Our Way of Life Sermon Transcript October 23, 2016 Kingdom Life: Love God, Love People Matthew 6:33 and 7:12 This message from the Bible was addressed originally to the people of Wethersfield Evangelical Free Church on October 23, 2016 at 511 Maple Street, Wethersfield, CT, 06109 by Dr. Scott W. Solberg. This is a transcription that bears the strength and weaknesses of oral delivery. It is not meant to be a polished essay. An audio copy of the sermon on CD is available by request at (860) 563-8286. An audio version of this sermon may also be found on the church website at www.wethefc.com. 1
Sermon Text Matthew 6:33 Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. Matthew 7:12 So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets. Our Way of Life By God s grace and through faith in Jesus Christ, I have been delivered from the dominion of darkness and transferred into the kingdom of the beloved Son in whom I have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. Therefore, as Sons and Daughters, Servants and Stewards in the kingdom of God, I will embrace the following way of life.... The Lord s Prayer: Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed by your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done; on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever, Amen. 2
Our Way of Life We begin a new sermon series this morning. It is a five-week series called Our Way of Life. I am excited about this sermon series and I would like to tell you why. First of all, it is a practical series. The title for this series, Our Way of Life, suggests that we will be presenting to you a way to live. We want to give you some very practical things to help you live out your faith. That is the goal, is it not? The Christian life is more than just a way of belief. Sure, what we believe is important, but our faith is more than what we believe. What we believe must inform how we live. Jesus said it this way at the end of the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 7, Everyone who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock... And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. The difference between the wise man and the foolish man is not in the hearing of the words of Jesus. The difference is found in what they do with what they hear. The wise man does them while the foolish man does not do them. The difference between the two is couched in the way one lives. Yes, I know we are saved by grace through faith in Jesus and not by works that we do. And yet, clearly, there are things for us to do. There is a way for us to live. Secondly, this is a unifying series. This is OUR Way of Life. This is how we are going to strive together to follow the way of Jesus. So we are going to invite you to receive this instruction and to put it into practice. Each week you will be given a simple statement that affirms what it means to be a follower of Jesus. All we are going to ask you to do is that you daily read it and affirm it to be true. And then with each affirmation, we are going to share with you a practice that will help you grow in this area. Since this is Our Way of Life, this is not something that we will do for five weeks and then move on to the next thing. Rather, this is going to be our constant guide as we seek to follow Jesus. This Way of Life will be present in our worship services, our community groups, our families and in our own quiet time with the Lord. After all, this is a Way of Life. So it is not something just relegated to our life down here at the church. It is for all of life. Thirdly, this is a biblical series. A familiar verse to many of us is Matthew 28:19-20. These are the parting words of Jesus to his disciples before he ascends into heaven. What did he say to them? What were they to do? He said to them, Go and make disciples. What did they hear when Jesus told them to go and make disciples? We see that word disciple and it has become a very Christian term for us. We would say that a disciple is a follower of Jesus. And so the word disciple has become a word of the 3
church. But before it became a church word it was a very common Jewish word. And when these Jewish disciples heard these words from Jesus, they knew exactly what Jesus was calling them to do. We need to hear this verse with Jewish ears. In this Jewish context, a disciple was someone who followed a rabbi. You could say that a disciple was a student and a rabbi was a teacher. The only problem with that for us is that when we hear the words student and teacher we are automatically drawn to the classroom. Lois Tverberg put it this way, Jesus didn t hand his disciples a textbook or give them a course syllabus. He asked each one of them to follow him literally to walk after him. 1 In fact there was a Jewish expression that captured the relationship between a disciple and his rabbi. It went like this, You should learn from a rabbi by covering yourself in his dust. 2 Their mode of travel was often by foot and they walked on dirty and dusty roads. And so the disciple learned from his rabbi by walking so close to him that he would be covered in the rabbi s dust. In other words, he would learn