Introduction:
A. We just finished a long and I hope wonderful series about Jesus our King from the Gospel of Mark.
1. Before we start a new sermon series in January, I want to explore a few things before the Sunday of Christmas eve when we will focus on the birth of Jesus.
2. Today, I thought it would be good to remind us about our focus on loving God, loving people, and loving truth.
B. All of us have likely marveled over the years at the feats of the great Wallenda family and their daredevil highwire stunts.
1. Nik Wallenda holds 11 Guinness World Records for various acrobatic feats.
2. He is best known for doing his high-wire performances without a safety net.
3. In 2012, he was the first person to walk a tightrope stretched directly over Niagara Falls and his last feat was walking across a volcano in Nicaragua in 2020.
4. Let me share an insight from Tino Wallenda, Nik’s uncle.
5. Tino said, “When I was 7 years old, my grandfather, Karl Wallenda, put me on a wire 2 feet off the ground. He taught me all the elementary skills: how to hold my body so that I remained stiff and rigid; how to place my feet on the wire with my big toe on the wire and my heel to the inside; how to hold the pole with my elbows close to my body.
But the most important thing my grandfather taught me was that I needed to focus my attention on a point at the other end of the wire, a point that was unmoving and wouldn’t shift. That is how we maintain our balance on the wire. We need a point to concentrate on to keep us balanced.”
C. That technique of focusing is essential for tightrope walking but it is also important for churches and Christians trying to accomplish God’s mission.
1. Having the right vision and a shared vision is critically important for disciples of Jesus.
2. Without a vision, we have no idea what our target is.
3. Without a shared target or direction, then we have no hope of getting anywhere together.
D. Many times over the years, I have asked you this question: What would you say 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, then we can’t begin to determine how to do it.
4. Ultimately, in the church, 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.
E. 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 determines the vision.
2. God’s vision for the church has been clearly communicated in the New Testament.
3. There, in the New Testament, by command and example, we discover God’s purposes, goals and tasks for the church.
F. As your elders and ministers, it is our responsibility to teach God’s Word, and to clearly define what is God’s Will for us.
1. The Great Commission states that our goal and focus should be on making disciples who make disciples, who make disciples and so on down through the succeeding spiritual generations.
2. One of the ways to carry out the great commission is to carry out the greatest commandment.
3. The Greatest Commandment states that we should love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength and to love our neighbors as ourselves.
4. Based on the Greatest commandment, we created this image and focus statement for our congregation: The Wetzel Road Church of Christ is striving to be a group of Christians who are loving God, loving people, and loving truth.
5. Today, I want to remind us of that vision and how we can put it into practice.
G. When Jesus was asked what is the greatest commandment this is how He answered: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and most important command. The second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets depend on these two commands.” (Mt. 22:37-40)
1. How helpful it is for us to know what matters most to God.
2. In answering that 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.
3. 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… 13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
4. So, we see, that love is really the beginning and the end of all that God wants from us.
5. Now let’s define what loving God, loving people and loving truth looks like practically.
I. We are striving to be a group of Christians who are LOVING GOD.
A. But what does it mean to really love God?
1. 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 love God.”
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 entire selves: 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 preeminently (above all else), and totally (not partially, or mostly, but with our all).
B. But in addition to loving God preeminently 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.
a. Love must be more than an emotion, it must be an action.
2. Are we willing to love God practically and obediently?
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.
C. When we consider what it means to love God through obedience to God’s commands, it looks like this:
1. We show our love for God by believing in God and trusting in Him with all our heart?
2. We show our love for God by worshiping Him regularly and truthfully?
3. A deep and sincere love for God will cause us to serve God, pray to God, and give generously.
4. And a deep and sincere love for God will cause us to strive to live holy and pure lives, because God’s people are called to be holy as God is holy.
D. 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.
3. I hope it will be obvious that we worship so regularly, serve so willingly, pray so fervently, give so generously, and live so purely because we love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength.
II. We are striving to be a group of Christians who are LOVING PEOLE.
A. When we look back at Jesus’ answer about the greatest commandment, we notice that in addition to loving God, Jesus added: “The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”
1. I don’t have time to delve too deeply into this verse, but what is obvious 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 we won’t be able to do that for others?
3. If you have ever flown on an airplane, then you have heard this important safety procedure: “If the airplane loses pressure, the oxygen mask will drop. If you are traveling with a child, put the oxygen mask on yourself first, and then put the mask on your child.”
a. You have to put the mask on yourself first, because you can’t take care of another person if don’t first take care of yourself.
b. 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. On other occasions, when I have taught us about learning to love others as we love ourselves, I have given us two principles to guide us.
