A New Command | John 13:34-35 | Tim Johnson

Thank you seriously for just such a sweet welcome.

Um I always like to test out whether I'm in the house of God, not just by how rapturous the praise is, though that is also one way I like to feel comfortable at home.

It's like, man, do these people love my Jesus?

Can I just see it?

Are they forcing me to believe that they love my Jesus?

I love Jesus.

Are you sure?

Yes, I love Jesus.

But you know, I love, I love rapturous praise environments because it's like, man, they're crazy about Jesus.

I love Jesus too.

Um, but I also just, man, the people who come out of their way to say, hey, I don't know you, brother.

What's your name?

And even those who invite a current pastor to their church to be a member, I love that too.

Keep doing it.

You know what I mean?

You don't know who you're around.

I could be seeking, I could be looking.

So I'm really grateful uh just for the welcome.

Love your pastor, love the family, love the seagers, love the rays.

Uh they're just really uh uh stalwarts in the Memphis faith community, as I'm sure you all know and would agree.

Um love them and just love their witness uh to the city.

So, C3, I'm praying for you.

I love you.

Uh just worked out.

I happened to be on sabbatical.

So y'all pray.

I got a couple more weeks.

Uh the Lord's Lord's been doing some really cool, refreshing things um because ministry can just be a booger sometimes.

But I wouldn't trade it.

I'm already like, I need to go back.

Because I love it, man.

So um grateful for you.

I want to preach briefly from John 13.

Um, and uh we'll probably land on the 34th and the 35th verses kind of as a focus.

Um, so if you turn there, um get your phones there, um, whatever, we'll be ready.

I I want to apologize in advance.

Um I was a football player, and um, you know, I was a rah-rah kind of leader kind of guy.

So there will be some yelling.

But I love you.

It's not because I'm angry, it's just because I don't know how to dial this stuff down.

When I get excited, it's just it's like I don't know seriously.

It's like it's like a shoulder, uh a bolt of electricity going through me.

But I'm not mad at you.

I'm just really excited about what I'm talking about.

Amen.

Somebody, I got any passionate people in the place.

Anyone who gets.

Yeah, okay, okay.

I just want to make sure, you know what I'm saying?

I'm just so passionate.

Um, so um, this is the summer.

So we've been once again, I told you sabbatical.

So we've been trying to do a whole bunch of deliberate things with the family, refreshing, refueling, stuff like that.

And so this is MJ Summer.

You know what I mean?

I don't know if it doesn't seem like maybe this is the MJ crowd, I'm not sure.

But there's a movie called Michael.

Is that the title, Michael?

It's it's the biopic, right?

And so I got MJ fever.

Yeah, I got the fever, baby.

I'm in there.

So um, as you watch this two and a half hour long movie presentation about Michael's life, um, you know, clearly they're they're showing his coming of age, his ascent, and and really when he gets to superstardom, like he becomes bigger than the Jackson 5.

It should have been Jackson and the others, you know what I'm saying?

But Michael is he's on the summit.

Um, and then, you know, really the way that the movie portrays it, he's at the pinnacle, and then something kind of shifts.

And Michael then starts to uh the way he sees himself is not only this megastar, but some kind of ambassador of love, peace, and joy.

He's like, I want to spread love, peace, and joy.

And if you are a Michael fan, uh you could probably tell by the music.

Once you get it to all this free willy stuff, uh you know, all the stuff started changing a little bit.

It's all like heal the world stuff.

We are the world, you know.

Because Michael really tried to embrace um this identity to be an ambassador of love, joy, joy, and hope.

As you come into John 13 and 34 and 35, I want to maybe just petition to us that Jesus has basically charged us with a very similar mission.

Not the same, but similar, at least in its tellos and its goal, that there is a love that Jesus wants us to be able to bring.

When you get to John 13, um, I would just encourage you, those are fun reads.

Read you a gospel every year, read you a gospel every quarter.

Just get familiar with the the flow, the narrative arc, how it's moving.

Um, there are uh just specific things um that features in the gospel that it's just fun to notice.

Like, when is the Messiah revealed?

Who is the one who rightly identifies who Jesus is?

When does Jesus stop concealing his identity?

And when does he start clearly saying, Yeah, I'm the dude you're looking for?

When does he start agitating the religious leaders, the Pharisees, and his enemies?

And when does he kind of who does he deal more gently with?