by doing what his rabbi did. The purpose of the rabbi was to take Torah, Old Testament Law, and to teach his disciples how to walk by God s Word. Do we not hear Jesus say over and over again in the Sermon on the Mount, You have heard it said.... But I say to you. He was talking about the Old Testament commandments and he was teaching his disciples how to live in light of God s Word. This way of life was called the rabbi s yoke. And so we hear Jesus say, Take my yoke upon you and learn from me. In Jewish culture, it was expected that the disciple would then take this way of life and then teach it to others. I don t think it was any surprise to these disciples that Jesus calls them to make disciples. That is what they signed up for when they agreed to walk in the dust of Rabbi Jesus. That is exactly what they did. There is an ancient writing called The Didache. Some think it is written as early as 50 AD. That would mean it could have been written prior to the writing of some of the books in the New Testament. Others believe it could be written as late as 150 AD. The word didache means teaching. The fuller title eventually given to it was The Lord s Teaching to the Nations through the Apostles. 3 The consensus is that this ancient document is a reflection of the teaching of the Apostles. Will Varner suggests that this is the first Christian handbook and it was written for Gentiles who had converted out of a pagan background and they were to complete the first six chapters before they were baptized. 4 Listen to how this ancient writing of the church begins, There are two paths, one of life and one of death, and the difference is great between the two paths. 5 Notice the word path. It suggests a way to walk through life. In other words, there are two ways to live. Then it says, Now the path of life is this first, you shall love the God who made you, your neighbor as yourself, and all things that you don t want done to you, do not do to others. 6 Does that 4
sound familiar? It comes from the Sermon on the Mount. In Matthew 5:1-2, it says that Jesus sat down and his disciples came to him and he opened his mouth and he taught them. Like the Sermon on the Mount, the Didache, The Teaching of the Apostles was all about passing this way of life onto the next generation of disciples. They were doing what Jesus told them to do in Matthew 28. They were passing down a Way of Life. I believe that the Didache is heavily influenced by the Gospel of Matthew. In the Gospel of Matthew, we have the largest collection of the teachings of Jesus. So when Jesus in the Great Commission tells his disciples to go make disciples by teaching them to observe all that I commanded you I think Matthew is inviting us to look back and use the Gospel of Matthew as an important tool in passing down the Way of Life we have received from Jesus. So when we talk about Our Way of Life we are going to use the five teachings of Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew to help us learn how to live as a follower of Jesus. The biblical template for Our Way of Life will be: Kingdom Life: Matthew 5-7 Kingdom Power: Matthew 10 Kingdom Now: Matthew 13 Kingdom Community: Matthew 18 Kingdom Come: Matthew 24-25 Finally, this is a gospel series. Before we learn about the Way of Life in Mathew 5-7 we see Jesus in Matthew 4:23 proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom. Earlier in Matthew 4 we hear Jesus say, Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. This is important to remember whenever we talk about practicing our faith. The foundation of our faith is anchored in the good news of God s grace. Our Way of Life begins with an affirmation of the gospel. This is our starting point. By God s grace and through faith in Jesus Christ, I have been delivered from the dominion of darkness and transferred into the kingdom of the beloved Son in whom I have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. Therefore, as Sons and Daughters, Servants and Stewards in the kingdom of God, I will embrace the following way of life. The gospel of grace forms the foundation. I don t earn any favor before God. My favor with God comes through Jesus Christ. But once I find favor with God through faith in Jesus, it leads me to a new way of life, a life under God s good rule. This is exactly what Paul did in his letters. In the first three chapters of Ephesians he 5
talked about the wonderful riches of God s grace. And then in typical rabbinical fashion, five times in chapters 4-6 he tells them how to walk. In other words, he is sharing with them a way of life. J. I. Packer in his book Knowing God has a chapter on the grace of God. Listen to how he ends this chapter on God s grace. He writes, Those who suppose the doctrine of God s grace tends to encourage moral laxity (saying, final salvation is certain anyway, no matter what we do; therefore our conduct doesn t matter) are simply showing that, in the most literal sense, they don t know what they are talking about. For love awakens love in return; and love, once awakened, desires to give pleasure. And the revealed will of God is that those who have received grace should henceforth give themselves to good works. 