Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] You're listening to a live recording from Westside Church in Bend, Oregon. Thanks for joining us.
[00:00:06] Mark 12. We're going to talk about love and our culture is in love with the concept of love.
[00:00:14] We are completely obsessed with finding the feeling of love. We're in love with the idea of finding and feeling love. When it comes to love, it's not all the same.
[00:00:28] I love my wife, I love carnitas tacos, I love dogs, I love golf. But hopefully not all in the same way.
[00:00:40] They are different and the Greek language is much more robust. And they have eight different words to describe love. We have one that we just use for everything.
[00:00:52] Well, in the New Testament, which was written in Greek, four of those Greek words show up. I'll just give them to you real quick. The first one is Eros, which is romantic, ain't she hot kind of love.
[00:01:04] And then storje, which is familial love, family love. And then there's Philia, brotherly love, friendship love. And then agape, which is the unconditional sacrificial God love.
[00:01:22] Now we're going to look at Mark 12. Jesus is in the temple and he's debating with the religious leaders and they're trying to trap him with the letter of the law, which is just really a bad idea. He's God and it doesn't work out.
[00:01:41] But the great thing is Jesus just has the mic drop on the law of love in this section of scripture. Let's, let's look at it together. One of the teachers of the law came and heard him debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, of all the commandments, which is the most important? The most important one, answered Jesus, is this hero Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, with all your strength. The second is this. Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these. Well said, teacher. The man replied, you are right in saying that God is one and there is no other but him. To love him with all our heart, with all our understanding, with all our strength. And to love your neighbor as yourself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices. When Jesus saw that he had answered wisely, he said to him, you are not far from the kingdom of God. And then no one dared ask him any more questions.
[00:02:41] They smartened up. This idea of loving God. I think of that 18 year old standing in a weird church, not understanding all that was going on. And this idea of loving God, it was a hard one for me to get a hold of. I didn't feel it, I wanted it, I didn't feel it. And I wasn't sure how to connect in this way. Last week, Ben closed with a quote from St. Teresa. And I want to kind of kick things off with it. It was so good. Says this, oh, God, I don't love you. I don't even want to love you, but I want to want to love you. And I thought, man, that is so descriptive of how I have felt in my life, that I didn't necessarily have this, oh, you know, love island sort of connection with God.
[00:03:36] It didn't. I didn't have that. So I want to. But how.
[00:03:41] How do I love God and love my neighbor? How do I actually go about that? There's the word love, and then there's the definition of love. And love may not be what we necessarily think. So. So we need to get to some descriptions of love, the definitions of love. And the Apostle Paul wrote to the Corinthian Church in First Corinthians 13, it's the love chapter. If you've ever been to a wedding, you might have heard this section of Scripture. And it's. It's very descriptive of love. There's like 15 verb statements in here, seven of which say what love is, eight which say what love is not.
[00:04:21] And, well, let's just look at it. Love is patient. Love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others. It is not self seeking. It is not easily angered. It keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.
[00:04:50] You may kiss the bride.
[00:04:52] You know, that kind of where it goes from there. The point is, feelings are temporary.
[00:04:58] They come and they go. But love is more than a feeling. It's action. You can act your way to feelings, but rarely can you feel your way to action.
[00:05:10] If you're waiting, something you do and feelings follow. For example, January 1st, I made a commitment. I'm going to the gym every day. And so every day that I wake up and I feel like going to the gym, I'm going, haven't gone yet, but I'm waiting.
[00:05:33] See, love is an action that feelings follow. Here's the thing. You can't command feelings, but you can command action.
[00:05:43] I can command you to jump, but I can't command you to feel jumpy.
[00:05:49] I can command you to Smile. But I can't command you to feel joy.
[00:05:55] I used to command my son to apologize to his sister, but I couldn't command him to feel sorry.
[00:06:04] You know that story?
[00:06:07] In the same way, when God commands us to love him, our neighbors, our spouse, and even our enemies, he's not commanding us to feel something, he's commanding us to do something.
[00:06:17] This agape is powerful.
[00:06:21] Agape is strong enough to support the weight of life's relationships when feelings run out.
[00:06:29] This love is not only essential for you, it's essential for the people around you, people you live with, work with.
[00:06:37] Love is a challenge. When you're married or have a roommate, go to work, love is a challenge. Every time you walk out the door, it is.
[00:06:47] But love, love becomes a real challenge when someone hurts me.
[00:06:52] Jesus displayed this extraordinary agape on the cross when he said, father, forgive them. They don't know what they do.
[00:07:00] Jesus also said this in Luke 6. But to you who are willing to listen, sometimes when our hearts hurt, our ears don't work.