These are features that you see in the gospel.

Once you arrive to John 13, Jesus has turned his face towards Jerusalem, which means what?

He's done with the earthly ministry, he's about to finish, he's about to complete what he started.

And in John 13 to 30, uh 13 through 17, we call it the upper room discourse.

It's when Jesus finally gets his last compatriots and padres together, and he's going to deliver to them the farewell address.

Now, if you know anything about farewell addresses, uh, how many of y'all know um Kenan Vaughn, um, downline ministries?

Kennan, I get a chance to kind of hear him do this every every year because he does the prodigal son, and I do uh two parables after him.

Um, but he tells this story about the last words that he kind of last moments that he has with his dying father.

And he knows that these words are the most important words that his dad's gonna say to him.

These are the final encouragements, the final uh reminders about truth and the final charge of what it is that we're supposed to do.

And as Jesus takes his closest followers together and he charges them and he comforts them, he basically gets to one part that I think is the fulcrum of what he wants to say.

John 13, 34, he says, a new command.

Everybody say, new.

Come on now, you gotta talk back to me.

I don't know if you know it, but I'm a black pastor.

You gotta talk back to me today.

He said, A new command I give you.

He said, Love one another as I have loved you, so you must love one another.

Now, the word new there is is tricky because new really um is not new in the sense that we think.

Because these people are familiar with the Mosaic covenant and commands, right?

They're familiar with the law.

In Leviticus and Deuteronomy, they would have heard that I'm supposed to love God above all things with my whole being, Deuteronomy 6, 5, the Shema.

They would have heard in Leviticus that I'm supposed to love my neighbor as myself.

So the idea of loving God and neighbor wouldn't be new to them.

But what is new to them is the person who's giving them the command to love.

I give you a command.

Whoa.

Like, yo, we know Moses, we know all the Jewish leaders, but who is this guy who's not neither in the synagogue, he's not a Pharisee Sadge, but he's saying, I'm giving you commands.

Whoa, that's new.

And then Jesus says, I want you to love as I have loved.

So it's the one who's giving the command that's new, and it's the fact that Jesus is placing himself at the center of the love commands that is new.

This would have been rocking to them.

So Jesus is going to reinterpret and deepen Moses' commands to love God and love neighbor.

He's gonna place himself in the center as being the ultimate example of love.

So let's just start first with as I have loved you.

So we know we're supposed to be loving one another.

This new command to love one another, but it's on the basis of how Jesus had loved his disciples.

He says the new command to love one another is on the basis of my life and my ministry.

And so, in order for us to understand what love is meaning in this context, we gotta understand who's speaking and how is it that he has loved them.

You don't know, I guess what I'm trying to say is you don't know biblical love unless you know Jesus.

Now, I can't fight the world on their definition of love.

When they say love and they say this is what it means to love, it's like, okay, man, if that's what that's what you mean, okay.

But you can't tell me what biblical love is unless you know Jesus.

You hear me?

If you don't know Jesus, you are not a proper proper interpreter of biblical theology on love.

You gotta start first with letting the Bible define its own terms and its own definitions on its own terms.

A lot of times it's it's just human nature, it's cognitive dissonance, right?

We learn things just by nature of our environment, and then we start to take what we have learned, how we have experienced the world, and we transfer those ideas on to the new thing that we're trying to get to know because we don't have a point of reference.

So you're like, you know, uh it's it's FIFA World Cup time, go USA, right?

And so that's exactly right, right?

Around here, we do real football.

And so I imagine there's gonna be a whole bunch of people who don't know anything about soccer, but guess what?

They know American football, and so as they try to learn international football, they're going to take references from American football, and they're gonna be like, So it's kind of like it's like, uh my wife was telling me um she was watching a game the other day, and somebody tripped somebody, and the novice fan was like, Oh my god, throw the flag.

It's like, oh, they don't throw flags in soccer, they got cards, kind of similar.

And so I guess where I want to start really is just saying that, man, there are some similarities to biblical love, but they're not the same.

And we gotta be savvy enough in our word to know where we share some similarities with how the world sees love, but where we depart.

And let me just give you a couple key um pivotal points where biblical love departs from the world's love.

First of all, it's who is doing the loving, who's speaking in this passage?

Once again, it's Jesus, he's got his closest followers, and he's saying, I give you this new command to love one another as I have loved you.

Who's the I who's speaking?