6 I believe it is my calling as a pastor to pass on Our Way of Life so that you might do the same. It will be practical. It will unify us. It is biblical. It is anchored in the gospel. I humbly echo the words of Paul who said, Imitate me as I seek to imitate Jesus. Lets walk in each others dust as we walk in the dust of Jesus. Kingdom Life: Love God, Love People As we begin to define Our Way of Life we are going to start with the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5-7. Here Jesus tells us what Kingdom Life looks like. In our remaining time together, I am not going to be able to walk in detail through these three chapters, though we have done that in the past. Rather, I want to isolate two verses that capture the essence of what Jesus is teaching in this famous sermon. In Matthew 6:33 Jesus said, Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. Then at the end of the Sermon on the Mount, in summary fashion, Jesus says in Matthew 7:12, So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets. Did we not already see that this is how the Didache begins? It tells us to love God and to love others and to make sure we don t do to others what we don t want others to do to us. This is Our Way of Life. The first affirmation in Our Way of Life is this: I will seek to proactively love God and love others. Do you think you can affirm that every day this week? What if before you say a blessing for your meal, if you recited this together as a family, By God s grace and through faith in Jesus Christ, I have been delivered from the dominion of darkness and transferred into the kingdom of the beloved Son in whom I have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. Therefore, as Sons and Daughters, Servants and Stewards in the kingdom of God, I will embrace the following way of life. I will seek to proactively love God and love others. You can do it in your quiet time. You can say it before you go to 6
bed. You can recite it together in your community group. We just did it in our worship service. I encourage you to make this your daily habit. In Matthew 22:35, we see a lawyer approach Jesus. In this context, a lawyer was an expert in Torah, Old Testament Law. And so he looks to Jesus and calls Jesus a teacher. In other words, he begins by saying, Rabbi. And here is the question. Rabbi, which is the great commandment in the Law? Many of you know what Jesus said. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets. In other words, this is what it is all about. In giving this answer, Jesus was quoting from Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18. In Deuteronomy 6:4-5, we hear Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart with all your soul and with all your might. By the way, this is the central prayer in the Jewish prayer book. It is often the first verse a Jewish child learns. It is recited at the synagogue and many observant Jews recite it two times a day. So why can t we affirm this central truth of living out our faith on a daily basis? Quoting from Leviticus 19, Jesus adds, that along with this command to love God is the command to love your neighbor as yourself. And so, I want to proactively love God and love people. I want to seek first the kingdom of God and do to others what I would like them to do to me. This is Our Way of Life in the kingdom of God. Love God: Seek First the Kingdom of God What does it mean to love God? When we see the word love, we often think of that warm feeling. We think of an emotion. We talk about falling in love. And yet, the call to love God is stated as a commandment. How do you command love, especially if it is a feeling? It must be more than a feeling. When we talk about loving God, we are talking about far more than an emotional feeling. We already saw that when Jesus answers the lawyer s question about the greatest commandment, Jesus goes to Deuteronomy 6 and quotes this most revered verse for the Jewish worshiper. It is called the Shema. Here is how it begins, Hear, O Israel, The LORD our God, the LORD is one. In preparing for this sermon, I discovered two things about this sacred prayer that helps us understand what it means when we affirm that we want to proactively love God. First of all, the Shema begins with the word Hear. In the Hebrew mind, the word 7
hear has a wider meaning than just perceiving sound. When we say, can you hear me now? we are simply wanting to know if you could perceive the sound of my words. But to the Jewish mind, the idea of hearing encompasses the idea of obeying. Several times in the Old Testament the word translated into English as obey is literally the word hear in Hebrew. For example, in Exodus 24:7 the people of Israel say, All that the LORD has spoken we will do, and we will be obedient. Literally, in Hebrew that last phrase is, and we will hear. We do the same thing. When we talk about our kids having a hearing problem we mean that they didn t do what they were told. Or men, we can be accused of having selective hearing. Typically, what that means is we tend to do what we want to do. And so when Jesus says, Whoever has ears to hear, let him hear what he is saying it that, You have heard what I said, now take it to heart and obey it. Or as James says, But be doers of the word, and not hearers only. The second thing I learned about the Shema deals with the latter portion of this phrase, Hear, O Israel, The LORD our God, the LORD is one. We tend to read this as a statement of belief. We tend to see it strictly as a statement that supports monotheism, that there is only one God. But the word for one can also be translated alone. And so the worshiper is declaring that they are going to worship God and God alone. Tverberg says It is an oath of loyalty... It is a call for a person s absolute allegiance to God. God alone is the one we should worship, him only shall we serve. 