Tough Love Week 2 Welcome to the second week of a series we are calling tough love. We ve been saying throughout this series to truly understand love and be loving people, we probably need to come to the fuller sense of the word itself. We need to see love not as something we have and hold, but something we do. Its not a noun, it s a verb. And that means we have to do something. And the point we ve been making is, the something we have to do doesn t always feel good. And that makes love much tougher. Your neighbor really needs your help and support right now, even though you don t have the time, and that doesn t feel very good. Your friend at work is getting way to negative and critical all the time, and it s time to say something, and that doesn t feel very good. Your husband is hurting, but he won t really talk to you about it, and that doesn t feel very good. Here's another way to put it. To love humanity is easy. To love people is great. But when people become a person, then it gets tough. To stay married to someone through good times and bad, to maintain healthy communication between parents and teens, to commit to a friendship even during the times it feels completely one sided, is tough. Not everybody can do it, and all of us fail at least from time to time. And as much as we struggle to love the people in our lives we want to love Jesus raises the standard even more. While you re struggling to love your parents and your spouse and your siblings, he says it s not enough; as tough as that is, there s more, and it s tougher because You gotta love your narcissistic neighbor You gotta love your crabby customer You gotta love your endlessly annoying office mate And then he says, even that isn t enough, there s more and it s tougher because You have to love your persecutors You have to love your detractors You have to love your enemies - Talk about tough. Last week we looked at a way to motivate ourselves to make acts of love a little greater priority. The Gospel says that we are salt and light. We have an identity that Jesus gave us to be the salt of the earth and light for the world.
Salt preserves things, it adds flavor. Light makes clear the path for others. And when we love we are doing that. To try and make this series a little more real, we are challenging you to try and decide who in your life right now is that person, the single person who is tough to love, the extra grace required person and to begin to lift them up in your prayer time. Today we are going to look deeper into the why of this topic. Why is love so tough? What, exactly, is the main problem we face in actually loving other people. In the course of this series we re relying on Jesus teaching from the Sermon on the Mount, essentially chapters 5, 6 & 7 of Matthew s Gospel which we called Jesus inaugural message or teaching, setting forth the basics when it comes to discipleship (or being his student and follower) The Sermon on the Mount is a cohesive message that is ultimately and all about love. At one point he sets forth some basic behaviors, which he is cautioning us about and counseling his followers to stay away from. He says: You have heard it said to your ancestors, you shall not kill, whoever kills shall be liable to judgment. Matthew 5.21 Jesus refers here to the 10 commandments, which God gave to Moses and the Israelites after he had rescued them from Egypt. The commandments are prohibitions as well as proscriptions given to Israel to establish a new rule of life he wished them to live in. You can read about the 10 Commandments in Exodus chapter 20. Here, Jesus specifically refers to the fifth commandment, which everyone was familiar with, and he acknowledges that. In other words, you all know this right? you shall not kill? Right.? But I say to you. Matthew 5.22 Jesus uses this phrase throughout the Sermon on the Mount, and he does it for a strategic purpose. He is establishing himself as an authority. And yes, that would have been remarkable and even shocking to his audience; it was interpreted by some as arrogance and by others as the deep delusions of a mad man (which some of his contemporaries considered him). Either way, as Matthew eventually tells us, everyone was simply amazed at him. Anyway, he says, But I say to you, whoever is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment. Matthew 5.22 Before in the Ten Commandments, the threshold was murder. Now, here he raises that threshold considerably: he makes it anger. Lets be clear, being angry is OK, everybody gets angry, Be angry, don t sin. Ephesians 4.26 There is anger we experience as a basic human emotion and it happens all the time.
