Love One Another

It has been stated that the Bible is a love letter from God to His people. I believe that is an accurate depiction, for the theme of the Bible is how God loved us so much that He set up the gospel plan of salvation through the gift of His Son and our Savior, Jesus Christ, in order to redeem a lost and dying world.

Jesus taught that it is the basis of love for God and love for each other on which the whole Law of Moses stood when He said in Matthew 22:37-40, “'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 foremost commandment. And a second is like it, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets." Doing for others out of love and concern for them had been part of the message Jesus delivered in the Sermon on the Mount when He said in Matthew 7:12, "Whatever you want others to do for you, do so for them, for this is the Law and the Prophets."

To make sure His disciples got the message, Jesus let them know that loving each other was a commandment, not because of compulsion, but because it would identify His followers as being His disciples when He said in John 13:34-35, "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another."

Jesus is so much about love that He wants His followers to extend love to their enemies because God the Father does the same: "But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return; and your reward in Heaven will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High; for He Himself is kind to ungrateful and evil men." (Luke 6:35)

Jesus taught that our love will be manifested in our service to others, and He used Himself as the greatest example of service there is in Mark 10:43-45 and John 13:14-15: "Whoever wishes to become great among you shall be your servant; and whoever wishes to be first among you shall be slave of all. For even the Son of man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give His life a ransom for many. If I then, the Lord and the Teacher, washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. For I gave you an example that you also should do as I did to you."

In the great love chapter of the Bible, 1 Corinthians 13, Paul states that nothing we do has any worth if it is not motivated out of love. He sums up this chapter by saying, “So faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.”

Let us all truly learn to love one another so that they will see the Lord living in us!

Bread and Water

Some of the most evocative words, in my opinion, in the Old Testament come from Ecclesiastes 3:11 [ESV]. The Preacher writes, “He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, He has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.”

Restlessness and longing are universal traits of the human heart. God has put eternity in our hearts and we have an inconsolable longing to be with our Creator, but we choose to reject the Lord at all turns. Isaiah put it like this in 55:2-3 [ESV]: 2 Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen diligently to Me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food. 3 Incline your ear, and come to Me; hear, that your soul may live; and I will make with you an everlasting covenant, My steadfast, sure love for David. And Jeremiah, the weeping prophet, stated it this way in 2:12-13 [ESV]: 12 Be appalled, O heavens, at this; be shocked, be utterly desolate, declares the LORD, 13 for My people have committed two evils: they have forsaken Me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water.

Is it not simply amazing how little things have changed throughout these thousands and thousands of years? These words spoken to the people of Judah have a remarkably eerily application to us today. Have we not as a people forsaken the Lord, and sought to replace the void created by our rejection of God with materialism that only leaves us wanting more and more, and we never get filled, just as a cistern that holds no water will never satisfy one’s thirst? Or worse yet, some choose to fill the void in their soul created by their rejection of God by seeking solace and comfort in drugs or alcohol.

We drink at broken cisterns. And we eat bread which does not satisfy. Jesus has something to say to us this morning about this universal experience of an inconsolable restlessness and longing. He has something to say about the insatiable hunger of the human heart, and about the relentless thirst of our soul. His words are found in the Beatitudes in His Sermon on the Mount in which our Lord and Savior declared in Matthew 5:6 [ESV], “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.”

What is the righteousness Jesus is talking about? Quite simply, it is seeking the Lord and His will in your life. In Matthew 6:33 [ESV] Jesus says, “But seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.” Jesus is the solution to all the world’s hungering and thirsting, for He is the “Bread of Life” (John 6:35) and the “Living Water” (John 4:10) that will truly satisfy throughout all of eternity!

Calling His People

Psalm 81:8-16 [ESV] says,

8 “Hear, O My people, while I admonish you! O Israel, if you would but listen to Me! 9 There shall be no strange god among you; you shall not bow down to a foreign god. 10 I am the LORD your God, Who brought you up out of the land of Egypt. Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it.

11 “But My people did not listen to My voice; Israel would not submit to Me. 12 So I gave them over to their stubborn hearts, to follow their own counsels.

