By Rev.
Brian Wilkie
Pastor of St. Andrew's Christian Community
Rockland, Ontario
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PODCAST LINK to CFRA
broadcast - Sunday, September 20th, 2015:
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Broadcast Notes:
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‘A New Commandment’
For today’s show I want to mention a particular person who
has been a great support over the years to our program, and unfortunately I
have to do this in memory of him, because Reverend Mel Newman died on July 12
of this year. We’ll be missing his encouragement, his support and his wisdom,
as he’s been a great servant of the Lord through the years, and we’re thankful
for the great hope that we have in Jesus Christ for the resurrection of the
dead and that Mel will receive his reward with the Lord.
Today I want to address the topic of the new command that
Jesus gave to his disciples. He
addressed his disciples on the evening of his crucifixion, and he spoke to them
about many things, but this is one of the parts of what he said after Judas had
left to go and betray him
"Jesus said to the disciples, 'Now is the son of man
glorified and God is glorified in him.
If God is glorified in him, God will glorify the son in himself, and
will glorify him at once. My children, I
will be with you only a little
longer. You will look for me, and just
as I told the Jews, so I now tell you.
Where I am going, you cannot come. A new command I give you. Love one another as i have loved you, so you
must love one another. By this all
people will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.'”
This was the scripture from the gospel of John 13:31-35, and
in it Jesus announces a new commandment for his disciples.
Now throughout the teachings that he gave through the
Gospels, at the Sermon on the Mount in the gospel of Matthew, at various
teaching places throughout Mark, Luke and John, Jesus expands upon the law of
God that was given to Moses for the people of Israel. And he insists that he’s not there to destroy
the law. In fact he says that not one
jot or tittle, not one dot on an I, not one crossing of a t, will be forgotten
from God’s law until he comes again. So he completes the law and he actually
strengthens the law. From a law that
focused very often on the external things we did, Jesus presses into the motive. He takes the command about not murdering
someone, and he says, 'But if you’ve been so enraged by your brother. If you are harboring in your heart a thought
of anger or a thought of hurt for someone because of your anger, then you’re
already breaking that command.'
He said about faithfulness, he said that not only should one
not physically commit adultery, he said that if you look at a woman in lust,
you’ve already broken the law. And so he
tells us to take the law a little deeper, a little farther, in terms of not
just loving on the outside, of not just being ship-shape with the externals,
but looking into the heart.
He speaks sometimes about not washing just the outside of
the cup and leaving the inside of the cup dirty . Can you imagine that if your dishwasher
cleaned up the outside of the cup but all the leftover drink or food or
whatever was in the dish remained in there getting disgusting, day by day. It would be foolish to wash the outside and
not the inside, and Jesus does the same thing with the law. So he really doesn’t add to the law until he
comes to this place. He expands upon it,
but here he introduces a brand new command, and I’m going to suggest that he
couldn’t have given this command any earlier in history or in his life.
We’ll take a look at that in a few minutes. But first I’d like you to hear with me, the
Glen Campbell song, You Ask Me How I Know
… this is from his album the Inspirational
Collection, and I invite you to listen to it with me.
When we look at the new command of Jesus, we come to the
whole question of how much Christians are expected to live by the direction of
Jesus. I know that it should be
obvious. We say that Jesus is Lord and
there’s no one above Him, no one beside him, no one beyond him. That he is the one that directs our lives and
that we ought to be able to say, our lives are completely devoted to him. But we so often fall short of that, that we may start to wonder just how good do we
need to be. Well, Paul addresses the people of Thessalonica when he writes to
the Christians there and he says,
“Finally brothers, we instructed you how to live in order to
please God, as in fact you are living .
Now we ask you and urge you in
the Lord Jesus to do this more and more.For you know what instructions we gave
you by the authority of the Lord. It is
God’s will that you should be sanctified; that you should avoid sexual
immorality; that each of you should learn to control his own body in a way that
is holy and honourable. Not in passionate lust like the heathen who do not know
God, and that in this matter no one should wrong his brother or take advantage
of him. The Lord will punish men for all
such sins, as we have already told you and warned you. For God did not call us
to be impure, but to live a holy life.
Therefore, he who rejects this instruction does not reject man but God
who gives you his Holy Spirit.
“And now about brotherly love: We do not need to write to
you. For you, yourselves, have been taught by God to love each other, and in
fact you do love all the brothers throughout Macedonia. Yet we urge you to do so more and more. More
and more. Sometimes we can beat
ourselves, goad ourselves to try and do more and more. And wonder where it might end. What does it mean to live a holy life? What
does it mean to be sanctified, set apart for God?
Sometimes we wonder how much can a human being do? How good can a human being be? We will say to ourselves, well, I’m only human. And in that way think that we’re excusing sin in our lives. But here’s the thing, we need to know exactly how good a human can be, and we need to know something related.
Sometimes we wonder how much can a human being do? How good can a human being be? We will say to ourselves, well, I’m only human. And in that way think that we’re excusing sin in our lives. But here’s the thing, we need to know exactly how good a human can be, and we need to know something related.
God is asking a lot of us, when he asks us to
love in the way that He has called us to love.
And what’s the measure of how much he’s loved us. In this new
commandment Jesus gives, we see an inkling about the answer to both those
questions. You see, God has told us to
love one another. He’s given us examples
in his law about what love will look like when it’s played out. He’s also given examples in parables and
teachings to show us how to love one another. He’s told us a lot. He’s instructed us through generations, and
yet this new command comes after all those thousands of years of leading the
people of Israel.
