You Had One Job

You Had One Job

Matthew 22:34-40; I John 4

■ We’re going to look at two scriptures today. Our launching point will be Matthew 22 and from there we will spend the rest of our time in I John chapter 4.

■ (Video 1: An orchestra playing) He had one job, didn’t he? Just hit the drum with the mallet at the right time. Unfortunately, he hit a percussionist at the wrong time.

■ If Christians were given a job description of our duties as followers of Jesus, we would be surprised at its brevity. I know we could come up with a hundred things we need to do. Get ready for the surprise of your life. During Jesus’ final week on earth, He is in Jerusalem and daily facing questions from religious officials who are trying to get him in trouble.

■ Matthew 22:34-40 (ESV) – 34 But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the

Sadducees, they gathered together. 35 And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. 36 “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” 37 And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. 40 On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”

■ Jesus narrows down the Law (The Torah, our first 5 books of the Bible) and the Prophets (what we call the major and minor prophetic writings) to 2 commands. And the first and greatest helps us obey the second. What is the most important thing you can do every day? Love God with everything. Let’s move now to I John chapter 4.

*Our “one job” is loving God with everything we are and have.

From it flows everything else. But this commandment isn’t as simple as it sounds. I heard someone once say that the most complex song of all-time is “Jesus loves me; this I know.”

– 7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever

loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. 10 In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins… 14 And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. 15 Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. 16 So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us.

• Nothing matters if we don’t believe it. For me, the “flat-earth crowd” can have conferences, seminars, lectures and podcasts telling me their firm convictions about the shape of the planet, but I’m not going to spend one second listening to it. To me, it’s a settled issue. I don’t believe their claims.

Similarly if someone doesn’t believe in the love of God, it will ring about as hollow as the flat earth stuff does to me. The love of God must be believed before anything can happen in our lives. The apostle John is speaking to believers in Jesus here, but he is reminding them of how they have come to believe in the love of God over their lives.

• I need to believe I can’t do it. Since the 3rd chapter of the Bible until today, God’s creation wants to believe that we are god. When Eve was offered fruit from the forbidden tree with the offer of “you will be like God,” and we’ve been chomping down on that sinful produce ever since. We all want to be God. We all want to be in control. We all want to be the master of our fate. We want to think that we are enough. But we aren’t, my friend. You’re not enough. o You and I have made a horrible mess or our lives that we can’t fix. We have all sinned. We have all failed and broken God’s laws. We all deserve hell for what we have done. Nothing changes until we acknowledge we can’t do it. In the 12 steps of AA, there’s a reason why Step 1 is “We admit we are powerless over alcohol — that our lives have become unmanageable.” We are powerless over sin, and our lives have become unmanageable. o But Jesus did for me what I could never do for myself! Out of His great indefinable love, verse 14 says, “the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world.” Verse 10 says, “In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” Jesus left heaven, came here, lived a sinless life, and died on a cross for the sins of humanity.
• There’s a $5 word in verse 10 that every Christian should know. The word is “propitiation,” and it deals with God’s wrath. Some believe the word means “appeasement” or “deflection,” but author Jerry Bridges says there’s a better word to use. The word is “exhaustion.” In other words, Jesus exhausted the wrath of God. When He willfully laid his life down (because no one takes it from him), He endured the true pain of the cross. I’m not trying to minimize what He went through physically, but the true pain of the cross was not the crown of thorns, or the lashes upon his back, or the nails in His hands and feet.
• The brutality of the cross is found in Jesus taking the cup of God’s wrath meant for us and drinking every last drop of it upon Himself. He took on every theft, murder, lie, affair, lustful thought, and so on upon Himself. He exhausted the wrath of God Himself. Can you even imagine what that must have been like for those hours He spent on the cross, STILL NOT SINNING IN THE PROCESS. Only His love kept Him there – His love for YOU!! Believe in this love today.
• I need to believe I was worth it. My loving Jesus doesn’t activate His love. It’s already active whether I recognize it or not. Verse 10 says, “In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us.” He’s been doing this loving thing for you before you were aware of Him. o There is a horrible thread of nihilism that has invaded our younger generations. (There’s a social media influencer who had gained millions of views. In a recent video, he’s playing a keyboard and joyfully singing a tune that sounds like a Disney musical but the lyrics are far from it: “I’m not important and neither are you. So let’s do whatever we wanna do. Bask in our cosmic insignificance, soak up this blip we’re livin’ in. Cause nothing matters anyway. Isn’t that great?”) Nihilism is not the answer to narcissism. The answer to “I’m god” isn’t “I don’t matter.” The answer is found in a love that reached out to you first. Yes, Jesus died for humanity – but He died for you individually. He took on your individual sins to rescue you from these prisons of thought.

He thought you were and are worth it. I’m not god; I’m not worthless; but I am worth the love of the Almighty. He loves you today! Believe in this love!!