8 Chuck Warnock puts it this way, Love meant action. Love meant living a certain way, a way that distinguished God s people from all other people. Loving God meant worshipping the One, True God... Loving God meant throwing your lot in with the One God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. 9 So quite simply put, to love God is to obey God. Jesus said the same thing in John 14:15, If you love me, you will keep my commandments. Jesus says it this way in the Sermon on the Mount, Seek first the kingdom of God. That is what we are saying when we say we will proactively seek to love God. This is a statement of allegiance and a statement of loyalty. We want to order our lives around God. We want God s name to be hallowed. We want God s kingdom to come. We want God s will to be done. There is nothing sentimental about this statement to love God. In fact it brings us back to the Ten Commandments. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself any idols. You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain. This is what it means to love God. Why such loyalty? Why such allegiance to God? It is because of who God is! And when you find God you find life itself. It is not to say that God doesn t touch our emotions. He does. When we lose our lives in him we actually find it. In knowing God there is joy 8
and peace and contentment. It is because our love for God is in response to his love for us. He loves us with a love that will not let us go. And so Our Way of Life begins with a declaration to proactively love God, to seek first the kingdom of God. Love Others: The Golden Rule We learn from Jesus that you can t divorce loving God from loving people. Our love for God is expressed in our love for people. And so in our first affirmation, describing life in the kingdom of God, we say that I will seek to proactively love God and love people. When you read through the New Testament, you can t find an author who doesn t support this Way of Life. Paul says in Galatians 5:14, For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. Peter said in 1 Peter 4:8, above all, love each other deeply. John said in 1 John 3:11, This is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another. James called the command to love your neighbor the royal law found in Scripture. And so in the Sermon the Mount, describing life in God s kingdom, Jesus sums it all up with the Golden Rule. He says in Matthew 7:12, So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets. I used to think of the Golden Rule as a nice little saying. But it is far from that. Jesus said that the whole Law and the Prophets hang on these words. There was a rabbi who predated Jesus by a generation. His name was Hillel and his teachings formed a school of thought that was prevalent during the time of Jesus. His grandson, Gamaliel, was the rabbi Paul studied under when he was being raised in Judaism. Hillel said this, Whatever is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow man: this is the whole Torah and the rest is commentary. So when we say that we want to proactively love others, we are addressing the very essence of what it means to walk in the dust of Jesus. What does it mean when we are told to love your neighbor as yourself? Well first of all, the purpose of the story of the Good Samaritan is to identify my neighbor. It is anyone I happen to run into along the way. It doesn t have to be someone like me or even someone I like. Jesus even tells us to love our enemies. But what does it mean to love someone as yourself? In Leviticus 19:18 it says, Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. Do you know what he is saying. He is telling us to love our neighbor who has obviously done something to hurt us. But why should I love that neighbor? Because 9
