Making the Most of Your Life: Values Jesus Lived By
10/13/2002 - The Value of Love
Back in the late 1960's when the Beatles were trying to find themselves and doing a lot of soul searching over in India, John Lennon insisted on going up in a helicopter with the Maharishi, hoping that during their flight the guru would open up and reveal to him the secret to the meaning of life. But he was so disappointed when instead all the Maharishi did was comment on the scenery.
Cecil Adams, who made a name for himself by claiming to be the world's smartest human being, at one time had a nationally syndicated newspaper column called "All major mysteries of the cosmos succinctly explained." But when people wrote in to find out the true meaning of life all they could get were answers to profound questions like, "Do turkeys really drown when they look up during a rainstorm?" or "Do you get better gas mileage driving with the air conditioner on or with the windows open?" Life changing stuff! But when it came to questions like "How can I truly be happy?" Cecil was silent.
Pierre Gassendi was a professional philosopher who had a lot to say during his lifetime. So when his followers huddled around his deathbed they were all hoping for some final revelation from this great thinker. Yet all he could mumble was, "I was born without knowing why. And I am dying without knowing why."
A few years ago a 17 year-old California girl named Karen Cheng made scholastic history. She scored a perfect 1,600 on her SAT's and a perfect 8,000 on the tough University of California acceptance index. Never before in history had anyone accomplished that intellectual feat. She was a brilliant, straight "A" student in high school, her teachers called her "Wonder Woman," and both Harvard and Stanford University wooed her. But when a news reporter interviewed her and asked if she knew the meaning of life she said, "I have no idea. I would like to know myself."
The late author and philosopher Dr. Francis Schaeffer once said, "The damnation of this generation is that it doesn't know why it has meaning."
Do you know the meaning of life? Do you where you came from and why you're here and where you're going? This morning we begin a brand new series called Making the Most of Your Life: Values Jesus Lived By. But we can't make the most our life until we've settled those fundamental questions. And you don't need to be a guru or the smartest man in the world or a famous philosopher or run the table on your SAT's to know the answers. You just need to take seriously what the greatest expert on life had to say. And that was a Jewish carpenter from Nazareth named Jesus.
Jesus told us where we came from. He said we're all the wonderful, unique creation of a God who loves us more than anyone in the universe. He told us why we're here. He said we're all here to love God with all our heart and soul and mind and strength and to love our neighbor like we love ourselves. He told us where we're going. He said if we believe in him, the one who called himself the way, the truth and the life, we'll spend forever living in the kind of loving home that we all deeply long for. In my Father's house are many rooms, he said, I go there to prepare a place for you .
We'll never make the most of our lives until we get a grip on the meaning of life. But we all know lots of people who think that making the most of their lives means getting a good education. And today that doesn't start with college, it starts with pre-school, getting a jump on the competition at three years old. Seeing how early your kid can learn to read, do calculus, and surf the Internet. And there's nothing wrong with a good education, it opens doors of opportunity, it's a wonderful thing, but it's not the most important thing in life.
Lots of people think making the most of their lives means following that career path as far as it can take them, climbing the ladder, being successful, collecting the toys, building the dream house, and making enough money so that they'll never have to worry about finances again. And there's nothing wrong with having a good job and pulling down a good income, but you'll never have enough money not to worry, in fact the more money you have the more you have to worry about it. A great career is a wonderful thing, but it's not the most important thing in life.
Lots of people think the most important thing in life is relationships. They dream about getting married to the perfect spouse and having the perfect family. They think that a lifelong companion is what makes life worth living, having somebody to laugh with and to cry with and to share their struggles and to make love to. I love my perfect wife and I love my perfect kids. And being part of a perfect family is a wonderful thing, but it's not the most important thing in life.
If anyone has ever walked this planet with their priorities straight, it was Jesus Christ. He knew how to make the most out of life. And he taught us to do the same. And we make the most out of life when we build our lives on the values that he lived by. This series is all about value based living. Each week we're going to unpack a value that drove the life of Jesus, a value that he wants to drive our lives as well. And so today we start with the value of love.
