Introduction:
A. If you noticed my title to this sermon, “I Can See Clearly Now,” you may have wondered if I was going to have us sing the words to that classic 1972 song by Johnny Nash.
1. Sorry to disappoint, but we are not going to focus on the words to that song.
2. But I’m using that title as a launching pad for a discussion of having a clear vision.
B. The famous country singer, Hank Williams, once said, “A man has to know what he wants to do, and then do it and keep his mind on it, and don’t let nothing else get in the way to clutter his life.”
1. Hank Williams was right, we need to have a vision of our target or our goal, and to keep it clearly in mind, and then not let anything else get in the way of reaching it.
C. A man named Robert Woodruff did just that.
1. You are probably wondering: Who is Robert Woodruff?
2. Woodruff was the president of Coca-Cola from 1923-1955.
3. While leading that company during WWII, Woodruff had the audacity to state, “We will see that every man in uniform gets a bottle of Coca-Cola for five cents, wherever he is and whatever it costs.”
4. After WWII ended, he said his goal was for everyone in the world to have a taste of Coca-Cola.
5. How is that for having a clear vision and goal?
6. His vision enabled the employees of Coca-Cola to work to accomplish both of those goals.
D. Vision is critically important.
1. Without a shared vision, we have no idea what our target is.
2. Without a shared target or direction, then we have no hope of getting anywhere.
3. Just like the story of the businessman who rushed into the airport and demanded: “Give me a ticket.” “Where to?” asked the ticket agent.
a. To which the businessman replied, “It doesn’t matter…I’ve got business all over!”
4. A lack of definition, or purpose, or vision, leaves us disorganized.
5. We need a target to shoot at. We need a goal to strive toward.
6. That is true for individuals. That is true for corporations. And that is true for churches.
E. How would you answer the question: What is the mission of the Wetzel Road Church of Christ?
1. Can each of us state clearly and concisely what we are about?
2. What is our business? What are we trying to accomplish?
3. See, until we have a handle on what we are trying to do, how can we begin to determine how to do it?
4. In the end we don’t want just activity…we want productivity.
5. If efficiency is doing things right and effectiveness is doing the right things, then excellence is efficiency and effectiveness. Doing the right things, right.
F. But it all must begin with a vision; a shared vision.
1. When we talk about vision with regard to the church, we have to realize that the vision originates with God. He is the one who inspires and communicates the original vision.
2. God’s vision for the church has been clearly communicated in the NT.
3. There, by command and example, we discover God’s purposes, goals and tasks for the church.
G. As your elders, it is our responsibility to teach God’s Word, and to clearly define God’s will for us.
1. Together with the ministers, we have worked to state, concisely and clearly, what we are striving to do as a community of Christ-followers.
2. Today, we want to share with you this new way for us to describe God’s unchanging will for the church.
3. The Wetzel Road Church of Christ is striving to be a group of Christians who are loving God, loving people, and loving truth.
4. Let’s spend a few minutes seeing how these goals for us come directly from Scripture.
H. As you know, the Bible is a very big book.
1. The Bible is filled with hundreds and thousands of commands and examples.
2. So, people over the history of humankind have found themselves asking God: “But what is the bottom line, God? What is the most important thing to you?”
3. So, from the depths of our hearts, we ask God: “What do we really need to do to please you?”
I. You might recall, that on one occasion during Jesus’ ministry, an expert in the Old Testament law came to Jesus and asked, “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?” (Mk. 12:28)
1. Here is the answer that Jesus gave to the great question: “29 The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. 30 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ 31 The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.” (Mk. 12:29-31)
2. Well, there is the answer. Now we know what matters most to God.
3. In answering that Scribes question, Jesus tells us that the bedrock of Christian discipleship consists of LOVE.
a. The right answer for everything in our life before God is LOVE.
b. First love for God and then love for our neighbor.
c. When you boil Christianity down and get rid of all the peripherals, what is left is LOVE.
4. The Apostle Paul confirms this truth in 1 Cor. 13: 1 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.
5. Paul champions the same message in Romans 13:8-10: Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for he who loves his fellowman has fulfilled the law. 9 The commandments, “Do not commit adultery,” “Do not murder,” “Do not steal,” “Do not covet,” and whatever other commandment there may be, are summed up in this one rule: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” 10 Love does no harm to its neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.
6. So, we see, that love is really the beginning and the end of all that God wants from us.
7. Now let’s define what loving God, loving people and loving truth looks like.
I. The Wetzel Road Church of Christ is striving to be a group of Christians who are loving God.
A. But what does it mean to really love God?
1. Do we really love God? Do you and do I really love God?
2. If someone were to walk up to us on the street and asked us if we love God, I’m sure that most of us would say, “Yes, I sure do.”
