One of the strangest moments for me on an airplane is when the plane backs up from the gate and begins to taxi towards the runway and the flight attendants come on and begin to give you instructions concerning the lights and what to do in case there is a loss of cabin pressure. And one of the instructions that they give you concerns the oxygen masks that come down if the cabin pressure drops. And what they say to you is that in the case and instance of a loss of cabin pressure, if you are traveling with an infant, place the oxygen mask on yourself FIRST before placing it over the mouth of the baby. And when you first think about that, those instructions seem kind of odd and, quite honestly, seems to be quite selfish. It would seem to me that the first thing you would want to do is to make sure to get some oxygen to the infant who is not as strong or lungs are smaller than yours. It appears to be quite selfish and self-centered to leave the child WITHOUT oxygen while you hook up yourself. But when you properly understand what is being said, there is a major principle, premise and throught of life and theology wrapped up in those instructions—you have to put the mask on yourself FIRST because you can not take care of ANOTHER person if you don’t FIRST take care of YOURSELF. You have to put yourself FIRST in order be there to help somebody ELSE. If you are NOT in proper shape, safety and security YOURSELF, then you are in NO shape to help somebody else. It is the same thought and premise we convey to persons who don’t have the adequate means to live and thrive in the economic demands and reality of our day; and they have a desire to bring children into the world. We often rush to ask them, ‘how are you going to take care of somebody else, when you can’t even take care of yourself?’
This is the exact principle that is communicated here by the words of our Savior—the life-giver-King Himself—Jesus, as He is having a discussion, dialogues and discourse with one of the Jewish scribes from the temple. Jesus has had, prior to this, three hostile, rigorous conversations with some of the leaders of the temple who have ought with Him because of His refusal to conform to some of the rules that had been set up. And people who don’t like change will always seek to destroy the change that makes them uncomfortable. And so they spend all of their time in an attempt to TRAP Jesus and make Him trip up on the law. And so as Jesus ends one of these debates there is one scholar and scribe who sees that Jesus has answered every question and every challenge vociferously and properly. And so he comes to Jesus now—NOT from a hostile angle; but from one of curiosity. And he asks Jesus—‘which out of all the commandments is the most important.’ It’s a very interesting question; and Jesus sums up the question with two statements. The first is how you are to love the Lord your God with all your heart, your mind, your soul and your strength.’ And it is the second one that trips me up; He says, ‘And love your neighbor like you love yourself’. The implication is very powerful; because what it means is to be authentically Christian, means I have to know how to love ME before I can love YOU. It is a PARADOX—because I have to put ME first in order to put YOU first. Now I know that this PARADOX sounds theologically PARADOXICAL to what we’ve been taught – because we always teach and have taught that when you put yourself first, it’s being selfish. And, more often than not, that is absolutely true. But please understand here, that if you are going to walk in love, and in God-honoring relationships with other Christians, and in a functional relationship with anybody, you’ve got to put yourself FIRST to love YOU before you can love anybody else.
And what that means is—THE WAY I TREAT OTHERS IS A GIVEAWAY FOR HOW I FEEL ABOUT MYSELF. If I’m always talking ABOUT other people, it says something about what I don’t like about ME. If I’m always nasty, mean, condescending, skeptical, cynical, judgmental or just plane hateful toward other people, it says something about how I feel about myself.
And this is a major word that needs to be preached in the church. Why? Because we know more about how to HURT each other than we do about how to LOVE one other.
- We hurt one other when we gossip about one other.
- We hurt one other when we fail to forgive one other.
- We hurt one other when we don’t do the work to make peace with one other.
- We hurt one other when we seek to divide one another.
- We hurt one another when, instead of coming to one another with a fault or a mistake and seeking to help the person grow and not make the mistake again, we would rather DESTROY them and LAUGH about it.
I often meet people who aren’t apart of any church; and don’t want anything to do with the church. All because of those, what they call, ‘Religious Hypocrites’. They have great pain that they blame on the church because, they say, the institution has hurt me. But it’s not possible for an INSTITUTION to hurt you. Institutions are made up of people. PEOPLE hurt people. It’s not the INSTITUTION that hurt you, it was somebody in the institution that hurt you.
* I do find it interesting that many people get hurt by people in the club, but they never stop frequenting the club.
* People have lost money in the mall, but nobody stops going to the mall because you left their broke the last time you attended the mall.
And one of the reasons that the Devil tries to keep the church from turning into a community, is because HE knows that if TWO or THREE gather in the name of Jesus Christ and can establish a thing, can you imagine if 15 or 50 or a thousand people touched and agreed on a thing? If people can ever touch and agree:
- Cancer would straighten up
- Demons would take flight
- Depression will flee
- The Spirit of God would have His way
- Issues would be dissolved
- Hope would be strengthened
- Anxiety dispelled
- Questions would be answered
- Lives would be changed
And so the Devil spends all of his time trying to get the church from becoming a community of oneness. And so he keeps us locked in dysfunction by instituting power struggles and opinions and clicks and divisions and perversions and lying/backbiting/nitpicking/dissension because he knows that if the people of God ever figure out the power of love, harmony, forgiveness and unity...the glory of God would fall and the Holy Spirit will rain down such a power and anointing on the church that the enemy won’t be able to stand. John 13:34 says ‘you’ve got to love your NEIGHBOR like you love yourself.’
