Called to Love

( unedited sermon transcript )

Good morning Castleton Church family, delightful to be with you for another Sunday and for us to find our fellowship around the word of God. I'll begin by reading a passage in First Thessalonians four, nine through 12. That's First Thessalonians chapter four, verses nine through 12. This is what scripture says. Now concerning brotherly love you have no need for anyone to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love one another. For that indeed is what you are doing to all the brothers throughout Macedonia. But we urge you brothers to do this more and more and to aspire to live quietly and to mind your own affairs and to work with your hands as we instructed you so that you may walk properly before outsiders and be dependent on no one. Brothers and sisters, this is the word of the Lord.

Will you join me in a brief word of prayer. Jesus says, we come to your word, would we find that which our souls need the very sustenance from your mouth. I pray that my speech would be clear that your love would permeate through us, and that we would show a watching world what you are like. We ask these things in your name. Amen. It wasn't long ago that I was in the atrium of a church and I saw a plaque on the wall. It spoke of a difficult day in which they found God's grace to be true. The rejection of a hopeful relationship between young people had sparked the anger of someone in that church, and that hot anger had turned into literal flames. Someone, yes, burned the place down.

The price tag came in around two million. Thankfully no one was actually hurt. But it's an extreme example of something that's all too common in churches. Isn't it? The damage that's caused when we fail to love. Christians are all too well-known for mistreating each other, for suing each other, for abusing each other, all while wearing their Jesus t-shirts. Giving Jesus the reputation for being less than he truly is. That is loving. Which is why our passage this morning, even though it may seem like Christianity 101, and in fact it is, is vital for us to hear.

God wants the world to see Christians loving each other. And that's why we need that word for us this morning. We're in that section in Thessalonians where God is revealing what it is he wants for all Christians. There were three things. Last week we saw he wanted us to live lives that were Holy, and this week he wants us to live lives that the world can see are full of love for each other. We'll see that in two sections as we move through these verses this morning.

First, we'll see that you are to grow your love for citizens of the kingdom. Grow your love for citizens of the kingdom in verses nine through 10. Second, that you are to show your love to citizens of this world. Show your love to citizens of this world, in 11 through 12. Let's begin in that first one. Grow your love for citizens of the kingdom. Right there in that first verse, verse nine, we see the topic of this section love between Christians. Paul says, "Now concerning brotherly love." The word he uses there in the original Greek is Philadelphia.

Now long before it was a city in Pennsylvania known for Philly cheesesteaks, Philadelphia had a very different connotation. A connotation of family love. The love between siblings. The love for those closest to you. The Greek cities back in that day used to aspire to have their citizens show this type of love toward each other. It was a great ideal of virtue. Paul picks up on this idea and transfers it to the church. To that heavenly city that's here on earth. An outpost form in your local church. It describes the love within the church of the Thessalonians as Philadelphia. Love between family and brothers.

Now notice that he thinks that this sort of love is basic to being a Christian. You might even say it is Christianity 101. Says, concerning brotherly love you have no need for anyone to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love one another. That phrase "Taught by God" should immediately perk up your ears if you've been paying careful attention to your old Testament. Back at the prophets, or at least a few places you could look to, Jeremiah 1. But I think Isaiah most likely where this phrase is significant. So we'll look for a Second Isaiah 54:13.

Isaiah looks forward to a day when God is going to be doing something new amongst his new covenant people. He says this, he says, "All your children shall be taught by the Lord, and great shall be the peace of your children." Both of those concepts are key in this passage, that idea of peace, but more directly right here being taught by God. Paul says in effect that you have already gone through kingdom living one 101 and God himself was your instructor. And what was the content of that course? Nothing less than love. Love from God and love to other Christians.

Now our small group had a great joy recently. One of our members became a citizen of the United States, Robert and [inaudible 00:06:57] celebrated that moment. And we as a small group over Zoom were able to cheer them on as Robert passed the citizenship test and officially became a citizen of the US. One of the reasons we are so proud for Robert is it took a good bit of work for him to go through that process. He had to study, he had to study US history. He had to study civics and the rules of our government. He had to learn what it was to be a citizen of the US. I would hazard to say, he might know more about those things than some of us like me, who grew up here in the US and take many those things for granted.