1. The first principle is the The Golden Rule: do to others as you would have them do to you.
2. The second principle is The Jesus Rule: treat people as if they are Jesus.
a. We all love Jesus and would want to treat Him as the King that He is and imagine if we treated everyone like we should treat Jesus?
b. Jesus told us that ultimately, how we treat others is how we treat Him.
3. I find both of those rules to be very helpful.
D. As we consider the target of loving people, let’s consider what that includes.
1. Loving people includes loving the people inside of the church family and outside of the church family.
2. When we love others, God would want us to love others unconditionally, which means with no strings attached or conditions to meet.
3. Loving people includes being willing to share ourselves and our lives with them – developing relationship and opening our homes and hearts to people.
4. Loving people means using our words to bless and help, rather than harm and destroy.
5. And when we love others, we will want to speak the truth in love and the most important truth we can share with the lost is the truth of the gospel of Jesus.
6. In Colossians 4, the apostle Paul encourages us act wisely toward outsiders and to let our speech always to be gracious, seasoned with salt.
a. Rather than starting with “You are lost and going to hell” (even though that is likely the truth), we should start with “God made you, God loves you and God wants to shower His grace on you and save you.”
b. People are more open to hearing us if we start with the good news rather than the bad news.
7. Loving people includes willingly serving them and their needs – whether they need us to help them carry their burdens or to invest in their lives.
E. 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.
a. God loves and values all people, but loving them and valuing them doesn’t mean God approves of all that they do; so we too can love people without approving of all they do.
3. 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.
4. Also, I hope and pray that people will see that our love for each other causes us to serve each other and invest in relationships with each other – we are the family of God.
III. Finally, We are 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 God is pleased when His people love the truth.
2. In Psalm 119, the longest chapter of the Bible (176 verses), 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) – I hope that none of us will refuse to love the truth and be lost!
B. God desires that His people will love the Word of God and love the truths of God found in it.
1. Our love for God and His Word should result in our desire to study and apply it to our lives.
2. This should be done in our own personal study and in our public study with other Christians.
3. But then, as we grow in our knowledge and our obedience to that knowledge, we must not let it puff us up – we must continue to walk humbly – no matter how knowledgeable or how godly we become, we will still be save by grace.
C. Being a people committed to loving truth, we must be committed to teaching and practicing what we find in the Word of God.
1. We must strive to love the truths about God, and Jesus, and the Holy Spirit (most cults and false gospels teach something untruthful about God, Jesus or the Holy Spirit).
2. We must strive to love the truths about the salvation found in Jesus, we are saved by grace through faith (this is another one of the truths that gets corrupted in cults and false gospels).
3. We must strive 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 must strive to love the truth of the church’s great commission to make disciples who make disciples of all nations.
5. And we must strive to love the truths about morality, the value of all people, the sanctity of human life, God’s design for marriage, and holiness; just to mention a few.
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 put what God says over anything that humans say.
3. I hope and pray that they see we have a passion to keep searching for truth and keep applying God’s truths in our daily lives, and that we do so with humility, not pride.
Conclusion:
A. I hope that this simple handle on what we are trying to do as a group of Christ-followers is helpful.
1. When someone wants to know what our church is all about, we can simply say: 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.
B. I want to end with an illustration from the life of artist James Whistler.
1. Whistler’s most famous painting is called “Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1” more popularly known as “Whistler’s Mother.”
2. When Whistler was at the height of his artistic career, a wealthy patron purchased one of his pictures on the condition that the artist would accompany him home and help select the right spot to hang the picture.
3. Whistler agreed and went to the patron’s home.
4. The man held up the picture in his house, first here, and then there, each time asking, “How about this?”
5. Finally, Whistler said, “You are going about this all wrong. What you must do is remove all the furnishings from the room, hang the picture where it will be best displayed, and then arrange the furniture in relationship to the picture.”
C. Similarly, many of us would like to add God and God’s truths to the furnishings of our lives, but what God requires is that He be placed as the focal point of our existence, and only then can we arrange the other aspects of our lives.
1. If we are going to have a proper relationship with God then we must start by putting “Loving God, Loving People, and Loving Truth” in its proper place in our lives.
2. When we do that, then we can arrange all the other goals and aspirations of our lives in their proper place.
3. Thank God that when we have the right focus before us – loving God, loving people, and loving truth – then we can navigate the tightrope of life that leads us to the right end.