your neighbor is just like you! You do the same thing. This is what helps us forgive, because we too need forgiven. That it is the point being made in the Lord s Prayer, forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. You could pray that prayer this way, Please love us even though we are sinners, as we love other sinners who are just like ourselves. 10 So daily I want to affirm my calling to love others. I want to do for others what I would want others to do for me. I want to talk to people the way I want to be talked to. I want to forgive others like I want to be forgiven. I want to care for others the way I want to be cared for. So each day, would you affirm what is most central to Our Way of Life: I will proactively seek to love God and love others. Imagine starting your day this way; reminding yourself of this most central command to love God and love others. Practice: Pray the Lord s Prayer With each affirmation, we are going to give you a practice to help you live out this affirmation. To help you love God and love people, I want you to daily pray the Lord s Prayer. It is interesting to me that in the Didache the early instruction of the church went like this, As the Lord has commanded in his gospel so pray: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done as in heaven so on earth. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debt, as we also forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: for thine is the power, and the glory, for ever. And then it says, Three times a day, pray in this fashion. 11 That was their way of life. Why pray the Lord s Prayer? How does that help me to love God and love others. It is the whole focus of the prayer. It gets you on board with God s agenda. To love God is to acknowledge your allegiance to God and so you want to hallow his name, you want his kingdom to advance and his will to be done. Unfortunately, too often in our prayers we are more concerned about getting God on board with our agenda. And furthermore, the second half of the prayer turns our hearts to others. There is not one singular pronoun in this prayer. It is a communal prayer. It is not just your daily bread you are praying for, but you are praying for others. I heard someone say one time that if you are having a hard time loving someone, start praying for them. By praying for that person, God fills you with love for that person. You can t even confess your sin without being reminded of forgiving others. And by resisting temptation, you are asking that you would walk in the way of Jesus and so have influence on others for the glory of God. So this is your assignment for this week. Daily read the affirmation. By God s grace 10
and through faith in Jesus Christ, I have been delivered from the dominion of darkness and transferred into the kingdom of the beloved Son in whom I have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. Therefore, as Sons and Daughters, Servants and Stewards in the kingdom of God, I will embrace the following way of life. I will seek to proactively love God and love others. Then pray the Lord s Prayer. You can recite it. You can use our weekly prayer sheet to pray for other things guided by the Lord s Prayer. You can use the Lord s Prayer to outline your prayer. You can do this as a family. You can do it in your quiet time. You can do it in your community group. But let this prayer form your love for God and your love for others that we might walk together in Our Way of Life. 1 Lois Tverberg, Walking in the Dust of Rabbi Jesus (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2012) Kindle Reader, Location 360 2 Ibid 3 Thomas O Loughlin The Didache (Grand Rapids: Baker Books Academic, 2012) 5 4 Will Varner The Way of the Didache (New York: University Press of America, 2007) 14 5 Didache 1:1 6 Didache 1:2 7 J. I Packer Knowing God (Downers Grove: IVP, 1973) 137 8 Tverberg, Kindle Reader Location 562-579 9 Chuck Warnock The Most Important Thing Jesus Said www.ethicsdaily.com August 12, 2011 10 Tverberg, Kindle Reader Location 978 11 Didache by Dr. Scott Solberg - All rights reserved 11
Sermon Title: Kingdom Life: Love God, Love Others Sermon Text: Matthew 6:33 and 7:12 Sermon Date: October 23, 2016 Getting To Know Me Questions 1. Think about your experience in the church throughout your life. What has been the emphasis? Has the emphasis been put on a way of belief or a way of life? In your experience, what has been missing? 2. Has anyone ever discipled you? If yes - What did that look like? What is the way of life that was passed onto you? If no - How did you develop your way of life? What do you have to pass onto others? 3. Recite together this week s affirmation (pg. 2) and say together the Lord s Prayer. Diving Into The Word 4. Read Deuteronomy 6:4-5. This verse can be translated, Hear, O Israel: The LORD alone is our God. How does this deepen your understanding of what it means to love God? (See also Mathew 6:33) 5. Read Psalm 119:1-8 and Romans 12:1-2. How do we love God through our minds? How does this impact how we live out our way of life? 6. Read Leviticus 19:18, 34 and Matthew 7:12. How is your neighbor just like you? How does that help you to follow the Golden Rule? 7. As a group, make a list of how not to love others things you are prone to doing to others that hurt when you ve been on the receiving end. What do you learn about loving others from this list? 8. Read Matthew 6:9-13. How does this prayer help you love God and love others? Discuss some practical ways to use this prayer to outline your own prayer life. Taking It Home 9. Talk about how you plan on putting into practice the daily affirmation and the Lord s Prayer. 10. Consider writing out a prayer based on the Lord s Prayer and use it during the week. Share it with the community group the next time you come together. 12