Well, by way of analogy, you could see a similar thing that's true of anyone who is a Christian. You are a citizen of a place, of a city. You're a citizen of somewhere very different from the place you live in the flesh. You're a citizen of the very kingdom of God. And you've already gone through the citizen training when you were converted. God taught you what it is to be part of this kingdom. He taught you how to love. That was a promise for God's new covenant people back through the prophets. That promise came to fruition as Jesus started his ministry. And what did he teach his disciples? Yes. To love one another. You can't simply say that Christianity is nothing more than love.

However, it is undoubtedly the most basic building block. You learn to love through your relationship to God, and then you turn around and you live that love out to other Christians. Now in the case of the Thessalonian church, they were living that love out in very commendable way. Paul's description of them here is of a church that is doing this well, that he's exhorting even to further and further obedience. Look in verse 10 as he describes the way that love overflows into a mission of mercy. For that indeed is what you were doing to all the brothers throughout Macedonia. But we urge you brothers to do this more and more.

It's not entirely clear what Paul has in mind here, but it seems as if it's more that there was some sort of need known by the larger region of Christians. Maybe it was the famines that we hear about in other letters, maybe it was just some other occasion where poverty caused hardship, but somehow or the other, the Christians in Thasaloniki were moved by their love for fellow citizens of the kingdom to help. We see here that that means that their love is at least two things. It is both expansive and it is expensive.

It's expansive, they're loving people more than just the people right in front of them. Their concern is for the whole church. And in this case, that means is they hear of needs of people who even live in neighborhoods very different from theirs. They react out of love and show mercy. The second is that, it was expensive. It wasn't cheap to send letters. It certainly wasn't cheap to send people, and money always costs us something. But it seems here that their love moved them to help even though it did indeed cost them something.

Now you might say a love like that sounds pretty great that maybe Paul would just hold them up as an example and say, "Everyone live like them." But that's actually not what he does here. He moves from commending them to exhorting them. At the end of verse 10, but we urge you brothers do this more and more. That this love that's expensive and expansive needs to continue growing. Then it needs to increase, compound its interest year over year.

I was at a wedding one time where they had a couple that had been married for, I believe it was eight decades, it was incredible. And a very sweet old couple, and they gave the husband the microphone and he said he had one bit of advice for all the couples out there, just love each other more each year than you did the year before. Well, that's a wonderful sentiment, and yet it should be true for the way Christians advance in their love for each other.

No matter how long we have been Christians, no matter how much we have expended ourselves to love other Christians, there's always a new level, always a new vista for our love toward each other. Because after all we have been loved by an infinite God. His spirit motivates us to love him more and more each year, and that will mean we will love each other more and more each year. So I need to ask brothers and sisters, in 2020, did you find yourself loving other Christians more than you did previously? Did you draw closer to other Christians or did you draw back from them? When you look at the year that was passed, are there more things between you and other Christians or are there less things between you?

One of the marks of someone that is spiritually healthy, is that they're drawn into community with other Christians. A very practical step that means is that, being a part of a local church is vital to being a healthy Christian. You can think of a local church as an outpost of the Kingdom of God. It's soil from that heavenly city right in your locale where you are supposed to gather and be a part of, and yes, love other Christians. That means if you're not a member of a local church, if you don't have somewhere where you are accountable to other believers and have committed to loving them, even when it costs you something, brothers and sisters, there's something missing in your Christian life.

Now I want to point out that we are not the only local church that is an outpost of the kingdom. Anywhere where the gospel is preached and people bow the knee to Jesus, that is an outpost of the kingdom just as much as we are. But if you are visiting our church or getting to know us, or looking for a local church, let me just say that we would love for you to take the steps necessary to join our membership. And in fact, this Saturday coming up, we are having what we call Castleton 101, that's our membership class. Where we lay out what it is we expect for the members of our church and the things we commit to do together.

Well, one aspect of that, that we go through in great detail, is our member covenant. One of the things in that covenant relates to how we understand our call to Christian love. Let me just read you a short portion of it. We purpose therefore, by the aid of the Holy Spirit, to walk together in Christian Love. I hope you want to do that with other Christians. And if you're a member of our church, I hope you have increasingly in the year past, but certainly in the year that's ahead of us, I hope that that will be true of your walk with Christ.

