March 10, 2002

Matthew 22:34-40

Learning to See with God’s Eyes

  1. Introduction
    1. Illustration – Windstorm and the invisible roots mattering more that the visible trees.
    2. Context – We have the same problem with our vision when it comes to what our church is supposed to be all about. We tend to have tunnel vision, seeing only what fits our own frame of reference. But God has given us a vision, one that encompasses His entire reality for our church, and we’re turning to Matthew 22:34-40 to see what it is.
  1. Scripture Passage
    1. Matthew 22:34-40 from The Message – When the Pharisees heard how he had bested the Sadducees, they gathered their forces for an assault. One of their religious scholars spoke for them, posing a question they hoped would show him up: "Teacher, which command in God’s Law is the most important?" Jesus said, "’Love the Lord your God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence.’ This is the most important, the first on any list. But there is a second to set alongside it: ’Love others as well as you love yourself.’ These two commands are pegs; everything in God’s Law and the Prophets hangs from them."
  1. Love as Our Motivation
    1. You know, the religious scholar asked Jesus an interesting question. Sure, his motivation for asking was wrong, but not because he didn’t believe in following God’s commands. The problem was that the scholar based his entire relationship with God on doing the right things, performing the right rituals, staying away from anything that might be the least bit questionable. The Jews had been exiled from their country once for ignoring God’s commands and doing their own thing, so the natural over-reaction of the religious leaders of Jesus’ time was to go overboard on being legalistic. They didn’t want to get thrown out of their country again.
    2. But this scholar, like his colleagues, missed the point of the whole law. It’s a bit ironic that, while Moses preached obedience as a means to right relationship with God, the Jewish leaders of Jesus’ time preached obedience as right relationship with God. They were so close to getting it right! That’s why Jesus had such a hard time dealing with them! So close but they wouldn’t get it! They had tunnel vision, and their tunnel vision didn’t include who God really was!
    3. Jesus’ answer to the question focused on one thing and one thing only – relationship with God. Loving God with all of our passion and all of our prayer and with all of our intelligence is the most important thing we can ever do. Jesus is saying that focusing all of our being on loving God is the greatest act of obedience that we could ever do. Loving God that way will transform us so that we grow to be more and more like Him. Loving God that way will enable us to obey the second command Jesus gives – loving others as well as we love ourselves. We can’t love others like we love ourselves without loving God with everything we are and have.
    4. That’s the bottom line. People are too annoying to love as much as we love ourselves without God’s intervention. People are too weird to love as much as we love ourselves without God’s intervention. People are too selfish to love as much as we love ourselves without God’s intervention. By doing everything we can to build our relationship with God, we are enabled to love other people as well as we love ourselves, even if they are just like us. Loving God with all of our passion and prayer and intelligence is the only cure for our tunnel vision.
    5. Illustration - C. S. Lewis, in The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses (New York: Macmillan, 1949, 2), wrote, "Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition, when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased!" Are we going to love God with all of our passion and prayer and intelligence and love others like we love ourselves, or are we going to continue messing around in the mud? That a choice each one of us has to make.
  1. God’s Vision for Us
    1. You may be thinking, "You know, all this stuff about love and God is great, but how do I do it? How does it work in my life?" That’s the right question to being asking. Truth is good to know, but it doesn’t make any kind of an impact in our lives if we don’t know how to apply it. God has told us how to apply these truths to our lives as individuals and as a church. This "how-to" is condensed into what we call our vision statement.
    2. The passion of Sodaville Evangelical Church is to reach people for Christ by accepting all people where they’re at and moving them toward Christ-like maturity. We do this by providing a safe and stable place to share, serve, and grow together into a loving Christian family. Good words. They embody what Jesus taught in the passage from Matthew we’ve been looking at. There is one problem with them that we’ve got to settle – where does the passion come from? Where does the passion come from to reach people for Jesus Christ and love them into the kingdom of God?
    3. If we try to do our vision statement on our own strength, what happens? We start out okay, because we can fake our way through anything for a short period of time. But when the really difficult times come and the people who are struggling with some really tough issues come through the door, we fail. We fail because no human being has it in themselves to love so unconditionally and accept so freely on their own strength. So when we try to generate our own passion, we get nowhere fast.
    4. On the other hand, when we use passion given to us by God, we can do mighty things for Him. We are freed to love people we have nothing in common with. We are freed to accept them and to lead them to faith in Jesus and to grow closer to Him. We are freed to share with them, serve with them, and grow in love with them. All this happens when our passion for fulfilling God’s vision for us comes not from ourselves but from God Himself. So how do we get passion from God to do this? Through loving Him with all of our passion and all of our prayer and all of our intelligence – with everything we are and have. When we love Him that strongly and passionately, He will give us the passion and the ability to love other people. Then the vision of Sodaville Evangelical Church will be fulfilled. And God will be glorified.
    5. Illustration - J. V. Taylor, in The Go-Between God (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972, 19) wrote, The Holy Spirit is that power which opens eyes that are closed, hearts that are unaware and minds that shrink from too much reality.... Vision and vulnerability go together. How willing are we to be vulnerable enough to love God with all we are and have?
  1. Conclusion
    1. If you want to love God with all that you are and all that you have, and you want to love others as well as you love yourself, now’s the time to take action. If you’re going to commit to loving God and loving others just like Jesus said, and if you’re going to commit to allowing God to use you to fulfill the vision He has given our church, come forward right now.
    2. Our world simply can’t wait for us to spend our time making mud pies in the slums. Our world can’t wait for us to start loving as Jesus loves and reaching out as Jesus reaches out. So if you want to be a part of what God wants to do here at Sodaville, you’ve got to love God with everything you are and have and love others as well as you love yourself. Again, if you want to commit to doing that and to working to fulfill the vision God has given our church, come forward now.
 1