LIFE: According to Jesus
07/10/2011 - Love Jesus
In C. S. Lewis' famous book,The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe which is the first of seven books in The Chronicles of Narnia series he describes the adventures of four children who leave England and end up in the magical kingdom of Narnia. I'm sure many of you have seen the movie or read the book. And in the series Aslan, the lion, is the Christ figure.
And at one point, when the kids are in Narnia, they meet Mr. and Mrs. Beaver, who describe Aslan to them.
Lucy asks, "Is he a man?"
Mr. Beaver says sternly, "Aslan, a man! Certainly not. I tell you he is King of the wood and the son of the great emperor-beyond-the-sea. Don't you know who is the King of the Beasts? Aslan is a lion - the Lion, the great lion."
"Ooh!" says Susan, "I thought he was a man. Is he - quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion."
"That you will, dearie, and no mistake," says Mrs. Beaver, "if there's anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they're either braver than most or else just silly."
"Then he isn't safe?" says Lucy.
"Safe?" says Mr. Beaver. "Who said anything about safe? Of course he isn't safe. But he's good and he's the King, I tell you."
Aslan, the great lion, the King of Narnia, the Jesus figure in the classic series by C. S. Lewis was far from being tamed and housebroken. He wasn't safe at all, but he was good, and just, and strong enough to defeat evil. And once the children met Aslan, they began the adventure of their lives.
And once we meet Jesus he wants us to begin the adventure of our lives as well. In fact, life is what Jesus came to give us. In John 1:1-4 Jesus is described as the life that was the light of all people, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2He was with God in the beginning. 3Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. 4In him was LIFE, and that LIFE was the light of all people.
Life. That's what Jesus came to give us. And that's what we're looking at this summer in our series called LIFE: According to Jesus.
Someone has said that Jesus loves us just the way we are, but he loves us far too much to let us stay that way. That's true. Jesus has a goal for us. He has an agenda for our lives. He wants to change us. Transform us. And make us more like him.
In Luke 6:40 Jesus put it this way, Students, literally disciples, are not above their teacher, but all who are fully trained will be like their teacher.
The goal of the disciple is to become like the teacher. The goal of life, according to Jesus, is to become like him. And in our last teaching we saw that that's a process. Life's a process. It starts with being curious about who Jesus is and then being convinced that he is who he claimed to be and then it moves to being committed to following him and serving him and finally it means being a continuer the rest of our lives as we remain in him and he in us. That's when we produce much fruit, he says. Do you want to have a full, fruitful life? Remain in Jesus.
That's what it means to be yoked to Jesus, to be his disciple, to be his mathetes. That Greek word for disciple occurs 284 times in the New Testament. It's used of four distinct groups of people. Moses had disciples. The Pharisees had disciples. John the Baptist had disciples. And of course, Jesus had disciples. The word is used most often for Jesus' disciples.
In its broadest, descriptive sense a disciple is simply a learner, an apprentice, a student. But in its more narrow, prescriptive sense there are seven characteristics or seven marks of a disciple that Jesus spells out when he says things like, "You are my disciple if ..." or "You cannot be my disciple unless ..." or "You are not worthy of me if ..." or "Whoever wants to be my disciple must ..."
And that's what the rest of this series is about. We're going to unpack these seven marks that Jesus says make us his disciples. So you'll have a chance to see if these marks are true of you or not? And if they're not, you might want to think about what's holding you back from taking the next step in the process.
The first mark of a disciple is an incomparable and unrivaled love for Jesus. He wants to be number one in your life!
When we were dating Jennifer and I often listened to a love song sung by Mickey and Becki Moore called "Love Song for Number Two". That was a long time ago, back in the 80's ... 1980's. It was on a little plastic cassette with brown tape rolled up in it. Does anyone remember cassette tapes? And the chorus of the love song went like this.
"There can only be one first place in my heart and you know who that's for. Jesus is number one in my life and second place will have to do for you. Well I'm counting on spending the rest of my life in love with the two of you."
And so Jen and I would often say to each other that we wanted to be number two in each other's lives. Not number one. We wanted Jesus to be number one and we still want it that way, twenty-six years later. We want second place, not first place because if we love Jesus more than we love each other we will love each other more than we would if we loved each other more than we love Jesus. Did you get that?
There's a website out there called iamsecond.com and it's filled with stories of people well-known and unknown who have put Jesus Christ first in their lives and put themselves second. It was started by a guy named Norm Miller, chairman of Interstate Batteries down in Dallas, Texas. And his inspiration for the site came from Jesus' words in John 13:16 , Very truly I tell you, servants are not greater than their master, nor are messengers greater than the one who sent them.
Jesus wants to be number one in your life. He wants you to love him more than anyone or anything else. And I want to show you two passages today where he emphasizes just that, first by comparison and then by contrast.
If you have a Bible turn with me to Matthew 10:37. In Matthew 10:37 Jesus says, Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me. Anyone who loves a son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.
Wow! Those are strong words. Jesus is saying that I want your love for me to be so intense that it exceeds the love that you have even for your family. I want you to love me more than your parents and I want you to love me more than your kids. And if you don't, you're not worthy of me.
The Greek word for "love" in this passage is the word phileo. It's the word for affection. It's the word that's found in Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love or brotherly affection.
In Matthew 10:37, Jesus is saying I want to be the object of your highest affection, even above the affection you have for members of your own family.
And then he goes on to say that I may cause division in your family. I may break you apart. Some of you know the division that following Jesus can cause in family relationships. You've been ridiculed, you've been teased, you've been misunderstood, you've been cut off from family because of your love for Jesus.