1. His love must be inhabited o I John 4:13,16b – 13 By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit…16 So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.
   • When we believe in the Lord’s love, it now takes root within us, and we make His love a daily focus of our lives. His love becomes the springboard for everything else we do. It needs to take residence with us. We need to inhabit this love and allow it to saturate every part of us. o 13 By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit.” The Holy Spirit is here to lead and guide us into all truth and daily deepen our understanding and acceptance of God’s love. We intentionally allow it to pervade our heart, our soul, our mind, and our strength. o (Growing up in a dysfunctional home…) But even if you endured an abusive or neglectful environment, if you have believed in Christ’s finished work for you, the Holy Spirit is now with you, reminding us of how loved we are. And yes, it’s going to take time (and we may need some Christian professionals to help us here), but the longer we inhabit and abide in this spectacular love, the more it changes us.
   • To inhabit this love is to abide in God. I think this is the absolute key to the discipleship process. And yes, adopting positive disciplines over our lives like Bible reading, worshiping, tithing are all necessary. But the greatest discipline of all in the life of the believer is to spend time daily reflecting, dwelling, and enjoying the love of the Lord. We are not meant to experience His love once then put on our uniforms of duty and keep a stiff upper lip the rest of our lives. On the contrary, when I am inhabiting the love of God, it changes my attractions. As I regularly bask in the love that God has lavished on me, how can I help not wanting to read His word, to pray, to give, and to serve?
   • Sometimes we’re too quick with the checklists, giving Christians their daily list of chores and checking them off one-by-one. Maybe our highest priority – our one job – is to inhabit and live in the love of Christ, doing so with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. And from there all the disciplines flow.
   • Abiding in the love of God allow lessens the attractions to sin. When we are truly and regularly experiencing the love of God, whatever things we have used for pleasure and distraction completely pale by comparison. I’m not saying we’re never beyond temptation. No, in fact, there’s a reason His grace is made available to us every day. But living in the love of God gives us a greater understanding that sin shall no longer be our master. o Who knew that maybe the most important step in the repentance process was to pray and earnestly desire for a deeper and richer understanding of God’s love? When we enjoy TRUE love, fake love online will be exposed for what it is. When we inhabit God’s love the substances that numbed us will be refused for our new reality requires no anesthesia. When we abide in God’s love, our misperceptions and misconceptions of father are superimposed by the steadfast love of the Lord that never ceases. Indeed, abiding in the love of God is the most important component in process of being a disciple of Jesus. This is our one job!
2. His love must be perfected

I John 4:17-19 – 17 By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world. 18 There is no fear in love, but

perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. 19 We love because he first loved us. o Now the word “perfected” is easily misunderstood. John isn’t alluding to an unattainable standard of perfection here, because just hearing the word “perfect” can make us think of “perfectionism,” which does nothing but frustrate us. No the word perfected means a maturing, a growing, a progressing in our walk with Christ.

• I can’t say this enough. We don’t “grow out of” our need for God’s love. If anything, maturity in Christ shows in a greater need and desire for His love over us. We don’t get so “mature” that we don’t need His love anymore and can do it on our own. That’s as unbiblical as it gets. No, we only go deeper into that love (Bob Schuh praying over the offering at Bethel). And doing so allows to do things we may previously thought not possible.
• In our ability to share. Please make note of verse 18. It’s a good highlight verse in your copy of the Scriptures. 18 There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. Perfect love, or maturing love, casts out fear. Love and fear cannot coexist. And the more we operate in the love of God personally, the less fear has a hold on us.
• Let’s be reminded of the second of Jesus’ commands: love your neighbor as yourself. Guess what? The second one doesn’t occur if the first one isn’t happening. Oh, I know even atheists can give and receive love. I’m not being naive here. But over this message you know the love I’m talking about. It’s an agape love (Greek word here). It’s a selfless love that loves without any expectation of something in return.
• We now live in a post-Christian America. Feel free to disagree if you like, but we are in a spiritual desert. If we do our one job, we are going to be the most equipped and available to share the message that has changed our lives. If we are so grounded in His love, fear goes out the window. The fear of rejection can be broken in Jesus’ name. The love of God and others shoves aside any hesitancy to share with unbelievers the gospel of Jesus Christ. o Note to introverts: you can do this. Better yet, WE can do this. I’m a very shy person by nature and not a guy who “works the room”. I’ve whiffed at chances to tell others about Christ, God forgive me. But I’m grateful for His grace and that he still gives me chances. And when I’m being perfected by God’s love, the fear doesn’t stand a chance.
• (As a tent making element to my life to pay bills, I drive for Uber. Recently I picked up a young man…) Trust me, only the love of God gives me the ability to do such things. o In our ability to forgive. Show me someone who can’t forgive, and I’ll show you someone who isn’t living in the love of God. This is a sermon in itself, but when I won’t forgive it shows proof that I haven’t been forgiven. But when the love of God is perfecting me, I constantly realize HOW FORGIVEN I AM and how much I still need to be, so how can I not do likewise?
• Remember that forgiveness doesn’t free the other person so much as it frees you.

Forgiveness doesn’t mean they get away with it, it gets you away from it. Jesus said, “He who is forgiven little loves little. Let’s be perfected and mature in the love of God so that we can be set free of all our chains. You had one job: love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.