If you have a Bible turn with me to Matthew 22:34-40, Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. 35 One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question. 36 "Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?" 37 Jesus replied, "'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it, 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."
Here at Valley View we just finished a summer series called Ten Commandments for Today. We learned that the Ten Commandments found in Exodus 20 aren't harsh rules given by an angry God who's out to get us, but tender commandments given to us by a loving heavenly Father who wants the absolute best for our lives, just like any loving dad wants the best for his kids. The Ten Commandments are boundaries, they're foul lines that God has set up to keep us in the game.
And almost every week after teaching one of the commandments a fellow would come up to me and say, "You got me again! You leveled me with another thing I need to work on." And by the end of the ten weeks he was under the pile and wondered, "Where do I start?" So I said to him, "You don't have to work on all ten of these commandments. In fact, you only need to work on one. And if you work on the right one it'll take care of all the others."
He said, "Oh yeah, which one's that?" Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and love your neighbor as yourself. That's the one to work on and the rest will take care of themselves. Or like my friend used to say, "Love the Lord and live as you please." That's the essence of what it means to be a Christ follower.
In Matthew 22, an expert in the Jewish law, a man who not only knew the Ten Commandments, but had also memorized the six hundred and three other commandments laid out in the Old Testament, comes to Jesus and wants to know the bottom line. Not so much because he was all fired up to obey the greatest commandment, but because he wanted to test Jesus and cause an argument. The question of which commandment was the greatest was a hot, political issue in Jesus' day.
So Jesus puts the cookies on the lower shelf. He says, "You want to know the greatest commandment? You want to make the most out of life? You want a value to live by? I'll boil it down to a single verb, love. Love God and love people. All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."
You see we can have the best education, the highest paying job, and the most wonderful family in the world, but we will never make the most out of our life without loving God and loving one another. Love is the queen of all the New Testament virtues.
The night before Jesus died he spotlighted love when he said, Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know you are my followers, if you love one another. The apostle John celebrated love when he said, Love one another. Those who live in love, live in God and God in them. The apostle Paul who wrote most of the New Testament crowned love when he said, Now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
Let me say a word about love here, because in our culture there's so much confusion about what love is. In the New Testament there are three different Greek words used for love. The word eros means passionate, sexual love. It's the word from which we get our English word "erotic." That's not the word for love used in these passages.
A second Greek word, phileo, is the word for affectionate love. It's the word from which get our English word Philadelphia, the "City of Brotherly Love," or as some say "Shove." That's not the word for love used in these passages.
The third Greek word used for love in the New Testament is the word agape. We have no equivalent for it in the English language. It means unconditional, no strings attached, self-sacrificing love. The kind of love that says, "I will give to you, even when you reject me. I will treat you kindly, even when you despise me. I will forgive you, even when you hurt me. I will love you, even when you hate me."
Agape love is the value that drove Jesus to the cross, to die a gruesome death for people who at the time had no idea or appreciation for what he was doing. That kind of unconditional, self-sacrificing agape love is to be the mark of a Christ follower. It's the bumper sticker of the Christian faith. This kind of love goes way beyond feelings. It's a choice. It's a choice for us to love God with all our heart and soul and mind and to love our neighbor as ourselves.
So if love is the supreme value on which to build our lives, how do we become better lovers? How do we start to love God with all our heart, soul, and mind so that we can love others better?
It starts by receiving God's love for us. We love because God first loved us, the Bible says. It starts by believing how much God loves you. Do you really believe deep down in your soul that God is head over heels in love with you? Do you really believe that God is out to pursue you and to woo you and to romance you and to bring you into a deep, intimate relationship with himself? Do you really believe that God has your picture hanging on his refrigerator? Do you really believe that you are God's first thought in the morning and his last thought at night? We won't be able to love God with every fiber of our being until we truly believe that God loves us with every fiber of his being.
It's hard to love a God that we think is indifferent. It's hard to love a God that we think is unapproachable or angry with us or maybe not even there. How do you view life? Do you see the struggles and difficulties in your life as a chance to trust and depend on a loving heavenly Father who wants to help you through them or do you see them as coming from an angry God who's out to get you? Do the trials in life make you better or make you bitter? The choice to love God is ours and it will determine the outcome of our life.