Look at Matthew 10:34-36, Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. 35For I have come to turn "a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law—36your enemies will be the members of your own household."
Whoa! What's up with that? Isn't Jesus the Prince of Peace? What does he mean that he didn't come to bring peace, but a sword? What's he doing splitting up families? Doesn't he want to reconcile families and bring people together?
Jesus is actually quoting a passage from the Hebrew prophet Micah who says these same words in Micah 7:6. In Micah's day the nation of Israel was about to be judged for their sin and the prophets where warning the people of what was about to happen. And some people believed the prophets and others didn't believe the prophets. And the difference of opinion on how God was going to deal with the nation even split families apart. The very words of God were like a sword that sliced families in two.
And so Jesus is saying that when you love me more than anyone or anything else, that love may slice like a sword through your family and your most important relationships, dividing you from those who don't understand or share your love for Jesus.
I can remember the first time I announced to my parents that I wanted to go to seminary in Dallas, Texas. My dad was a business man and I had graduated from Drexel with a degree in marketing and was on a path to join my brother and my father in the family business and start to put roots down around here.
But God had other plans and gave me a real hunger and thirst to study the Bible and to prepare for some kind of ministry. And that didn't go over real well at home, certainly not at first. My parents, especially my mother, really struggled with that decision. But eventually they did come around and were very supportive of my seminary education. And I moved to Dallasand spent four years studying down there.
Jesus is warning us in this passage that our love and loyalty to him may come at a price. So be ready for the relational fallout that may occur when you make Jesus number one in your life, but that's where he wants to be.
Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me. Anyone who loves a son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.
That's a statement of comparison. The next is a statement of contrast. It's found in Luke 14:26 where Jesus says,If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters - yes, even life itself - such a person cannot be my disciple.
Wow! That's another shocker! Cannot be my disciple. It sounds like Jesus has gone over the top here. I mean I can understand Jesus saying that we need to love him more than anyone else, but now he wants us to actually hate our parents, our siblings, our kids, our spouse, even hate life itself? What's that about?
I thought the apostle Paul said that husbands are to love their wives just as Christ loved the church? At least that's I what told Sarah Slawecki and Tom Koniewicz at their wedding yesterday!
This is a tough passage. Apparently, Jesus is saying that at times our love for him will be so strong that it will appear that our love for others and even our love for life itself looks like hatred by comparison. It doesn't mean we actually hate our family in an emotional or vengeful way or hate living, but compared to loving Jesus it looks like a love-hate contrast.
This isn't the first time in Scripture that this contrast between love and hate appears. In Malachi 1:2-3 we read , "I have loved you," says the LORD. "But you ask, 'How have you loved us?' "Was not Esau Jacob's brother?" declares the LORD. "Yet I have loved Jacob, 3but Esau I have hated, and I have turned his hill country into a wasteland and left his inheritance to the desert jackals."
Jacob have I loved, Esau I have hated. Now how can a God who is love and loves everyone say, "Esau, I have hated?" The only way this makes sense to me is that God's love for Jacob was so intense that by contrast his love for Esau seemed like hatred. He didn't literally hate Esau. He just loved Jacob a whole lot more. And so Jesus wants us to love him a whole lot more than anyone else.
I've heard stories over the years of friends who felt called to serve Jesus on the mission field overseas. And in heated discussions with parents they've been told, "You must hate us to go all the way over to Africa or Asia or wherever. We'll never see you again. And we'll never see our grandchildren grow up. How can you do this to us? You must hate us!"
Jesus is saying, "Being a disciple of mine may cause that kind of reaction because it begins with loving me more than anyone or anything else, even more than life itself."
And so down through the centuries the landscape is littered with the bodies of Christ followers who have literally loved Jesus more than life itself and have paid the ultimate price with their lives.
More Christians were martyred for their faith in the 20th century alone than in all the other nineteen centuries combined, 100 million martyrs.
Today an estimated 200 million Christians face some form of persecution around the world and international statistics show that about 150,000 die every year for their faith because they love Jesus more than life itself.
Jesus wants to be number one in our lives. He wants us to have an incomparable and unrivaled love for him. That's mark #1 of being a disciple. Why should we love Jesus that way? Why should we put him above all else and love him with that kind of intensity?
Because that's how he loves us. Jesus loves us more than we can ever imagine. He loves us more than anyone else ever could or ever would. And we love him, because he first loved us.
That's how John puts it in 1 John 4:7-10, 19 , Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might LIVE through him.10This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.19We love him because he first loved us.
That's the passage I did read at Tom & Sarah's wedding yesterday. No one, but Jesus, ever died for me. And the more we wrap our minds and hearts around that truth the more our love for Jesus grows.
If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters - yes, even life itself - such a person cannot be my disciple.
In his book calledTo Follow Him, Mark Bailey writes, "At this point you might be wondering, 'Well, what about my family? What about the significant relationships in my life? What's going to happen if I choose to make Jesus first and everyone else second?
Do our families lose out when we make Jesus our first priority? No. Our families benefit immensely when we put Jesus Christ first because, as Jesus stressed, if we love him we will keep his commandments. Therefore, we will reflect his love to all others: to our families, our coworkers, and everyone else. All our relationships are enhanced when we put Jesus Christ first.
"Think about it. What man wouldn't want his wife to follow all the Scriptures God has given concerning a wife's relationship to her husband? What woman wouldn't love for her husband to follow all the biblical guidelines for being a godly, loving husband? What employer wouldn't love for all his or her employees to follow the Scriptures God has given regarding our jobs? When we put Christ first in our lives nobody comes up the loser. Everyone wins."
The first mark of a disciple is an incomparable and unrivaled love for Jesus.