You know the game where one person stands in front of a group of people and says, “Simon says raise your hand,” and everybody raises their hands. “Simon says raise your other hand,” and everybody raises their other hand. Well the world is like Simon and many are doing exactly what the world says. The world says it’s ok to have sex with someone of the same gender, so they do. The world says to party, get drunk, lose control, and they do. The world says rebel against your parents, and so they do. But Jesus followers play something different called “Jesus says.”
Jesus says the most important command of God for us to obey is this, “To love God with all our heart, soul, strength and mind and to love others.” So for the last few weeks we’ve taken some time to define what this kind of love is. We can summarize our last few lessons this way, “Genuine love is faithful especially in very difficult and painful circumstances and full of joy. It’s impossible to love others and God without making sacrifices. And the only way to really love God and love others is to disown yourself and follow Jesus.”
If you’ve been here every Sunday for the last few weeks then you would be very familiar with how Jesus defines love, but, if you haven’t been here, or if you missed a Sunday or two, I would recommend you go to www.weymouthchurchofchrist.com and check out my blog. I post every sermon there so you can read it for yourself.
Jesus defines love. It’s weird according to world standards because love and lust are often confused with each other. The love of Jesus has nothing to do with lust, and everything to do with sacrifice. If you want to be a Jesus follower, the first thing you do is disown yourself. You understand that you belong to God because Jesus Christ bought you with His sacrifice on the cross. Jesus tells us what real love is, “This is real love—not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins” 1 John 4:10. Any other definition of love is a lie and there are plenty of lies about love in our world.
Today, and for the next couple of weeks we’re going to make some practical application to what we’ve been talking about. It’s one thing to define love, but, now that we know what God says it is, the bigger question is, “what do we do with this love?” How do we put love into action as Jesus followers? I believe that the best way for us to show love is to do it the way Jesus did. The irony is that spiritually everyone plays “Simon Says.” Our unbelieving friends and those who say they’re Christians but are fans of Jesus rather than followers do what everyone else around them is doing, but, genuine Jesus followers do what Jesus did. We live as Jesus lived, and we love as Jesus loves. But we all slip up. We all sin.
You’ve probably heard the acronym W.W.J.D. “What Would Jesus Do”. I hate that. I can’t stand it when people say this. The problem with it is that its conjecture. How in the world can we know what Jesus WOULD do? I’m not Jesus, I can’t tell you what He might do or might say, but I can tell you what He DID, and what He DID say. The better acronym is W.D.J.D. “What Did Jesus Do.” We know what Jesus did, and we know what Jesus said from the Gospel books in the Bible. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John records some details about His life. One thing I appreciate most about the Gospel of John is that John records more of the intimate conversations that Jesus had with his followers.
In John 17 we are provided some detail about the prayer of Jesus in the garden before his arrest. Jesus shares in verse 20 that his prayer isn’t just about His followers then, but, for everyone who will ever believe and follow Him. Jesus prays for you and I before He is arrested, tortured and executed on the cross. He prays for us. And he prays that just as God sent Him to the world, now He is sending His followers into the world. Jesus is sending us into the world to share His truth and love.
As followers of Jesus our purpose is to live the truth of Jesus. In this way we are continuing His work on the earth. We are living in participation with His ministry. We’re on His ministry team. He is our ministry leader. We know we don’t belong here, but, we have a purpose as long as we are living in this world. We are in the world for the purpose of living the truth of Jesus for others to see and hear. We are sent out as followers by Jesus for this reason.
So we’re going to talk about this for the next few Sundays. And today we’re going to talk about how to love and share truth with those who are not believers. Hebrews 4:14-16 says, "So then, since we have a great High Priest who has entered heaven, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to what we believe. This High Priest of ours understands our weaknesses, for he faced all of the same testings we do, yet he did not sin. So let us come boldly to the throne of our gracious God. There we will receive his mercy, and we will find grace to help us when we need it most."
Today we’re going to focus on the first part of this Scripture, "let us hold firmly to what we believe." Jesus Christ and His resurrection from the dead sealed our identity. His victory over death is the proof of our home in Heaven. As Jesus followers we belong to God, we are not our own because we've been bought with the blood and sacrifice of Jesus. This means that our actions are motivated by our choice to deny who we are and to take up the cross of Jesus. We don't help people because they need help, we serve people so we can show them who Jesus is. Everything we do and say is about loving God and others through our faith in Jesus Christ. This is the life of a follower.
Our standards for purity and morality come from the Bible, especially the New Testament, and even more especially from the mouth of the One we follow. We hang on every word of our Savior Jesus. We expect that other followers of Jesus will do the same, will live the same way.
The simple truth is that the church should judge itself. We must hold each other accountable as brothers and sisters in Christ to live our lives as worthy of the Gospel we live and preach. We are to judge ourselves in this way. We must hold on to what we believe. This is the message for today. How do we love unbelievers?
The best witnesses for Jesus to an unbelieving world are followers who hold on to what they believe in every circumstance.
Have you ever had a bad cold? You know what I’m talking about? Your head feels like someone is bashing it in from the inside with a sledgehammer. Your forehead is so hot you avoid fire detectors. Behind your eyes your head is pounding out a beat like it’s a bass drum for a rock band. You can’t sleep. Fluid seeps from your nose as if someone is squeezing your brain like a lemon, draining every last drop in a cup of tea. You know what I’m talking about?
