“Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not the things I tell you” (Luke 6:46).
“If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them” (John 13:17).
I apologize for the title. There are wonderful churches filled with
faithful disciples of Jesus Christ who are getting these things right; I
don’t mean to imply otherwise. But that does not negate the fact that
untold thousands of churches still exist primarily for themselves, have
no vision outside their doors and no compassion for anyone knocking on
those doors.
If none of this fits you or your congregation, give thanks. If it
does, you are hereby assigned to take the lead in reversing matters.
However, do not miss our notes at the conclusion.
1. We keep forgetting the second commandment is a command.
We want our religion to be private, just “me and the Lord.”
Jesus refuses to play that game. He said, “And the second is like
unto it. Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself” (Matthew 22:39). This
is a command, not an option, an opinion, a wish, a Facebook “like” or a
good idea. To love one’s neighbor strongly is a key component of the
kind of witness Jesus envisioned His people extending to the world.
So, why don’t we obey it? We have found it inconvenient, difficult
and demanding. When we love people — truly care for them to the point
that they know it — they might need us, and that would interfere with
our schedule. It’s much easier to love the lovely, to care for the
appreciative and to reach out to those who need little or nothing.
2. We keep forgetting two things about His command to feed the hungry, clothe the needy, visit the sick, etc., in Matthew 25.
First, we forget that this is a
command and is not optional,
something the Lord hopes we might find time to do along life’s way
while attending to more important matters. Jesus honestly expects His
people to do this. I’m happy to report many churches are taking this
seriously, and are involving their people in strong ministries to the
down and out, the voiceless, the forgotten.
Secondly, when we do these things “unto the least of these
my brethren,” He
takes it personally. We are to do good to everyone, but brothers and
sisters in Christ have dibs on our assistance. Paul said, “As we have
opportunity, let us do good to all, especially to those who are of the
household of faith” (Galatians 6:10).
A side note: Nowhere — underscore that — nowhere! does the Bible tell
the church to take care of all the poor of the world. It gets tiresome
hearing people say that the government would not have to get involved in
welfare if the church did its duty. (It’s almost ludicrous to imagine
Jesus telling the handful of disciples in Jerusalem that they were to go
into all the world and meet the physical needs of the billions. He did
not do this. Let us give thanks.)
3. We forget that loving people and loving the Lord is all about action, not emotion.
When our Lord told us to “love your enemies” in Luke 6:27ff, He
immediately explained that what He’s calling for is action: do good,
bless, pray, give, etc. Throughout the Upper Room discourse (John
13-16), Jesus emphasized that whoever loves Him keeps His commands.
Words are important, of course, and emotions can be, too. But nothing
packs more punch than actions, the works we do. The Lord said, “Whoever
hears these words of mine
and does them is like one who builds his house on a rock” (Matthew 7:24).
No one can command his own emotions — fear, anger, love, hate, etc. —
to the point of being able to turn them on or off at will. So, if love
is merely a feeling, in calling on us to love anyone (God, neighbor,
family, disciples, enemies) the Lord is asking for what cannot be given.
Fortunately, what He is calling for is far more manageable and doable.
We can give, pray, bless and/or help others. To do so — regardless
of how we feel about it! — is to do a loving thing.
4. We keep forgetting the Lord told us to expect to be treated badly.
“An hour is coming for everyone who kills you to think that he is offering service to God” (John 16:2).
God’s people keep expecting to be loved and appreciated by those to
whom we minister and often end up getting blind-sided by their
hostility. We wonder, “Why are they treating us this way? All I was
doing was helping and blessing.” “Where is God? What’s wrong?”
Answer: Nothing is wrong. You are right on schedule.
We have forgotten Matthew 10:16-22 and similar passages where Jesus
warned us that we would be hated “by all for (His) name’s sake.”
I run into disillusioned ministers who were badly treated by
churches, and are angry at the Lord who called them into this work but
seems to have no place for them to serve. Some no longer go to church.
You wonder if these people don’t read their Bibles. Don’t they see that
Scripture warns us to expect trouble from inside the church as well as
outside? (Acts 20:28ff for one.)
5. We keep forgetting He told us to love our enemies.
This point follows on the heels of the previous ones for good reason.
They treat us badly and how are we to react? We are to love them, not
nurse our anger, bear grudges or protect our resentment as though we now
possess a get-out-of-jail-free card entitling us to despise them.
Anyone who spends even a few minutes on Facebook reading the posts of
professing Christians will come away horrified at the hostility some of
the Lord’s people express toward other religions, worldly pleasure
lovers and wayward politicians.
6. We no longer remember that we are commissioned to throw parties for the undeserving and undesirable.
“When you give a reception (banquet), invite the poor, the crippled,
the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, since they do not have the
means to repay you; for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the
righteous” (Luke 14:13-14).