Jesus told a story to help us understand how much God loves us. And in the story God is a loving father who's been treated like dirt by his son. He's a wealthy man and his son wants to take advantage of his money. He'd like to see his father drop dead so he could cash in on his inheritance, but he's not willing to wait for that. So he asks his father for his share of the estate early. And when he gets it he goes to Atlantic City and then out to Las Vegas and blows the whole wad on wild living. He loses everything and ends up living in a pigsty.
Yet every day that he's gone his father walks out to the end of the long lane that leads back to the estate and looks for his son to return. Days turn into weeks, weeks turn into months, months turn into years. But still the father waits.
Finally one day, the father sees his son coming in the distance. And in Luke 15:20 Jesus tells it this way, But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him. He ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him ... and said to his servants, "Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let's have a feast and celebrate. For this son of mine was dead and is alive again. He was lost and now is found."
In that story, that son is you and that son is me. And that father is our heavenly Father and that's how deeply he loves us, every single one of us no matter what we've been through in life, no matter how we've messed up, no matter how bad we've treated him up to this point. Nothing can separate us from the love of God. And we will only be able to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength when first understand how much he loves us. God loves us because of who we are, just the way we are. We have value in his eyes because we've been created in his image.
Let me illustrate it this way. In my hand I have a brand new, crisp $20 bill. How many of you would like to have this $20 bill? Let me crumple this $20 bill up. How many of you would still like to have this $20 bill? Now, let me drop it on the floor and step on it with my shoe and get it all dirty. How many of you still want it? The condition of the $20 bill doesn't make any difference does it? Why? Because it has value no matter what condition it's in, whether it's brand new, crumbled up or ground into the dirt.
And so it is with our lives. They're times in life when we feel dropped and crumbled up and stepped on and dirty because of the decisions we've made or the circumstances that come our way. At times we feel worthless. But no matter what has happened to us or will happen we will never lose our value in God's eyes. To him, dirty or clean, crumpled or creased, we are still priceless. That's the kind of God we can love with all our heart, soul, mind and strength.
And I know that's a stretch for some of us who've had so much hurt and disappointment in life. And God knows that. Which is why we all need to pray with the apostle Paul who said in Ephesians 3:17-19 (NLT), And I pray that Christ will be more and more at home in your hearts as you trust in him. May your roots go down deep into the soil of God's marvelous love. And may you have the power to understand, as all God's people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love really is. May you experience the love of Christ, though it is so great you will never fully understand it. Then you will be filled with the fullness of life and power that comes from God.
Making the most of your life starts with love, a love for God that then empowers us to love one another. I've said this before, but I'll say it again. The goal of what we do in this church is to make us better lovers of God and better lovers of each other. The church is not an end in itself. The church is a means to that end. The end is that we love God, love our wives, love our husbands, love our parents, love our kids, love our friends, even love our enemies more. If being a part of Valley View Community Church is not helping be a better lover, you need to find yourself another church community that will.
Francis Schaeffer called Christian love the final apologetic, the best argument for the reality of our faith. He said, "As Christians we must not minimize the need to give honest answers to honest questions. We should have an intellectual apologetic to defend our faith ... Yet without true Christians loving one another, Christ says the world can't be expected to listen, even when we give them all the right answers. We must never forget that the final apologetic which Jesus gives, the final defense for the reality of our faith, is the observable love of true Christians for each other."
A few months ago when we had our June baptism a man came to me and said, "I'd like to get baptized next Sunday, but my son has a baseball game. What do you think I should do?" And without hesitation I said, "That's a no brainer! Go to your son's baseball game. We'll baptize you another time." And a few weeks later we did. I didn't know the impact that that made on that man, until he called me and said, "You blew me away with that response. I fully you expected you to say, 'Get baptized. That's more important. But you didn't. You encouraged me to be a better dad. And that's really what I want to be. A better dad and better husband."
And I told him, "Baptism is important. But so is being a good father and a good husband. Don't let the church come between you and your son. I knew we could baptize you another time, but that day you needed to be at the game."
Love God and love one another. That's the first value that will help you make the most of your life.