God's love in Jesus on the cross, we see that God did not simply appear to be loving.

God did not simply pronounce his love.

We want to appear to be loving.

No, God didn't just appear to be loving, he enacted his love, he demonstrated his love.

He came into this world, died on a cross, put on flesh, died, buried, rose again in victory to show you and I what love really is.

Love is not the pronouncement of love.

Love is not the proclamation that you are a loving person, that you care about abstract collective nouns.

Love is death on a cross.

And we've seen that in the gospel.

And when we give of ourselves to our neighbor, we are reminded of God's goodness, bringing the gospel to fresh light into our eyes and inspired all the more to love more and more.

Not because we're going to be a great person, not because people are going to applaud us, but because when we do that, we will know God all the more.

We will come to the knowledge of God as we love others.

And so may you go and love your neighbor as yourself for the simple reason that when you do so, you will know God all the more.

Let me pray for you.

God, we need your help.

You have loved us.

You have demonstrated love.

And so now help us, God, to demonstrate that love, that sacrificial love, to the people closest to us, no matter the circumstances.

We pray for your spirit's help in Jesus' name.

Amen.