13 “Oh, that My people would listen to Me, that Israel would walk in My ways! 14 I would soon subdue their enemies and turn My hand against their foes. 15 Those who hate the LORD would cringe toward Him, and their fate would last forever. 16 But He would feed you with the finest of the wheat, and with honey from the Rock I would satisfy you.”

Things have not changed much throughout the ensuing, rolling centuries. The Apostle Paul wrote of the rebellion of the people of his day, stating in his Epistle to the Romans,

18 For the wrath of God is revealed from Heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. 19 For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. 20 For His invisible attributes, namely, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. 21 For although they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks to Him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools, 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

24 Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, 25 because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, Who is blessed forever! Amen.

26 For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; 27 and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.

28 And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. 29 They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, 30 slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, 31 foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. 32 Though they know God’s decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them. (Romans 1:18-31 [ESV])

What the Psalmist and the Apostle Paul wrote of sounds eerily like what we see transpiring in our own times today: People in outright rebellion against God and people encouraging and reinforcing as acceptable behavior what God calls an abomination.

Just as He did with the Israelites of old, though, God gently calls His people home to Him today, even those who are the most rebellious against Him. Jesus said in Matthew 11:27-30 [ESV], 27 “All things have been handed over to Me by My Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him. 28 Come to Me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 29 Take My yoke upon you, and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For My yoke is easy, and My burden is light.”

May we all pray for the repentance of those lost in their rebellion and sin a round us, as did the Psalmist who stated,

13 O my God, make them like whirling dust, like chaff before the wind. 14 As fire consumes the forest, as the flame sets the mountains ablaze, 15 so may You pursue them with Your tempest and terrify them with Your hurricane! 16 Fill their faces with shame, that they may seek Your name, O LORD. 17 Let them be put to shame and dismayed forever; let them perish in disgrace, 18 that they may know that You alone, Whose name is the LORD, are the Most High over all the Earth. (Psalm 83:13-18 [ESV])

Mourning Warranting Comfort

In 2 Timothy 2:15 [ESV], the Apostle Paul writes, “Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.” We know that it is extremely important to study God’s word diligently for ourselves because as Paul later instructed Timothy, 16 All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, 17 that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work. (2 Timothy 3:16-17 [ESV]) If we do not study assiduously and persistently for ourselves then we can be misled by others into going down a road we never should have taken in the first place. We also could come to some wrong conclusions that could be devastating to us personally, even to the detriment of our place in eternity.

When we contemplate God’s word, we must be cognizant to remember to study it in context. This should always be the case, but I believe it is particularly true when it comes to applying the teachings of Jesus found within what have come to be known as the Beatitudes. Take, for example, Matthew 5:4 [ESV]. Jesus states, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” I recall seeing a movie adaptation several years ago of the life of Christ, and within that film the character playing Jesus was seen watching a woman in her grief with the tears flowing down her face as she wept unceasingly while following a funeral bier carrying the body of a loved one. The actor portraying Jesus was then shown to approach the woman, put his arms comfortingly around her, and saying, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” In the movie, the woman’s sobbing and tears immediately ceased upon hearing those words.

I am not trying to be too critical, but this is not the type of mourning of which Jesus spoke. If this were true then all anyone needed to do to enjoy the blessings of His Kingdom was to grieve over the death of a loved one! But it is not mourning over the death of a loved one that Jesus is referencing. Jesus is speaking of a person being so mournful at the sinful state of his spiritual condition that he will be moved to come to God humbly and receive forgiveness of his sins. As the Apostle Paul told the church in Corinth, “For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death” (2 Corinthians 7:10 [ESV]). It is this type of godly grief that Joel speaks of in Joel 2:12-13 [ESV]: 12 “Yet even now,” declares the LORD, “return to Me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; 13 and rend your hearts and not your garments." Return to the LORD your God, for He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love; and He relents over disaster.

May you cast aside your pride and come to the Lord on His terms in all humility! May He bless you and comfort you in the knowledge that all of your sins have been forgiven!