Preached in Markham Baptist Church, April 30, 2006

Do you know that the two greatest missionary strategies ever given to the church were given by our Lord Jesus in Matthew 19:19 and John 13:34?

In Matthew 19:19 Jesus says, “Love your neighbour as yourself.”  Actually, he is repeating the great command given to us in Leviticus 19:18, but Jesus defines it for us with a parable often called the parable of the Good Samaritan that shows that our neighbour is anyone who is in need (Luke 10:25-37).  We are to show love to anyone who is in need.  

It’s a great missionary strategy, as we give of ourselves to anyone in need regardless their cultural background, regardless of our cultural prejudices we demonstrate the love of God.  Jesus said that if we bear much fruit (John 15:8) people will know we are His disciples, people will recognize Jesus Christ in us. Surely this is part of what he means – love for our neighbour is part of the fruit Jesus is speaking about. It is as we demonstrate the fruit of love to our neighbours that people know that Jesus Christ is real.   

The other mission strategy is John 13:34 You’ve heard me preach on that text many times

“A new command I give you: Love one another.  As I have loved you, so you must love one another.  By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” 

This is another great mission strategy – it is as we love one another that the world sees that we belong to Jesus Christ and is able to see Jesus Christ as real. It is as we, from all different cultural backgrounds, with all sorts of different temperaments, different abilities, and different economic standing, it is as we love one another that the world sees the reality of Jesus Christ.  For love to exist among a people with all these differences the world say’s – that’s a miracle, it can only be God who does that. 

So two great mission strategies – linked by one word – love – love is to be demonstrated to those around us in need and love is to be demonstrated to one another.  And as we do so the world sees that we belong to Jesus Christ and that he is alive and real and they are attracted to the Saviour we serve.

As we think about daring to make a difference for our missions month.  It is this love that makes Christians different.  It is this love for one another and for our neighbour who is in need that distinguishes Christians from everyone else and demonstrates the reality of Christ in our lives. 

This brings us to our text this morning I John 4:7-10. Our text begins “Beloved, let us love one another.” This echoes Christ’s command that we are to love one another.  It is to be the mark of the Christian church, it is to be the distinguishing mark of Christ’s followers.  Francis Shaffer once wrote that Jesus Christ gave the world the right to judge the validity of anyone’s claim to be a Christian not by their doctrine but by their love. We are to love one another.  Not only love for one another but love for our neighbour as well.

The text continues: “Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.  Whoever does not love does not know God for God is love.”

This tells us both of the source of love and the reason for love.  First we have the source of love.  When Jesus said you must love one another, and when He said, “love your neighbour as yourself” (Matthew 19:19) He didn’t mean that we should try to squeeze love out for everyone with clenched teeth.  “I have to love so and so because that is what God wants.” 

No, no, no.  What this text makes clear is that as we experience the love of God we are able to love others.  “Love is from God.”  says the text.  It doesn’t come from within us, it comes from God and as we give ourselves to God and experience His self-sacrificing love, and with the infilling of His Spirit we are able to love one another and those around us. 

John will make this connection explicit in chapter 3:14, saying that love for others is the mark that  demonstrates that the life of God is in us.

So it is as we experience his grace and forgiveness that we are able to forgive (Colossians 3:13).  It is as we experience His comfort and strengthening presence that we are able to comfort those around us (2 Corinthians 1:4). God’s love is the source of our love.

Another one of the portraits we have up here of people who have dared to make a difference is Corrie Ten Boom.  She is perhaps one of the best illustrations of how God is the source of love and the reason we love one another and our neighbour.  

Corrie Ten Boom and her family lived in Holland and her father ran a small watchmaking business in a town called Haarlem.  During the Second World War and the Nazi occupation, her family’s Christian faith led them to hide many Jews, students and members of the underground in a small space behind a fake wall and then smuggle them out of the country.

They were betrayed in 1944 and sent to a Nazi concentration camp.  She experienced unspeakable torture and suffering.  Her own sister Betsie died right before her very eyes.  When the war was over she became  an evangelist and a preacher, and during the next four decades she established a worldwide ministry that took her to 64 countries, where she testified to Jesus’ love and forgiveness. 

Then one night she was preaching about forgiveness and the love of Christ. After the sermon a man came up to her and put out his hand to take hers and said, “O sister, how wonderful it was to hear you tonight.  To think God has washed away all my sin.”

And there was the instant chill of recognition.  He had been one of the SS guards in the shower room in the concentration camp – just before the gas chamber in the camp.  And everything came before her eyes - all of the suffering, all of the pain, and she could not move her hand toward this enemy.