These people have our Lord’s heart. They are special to Him. “He who
gives to the poor lends to the Lord,” Scripture says in Proverbs. The
closer we are to Jesus, the more such ones will matter to us too. (If
you haven’t read Tony Campolo’s
The Kingdom of God is a Party, then get it and dive in. Tony has a way of hitting us between the eyes with the 2x4 of God’s love.)
7. We conveniently forget that “Jesus saves.”
We know He forgives and we love to sing about it. What we have pushed
to the back burner, however, is the fact that He came to save sinners
(see Matthew 1:21 and Luke 2:11 for starters) and that is to be our
business too.
We who devote ourselves to feeding the hungry and clothing the naked
and so forth, sometimes think we have fulfilled our assignment. Not even
close. We fail people when we give them bread but keep silent about the
Savior who can meet their true needs, fill their deepest hungers and
heal their greatest hurts.
8. We forget that, with Jesus, change is the norm.
Luke 5:36-39 presents new wineskins as the Lord’s pattern for His disciples: strong, flexible, faithful, growing, etc.
We do love our status quo. Physicists call it “inertia,” the tendency
of a body to go on doing whatever it’s doing at the moment, moving or
remaining stationary. However, the Lord does not play this game with us.
He is forever calling us out of our comfort zones, away from our
customary methods, into new ways of seeing and doing and achieving. No
one unwilling to constantly be changing and adapting can follow Jesus
Christ for long.
9. We keep forgetting that the object is not to keep rules.
The object is obedience to the Lord, not slavishly keeping the rules.
Many of the Lord’s well-intentioned children miss the fine line between
those two.
“The letter of the law kills, the Spirit gives life” (II Cor 3:6).
Anyone who requires a demonstration of that proof needs only to drop in
on a legalistic church and hang around a few weeks. He or she will be
heartbroken over the way rule-keepers “omit the weightier matters” in
order to “tithe mint and dill and cummin” (Matthew 23:23).
Recently, while I was preaching in a church located near a sizeable
Amish community, the pastor had stories about the interesting ways of
these neighbors. One man had disinherited his adult sons for buying a
car. Yet, that same man would hire a car and driver to transport him to
Nashville where he would board planes to take him all over the world.
To the legalists who were twisting God’s laws into shackles for their
neighbors, our Lord said, “Man was not made for the Sabbath, but the
Sabbath was made for man” (Mark 2:27).
I say, without fear of contradiction, that every church in the land
has members (and often leaders) who need constant reminders of this.
10. We keep forgetting to read all the Word and not take a verse or two out of context.
“Here a verse, there a verse.” I stand before you today to confess
that I’m as guilty as anyone I know. We do love our verses, don’t we?
They fit so conveniently on bumper stickers and in our tweets.
How many people know and love Jeremiah 29:11 (“I know the plans I
have for you … ”) and claim it as their own, but have no clue what’s
going on in that chapter and to whom it was given.
Here’s another: In Luke 9:3, Jesus said to the disciples, “Take
nothing for your journey, neither staffs nor bag nor bread nor money;
and do not have two tunics apiece.” Clear enough, right? Wrong.
Not long ago, a distinguished Christian columnist quoted Luke 9:3 as
the basis of God expecting poverty from Christian workers. However, the
Lord reversed that command in Luke 22:35-36.
It’s an easy mistake to make unless you are a diligent student of the Word.
All of which proves, once again, that His thoughts are not our thoughts, neither are His ways our ways (Isaiah 55:8).
We do like our religion easy and palatable, comfortable and
undemanding, with instant rewards and no room for outsiders unless they
quickly become like us.
Now, you read this and conclude that your church is guilty of
forgetting the Lord’s teachings and is existing primarily for itself.
What to do?
1) Consider yourself a committee of one to begin to reverse matters.
2) But you must never ever become angry at your fellow members and begin to harass them for their negligence.
3) Instead, begin showing compassion (that is, doing deeds of love) to everyone around you.
4) Then, after, say, four months of such active love, you begin to
speak to a few friends in church — perhaps your Sunday School class or
your fellow deacons — on your concern, giving your own testimony. See
that? “Your testimony.” Do not tell anyone what they are to do. (It’s
such a temptation, but squelch it.) Just tell what the Lord burdened you
with and what you have decided.
5) Then, wait on the Lord. Keep close to Him, pray constantly for your leadership and the membership, and stay obedient.
6) Be patient. The decline did not set in just last week and the
rotten wood in the church did not occur overnight, so reversing it will
not automatically take place just because one member got his heart
right.
The Lord bless you and give you great joy in serving Him and blessing others in the name of Jesus.
I leave you (and this subject) with one of the most powerful and overlooked scriptures on this subject: Jeremiah 22:16.
“‘Did not your father (that would be Josiah) eat and drink and do
justice and righteousness? Then it was well with him. He pled the cause
of the afflicted and needy; then it was well. Is not that what it means
to know Me?’ declares the Lord.”