When we feel like this we don’t want to be around people. For one thing, we don’t want to spread our germs around, but, for another we just don’t have any energy, either. We just want to sit in a chair, or lay down in our bed and take all the drugs that are legal for us to consume. But the thing is, when people know you have a bad cold, they don’t want you around either. They don’t want what you have. When we’re sick like this, we tend to isolate ourselves, and at the same time, other folks don’t want to have anything to do with us either. Not until the bad cold has run its course anyway.
We can treat our sin the same way. As a Jesus follower we know that we’re to obey the teaching of the One we follow. We know this. When we don’t, when we’re disobedient, and we know it, we tend to isolate ourselves from other followers. We carry our guilt and shame around with us. The more we do this, the longer we live with guilt and shame, the farther away from God we’ll go. At some point, it will be acceptable for us to no longer have a faith. Our sin separates us from God. Our sin never brings us to God. Our repentance does.
The best thing you can do for a bad cold is the worst thing you can do with sin. To isolate yourself from other followers who can hold you accountable for the wrong things you do and keep you focused on the teaching of Jesus and the truth of the Bible. This is one of the significant purposes of the church. This is why the Hebrew writer encourages Jesus followers to hold on to what they believe. The Hebrew writer tells us that our job as followers is to encourage each other. We’re not to take our meeting times for granted, and we are to pursue opportunities to spend time together. Not necessarily to sing a few songs, pass the plate and take communion, but, to do this: “Let us think of ways to motivate one another to acts of love and good works. And let us not neglect our meeting together, as some people do, but encourage one another.” Hebrews 10:25
The best witnesses for Jesus to an unbelieving world are followers who hold on to what they believe in every circumstance.
We also have a tendency to treat people who don’t believe in Jesus like we do with a bad cold. We don’t want them around. How would you react if two guys walked in here to worship with us holding hands? What would be your gut reaction? What if a woman sat down next to you in a pew and she smelled like she had been drinking all night, what would you say to her? Would you ignore her? How about if she was wearing a tight short low cut dress?
What if the Weymouth Church of Christ had a reputation of being the most loving and accepting group of people in Nova Scotia? What if everyone in our community knew that the people you want to look for in Weymouth if you are hurting, wounded, sad, lonely, isolated, addicted, abused and sexually confused is around the followers of Jesus who meet here? What if we had that kind of reputation?
But, you might say, accepting? How can we be accepting of sin? Maybe you're thinking we should never accept sinful people. And you would be wrong. If your belief is we can’t accept sinful people here, then you should be the first to leave. How can any of us accept each other if we can’t accept sinful people?
It doesn’t make sense to judge unbelievers. It doesn’t make sense to tell someone who has not disowned themselves for the cross of Jesus they should live a pure and moral life; this is a fruitless thing. People who are living for themselves will not choose to live a life for Jesus and it's kind of dumb for us to expect them to. We're not the judge of the world. God is. Our belief in Jesus is not compromised because we hang out with unbelievers. Our belief in Jesus is not compromised if we love homosexuals. We're not compromised if we bless the addicted. Or help a man with a porn problem, or listen to a wife who wants to leave her husband, or hug a teen who lost her virginity. As a matter of fact if we love like Jesus, if we bless others like Jesus, we are living His mission. We hold on to what we believe so that we can bless people around us who need to hear about Jesus.
The best witnesses for Jesus to an unbelieving world are followers who hold on to what they believe in every circumstance.
It’s important for us to accept the fact that many won’t choose to love Jesus like we do. Most of the people we bless in the name of Jesus will refuse to obey Him. This isn’t something I’m making up, Jesus said it. In the chapter of Matthew that begins with Jesus teaching His followers not to judge others He says, “You can enter God’s Kingdom only through the narrow gate. The highway to hell is broad, and its gate is wide for the many who choose that way. But the gateway to life is very narrow and the road is difficult, and only a few ever find it.”
We are to love, to serve, to bless, to show the world around us who Jesus is. When a person decides to disown themselves for the cross, THEN we can teach them the truth shared by our Teacher, Jesus. Our job isn't to point the finger at the world and tell them what they are doing wrong, we should be pointing the finger at ourselves and at other followers, holding us and our fellow believers accountable. We must help each other hold on to what we believe.
If you think that I’m wrong or you don’t agree with what I’m saying, I would ask you to take a look at the life of Jesus. Find one example where Jesus judges in disgust a sinful person. Here’s a hint, you won’t find one. Jesus holds His disgust and judgement for the religious elite. We need to examine the life of Jesus and follow His example. He’s the one who has called us to follow Him, He’s the One who has sent us to the world to love and serve. The Bible says He didn’t come to condemn people but to save them. The best way for us to love unbelievers is to hold on to what we believe. To show them who Jesus is by the way we live so that we can share with them that Jesus is their Savior.
But here’s the sad reality, many Christians still play “Simon says” instead of doing what Jesus says. They do what others in the world are doing around them. The greatest damage to the potential faith of unbelievers are Christians who fail to hold on to what they believe. The world sees them and rightly so as hypocrites. And Jesus says that many of these so called followers will find themselves lifting their eyes from hell standing right next to Simon.
“Use your heads as you live and work among outsiders. Don’t miss a trick. Make the most of every opportunity. Be gracious in your speech. The goal is to bring out the best in others in a conversation, not put them down, not cut them out.“ Colossians 4:5-6