And then, there is anger we hold in our heart, we cherish it and live with. Here he gives an example: Anyone who says to his brother raca Anyone who says You fool will be in danger of fiery Gehenna. Matthew 5.22 In other words, in your anger you are judging and rejecting someone else, you are dismissing them, you are treating them as disposable. Don t do that. Gehenna is a Hebrew word. But it is not the same word as Hell or Hades, it s a different word, and would have had a different reference. Gehenna was the city dump in Jerusalem, and it was sort of perpetually on fire, that s how they got rid of the trash. In other words Jesus is saying, talk trash, treat other people like trash; you could end up living your life in a dump. Living your life in anger is like living in a smoldering dump. Then he gives us an illustration of an antidote to such behavior. What someone does so that anger doesn t rule his or her heart. He says, Therefore, if you bring your gift to the altar, and then recall that your brother has anything against you, leave your gift at the altar, go first and be reconciled with your brother, and then come and offer your gift. Matthew 5.23 Now this isn t a commandment, but it is an illustration of someone who does whatever it takes to not hold anger in their heart. In that culture, making a sacrifice at the altar was the most sacred act imaginable and the most important thing a Jewish person could do. Jesus says you should love people so much that you would be willing to lay aside this incredibly important responsibility to go and repair a broken relationship. At times, we can use religion or God to avoid the hard work of relationships and reconciliation. Don t do that. Don t use God as an excuse for not loving the people around you and reconciling to them. God doesn t want our sacrifices as a substitute for loving other people. Jesus elevates loving people to a standard above the practice of religion. Next he says: You have heard it said, You shall not commit adultery. Matthew5.27 So the Ten Commandments forbid adultery. And this prohibition comes immediately following the one for murder. Why is that do you suppose? Don t know exactly for sure. God is as unquestionably clear as can be
he wants us to stay away from both, nothing could be much clearer in the Bible. Perhaps it is because of its exceptionally destructive nature, adultery is a form of murder. Perhaps since God establishes marriage as the ultimate sign of life, adultery is a form of death. So God teaches us to stay away from it. But even here, Jesus now raises the standard for his followers, his disciples. He says, You have heard it said, you shall not commit adultery, but I say to you, everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery in his heart. Matthew 5.28 Here we re back to the heart; it all comes down to what s in our heart, and what drives our actions. Of course everyone experiences desire. It is part of the human condition. But if you re living your life in desire, if you re objectifying other people through the lens of your deep desire, well that s called lust that is lust and it will eventually corrupt your heart and negatively influence your decisions. This is why pornography can be corrosive and even destructive because it can change the heart over time. Look what he says: If your right eye causes you to sin tear it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into Gehenna. Matthew 5.29 OK kids, don t try this at home. This is called hyperbole, which probably would have made his audience laugh. It is a simple teaching though: Think trashy thoughts, spend time looking at trash, and you could find yourself living your life in a dump. Instead, Jesus gives us a positive encouragement to get rid of temptations and the sources of sin, as a way of avoiding excessive desire that leads to lust. Put yourself in a position to win and succeed. Then Jesus gives a third instruction. He says, Again you have heard that it was said to your ancestors, Do not take a false oath, but make good to the Lord all that you vow. Matthew 5.33 So this commandment was about telling the truth And honoring your word, a good thing to do, but once againjesus goes deeper. He says, But I say to you, do not swear at all Let your Yes be Yes and you No be No. Matthew 5.34, 37
Jesus deals here with our tendency to try and control other people. This is about not manipulating people. Love doesn t manipulate people. Love is straightforward. Love is honest and allows people the freedom to make their own decisions. Here s the bottom line Jesus is getting to in all these instructions. As people who follow Christ, we are to make decisions based on love, driven by love and directed toward love. And in his teaching, Jesus is exposing the real problem we face when it comes to our doing that. Love is held in the heart and there are just certain things that are incompatible with love. You can t hold onto anger in your heart and be a truly loving person You can t hold lust in your heart and be a truly loving person You can t be all about power and control and manipulation and be a truly loving person You re not a bad person because you experience these things, you just need to work on them, to work this stuff out of your heart. So how do we do that? How do we work on our hearts? One, honestly get to know your heart, take a closer look at what s really there (a lot of people have no idea). If you re having trouble seeing than talk to others, like a trusted friend or your small group. Ask them to help you see it. Second, take positive steps to change behaviors that corrupt the heart. Humble yourself to get rid of anger Fast to get rid of lust Apologize to those you ve tried to manipulate and you will quickly stop doing it Third, ask God to get involved and purify your heart in prayer; ask for the grace to remove what doesn t belong there, so that more and more there is only love there. As I said last week: Maybe we should not be surprised that God calls us to this remarkable challenge of love. After all, the symbol of our Christian faith is a cross. The cross was an instrument of death. But it wasn t just an instrument of death, it was an instrument of the most brutal, most savage, most inhumane form of death that mankind has ever invented. God chose to give up his son Jesus on the cross to illustrate and instruct us on his love. The cross is our ultimate instruction in love. It teaches us that the love of God is - our highest good and greatest need - our origin and our end - our first obligation and paramount duty - it is a virtuous habit above every other virtuous habit that
we should be cultivating the whole of our life because it is shaping our character and casting our destiny. It costs us everything because it means everything