The four loves.
The great commandment
1.Mt 22:36-40 Love the Lord your God with all your heart
and with all your soul and with all your mind.'
2. Love your neighbour as yourself.
The new commandment
3.Jn 13:34 Love one another.
The other commandment
4.Matthew 5:43 Love your enemies
What does it mean to love
your neighbour as you love yourself?
It is tempting to consider
the parable of the Good Samaritan, but that is primarily about “who is my
neighbour?” The question we have to understand is “what is love?”; “How do I
love my neighbour?”
The Bible, unlike our current
culture, sees love as an act of the will leading to action, rather than an
emotion that wells up and dies down. God does not show his love for us by
expressing emotion, he shows it by sending “his
one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love:
not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning
sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God has loved us, we also ought to
love one another. No-one has seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in
us and his love is made complete in us.” I John 4:9-12 Page 1227 in the
church Bibles.
Point one: Love is God at
work in our lives. This means that acts of ‘love’ that stem from selfishness or
greed or duty or lust are not love but selfishness, greed, duty or lust.
Nothing more. It fact much of what the world calls ‘love’ is the animal
instincts that we have. Love begins with us having a relationship with God, who
loves us. Once we have received his Love we have the potential to give it to
others.
Point two: Love always
results in action. God’s love led to him sending Jesus. It would be impossible
for God to have loved us and not acted. It will be impossible for you to love
your family, neighbour, friends, colleagues without revealing it in some way in
your actions.
I am looking at a particular
aspect of that love in action this morning. That is my contention is that to
love your neighbours you will evangelise them
The Great commission is :
Matthew 28:18-20 page 1001 in the church Bibles. It is one of the ‘how to..’s
of loving your neighbour.
Jesus Said: All authority in heaven and on earth has
been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptising
them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and
teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you
always, to the very end of the age.”
Can I remind you that when we
looked at this passage I made the point that making disciples means baptising them and it means teaching
them everything Jesus has commanded.
So to love your neighbour,
your family member, your colleague, your friend, that is what you are called to
do. Disciple them. The end game is that your neighbour, your friend, your family,
your colleagues are baptised believers with a full experimental
understanding of the Bible.
Right! So where do I start?
Let’s be disciples and follow
the master. What did he do?
Mark 1:15 page 1003
“The time has come,” he said. “The kingdom of God is
near. Repent and believe the Good News.”
It is quite important to note
that Jesus went to where the people were. More than that where they would be
receptive. He had a ready made audience in the synagogue and that is where he
went. The Mediterranean Climate allows people to be out of doors all day and
all evening, so speaking to people as they were going about their normal
business was practical. This message was given wherever Jesus could find
listeners to listen. He did not restrict himself to family and friends although
he clearly he was a great friend-maker.
The message was, in Mark
view, quite simple.
“The time has come,” he said. “The kingdom of God is
near. Repent and believe the Good News.”
There is an urgency in the
message.
It is about the kingdom of
God not about coming to church. It is about God entering into individual lives
and transforming them. It is about repentance –turning away from what hurts God
and turning to what pleases him.
It is about believing in
Jesus
The first aspect is that we
have a message to tell.
Luke 8:39
“Return home and tell how much God has done has done
for you.”
So the second aspect is that
we are witnesses of what God has done.
These two aspects of our
evangelism must be understood. Unless you have a grasp, however simple, of the
gospel, you are not able to tell others. If you have not experienced the living
God, you cannot tell others how much God had done. So we must know our gospel
and be practised at sharing it. We must know our story and be ready to share
it.
Why? Because our gospel is
John 3 verse 16 - 18 (NIV)
"For God so loved the world that he gave his one
and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal
life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to
save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but
whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed
in the name of God's one and only Son.
We cannot avoid this issue,
however uncomfortable it is. Those we know and love, however, lovely they are
and however much we love them, are, like us judged by whether or not they have
believed in Jesus. To fudge this issue is to deny our faith. If our loved ones
do not stand at risk of the condemnation of God and his judgement then, Jesus
died for no purpose. He died to take our punishment in our stead, his death
indicates how much God hates our sin and rebellion.
So our love for our neighbour
and our gospel drive us to tell how much God has done for me. God’s love
working through us desires that they know the gospel, they receive the gospel
and receive Christ into their lives by faith.
So I love by neighbour by
telling them about Jesus. I love my brother, sister, children, wife, husband
and cousins by living the kingdom of God among them and telling them about the
kingdom. Seriously, if I do not tell them about Jesus, I fail to love them. You
would be appalled if I didn’t tell my family of a faulty electrical light
switch which was live. It would be negligence not to do something about it. Yet
we know of a greater danger than death itself. Being damned by God is the greatest horror of all. How can I
keep that news from my family? The greatest thing in all my life we sing, is
knowing Jesus. Does our joy of the Lord ever get shared with our neighbours and
friends? If not we are not taking our Savour’s call to love our neighbour
seriously. Unfortunately we have all
sorts of excuses, Like our ungodliness gets in the way, True. Like we have to
wait for the right time . True. Like we are not gifted evangelists. True. We
even say that if we live the life, they will ask. True. But that is not
following Jesus. He did not wait for the people he went out to the people. He
sought out the woman of Samaria, Mathew, Zaccheaus and so many more. He sent
his disciples out to tell the good news, giving them the power of healing and
casting out demons as they went. If we read the gospel narrative honestly, we
see that Jesus ended up telling the good news in all sorts of awkward
situations.
And what about the early
church, what did they do? Well firstly, the Apostles were baptised with the
Holy Spirit. Yes, you cannot speak God’s word to your friends and colleagues
and neighbours and relations without
the Holy Spirit. Hang on, you and I have been given the the Holy Spirit. It is
an act of God as we confess our sins and turn to him in repentance and faith.
Secondly they moved out of the safe zone. Peter and John healed a man at the
gate. That ended them in prison. But they continued on. In Acts 5:42 we read “ Day after day, in the temple courts and
from house to house, they never stopped teaching and proclaiming the good news
that Jesus is the Christ.” Page 1098.
Then what happened?
Persecution broke out, driving the disciples out of Jerusalem except for the
apostles. The gospel was spread by ordinary Christians on the run from the
authorities. We know of specific leading of the Spirit in a few occasions but
the rest just proclaimed Jesus. It is clear that that evangelism explosion had
far reaching effects. When Paul travelled Westwards he often came across
Christians. And what was Paul’s message? He explained the facts about Jesus. He
called people to “Believe on the Lord
Jesus and you will be saved” the same message that Jesus had spoken to
Nicodemus.
It is clear that the message
carried the full obedience to the great commission. Peter at Pentecost says ”Repent and be baptised, every one of you,
in the name of Jesus Christ for the
forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” Acts
2:38 page 1094
So to conclude, The love of God compels us, 2
Corinthians 5:14 page 1161 that is what drives us to tell others. We have got
to open our lips and tell others how much God has done for us. We have a gospel
to share. A gospel that leads to discipleship for every one we need.
Last week we examined our
pockets. This week we need to examine our relationships with others. How are we
going to love them. I want to leave you with this analogy. How do two people get
married? Simple one has to propose to the other before a marriage can take
place. All the love has no effect until somehow they declare it. Declare your
love to your neighbour, colleague, friend and relation, tell them about Jesus.