3. Unfortunately, it is much easier to say that we love God, than it is to show that we love God.
4. Jesus’ simple, yet profound statement is: “Love the Lord your God will all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength.”
5. So the question is not just, “Do I love God?”, but “Do I love God with all my heart, all my soul, all my mind, and all my strength?” Now that’s a harder question. Right?
6. Jesus describes the totality of our love as “all our heart, soul, mind and strength.”
a. Those four aspects of our humanity describe our complete lives: our heart (our emotions), our soul (our spiritually), our mind (our intellect) and our strength (our physical bodies).
7. Jesus says that we must love God with everything we are and everything we have – that is hard!
8. Jesus is saying that our love for God must be one where we love Him exclusively (above all else), and totally (not partially, or mostly, but with our all).
B. But in addition to loving God exclusively and totally, we must also love God practically.
1. One of the most important ways that we demonstrate our love for God is by obeying His commands.
2. Sometimes we get a distorted idea about what love is.
3. One night, a man decided to show his wife how much he loved her.
a. After dinner he began to recite romantic poetry, telling her he would climb high mountains to be near her, swim wide oceans, cross deserts in the burning heat of day, and even sit at her window and sing love songs to her in the moonlight.
b. After listening to him go on for some time about this immense love he had, she asked, “But will you do the dishes for me?”
4. Are we willing to love God practically?
a. Jesus said, “If you love me, keep my commandments.” (John 14:15)
b. The apostle John remembered Jesus’ teachings and wrote, “This is love for God, to obey his commands.” (1 John 5:3)
c. I John 3:18 says, “Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.
5. In other words, loving God doesn’t mean just a warm fuzzy feeling in our hearts, it’s a lot more practical and down to earth than that – it means obedience to God.
6. Loving God is an act of the will whereby we submit ourselves to God – exclusively, totally and practically in obedience to God.
7. God is just like a good parent, who measures their child’s love, not by words of love or by promises, but by obedient actions.
8. We might say that we really love God, but if we live lives that continue to disobey God’s commands then we are saying that we love ourselves more than we love God.
C. I hope and pray that anyone who comes among us will clearly see that we are a people who are committed to loving God.
1. I hope that they will see that our obedience to the commandments of God is a clear demonstration of how much we love God.
2. I hope that they will see that our obedience is not some cold, robotic response to God, but a warm, enthusiastic response to God’s love and is an expression of our gratitude for God’s grace in our lives.
II. The Wetzel Road Church of Christ is striving to be a group of Christians who are loving People.
A. When we look back at Jesus’ answer about the greatest commandment, we notice that in addition to loving God, he adds: “The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”
1. I don’t have time to delve too deeply into this verse, but we notice something obvious and that is that Jesus wants us to love our neighbor – He commands us to love people.
2. But I want to draw our attention to something that may not be as obvious, in that statement, Jesus is also commanding us to love ourselves – after all, we are people too!
3. We are to love people as we love ourselves.
B. Why should we love ourselves and others? Because God loves us and God loves others.
1. God’s love for us and the value that God places on each and every one of us is based on the fact that we are made in His image, and that is the foundation of loving ourselves and others.
2. If we don’t know how to love ourselves and how to treat ourselves in a loving fashion, then how we will be able to do that for others?
3. If you have ever flown on an airplane you have watched the flight attendants teach the safety procedures.
a. They say, “If the airplane loses pressure, the oxygen mask will drop. If you are traveling with a child, put the oxygen mask on yourself first, then put it on the child.”
b. You have to put the mask on yourself first, because you can’t take care of another person if you first don’t take care of yourself.
c. Similarly, you can’t love another person if you do not love yourself.
4. Learning to love ourselves is critically important to being able to love others.
C. I want to give us two handles to try to help us to learn to love others as we love ourselves.
1. Let me tell you what they are, and then let me briefly explain each one.
2. The two principles that will guide us are: The Golden Rule and The Jesus Rule.
D. In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus gave us a rule that has come to be known as the “The Golden Rule” which is “do to others as you would have them do to you.”
1. I’m told that years ago, in the old Soviet Union there were very few laws about factories polluting the water.
a. That worked, because one of the few laws they did have was that any factory which dumped chemicals back into the river had to do so upstream from its own intake pipes.
b. In other words, whatever the factory dumped in the water was going to come right back into it before it went any further down stream.
c. Amazingly, that simple rule did much to cause factories to clean up their own pollutants.
2. What would happen if we knew that everything we put out would come back to us?
a. We often say, “What goes around, comes around,” but what if it was a rule, not just a saying?
b. What if we knew that every harmful word or deed would be rebounded upon us immediately?
c. Wouldn’t that change the way we act?