She immediately recognized the sinfulness of it and she prayed silently to herself. “O God, help me to forgive this man, in Jesus name, amen."  Yet she could not move her hand. There was nothing but cold hatred in her heart.

And so she prayed again, “O God I cannot forgive him, you forgive him and forgive me too.” And then with a power not her own, she reached out and took the hand of the old enemy.  God is the source of our love for our neighbour who is in need, and our love toward one another.   

But verse 7 and 8 also tell us the reason for our love.  We love one another and our neighbours because we have been born of God and know God’s love. John puts it in the negative in verse 8 – saying anyone “who does not love, does not know God, for God is love.”  The reason we love is because we know God. 

You see the power of this truth for mission?  Usually we love those who love us.  Usually we love those who agree with us. We love those who are lovely, we love those who are loveable.  We love those who build our self-esteem, who make us feel like people of worth.  We love those who are beautiful or funny or whimsical or famous - we want to be associated with those people because that’s good for our self-worth. Those are the reasons most people love others. 

But the Christian difference is this – we don’t love others for any of those reasons, we love because we have been born of God and we know God. We love because we are loved by God.

Look - your self-esteem, your sense of self-worth should be through the roof because the God of the universe has told you He loves you, has expressed that love for you in Christ. John says in verse 10 of our text - “he loved us and sent his son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins,” and now you don’t need to love the beautiful and famous and the wealthy others to bolster your ego.  We are free to love the unlovable, the unlovely, the lonely, the lost, the least because we have secured the one love that matters – the love of God.  Do you understand the difference that makes to our mission to proclaim the love of Christ?  It means that we are not self-seeking. We have no hidden agenda, we are motivated by the love of God – the love of Christ compels us. 

He is the source of our love and the reason for our love.  That gives our mission power to love those who are not like us.  We can truly make a difference because of His love for us. 

But this passage continues verse 9 and 10 - “God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him.  In this is love not that we love God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be an atoning Sacrifice for our sins.”

This tells me that love is to be expressed practically.  God did not simply say to us, “I love you, I wish you well. I know you blew it in the Garden of Eden and you are plagued with sin – I really hope everything works out all right for you – blessings on you.” 

That’s not the kind of love God has for us.  God’s love is practical, it is active and we see it at work in His sending His Son to deal with the sin issue.  So John will say at verse 11 - “Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another.”  John is saying, this is how we ought to love one another. This is how we ought to love our neighbour who is in need, practically - demonstrating love through active caring.

So John would write in chapter 3:18 - “Let us not love with word or with tongue but in deed and truth.” 

A portrait we have here today is of someone who dared to make a difference - Bob Pierce.  Bob Pierce believed that the most effective way to present Christ to the world was through tangible acts of love and compassion.  He understood that love for one another and love for our neighbour had to be practical.  He would write, “We must first treat people’s physical needs so we can then minister to their real (spiritual) needs.”  One biography has said that “next to the Lord Himself there have been few people in history who demonstrated greater compassion for suffering humanity than Bob Pierce.”  He would write in the front of his Bible, the words, “Let my heart be broken with the things that break the heart of God.” 

It all began with a trip to China as a Christian minister and war correspondent in 1949.  Bob was visiting a mission orphanage where he was drawn to a small forlorn little figure – her razor thin body hunched at the bottom of the stairs.  When he asked why she wasn’t being cared for like the other orphans, he was told that the orphanage was full, caring for four times the number they were able to handle.   So he took five dollars from his pocket and handed to the headmistress and said, “Please care for her.”   He then traveled to war-torn Korea, where he learned how thousands of suffering people and children orphaned by war were in need of emergency relief in the form of food, water and housing. 

Bob returned to the USA and in 1950, knowing that Christ is demonstrated when we love one another in practical ways, he founded World Vision. Fifty years later, World Vision is the planet’s largest privately-funded relief and development organization serving well over 50 million people in 103 countries. Because one man dared to make a Christian difference through practical acts of love.

The last part of our passage, verse 12 - “No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is perfected in us.”   My friends,  the world is watching us.  They have never seen God and they are wondering if God is real.  They want to see God. Many want to believe. And they are looking to us.  And we demonstrate the reality of Jesus Christ by loving one another and loving our neighbour.  

I don’t need to take you by the hand and tell you ways you can demonstrate the love of Christ to one another and to your neighbour who is in need.  I know you that the Holy Spirit speaks to you and there are a hundred and one ways for you to demonstrate love.  The problem is in doing it.  Do you dare to do it?  Do you dare to take Jesus at His word when he says, “All people will know you are my disciples if you love one another”?  And love your neighbour as yourself. 

Now, I know that I’ve told you part of this story before but it illustrates what I am saying so well that I cannot resist telling it here. One of my favorite preachers is Juan Carlos Hortis, who was once a pastor in a church in Buenos Aires.

