Sent Out! #5
Part 5: How to Defeat the Fear of Man
Matthew 10:34-42
Harry Stoliker
February 15, 2009 EBC
Sent Out!
This morning we are looking at the other powerful force that Jesus spoke
to his apostles about as He sent them on Mission. Last week we looked at
the Fear of Man and now we will consider having a Supreme Love for Christ.
Thomas Vincent (1634-1678) was a Puritan non-conformist minister and
author word a powerful little book called The True Christian's Love to the Unseen
Christ. He was thrown out of his pulpit in 1662 under the Act of Uniformity
by the Parliament in England forcing all the ministers to use the Common
Book of Prayer and other Anglican rules of worship. All preachers
who didn't conform to it were expelled from their churches and kept away
from their congregations by being forced to stay at least 5 miles from their
towns.
He opens his book with: "The life of Christianity consists very much in
our love to Christ. Without love to Christ, we are as much without spiritual
life as a carcass when the soul is fled from it is with out natural
life. Faith without love to Christ is a dead faith, and a Christian without
love to Christ is a dead Christian, dead in sins and trespasses. Without love to
Christ we may have the name Christian, but we are wholly without the nature.
We may have the form of godliness, but we are wholly without the power. "Give me
your heart" is the language of God to all the children of men (Prov. 23:26);
and "Give me your love" is the language of Christ to all His disciples."
If you are going to be effective in expanding the Kingdom of Christ in mission,
you have to love Christ supremely. (Repeat this take home phrase).
Matthew 10:37 "Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy
of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me."
Luke 14:26 "If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father
and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own
life, he cannot be my disciple."
Luke 14:33 "So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all
that he has cannot be my disciple."
Augustine, philosopher and theologian and church father (354-430AD)
was one of the most important figures in the development of Western Christianity
said it as powerfully as a human can: "Jesus Christ is not valued at all
until He is valued above all." He means that ½ love is no love.
You can't love anything in life as much as you love Jesus.
Jesus wants you to love Him more than anything else in your life.
That is the constant and ultimate challenge of your life. It has always
been God's demand and call upon His people. "What is the greatest commandment?"
they asked Jesus. He replied in Mark 12:29-30 "The most important is, 'Hear,
O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God
with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind
and with
all your strength." Every part of you: will, mind, soul,
heart, strength – every fiber of your being, every chamber of your heart, every
ounce of your strength, every category of your mind. Are you there yet? Are
you that much in love with Jesus? Does love for Him occupy that much
of your being?
Our passage in Mt. 10 starts out with Jesus dispelling a false assumption:
10:34-36 "Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth.
I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man
against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against
her mother-in-law. And a person's enemies will be those of his own household."
-
Wasn't the Messiah going to be the Prince of Peace? Didn't the great company
of angels at his birth say "and on earth peace to men…?" Didn't the messianic
Psalm 72:7 say of Him: "In his days may the righteous flourish and
peace abound, till the moon be no more!
Jesus wasn't going to bring the kind of peace that people wanted, a peace
that left them alone in their sin and idolatry. They wanted a domesticated
Messiah who would bring a tranquility that didn't require anything
from them.
-
The Peace Jesus brought came at the expense of loving him supremely.
Peace with Jesus would mean separating from unbeliever and separating from
sin. It came with the price of changing priorities and loyalties
to make Jesus of supreme importance.
-
The sword Jesus brought wasn't a literal sword but the sword that would
divide family loyalties. Some fathers and mothers wouldn't agree that
their sons and daughters became Christ-followers. Making Christ supreme would
generate hatred and enemies among even family members who refuse to
also submit to Christ's supremacy. What happened in Jesus' own family
that showed how his brothers felt about his total commitment to God? Open
to Mark 3:21 "And when his family heard it, they went out to seize him, for
they were saying, "He is out of his mind." Your family may come to think
the same about you!
-
This dividing of families into believers and non-believers creates the
greatest challenge of where your ultimate loyalty will lay and who
you will love more: your family or Jesus Christ.
V.37 "Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of
me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me…"
Luke 14:26 "If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father
and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own
life, he cannot be my disciple."
In what ways do we show that we love Christ supremely? What does it look
like when it is lived out rather than just verbalized?
-
Obedience. The number one way is through obeying the Word
of Christ. John 14:21 "Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is
who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him
and manifest myself to him." This is how Jesus measures our love for Him.
Not in the number of church services we attend or the million
committees we sit on or the endless activities we are involved with.
Clear, simply, concrete obedience to the Word of God as the Spirit draws
it to our attention. Not ½ obedience, which is no obedience, but full obedience
to direct commands of Scripture. John 14:15 "If you love me, you will keep
my commandments." 1 John 2:4-6 "Whoever says "I know him" but
does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him, 5
but whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected. By this
we may be sure that we are in him: 6 whoever says he abides in
him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked."
-
Author Sam Storms said it this way: "Are we so much in love with Jesus,
so utterly enthralled with the transcendent beauties of our Savior,
so swallowed up in the adequacy of the Son of God in all things that nothing
appears so sweet to us as obedience to His commands?" Wow! What did he
just say? I think he said that the more beautiful we think Christ
is, the more spellbound we are by His complete sufficiency, the more
we are going to really want to obey Jesus!
-
John Hannah, Distinguished Professor of Historical Theology at Dallas
Theological Seminary, made a powerful statement about obedience: "It
is inconceivable that a person could fall in love with the Redeemer
in the biblical sense and not long to be conformed to the object of that affection."
If you say you love Jesus supremely, then you must long to become like Christ in
every way.
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Supreme love for Jesus is seen when we conquer sin in our lives
and conform more to His character. Romans 12:2 "Do not be conformed
to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you
may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect."
Reprogramming the way you think about the world and all that's in it will
make you more like Jesus. Dying to the power of sin, lust, pride, greed,
hatred, and envy is clear evidence that your love of Christ is strong and
is pushing out the evil that was in you.
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Loving what Christ loves is clear evidence of supreme love
for Jesus. 1 John 2:15-16 "Do not love the world or the things
in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.
16 For all that is in the world— the desires of the flesh and the
desires of the eyes and pride in possessions—is not from the Father but is from
the world." The love of the Father will expel the love for the world
from our hearts. Supreme love for Christ forces out the love of evil things of the
world.
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C.H. Spurgeon said it well back in the 1840's: "The man who is all aglow
with love to Jesus finds little need for amusement. He has no time for
trifling. He is in dead earnest to save souls, and establish the
truth, and enlarge the kingdom of his Lord."
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Do you want to test yourself to see if you love Christ supremely? Here's
how : Ask yourself if you waste your time on trifling, on trivial things
or eternal things- things that count for eternity? Are you addicted to watching
trivial television or wasting large amounts of time on things that
have nothing to do with saving souls, establishing God's truth
or enlarging His Kingdom?
V.38 "And anyone who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of
me."
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Loving Christ supremely looks like someone who has taken up his cross daily.
He is dying. He is dying to the sinful passions of the world. He just isn't
drooling over what the world drools over. He isn't addicted to what
the world is addicted to. He isn't enjoying what the world enjoys. He isn't
chasing what the world is chasing. Rather he is boasting and glorying
in the Cross of Jesus Christ. Galatians 6:14 "But far be it from me to boast
except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified
to me, and I to the world."
We should never 'sanitize' the language of taking up our cross. This
wasn't pretty language then, it wasn't a religious cliché either.
It was frightening language. They were all too familiar with the horror of
crucifixion. It was a vivid and scary means of death. Jesus is saying
that if you love me supremely, you are willing to face the prospect and possibility
of a savage death. It was savage and shameful.