- You don’t love yourself just because you know how to dress yourself.
o Sometimes dressing yourself up is not because you love or like yourself, sometimes that is because you don’t love you; and you’re trying to feel better about yourself.
o Changing your hairstyle every week
o One day you have blue eyes; the next day you have hazel eyes
o This week you’re on the California diet; next week you’re on the grape diet
o Because you are trying to find away to feel better about yourself.
- But when you love yourself, you can have rollers in your hair and like who you are.
- When you love yourself, you can have on Walmart jeans and love who you are and who God made you.
- Because you can declare that ‘I’m am fearfully and wonderfully made; and I don’t need to have name brand to know I’m grand.
I KNOW WHO I AM!
If you were to look at the way that we treat each other; and if how we treat each other is a dead giveaway for how I love ME, you would have to conclude…that there is a love of self-hatred masquerading as self-confidence.
What does it take to love myself?
I. THE FIRST THING THAT THE TEXT TEACHES US IS THAT YOU’VE GOT TO TREASURE RELATIONSHIP MORE THAN RELIGION.
Verse 28 says that this brother comes to Jesus and says, ‘Now Jesus, which out of ALL the commandments is the most important?’ Now you have to understand the gravity and the jist of what he’s asking because there were over 613 commandments. Now if you’re smart and you study your Bible, you’re already saying to yourself, I thought there were only 10, where did the other 603 come from? I didn’t see God tell Jesus or anybody else go back up to the mountain because I forgot.
603 commandments were not from God; but were from Jewish leaders who had an opinion on how Jewish religion ought to be run. They had their likes and their dislikes about what should and should not be allowed; then they treated their opinions as if they were rules and tried to make them as if t hey were from God.
• One of the worse things that can happen in the church is when we seek to impose our OPINION based upon what WE like and what makes US comfortable and then turn around and make them rules to be FOLLOWED.
“This is the BAPTIST church. We don’t do that here”. Where you find that in the Bible?
“Well the Bible says if you’re saved you’re supposed to speak in tongues”. Where you find that in the Bible?
• It’s a dangerous thing when your rules become so important that your religion is more important to you than knowing how to have a relationship with people in the church, or extending the love of Christ to people outside the walls of the church.
The scribes were so caught up on the rules, which made up the religion, that they had fallen short on knowing how to have relationship. Jesus said, ‘love the Lord your God with all your heart, your soul, your mind and your strength…and your neighbor as yourself’.
- And you can’t have one divorced from the other.
- You can’t be religious but not know how to love.
- One VALIDATES the other.
- You can’t claim to love God; but not know how to properly deal with your brother and sister.
- You can’t claim to love God, but get joy out of gossip, slander and ridicule.
- You can’t claim to love God, but don’t speak to the person you sitting next to right now/fellow choir members/fellow ushers.
o You can look straight ahead with somebody in the church like you don’t want them to talk to you; don’t want them to speak to you; don’t say nothing to me; don’t ask to share my Bible; don’t touch me; I ain’t your neighbor….But you love God!!!
o You walking up in church, walking right past people on your way into church and ain’t NEVER said good morning….but you love God.
o You hear the pastor saying to greet people you didn’t come to church with, yet you fold your arms, keep your seat, don’t go to anybody, wait for everybody to come to you, and have the nerve to leave church talking about, ‘I didn’t feel it today; they didn’t make me feel like I mattered’….but you love God.
The evidence of how you love God is NOT how big your Bible is or how much you shout or how much you give; I read somewhere in the Bible where it says, How can you claim to love ME whom you’ve NEVER seen and yet you hate your brother and your sister who you see every day?’ That the evidence that you love God is when you walk RIGHT with other people.
And I hear you:
“I ain’t treating them right; I’m going to get them. Because they deserve it for what they did.” And that may be true! But let me ask you this: What if God allowed YOU to get what YOU deserve for everything YOU did? How would YOU feel if God decided He was going to pull the sheets off of some of the stuff He’s covered in your life?
Aren’t you glad that there were times when God sent somebody to you in love, aware of your mistake, and they stood with you, they prayed with you and they COVERED you.
There’s an old Jewish saying and proverb that says: WHAT IS HATEFUL TO YOU, DO NOT DO TO YOUR NEIGHBOR.
- If you don’t want to be lied on, don’t lie.
- If you don’t want to be talked about, don’t gossip.
