A, Mid Week Lent 4- Sermon Series "The Litany of Jesus' Treasures - Love"

By the love of Jesus, Lord teach us how to love.

The treasure of love Jesus gives us, is a treasure that lasts for an eternity.  What is this treasure?  It’s Jesus himself, his sacrifice, his life for your life, eternal life swapped at the cross for death and descent into hell.

Jesus’ treasure of love is all about life!  God the Father loves life, he loves to give life.  His love comes to all people regardless of them, knowing about, or, wanting his love.  God’s love flows to humanity through his giving of life in the world.  All that God created is a gift of love to humanity, and in this creation, he continues to love us by providing all we need.

God’s love also comes to us physically and effectively in Jesus Christ.  Jesus is sent and he comes to us because of the Father’s love for us.  Jesus loves us and he loves God the Father and therefore lovingly follows the will of God the Father.

Jesus giving himself to us in love, is about eternal life.  God the Father provides for us in this created world, and he gives us Jesus Christ so we might have new life in his eternal realm.  Jesus is God’s gift of eternal love to us!

We hear from Luke chapter ten, “And behold, a lawyer stood up to put him to the test, saying, ‘Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?’  He said to him, ‘What is written in the Law? How do you read it?’  And he answered, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbour as yourself.’  And he said to him, ‘You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live.’” (Luke 10:25–28 ESV)

The law man meets Jesus.  He is second to none in his knowledge and practise of the Old Testament Law.  He asks the Gospel Man about life who directs him back to the Law and from it we hear the summary of the Ten Commandments,  ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbour as yourself.’  To which Jesus gives the Lawyer the “Law answer” to life,  “do this, and you will live”.

Notice the Law answer is about us doing the loving.  If humanity could love God the right way, then we could get eternal life.

Now, from Mark chapter ten, hear Jesus’ interaction with someone else who seeks eternal life, “And as Jesus was setting out on his journey, a man ran up and knelt before him and asked him, ‘Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?’  And Jesus said to him, ‘Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone.  You know the commandments…  And he said to him, ‘Teacher, all these I have kept from my youth.’  And Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said to him, ‘You lack one thing: go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.’  Disheartened by the saying, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.” (Mark 10:17–19a, 20­–22 ESV) 

Jesus loved him!  He told him what to do, to get rid of his treasures to receive treasures in heaven.  To love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbour as yourself, is what one must do to love God, and to receive eternal life.

Two problems loom at this point.  Can we do this love effectively enough to receive God’s love and eternal life?  And secondly, when Jesus looked at the man and loved him, it does not sound like he loved him, in his response, and the man’s reaction.  What is going on?  What is this love?  How do we love as Jesus loved?

Jesus loving look at the man and reply does not invoke feelings of love from the man, but rather sorrow and looking away from Jesus back to his possessions.

Immediately after this, “Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, ‘How difficult it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!’  And the disciples were amazed at his words. But Jesus said to them again, ‘Children, how difficult it is to enter the kingdom of God!  It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.’  And they were exceedingly astonished, and said to him, ‘Then who can be saved?’  Jesus looked at them and said, ‘With man it is impossible, but not with God. For all things are possible with God.’  Peter began to say to him, ‘See, we have left everything and followed you.’”  (Mark 10:23–28 ESV)

Peter and the disciples still did not get what this love was all about.  Yes, he and the disciples had left everything to follow Jesus, but they did not understand the fullness of “everything”, nor to where they were following him! 

To where was Jesus looking when he looked at the man and loved him?  To where was Jesus looking when he said, “With man it is impossible, but not with God.  For all things are possible with God.”

We hear from Luke chapter nine, “When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem.”  (Luke 9:51 ESV)

Jesus’ love for the lawyer, and the man he looked at in love, was not that he gave them a method through which to love God and receive eternal life.  But rather Jesus’ love, for them, and us, is at the cross, Jesus loved God the Father with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his strength and with all his mind, and his neighbour as himself.  Jesus loves us in the fulfilment of the Law at the cross.

Notice the Gospel is about Jesus loving us where we fail to love him through the Law!

So, what do we learn from Jesus’ love for us, so we might learn to love one another?  Hear what Jesus says to Simon Peter after his resurrection…

“‘Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?’ He said to him, ‘Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.’ He said to him, ‘Feed my lambs.’  He said to him a second time, ‘Simon, son of John, do you love me?’ He said to him, ‘Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.’ He said to him, ‘Tend my sheep.’  He said to him the third time, ‘Simon, son of John, do you love me?’ Peter was grieved because he said to him the third time, ‘Do you love me?’ and he said to him, ‘Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Feed my sheep’.  And after saying this he said to him, ‘Follow me.’”  (John 21:15–17,19b ESV)

Little do we realise we have the eternal treasure of love now, as we follow Jesus.  He allows the Law to show us our sin, and therefore our death, to face us towards eternal life.  Like the man asking what he should do to earn eternal life, we do well to not walk away disheartened, but to keep following Jesus to the foot of the cross.  It’s here he swapped and continues to swap our sin and sinfulness for his sinlessness and righteousness.

For us humans to enter into a relationship of love, we “follow Jesus”.  Like Peter, God is working in you with his Holy Spirit, teaching you the possibilities of God as he reveals the impossibilities of our perishable possessions, our time bound by death, and sinful selves.   God the Father, and God the Son continue to love us by giving us renewed life in the Holy Spirit. 

Notice the Holy Spirit loves to give new life in Jesus Christ’s work of love!

Like Peter, we are being taught and inspired by the Holy Spirit that giving up “everything” to follow Jesus, first begins with giving up the powers and principles within ourselves, which are really nothingness, so the powers and principles of our Triune God work in us and through us, giving us everything to die to self and love others as God loves us.   

Jesus says, “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.  Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.  You are my friends if you do what I command you.  No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.  You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you.  These things I command you, so that you will love one another.”  (John 15:12–17 ESV)

God continues to love us, now we have the power to love God and others, because the Holy Spirit wells up faith within us.  This is a faith in the faithfulness of Jesus’ love toward us, and in it the Spirit empowers within us an enduring love to be faithful towards one another, to feed and forgive, and humbly seek forgiveness too.