Centuries of instruction, of training and discipline, and now we come to a new command, to love one another as he has loved us. You see this command couldn’t have come any sooner in history or in Jesus’ ministry, because we don’t know how God has loved us until we see Jesus’ life played out before us, even to the point of the cross.
Centuries of instruction, of training and discipline, and now we come to a new command, to love one another as he has loved us. You see this command couldn’t have come any sooner in history or in Jesus’ ministry, because we don’t know how God has loved us until we see Jesus’ life played out before us, even to the point of the cross.
The measure of his love is
expressed to a degree in his faithfulness through all the generations. The measure of his love is expressed to a degree in the that
care he’s given to the people of Israel.
The measure of his love is expressed to a degree in his healings, in his
teachings, in his patience with his disciples.
And yet the full measure of his love is not known until we see his
greater love, of laying down his life for his friends. Jesus says precisely that to his disciples so
that they will understand what he’s about to do. Greater love has no one than
this, that a man should lay down his life for his friends. And yet Paul tells us that in laying down his
life, Jesus was doing something greater than the love that we’ve seen in anyone
before. For Paul says, you know for a good person, one might possibly lay
down one’s life. But God showed his love
for us in this, that while we were still sinners, still enemies of God, Jesus laid
down his life for us, as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. So, Jesus has now set a new bar. What is this love that he calls us to give to
each other. It’s the love that lays down our lives, just as God has laid down
his life for us.
How close can we come to living out this love? We’re only human. Well, here’s the thing. Our
scriptures teach us that Jesus Christ was fully human; fully human. That means
that he was tempted in every way. That means that he got hungry and weak. That means that he got hungry and thirsty. In
fact, he experienced every kind of hardship that we ourselves faced. He faced
rejection from his friends, from his own mother who came with some of his
brothers and said, Jesus you need to come away and take some time apart,
because they thought he was going mad.
He faced rejection by powerful people.
He faced thanklessness and ungratefulness from people that he had
helped, whatever you’re going through, whatever loss you might have
experienced, you can be sure that Jesus Christ knows not from a distance, but
from his own life. And yet, (the) scripture says that Jesus was without
sin. Jesus did not sin. How is it possible that a human being, born
in the flesh, growing up under human guidance from his mother and Father, living
in a broken world. How is it that Jesus
was able to live a sinless life.
Well, we’ll take a look at that in more depth and we’ll take
a look at what that means for how we can love one another after we listen to
this next song, which is from Mark Schultz.
And he prays to God, Give Me Jesus. This is from his album, Simply Hymns.
Jesus our brother, who shared with us human weakness, lived
a sinless life. He always deferred to
his Father. Whenever he wanted to go and
be by himself he went actually to be with his Father. He said over and over again that he didn’t do
anything on his own, but only what His Father in heaven told him to do. And perhaps we’re afraid to be as committed
to the Father as Jesus is. Perhaps we
don’t trust God entirely. Perhaps,
rather than being merely human, the problem is that we are of little
faith. We don’t trust God’s way. We can see in Jesus’ life that when he put
himself fully into the care of the Father, that the Father was ready to help
him, support him, and lead him all the way.
Did his life always lead him down a flowery pathway? Did he always experience wealth and prosperity
and all those things that so many people want to promise? No.
Jesus did suffer hardship in following his Father. But his Father was always faithful to him. He could love and give his life. Not just on the cross but daily as he called his
disciples to, because his Father held his future in his hands. Even when he went to the cross, the
scriptures tells us that it was for the glory set before him he endured the
cross. He trusted that his heavenly
Father would make something of his death.
He trusted that his heavenly Father would receive him into everlasting
life, as he had shared that everlasting life with the Father for all eternity. He trusted the Father and showed us that we
can do the same.
There’s even a hymn that suggest that his death of course
was for us, and the grave of course was for us and the resurrection was for
us; a demonstration for us of God’s
great love. And it was Jesus coming back
to life to continue his gift and his service to humanity of salvation. And he ascended into heaven for us and he
sits on God's right hand for us and intercedes with him for us. Jesus was fully guarded and kept by his
Father, even through the sacrifices that his love called him to make.
If we want to obey the command to love as Christ has loved,
we need to trust God as Christ has taught us, as Christ has shown us. There’s so much more to loving one another as
Christ has loved us, of actually laying
down our lives, both metaphorically, for the most part. But day by day, giving of ourselves, trusting
our Father who sees what is done, will take care of us in the end.
Can we love as Christ has loved? Not without the same help that Christ
had. Because he was not alone, He had an
unbroken relationship with his Father from the beginning. And he has given to
us a restored relationship with God, and given us his Holy Spirit so that we
can share in the power and the trust and the faith which only the Spirit can
give. We need to lean on God more in
order to obey him more. We need to
accept his help and as we live by his word.
Well that’s our message for today and I hope that you will
continue in prayer as you consider this call to love as Christ has loved.
Let me pray with you right now;
O mighty God we do
pray that you would show us that your burden is in fact a burden that is easy,
able to be carried, especially since we share the yolk with you. Lord, help us to trust you and to obey you,
and Lord, help us to rejoice in the great gift you have given us in Jesus
Christ. Amen
Last song....Love take me over ... this is from the album
the Glorious Unfolding by Steven Curtis Chapman
Rev. Brian Wilkie
St.
Andrew's Christian Community,
Rockland, Ontario
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To listen to the above
broadcast, click on the following link:
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