When he went there had 300 members in his church and in a very short time had grown to over a 1,000.  And he says that he was known as the pastor of the fastest-growing church in Buenos Aires.  And he was quite pleased about that.

He tells how one Sunday morning he had prepared a sermon on the subject of love.  He had looked up the Greek words for love, was going to define them, and had his message carefully planned.  But that Sunday morning as he sat on the platform, proud of his message, as one of his colleagues was leading the singing during the time of worship, he felt very strongly that he shouldn't preach this message.

And then the song leader said, "And now brothers and sisters brother Juan Carlos will bring us the message."  He tells, "I went up the pulpit and I said, ‘My brothers and sisters, my text for this morning is Love one another.’ "

He closed his Bible, went back to his seat and sat down.  And there was silence for about 2 minutes.  And that is a very long time when you don't know what is happening.  The music leader leaned across and asked if they were supposed to sing another song.  Yet he just sat there quietly.

After about two minutes he got up and said, "Brothers and sisters, my text this morning is love one another,” then he went back to his seat.  His wife was in the balcony and thought, "He's flipped. I knew he would one day, but today's it - he's flipped."

He got up a third time, and said, "Brothers and sisters, my text is love one another."  He went back to his seat.

It was when he got up on the fourth time and said, "Brothers and sisters, my text today is Love one another,” that as he went back to his seat, a man sitting over on one side of the church got up and went to a man on the other side of the church - a man with whom he had a longstanding argument and in front of the whole church said, "I'm sorry for the things I have said, will you forgive me?"  And the two embraced as forgiveness was offered and accepted.

Within a few minutes the church was alive with people moving around the sanctuary.  Everyone was turning to another offering to do what ever they could do for one another.  Another man got up and went to a woman in the congregation and said, "I know you are out of work and my office is hiring right now, Maybe I can help." 

A woman got up and went to a single mother and offered to baby sit for her on Wednesday afternoons so that the mother could attend the weekly Bible study. 

Juan Carlos says that all sorts of needs were met that morning, all sorts of relationships were reconciled, and 28 unemployed people in the church went home with a job.

He said, “Had I given my message on love, they would have shook my hand at the door and said, ‘Thank you, pastor. That was a great message. I didn't know that God enabled me to love my fellow Christian in that way. Wow I go home fully informed now.”  But countless relationships would still be broken and 28 unemployed people would have gone home still unemployed, and most of the church could not have cared less.

The next Sunday morning he got up and said, "Brothers and sisters my text this morning is Love one another."  He closed his Bible and went back to his seat and someone in the congregation got up and said, "Who can I help this week?"

He says, “for three months I had no liberty to preach.”  He adds, "Some people didn't like it, we lost about 300 people in those 3 months.  They said, ‘We've come here to hear the ministry of the word and all you say, is Love one another.’ "  But he said it transformed his church.

He said, “I was pleased that our church was the fastest growing church in Buenos Aires but I drove by the local cemetery one day and I noticed that it was growing as well. I realized that we weren't growing at all, we were just getting fat - we used to be 300 unloving Christians now we were 1,000 unloving Christians.  That isn't growth, that's just getting fat.”

And after 3 months he got up and said, “Brothers and sisters, the Lord has given me a new text this morning,” and the congregation broke out into applause!

He said, “my text this morning is Love your neighbour as yourself,” and there was a silence across the church.  He went back to his seat.  He said in about half a minute someone got up and went out through this door, someone else got up and went out through this door.  Within 10 minutes the church sanctuary was empty.  They had gone to their cars and the church parking lot was empty - they had all gone to their homes. He and his wife and their two daughters went back to their home, parked their car, and went knocking on doors asking people, “Is there any way I can help you?  Is there anything I can do for you?”

He said, “We tried all sorts of evangelism programs.  Our growth was primarily Christians frustrated with their churches coming to join us.  Suddenly we had people calling our church at all times of day and night, asking, ‘Can you help us?’ because the community had learned that these were a people who truly loved.”

Do you dream that our church would so demonstrate the love of Christ to one another that no one would feel excluded?  No one would be able to hold a grudge for long.  Forgiveness would be offered, forgiveness would be received – people would feel that they actually belonged to a group of Christians who love them?  Do you dream that for our church?

Do you dream for that our love for our community would be demonstrated in such a way that the those who are in need would actually call, not social services, not a government agency but actually call us for help because they had heard that we were a people who were willing to help and demonstrate the love of Christ?

Do you dare to dream that dream? I pray that you do and would be willing to make it a reality for it is then that the love of Christ would be made real to each person here and to our world.

Copyright MBC and Tom Cullen - April 2006

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