It is Jesus, which immediately forces us into the uniqueness of our monotheistic religion, right?

There's only a couple monotheistic religions, right?

Islam and Judaism, but then Christianity then takes it a step further.

We stand alone from those because we believe that we have how many gods?

And but in how many persons does he exist?

Three.

So this is not Allah, this is not the Jewish God who would stay with a the God of the cosmos, but it would not deify the Lord Jesus Christ, and it certainly would not deify the Holy Spirit.

Tracking with me?

Christianity standing alone, and so the first way we've got to understand biblical love is to know that whatever this love is, it originates from God.

It originates from God because Jesus is God, and Jesus, as you read the gospels, is his mission is always attached to the plan and purpose of God.

It's not just warm, fuzzy feelings on its own, but whatever Jesus was commanded to do, it's always attached to God's perfect will.

And God's perfect will is to be in covenant relation with those he created in his image.

There's two big terms for love in the Bible.

Just you'd have to take my word on this.

It's Hesed.

Everybody say Hesed.

Get that little snake, Hesit.

Let me see you next.

Hesit.

In Hesid, this is gonna be a word that's gonna be used over 240 plus times in the Old Testament.

Most of them are gonna be used in the Psalter, but it's this grammatical construct of a word, right?

It's not singular, it's trying to literally tie together.

How many of y'all doesn't trap that God's love is so vast, there's not one word in Hebrew, English, or Greek that could sum it up.

So they're literally trying to tie together ideas that don't naturally go together.

They're like, it needs a little bit of that, a little bit of this, a little bit of that.

Now we got God's love.

That's crazy, isn't it?

God says, when you want to talk about my love, Hesed, I want you to talk about loyalty, I want you to talk about kindness, I want you to talk about promise keeping, I want you to talk about mercy, because all of these things make up my love.

And as you read the pages of the Old Testament, there is not one section of the Hebrew scriptures that is not shaped by this word Hesed.

Everything, all the promises are being tied back to this God who chooses to love people despite people.

It's wild, y'all.

It is wild from the first covenant he makes with Adam to the next covenant he's gonna make with Noah and Moses.

It's all of this idea that I promised that I was going to lean my positive blessing in the direction of humanity, and I'm determined to not let, I'm determined to not let them mess it up.

So I keep making provisions, I keep being slow to anger, I keep being patient, and I'm determined not to let my emotions, even though I'm displeased with them, sometimes negate my promise.

It's unfair, it's crazy, and Judaism and Islam don't quite understand what we're talking about here.

It's a covenant loyalty.

But then you get to the New Testament, and Jesus, in this Hellenistic Greco-Roman society, he takes it a step further.

He's got new language.

We know it.

What's the word for love in the New Testament?

The primary word, right?

Agape, right?

And once again, it's gonna be used 116 times in the New Testament, but it's never used, listen to me, y'all, about romantic uh um affection or passion.

It's never used about just natural affinity or affection.

Agape takes this idea of covenant committed love further to a sacrificial love, a deliberate laying down of conveniences for the sake of others.

Agape.

So I'm gonna read this slow.

Every once in a while, y'all can tell I'm probably a pretty wild preacher.

I was raised in an Anglican background.

Y'all believe that?

You shouldn't.

It's about as charismatic as it comes.

But every once in a while I realize that the same Holy Spirit who works in the moment also works on Monday when I'm preparing.

And so sometimes the Holy Spirit gives me exactly what he wants me to say on Monday, and I write it down and I read it.

I want to read what the Holy Spirit gave me.

Alright, I'll read it slow just in case some of y'all are tracking with me.

So I think now that we have the Old Testament word for love, New Testament word for love, I think the concept of biblical love is a commitment that expresses itself in tangible action.

Biblical love is not an idea, it's not a feeling.

I love you.

Somebody say, Where to receive?

Right?

Biblical love is a commitment that expresses itself in tangible actions that benefit others, and it is not subject to the feelings or the behavior or character of the recipient.

Biblical love is a commitment that expresses itself in tangible actions that benefit others, and it's not subject to the feelings or the behavior character of the recipient.

One commentator just says this that biblical love originates, it's a self-giving disposition that originates in God, is displayed perfectly in Jesus Christ, and is implanted in believers by the Holy Spirit.

Biblical love, according to one commentator, is a holy, self-giving disposition that originates in God.