- If you don’t want to be treated disrespectfully, RESPECT.
- If you want others to speak to you, learn how to start speaking to somebody else.
YOU CAN’T CLAIM TO HAVE RELIGION, BUT DON’T KNOW HOW TO HAVE RELATIONSHIP.
II. SPEAK THE TRUTH ABOUT YOURSELF, EVEN IF YOU KNOW THE FACTS ABOUT YOURSELF.
Please understand that—we as believers, we don’t live on facts. Facts are things you see; we live on TRUTH. And we have to learn to speak truth to power.
• Trust is based upon my faith in the promises of God; and my faith in what God has said inspite of, and over and beyond what I SEE…so that truth can be different from the facts.
And the implication of the text is that Jesus infers that you have to love yourself before you can love anybody else. But Jesus never tells the man how to love yourself so that you CAN love your neighbor; because the brother didn’t ask. So I decided to ask.
Here is what the Holy Spirit said to me: The FACTS of your life can become so powerful, that you EMPOWER them to speak on your behalf about who you are. You begin to assign TO yourself VALUE ; based upon the FACTS that you see; then the FACTS that you give power to define you become the reality out of which you operate; to the extent that now you don’t like yourself because of what you think ABOUT yourself as a result of what you allow FACTS to suggest TO you ABOUT you.
So you spend all of your time trying to hide the facts that can’t be changed. And what has to be the power in your life in what you think about yourself, cannot be the facts. And you have to reprogram what you think about yourself; you’ve got to program your mind with the thoughts of truth and not just fact. Why? Because ALL of us have some facts about us that can make us not like ourselves. And you can sit in here and act like it isn’t for you; that is the first sign of your obvious dysfunction.
• The fact is I was a sinner; but the truth is I’m forgiven.
• The fact is I’ve made some horrible mistakes; but the truth is if I confess my sins, He is faithful and just to forgive me and cleanse me from all unrighteousness.
• The fact is that you were born out of wedlock; but the truth is that you were fearfully and wonderfully made.
• The fact is that you were born into poverty and still don’t have much; but the truth is that in Jesus, you have the riches of joy/peace/the kingdom
• The fact is maybe nobody likes you and everybody has hurt you; but the truth is when my father and mother forsake me, then the Lord will pick me up.
• The fact may be that you’ve had to deal with one drama after the other in your life; but the truth is that the joy of the Lord is your strength.
• The fact is you’ve been through a divorce, but the truth is no weapon formed against you shall be able to prosper.
• The fact is you’ve been going through so much pressure and disaapointment that even your own family doesn’t know what you’re in right now; but the truth is tha greater is He that is in YOU than He that is in the world.
Is there anybody other than me who can declare I have some facts that can make me not like myself, but I’ve got some truth: The Lord is my light and my salvation/He who dwells in the secret place….and that’s the truth!!!
WALK IN TRUTH!
III. LEARN THAT THERE IS POWER IN YOUR PRESENCE.
I’m not talking about the power around you; I’m talking about the power IN you.
• You’ve got to reach a point that when you walk in a room, you have the ability with your presence to change the atmosphere.
You’ve got to love YOU so much…that when you enter the room, ROYALTY showed up.
You’ve got to know that you have so much power in your presence…that if you are the only one in the room that doesn’t have a 300 dollar suit on, when you walked in the room, that’s when richness showed up. That there is something about you that makes the world better because you’re in it. That you bring something to the table of the world…that by your being here, and because God doesn’t make mistakes, you aren’t here by accident.
• You can’t be a mistake.
• If God allowed the happening of your birth, there had to be something that He birthed you for.
• And you have to be at peace with who you are.
• And until you are at peace with who you are, you will never connect with anybody; and you will never connect to God.
While a man was polishing his new car, his 4 yr old son picked up stone and scratched lines on the side of the car. In anger, the man took the child's hand and hit it many times; not realizing he was using a wrench. At the hospital, the child lost all his fingers due to multiple fractures. When the child saw his father.....with painful eyes he asked, 'Dad when will my fingers grow back?' The man was so hurt and speechless; he went back to his car and kicked it a lot of times. Devastated by his own actions.......sitting in front of that car he looked at the scratches; the child had written 'LOVE YOU DAD'. The next day that man committed suicide. . .
Anger and Love have no limits; choose love and discover that there is power in your presence.....Things are to be used and people are to be loved, But the problem in today's world is that, people are used and things are loved.
Notice verse 33...he says that the gift of YOU and the gift of your love, is greater than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.
• The greatest gift that God has given is not what’s in your hand but what’s in your heart
• The greatest offering is not your physical assets it’s your attittude
• The greatest gift your offer to God is not what you drive but what drives you
• The greatest treasure you posses is not what you have on but on what resides within
You may build great cathedrals large or small,
you can build skyscrapers grand and tall,
you may conquer all the failures of the past,
but only what you do for Christ will last.
