This morning, we celebrate God’s goodness and faithfulness to and through the Marin Community Christian Church for the last 22 years. Biblical Christianity recognizes that church is not a building or an organization. The church is made up of learners and followers of Jesus Christ.
So this morning, to the best of my ability, I’m going to tell you what Jesus said is important to His followers. Jesus summed up the first and second most important commandments for His followers in Matthew 22:36-40. And before Jesus ascended into Heaven, Jesus gave us His commission, and we find this in Matthew 28:18-20.
The purpose of the Christian Church remains unchanged for 2000 years. The purpose comes from Jesus’ first and second commandments and His commission. We can summarize all three in one sentence: To develop people who love God, love each other and love self, and to teach the world to do the same.
When we apply this purpose of the church to our specific community, we come up with our local church mission statement: "To bring English-speaking Asians in our community into a right and healthy relationship with God and with one another through Jesus Christ and to multiply our effort by supporting missionaries, church planters and church plants who minister beyond our focus and community."
Someone tells about a child who found his Father reading a magazine in the den. He asked his Dad to play with him. But the Father wanted to read quietly for another 30 minutes. So he found a page in his magazine with the map of the world. He cut the page into little pieces and gave the pieces to his son as a puzzle.
The Father said, "Son, here’s a roll of tape and some puzzle pieces. When you get done with this puzzle, I’ll play with you."
To the Father’s surprise, the son came back within five minutes with the puzzle of the world completed. The Father asked, "Son, how did you know which piece of the world went with which piece of the world?"
The son replied, "Dad, that was easy. On the back of the world picture was a picture of a man. I knew that if I got the man right, I would get the world right."
This morning, Jesus wants us to know: "If we get the Christian right, we will get the church right. And if we get the church right, we will get the world right."
So let’s begin with us who are here this morning. What kind of person does Jesus want us to become?
First, Jesus wants us to love God, totally. Matthew 22:37-38
From the book of Genesis to the book of Revelation, the supreme command is to love God. Find your satisfaction in God. Love God above all else. The person who loves God totally is the person who is living as God intended.
Yet, the Bible is clear that no one, besides Jesus, has lived as God intended. All have tried finding satisfaction in lesser things than God. Adam tried to find satisfaction from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. You and I try to find satisfaction in temporary pleasures, material possessions, popularity or prestige.
The television evangelists who were caught in adultery and embezzlement were not taking advantage of God’s goodness. They didn’t believe God was good enough to satisfy. Unfortunately, when they found that adultery and money didn’t satisfy, their lives were already ruined by adultery and embezzlement.
C.S. Lewis wrote, "If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world." Nothing in this world can satisfy us, because we are made for life and love with God.
Whenever we love something more than we love God, we are trying to find satisfaction in lesser things. We are easily satisfied with a pretty girl, a large screen TV, a yearly vacation or a new house. We are satisfied with things too small without seeking the greatest satisfaction found only in God.
But what if your early experience with the church taught you that God was like the security camera in a Seven-Eleven store, that He doesn’t care about you unless you do something wrong? Then He would punish you for your wrongdoing. Or maybe you grew up in an environment where you were taught there is no God, that God didn’t exist?
How then, can you love God? The answer is: Let God love you first. 1 John 4:19 tells us, "We love because [God] first loved us."
We can only love if we have been loved, and we can only love to the degree we have been loved. When I fell in love with my wife, Susan, I felt good around her. I felt loved by her, and I felt loved by God. Therefore, I had enough love to give to Susan.
We can easily love God because God initiated the love relationship. Remember God created this world to meet our needs for life, and when we ignored God, God came in Jesus Christ to demonstrate His great love for us on the cross. When we let God love us first, we naturally love God back.
Steve Brown tells about a woman whose husband left her for a younger and prettier girl. The woman vowed she would never remarry, but that if she did, she would marry the ugliest man in town. That way, no one else would steal him away from her.
Two years later, she did exactly that. She married the ugliest man in town. And that man would many times sit around and just smile, because he couldn’t believe that she would marry him.
We ought to sometimes just sit around and be amazed by God’s love for us. Only then can we love God back. Jesus wants us to love God totally, not out of fear or duty, but out of satisfaction and pleasure.