[00:07:10] I say, love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you.
[00:07:16] Okay, is it just me? That sounds hard.
[00:07:19] You know, I mean, anybody else here just struggling to love the people you came here with today?
[00:07:25] You know, don't look right or left.
[00:07:32] What does loving God and my neighbor look like? And you've got these 15 action steps in 1 Corinthians 13. I want to look at two of them just randomly. That can be a challenge, but they're really important to being able to love my neighbor. And I want to be completely transparent here about what a struggle these two are for Ben and Evan. It's, it's, it's something I've witnessed.
[00:08:02] The first one is this. Love is not easily angered.
[00:08:06] Love is not easily angered. How you doing?
[00:08:10] Uh huh.
[00:08:11] I can get angry with people. I can get ticked off. Just when I'm driving the car, I can get ticked off. You know what else I can get ticked off at?
[00:08:23] When someone messes with my stuff, my property, I can get ticked off. I was, a couple months ago, I was downtown, I was going to park on Bond Street. You know how you just sort of slide into those parking spaces and it's really convenient until you're backing up?
[00:08:41] Well, I slid in and I was just sitting there in the car for a bit and I was praying or texting, I'm pretty sure I was praying and I noticed out of the corner of my eye a car pull in next to me and didn't look over or anything, but all of a sudden Whoever's in the passenger seat threw the door open and bashed my car.
[00:09:05] And I was just immediately filled with love.
[00:09:13] Not so much so. It was like I just wanted to, you know, I fortunately gathered myself for a moment, I opened the door, which shocked this young teenage girl. She didn't know anyone was in the car, she had just bashed.
[00:09:32] And I looked at her and she is now very fearful. And I said, really?
[00:09:43] And I knew I just needed to not say anything more.
[00:09:47] And she just scurried to the sidewalk and her dad's there and kind of what was. And then he marches her back and we're looking at this ding with their paint on my white car.
[00:10:00] And he starts to talk and I said, you know, I've got two kids and seven grandkids, I think we should just forget this. And he says, I think that's an excellent idea.
[00:10:12] I was successful on that one.
[00:10:15] Well, my friend Wayne used to say this a lot and I love it. He used to say this, if I'm easily offended, I'll be easily defeated.
[00:10:25] Oh, that is so true. Especially in the context of this command. Love God, love your neighbor. But if I just get completely twisted up over someone's social media post or a news headline or some comment in a group of people, if that just. I'm going to be easily defeated. I'm not going to accomplish a whole lot of love because I have this righteous anger.
[00:10:55] Jesus. Name another example of my anger. A few years ago I was in the hotel rooms at a conference. We had gone late and we were going to have an early start. At 2am I am suddenly woken up because there's a bunch of drunks in the hallway and they are partying it up. I'm thinking, okay, I gotta get some sleep here. They'll move on. They didn't. I think they pulled a keg out into the hall and they're just partying it up and I'm getting madder and madder and madder and I'm thinking I'm just gonna go out there and tear them apart. So I get up and I rip my shirt off and then I put that back on because that's not gonna help.
[00:11:42] And I go to the door and I'm just, alright, I'm gonna make a big entrance. And I forgot I'd flip that. You know, they got the little steel thing and I flipped that over and oh, that's not a good. So I flipped it over and I just yanked it open and I planted the steel thing right here, right in the Middle of my head. And I'm just immediately like, oh, I'm seeing stars. And I'm going. I don't. I think I'm gonna fall down here. And I made a decision in that moment to let it go.
[00:12:13] To just let it go. Proverbs 29. Fools vent their anger, but the wise quietly hold it back. I just want you to know I was successful in that moment to quietly hold it back, stumble back to the bed and collapse.
[00:12:30] James, older brother, the apostle James was Jesus. And I think if there's any of the disciples of Jesus Christ that could have had some anger issues, it's James.
[00:12:43] How would you like it if you grew up with the older brother was Jesus?
[00:12:50] James? Why can't you make your bed like Jesus, James? Why don't you listen like Jesus, James? Maybe you should ask yourself, what would Jesus do?
[00:13:02] You know, at some point, I'm guessing he just storms out of the house, he's with his buddies, and goes, dang it. That Jesus just thinks he's so perfect.
[00:13:10] He discovered later that he in fact, was perfect.
[00:13:13] He obviously got over his anger issues. He wrote this in James 1. Understand this, my dear brothers and sisters. You must be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to get angry.
[00:13:25] Huh?
[00:13:27] I think that's essential to loving my neighbor.
[00:13:32] I have never gotten into a fight because I was listening so intently.
[00:13:38] But, man, once I start talking, I can change the atmosphere like that.