It's displayed perfectly in Jesus Christ and is implanted in believers by the Holy Spirit.

He says, A new command I give you to love one another as I have loved you.

And we see that in God the Father, continuing to be patient and merciful with mankind.

And he says, now love one another.

And so who's Jesus speaking to?

He's speaking to his disciples.

Let me try to do it quickly.

This will be fun, fun study, maybe over the summer.

Let's just start with the 12 first.

You know, you've got different relational dynamics here.

You got a couple pair of brothers.

You got uh Peter and Andrew, you got James and John.

We know Peter's married.

We don't know maybe James and John.

We know a couple of them probably were single.

They got different occupations.

Um, we know at least four of them were fishermen, probably more of them were fishermen.

Um they probably lived off the land in the society.

Um, Matthew was a tax collector, we know that.

Um, we know that Judas, um, because he dealt with the money, theologians assume that he probably was the group's accountant.

Uh he was probably the Kate, but Kate is just a more godly person, obviously, than Judas.

You know what I'm saying?

But um, but Simon, he gets identified as the zealot, which means that he was super politically active uh with a group uh that's known for radical opposition to Roman rule.

Uh, where were they from?

Baseda, Capernaum, Nazareth, Cana.

So you imagine at least cut the United States in half.

Um, you look at that boot of Israel, these guys are covering a great kind of portion of it of area.

They weren't all from the same place.

Luke, the gospel of Luke, takes it a couple steps further.

We know that how many disciples were there?

12, but was that all Jesus was walking around with?

No, we know that the 12 were really just a subset of Jesus' plenteous disciples.

Listen to Luke 16.

After a night of prayer, Jesus called his disciples and he chose from them 12, right?

So there's a large group of disciples.

Um then Luke 8.

They these people are diverse, right?

Soon afterwards, um, this is Luke 8.

Soon afterwards, Jesus went on through cities and villages proclaiming and bringing the good news of the kingdom, and the 12 were with him, and also some women who had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities.

Mary called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, and Joanna, the wife of Chusah, here it's household manager, and Susanna, and many others who provided for them out of their means.

Did you know that you were sitting next to someone who's probably been delivered from some evil spirits?

Y'all, like, what?

I don't want to be a Christian no more.

It's like, well, yes, yes, you do.

Yes, you do.

What I'm trying to tell you really quickly is God's disciples include men and women, um, individuals with a variety of testimonies and stories.

Some of y'all have been delivered from stealing out of your business, some of you have been delivered from adultery and drugs, and some of you have were children who are disobedient and rebellious, and you gave your parents misery for 20 years, and you've been delivered, and you're all sitting in this room.

Because God's great big saving work, He's in order to demonstrate his power, he's gotta be able to save anybody from anything anywhere that shows and demonstrates the power of the gospel, not that Jesus is just the God of the elite or South Memphis or East Memphis or Collierville, He gotta be able to get them from everywhere to show the universality of his great salvation, and that's the family you've been called into.

And what does he say to this family of political zealots?

Yes, the in your family is probably the person when you see their post on Facebook, you want to pull your hair out.

That's who's in your family, that's who's in your family, and that's who God is calling you to love.

Not with positive vibes.

I love them, but with a commitment that mimics his, and with tangible action that mimics his as well.

Well, it's hard stuff, y'all.

But love is to be the distinguishing mark of Jesus' disciples.

It's supposed to be our thing.

Literally, the love thing is supposed to be our thing.

It's supposed to influence every sphere of our life.

We're to love one another, and he knows because we're so different and we're so diverse, he already knows this is gonna be hard.

This is gonna be really challenging.

And the only way we'll be able to do it is by his spirit.

Don't you realize the next time you get ready to be in your hard season and you say, Man, this is really hard, you ought to just be like, so you don't want me to be able to do life without you?

And he's like, Yeah.

I'm gonna lead you through the valley of the shadow of death, just so I can show you.

I don't leave my children.

Come on, man.

Can I get a hand wave somebody?

He don't leave us.

Come on, man.

That's what he does.

Okay, how am I doing on time?

Okay, good.

All right, praise God, praise God, praise God, praise God, praise God.

Feel in love with another time and I'm trying.

So, anyway, love is supposed to be the distinguishing mark.

And we're to love one another, and we're part of this club where we don't even have the ability to kick people out of it.

Isn't that frustrating?

Come on, get him out.