3. So how should we be loving others? By treating them the way we want to be treated.
E. Another handle for loving people the way God would want us to love them is to employ the Jesus rule – the Jesus rule is to treat people as if they are Jesus.
1. What do you think would change about the way we loved others if we began to view each person that we met as Jesus?
2. All of us would jump at the chance to serve Jesus directly and personally, right?
3. You might remember that Jesus taught that what we do or don’t do for others, we do or don’t do for him. (Mt. 25:31-46).
a. So, in that sense, every person we meet is Jesus.
b. Every person in our home is Jesus.
c. Every person in this church, and at our school and our workplace is Jesus.
4. So, every time we are about to do or say anything to someone, we need to picture saying or doing it to Jesus.
5. I truly believe that that will make a profound difference, don’t you?
F. I hope and pray that anyone who comes among us will clearly see that we are a people who are committed to loving people.
1. I hope and pray that we will become a people characterized by “The Golden Rule” and “The Jesus Rule” – that we will treat people the way we want to be treated and that we will treat people as if they are Jesus himself.
2. I hope and pray that as we do so our congregation will stand out in this world as a place where all people are loved and valued, no matter the country of origin, no matter the color of their skin, no matter their educational level or their financial strength, no matter the struggles or burdens they are carrying, no matter even the lifestyle choices they are making.
3. God loves and values all people, but loving them and valuing them doesn’t mean that God approves of all that they do.
4. I hope and pray that we will be able to love people in a way that it is obvious that we don’t hate anyone and that all people are welcome to come and learn and grow and change.
III. The Wetzel Road Church of Christ is striving to be a group of Christians who are loving Truth.
A. In John 17:17, Jesus prayed this prayer for His disciples: “Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth.”
1. God’s Word, the Bible, is truth and we want to be a people who love the truth.
2. In the Psalm 119, David so beautifully and passionately expressed his love for the truth.
a. He wrote: Oh, how I love your law! I meditate on it all day long. (Ps 119:97)
b. He wrote: I hate and abhor falsehood but I love your law. (119:163)
c. He wrote: Great peace have they who love your law, and nothing can make them stumble. (119:165)
3. God’s Word is so powerful and so able to perfect us and protect us.
4. Paul wrote that God’s Word is able to thoroughly equip us for every good work (2 Tim. 3:17).
5. Paul admonished Timothy to “Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a workman who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth. (2 Tim. 2:15)
6. Paul warned the Thessalonians saying: They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. (2 Thess. 2:10)
B. God desires that His people will love the Word of God and the truths of God found in it.
1. It should be our passion to know God’s Word, to know God’s truths and to employ them.
C. As a Church of Christ, we are a people committed to loving truth; we are a people who only want to teach and practice what we find in the Word of God.
1. We are striving to love the truths about God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit.
2. We are striving to love the truths about salvation found in Jesus, by grace through faith.
3. We are striving to love the truths about the church, that it is the body of Christ, bought by the blood of Christ, and made up of the sons and daughters of God who have believed and been baptized.
4. We are striving to love the truth of the church’s great commission to make disciples of all nations.
5. And we are striving to love the truth about morality, and the sanctity of human life, and God’s design for marriage, and holiness.
D. I hope and pray that anyone who comes among us will clearly see that we are a people who are committed to loving truth.
1. I hope and pray that they see that we are a people of The Book who strive to have book, chapter and verse for everything we teach and practice.
2. I hope and pray that they see that we take seriously what God says over anything that humans say.
3. I hope and pray that they see we have a passion to keep searching and applying God’s truths in our daily lives.
Conclusion:
A. I hope you are excited to have a simple handle on what we are trying to do as a group of Christ-followers.
1. When someone asks us what our church is all about, we can answer: We are about loving God, loving people and loving truth.
2. And how wonderful to know that those three pursuits are so central to God’s Will.
3. Two of them are found in Jesus’ answer to the question: what is the greatest commandment?
4. And the other one is part of the prayer that Jesus prayed for us and we would be sanctified by the truth.
B. So these three things are who we should be striving to be as a congregation as a whole, but it is also what we should be striving to be as individuals.
1. Loving God, loving people, and loving truth is what we can do together, but it is also something that each of us should be doing in our daily lives.
C. So, have you caught the vision? Can you see it clearly now?
1. Do you see yourself as someone striving to love God, love people and love truth?
2. Do you see ways where you need to grow in loving God, loving people and loving truth?
3. We can know for sure that God will empower us to become all that He wants us to become.
4. God will enable us to love Him and to love people and to love truth, if we give ourselves fully to that pursuit, depending on God every step of the way.
D. I pray that we will see more clearly our God-given vision for our church.
1. I pray that we will have a personal ownership of that mission.
2. And in the end, I pray that we will have successfully accomplished the mission of loving God, loving people and loving truth.