[00:13:46] And you've been hurt, you've been mistreated, maybe you've been abused, you've been wronged. All legitimate reasons to be angry.
[00:13:57] But ask yourself, how is my anger impacting my other relationships? The big lie is I can be angry at you and love everybody else just fine.
[00:14:09] But the truth is I can punish someone who loves me for what someone else did to me in my past.
[00:14:17] And I just cycle it forward. If I don't deal with it, I recycle it.
[00:14:24] The point is, what I don't repair, I will repeat repair. That's my part. See, I can't repair you.
[00:14:34] And in those situations, we often try to change the other person.
[00:14:39] When I work on repair, understand this.
[00:14:43] My repair efforts may not be received, but that doesn't mean I still don't need the repair work.
[00:14:50] How do I love my neighbor? Maybe you need to begin a conversation of repair in your life.
[00:14:57] Look for the small step forward and take.
[00:15:01] Doesn't mean it'll be one and done, but begin a process.
[00:15:08] The second thing from this section of scripture that Ben and Evans struggle with is love keeps no Record of wrongs.
[00:15:18] Okay, this is getting really easy, isn't it? Keeps no record of wrongs. If I'm going to love my neighbor, I have to realize that I have a list. I have a list of wrongs that have happened to me, that have hurt me in the past.
[00:15:32] And then when anything happens that sounds like that or feels like that past hurt, I react. Even though the person and the situation are not related in any way.
[00:15:41] But I'm protecting myself.
[00:15:45] I'm covering myself.
[00:15:47] Carmen and I have been married for almost 50 years.
[00:15:52] And do you think that over those 50 years I've accumulated any wrongs?
[00:15:57] Do you think in those 50 years that I have said anything that made her roll her eyes?
[00:16:06] Do you think that Maybe in those 50 years there's ever been a time where we've been at some gathering and we get back in the car and she looks at me and says really?
[00:16:18] Or she looks at me and says nothing for days.
[00:16:27] Well, we've learned and are learning to keep short accounts and to have those conversations of repair often.
[00:16:38] And she's getting better.
[00:16:44] But we have our list. That's what this is about.
[00:16:47] You see, we have our list. Oh, I remember when that one happened. Oh, I'll never forget that one.
[00:16:55] Oh, that hurts so much. And what we do is we have these lists and we keep them and we get ready. You get ready for your day and then before you go out, you grab your list and you head out the door. Because you gotta be on the lookout.
[00:17:11] Because if you do something or say something that's on this list, I've gotta protect myself.
[00:17:16] Cause you people are dangerous.
[00:17:21] You're mean and you're ill intentioned toward me.
[00:17:25] And as a result, what happens is we build the lists up.
[00:17:30] Carmen and I were 21 years old when we got married and we had a few things to learn.
[00:17:37] And as we walked through this thing called marriage, there was some repair work. You know, we would look at. Oh, you always, you never.
[00:17:50] And we had our list and the walls went up.
[00:17:59] The thing about those lists is when you have them, you're always on alert.
[00:18:04] And a level two offense, they all become level 10 because it's the last straw.
[00:18:12] I'm not going to take this anymore.
[00:18:17] The lists grow and as we got to know each other better, they grew more.
[00:18:23] Because that's just so annoying what they do.
[00:18:28] It was so cute at first and now it's not.
[00:18:34] We got to know each other better. It's kind of like coming to a new church. You think all these people are so Friendly. You just don't know them yet.
[00:18:44] That's the issue. Get ready.
[00:18:48] The work of repair is a risk.
[00:18:51] And you have to take it one offense at a time. And at some point, in loving God and loving my neighbor, I got to say, I'm letting it go.
[00:19:02] I'm letting that one go. I'm not going to hold onto it any longer. I want to be free. So I'm letting it go.
[00:19:11] And all the other parts of it, I'm letting it go. But it's a risk because am I doing this and letting you off the hook?
[00:19:24] Because that was bad.
[00:19:27] Well, it's not about letting them off the hook. It's about you being free.
[00:19:31] It's the repair work in you. See, not every relationship should be restored.
[00:19:39] There are people in your life that you might look back at and say, well, how could that ever be restored? Well, maybe it doesn't and shouldn't be restored, but you can still be healed. The restoration is for you, it's for me.
[00:19:57] And you might have to figure out which is which. Maybe get some help, a third party, a counselor, someone you trust. What do you think of this?
[00:20:09] First, Peter 4 says, above all, love each other deeply. Because love covers a multitude of sins, it doesn't mean that love is a cover up. It doesn't mean that love covers failures without an outcome. See, love covers failures and sins rather than exposing them.