You know, that's what the denominations do.

We try to, okay, so let me just make it easier to love people.

Someone say, You can't be in my club.

He's like, Nope, don't work.

It don't matter how you cut this pie, you're gonna find people who are difficult to love.

And he says, You're not exempt.

Figure it out.

Not on your own, but by my spirit.

And even if those people were to become your enemies, then you finally have an out not to love them.

Then he says, Hey, love your enemies.

What?

People really should be frustrated with being Christian because there's some really challenging stuff in here.

Like, what in the world?

I gotta love those people.

He says, Yeah, man.

Because according to the story of scripture, Ephesians 2, that's what has been done for us.

That Jesus was the one who seeks the sheep who wanders, so the people who stray, he seeks the enemies, the alienated, those far off from him, and our lives are supposed to be a living replica of what has been done for us.

And as a matter of fact, the way we love in every sphere of our life is supposed to be verification that we're actually his.

What does verse John 13, 35 say?

He said, first of all, 34 says, I give you this new command, love one another as I have loved you, loved you.

And what?

Verse 35.

By this, all people will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another.

So you can have all these evangelistic crusades and you can fight with people apologetically on Facebook.

And if you first John, you hate your brother, then you are actually demonstrating that you don't know the living Jesus.

He says, This love stuff is supposed to be our defining mark.

It's how we stand out.

It is natural for human beings to understand transactional love.

That the moment you stop being beneficial to me, the moment I stop enjoying your company, I cut you off.

The anti-human, spirit-filled thing that confuses all humanity is why do people stick with people who don't benefit them?

Now that is weird and it is strange, but it is exactly how we've been loved.

So how we land this plane.

And at the end, the psalmist is like, hey man.

But the eyes of the Lord are on those who fear him, on those who trust in his unfailing love.

And at the end it says, May your unfailing love be with us, even as we put our trust in you.

It's just like, man, if your definition of love is just warm fuzzies, then you probably that probably doesn't make sense.

But if you take the biblical ideas of love, then you understand that God's love, it's the anchor for our lives.

Without it, we don't actually have a hope.

If God actually loves people based on what we deserve, we're out.

It's literally, it was over at day one for me.

I'm not talking about anybody else in here.

I'm not talking about anybody.

Because y'all, I know y'all deserve to be loved and you just always hitting all the right marks.

But if God, hmm?

If God is loving people based on their faithfulness to him, I don't belong here.

But I got good news to wayward Christians.

That if God is still true to his promises, and if he's not a man that he could lie, then he can't love you any more than he already does.

He will never love you any less than he does right now.

And that ought to be really good news to some of us.

And to the unbelievers who are definitely sitting in this congregation right now.

I just would challenge you.

Where else do you get a better understand?

A better offer?

Is there a better offer of a way to live than inside the love of the one whose love doesn't fail?

In the um critically acclaimed award-winning film The Lion King.

You know, there's a kind of a journey that I feel like they take us on.

You know, you get Simba in trouble in the valley, in the gorge.

He's followed Scar's direction, and he's in there where they're, you know, they've got the big old stampede, and he's caught.

And of course, what does Mufasa do, the good father?

He jumps in, right?

He jumps in.

He dies, but his baby lives.

But then I think, seriously, like as you get to the end of the movie, and then finally, you know, it looks like the hyenas and scars a little group, they finally got the good guys cornered.

And then what now does Simba do?

Like you see this full transformation in this arc, that what the daddy did was not lost on the son, and that the son was actually, he came of age and was willing to do what his daddy did.

And he stood in the way of danger, and he laid down his own life so that other life could emerge.

Y'all, this is our charge to daily wake up and remind ourselves of how loved we are by God and the great extent that he went to, and to get so charged up about it that we'd be willing to love difficult spouses, hard classmates, bad bosses, tough neighbors, because we're constantly reminded of what's been done for us.

Would you close your eyes with me?

I just want to sing Yahama, invite the band back.

Sometimes I just like to sing my way out.

I'm forgiven because you were forsaken, and I'm accepted, you were condemned, and I'm alive and well, your spirit lives within me because you died and rose again.

Amazing love, how can it be that you, my king, would die for me?

Amazing love, I know it's true.

It's my joy to honor you, amazing love, how can it be that you my king would die for me?

Amazing love, I know it's true, and it's my joy to honor you how in all I do I honor you.