Second, Jesus wants us to love ourselves, obviously. Matthew 22:39
Jesus assumes that we love ourselves. The Bible never condemns self-love. Even when Jesus calls us to die to ourselves or to deny ourselves, He is acting like the coach who wants the athlete to experience greater satisfaction ultimately at the price of temporary sacrifice.
Many of us have been taught that self-love is the same as selfishness. Selfishness excludes love for God and love for others. Self-love is motivated by love for God and love for others.
I was on the phone with a new guest to our church. He commented that he felt really good being welcomed by our church members. He felt valuable. I told him he should feel valuable. He is made in the image of God. Each one of us should feel valuable. We ought to love ourselves. The Bible teaches we are made in God’s image.
When a person loves himself, he or she will exercise, eat well and live according to God’s plan. He will have self-control and work hard to achieve life’s rewards. When a person loves herself, she will be sure to seek the greatest rewards in life, which is a personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ.
C.S. Lewis wrote, "[The problem] is that our [God] finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling around with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered [to] us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he can’t imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at sea. We are too easily pleased (quoted from Desiring God by John Piper)."
Jesus wants us to love ourselves, obviously. We need to be careful we are not lazy about self-love and that we do not settle for lesser things.
Third, Jesus wants us to love others, equally. Matthew 22:39
Let me use the illustration from marriage to help us understand why loving another is the same as loving ourselves. Ephesians 5:28-29 reads, "In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it...."
Ted Engstrom tells about a man who was getting ready to divorce his wife. He was so mean that he wanted to make the divorce as hurtful as possible for his wife. He concluded that he would treat his wife like a queen for two months.
He would do everything in his power to please her in the next 60 days. He would listen to her whenever she wanted to talk. He would help around the house. He would take her out to dinner on the weekends, even to romantic weekend vacations. And then at the end of the two months, he would pack his bags and just leave. That would certainly set her up for a great loss.
Do you want to know what happened at the end of the two months? After two months of treating his wife like a queen, the man didn’t want to leave his wife anymore. He was now married to a queen. He found that he has never been happier.
This is not a far-fetched story. I’ve found that when I treat my wife, Susan, like a queen, I become married to a queen. When I treat Susan like a boring housekeeper, I become married to a boring housekeeper.
In all our daily relationships, Jesus wants us to love others, equally. To the degree that we do not love others, we do not love God and we do not love ourselves.
Fourth, Jesus wants us to reproduce this love, endlessly. Matthew 28:18-20
Jonathan Edwards noted, "Jesus knew that all mankind were in the pursuit of happiness. He has directed them in the true way to it, and He tells them what they must become in order to be blessed and happy (quoted from Desiring God by John Piper)."
If we are to teach others everything Jesus commanded us, we certainly need to include what Jesus said about true and eternal happiness, which comes from loving God totally, loving self obviously, and loving others equally.
Susan and I give financially to support Prison Fellowship, a ministry that teaches about Jesus’ love in prisons. We do this for three reasons. First, we support Prison Fellowship for the love of God: The Bible tells us that whatever we do for prisoners, we have done unto God. Second, we support Prison Fellowship for the love of others: Even prisoners are valuable, because they too are made in the image of God. Third, we support Prison Fellowship for the love of self: When we support the ministry of Prison Fellowship, we are decreasing the chances of prisoners returning to a life of crime when they are released into our neighborhoods.
Someone asked the question, "If you were to see 10 men in black trench coats walking down the street toward you, and this happened at 10 pm at night, would you rather that these 10 men came from a Bible study or a bar?
There is something about the teachings of Jesus Christ that, when reproduced in men and women, would make the world a safer place. Someone coming to our church and learning about Christianity, wrote in an email to me, "If all the people in the world were Christians, the world would be peaceful.... That would be wonderful."
John Piper coined the term, "Christian hedonist" in his book, Desiring God. A hedonist is someone whose purpose in life is to find maximum pleasure and happiness. Piper exposes from the Bible that God made mankind to find our maximum satisfaction and happiness in God Himself. "God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in God."
The church that is made up of Christian hedonists is a healthy church, because Christian hedonists love God totally, love self obviously, love others equally, and reproduce this love, endlessly. You see if we get the Christian right, we’ll get the church right. And if we get the church right, we’ll get the world right.