[00:20:34] I watched a little clip last week, Jason Alexander George on Seinfeld, and he was being asked about his 40 plus year marriage and how has he pulled this off? And he took a quote he said was from Raisin and the sun, describing his wife. He said, on my worst day, she remembers me on my best day and beckons me back.
[00:20:58] And I thought, oh, that's, that's my girl too. I've got one of those.
[00:21:05] And I thought, wow, that's a great statement for loving my neighbor.
[00:21:14] How do I do that? Well, one of my go to verses for relationships is Romans 12:18. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. First of all, if it's possible, meaning it's not always possible, do your part and then let it go.
[00:21:38] Let it go.
[00:21:40] But you need peace. And sometimes we don't deal with it at all. We avoid all conflict because we're fearful of the outcome. Having the conversation. What I'm really avoiding is peace within me.
[00:21:55] Sometimes to love another, you need to have a loving conversation, confrontation. And sometimes to love another, you just need to let it go.
[00:22:06] It's a level 2 I know it feels like a level 10, but it's not.
[00:22:15] The point is, we don't want to be living like this, hiding. Because what I hide won't heal.
[00:22:24] When I was in junior high, I found out about a party that was happening on an island.
[00:22:31] Mackenzie river in Springfield, where I was growing up, and high schoolers throwing a party. Keger. It's like, I'm going, I'm in seventh grade.
[00:22:43] I look like I'm in third grade.
[00:22:47] And I go to the party, and I'm like, yeah, I'm a big dog and big bonfire. They've built this huge bonfire, and some of these high schoolers are running up this big log in the fire and leaping through the flames.
[00:23:05] And I went, I'm doing that. I'm going to impress these guys. I'll show them. And I took a run up that log and slipped and went right into the coals, right into the flame. And fortunately, some guy saw what I was going to do, and he was ready, and he just yanked me out of there. But I had this leg landed right in the hot coals.
[00:23:30] And I didn't know what it was. I knew I'd burned it, but I didn't know what a third degree burn was. And my mom's a nurse, and I thought, I'm going to be in such big trouble. So I just took care of myself, and I just got home and kind of gently cleaned it up and then just wrapped it in gauze.
[00:23:45] And a few days later, I'm limping through the house, and I said, what's. What's going on?
[00:23:51] I think, what's that smell?
[00:23:54] My leg was rotting, and so she took my pants off. I'm in seventh grade, and she sees this mess, and she starts ripping it off and lecturing me. And then is debrading all of yeah. And guess what? It started to heal.
[00:24:18] It was no longer hidden, and it was a painful process, but really better than an amputation.
[00:24:31] What I hide won't heal. We're still going to have hurts that aren't healed.
[00:24:37] We're going to still have repair for broken pieces. Our soul. That's going to continue. We're in a process.
[00:24:47] So along the way, cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you. It's a process.
[00:24:56] So the idea of loving God and loving my neighbor, we can't wait until we're perfectly healed.
[00:25:02] You're probably not going to fully get there. So in the process, cast your cares. Go to him.
[00:25:09] Learn to release.
[00:25:12] I'm not saying it's easy. It'll take practice, one at a time. And sometimes you're going to be here and you're going to go, not yet, and deal with it.
[00:25:23] Gotta practice letting it go.
[00:25:27] How? Take the small step forward that you've got the courage to take, to risk this. Releasing. There's a requirement. Release by receiving.
[00:25:40] That's the step. In order to walk in agape toward others, I have to receive and embrace the agape that's flowing toward me.
[00:25:49] That's what I have to do to pull this command off.
[00:25:53] Matter of fact, loving God and my neighbor is my response to being fully loved.
[00:26:01] We're dispensers, distributors of love that he has already given to us. We don't generate it, we pass it along.
[00:26:12] This scene In Mark 12, Jesus is teaching and interacting. He's talking about these commands. And then in John 13, it's the last Supper and he's washing their feet and he says this. So now I'm giving you a new commandment. Love each other. Just as I have loved you, you should love each other. Well, wait a minute. What's the new. He's already said. It's been around for a long time. What's the new commandment? Here Jesus is telling the disciples how to love God and love your neighbor.
[00:26:46] We love because he first loved us.
[00:26:50] He commands us to love from this posture of being fully loved. We've got to begin here to do that. Out there.
[00:27:01] Are you able to receive?
[00:27:03] Are you able to receive this complete acceptance from God, complete forgiveness from God? Are you able to bring that in, casting your cares? Because you're going to jack it up every now and then, but receive it. Can you pull that off?
[00:27:25] Choose to. That's an action you can achieve.
[00:27:33] Jesus stopped at nothing so that we could heal and repair and love. And it begins with his love toward us.