One of the other ways you can test how you're doing it, this Christianity 101 is to ask, how expansive is your love? I love how our church is a church that loves global outreach. We love partnering with believers in India and Thailand and all around the world. Love being a part of what God's doing to send the gospel places it hasn't gone and encourage other believers. Let's recognize that that is a wonderful mark of Christian love. But we also need to ask if our love is being expensive in our own neighborhood.

Monday is Martin Luther King day, and that's a great time for us to see how failure to have that expensive Christian Love can cause great harm. If you think about Dr. Martin Luther King's prophetic ministry, it was in a time where Christians had great failures in their call to love each other. The evangelical church for far too long was engaged in excluding people based on the color of their skin, harming each other in the actions they took, and yes, even hating each other. That's base the polar opposite of what Christian love is supposed to do among us. We're supposed to help each other, to demonstrate our love for each other by drawing close to each other and having acts of mercy toward each other.

We should pray that God would help us never to fall into that trap again as a group. But let's realize, as there's a call for us to grow in love or other areas of our Christian faith, certainly there's going to be room for all of us to grow in loving people that are different from us in one way or another. Certainly, skin color is still something that our culture divides over. But there are plenty of other markers. It could be socioeconomic status, it could be what country you were born in. It could be ideas of culture or preferences of politics, lots and lots of different lines that our world divides over.

Among Christians love should bind us together. So ask yourself, are you loving people different than you? If you're a citizen of the Kingdom of God, if you're a part of that heavenly city, then you have more in common with another Christian. Then you do to your next door neighbor that loves all the same things you do in this world. I pray that our church this year would grow in our love for each other, especially when there are obvious differences between us. Well, God wants when the world looks in for them to see the citizens of the kingdom loving each other.

Our second point is how that witness impacts the world around us. Verses 11 through 12, show your love to citizens of this world. There are some things that you may not understand the inner workings of, but you will be able to see the results of. I had a friend when I was living in Chicago land who is a HVAC technician. Every once in a while, something would go horribly wrong with my heater or my AC and I would call him over, and he would get out his special tools and measure things inside the equipment and tinker around and eventually he would come and tell me, "All right, it's working." Now I didn't understand everything he did, but I could tell whether he was telling me the truth if the air coming out of the vents in my house was the right temperature.

When the world looks into the church, there are many things they will not understand about us. In fact, they'll likely misunderstand the majority of things about us. And yet they will be able to see the result of love. Paul gives the goal of this Christian love toward the world that's watching in verse 12, so that you may walk properly before outsiders. God wants the world to look at the community of Christians and say, "Wow." The question is, how? How do we get that sort of result when our neighbors examine our lives?

Well, there's two ways that Paul points out. First is in verse 11. He says, "Aspire to live quietly." You might say it this way, that you should let the silence of your life be deafening. Consider the moment we live in. Author Ed Stetzer describes us as living in the age of outrage. I think that's a correct assessment of things. How different is it that a Christian might live a quiet, even peaceful life in the midst of a culture that seems to be outraged about everything?

Now to be sure that doesn't mean there aren't things for us to be righteously angry about. There are many. And yet we have to have a different gear to our spiritual engines. We have to be able to live in the gear of peace. Even when there are times for us to be prophetic. Stetzer writes, "What do we do when the anger becomes too much? When our righteous indignation and injustice morphs into something completely different? How do we know when righteous anger has made the turn into unbridled rage?" If the only way we can write is with our caps lock button always on. If the only way we can engage is by getting a bigger bull horn than our opponents. If all we seem to do is get angrier and angrier as the days go on, something has gone to miss brothers and sisters.

All right, look at the world around us. There is no shortage of outrage. What would it do to our witness in the community if there was a contrast to the way Christians lived? If we were known for living quietly and peacefully, ask yourself this question. If heaven were to send a survey to your neighbors, asking about your life, how would they respond? Would they say, "That guy is really hard to pick a fight with." "I can't believe that lady. It's unbelievable how patient she is when people are mean to her." "There are so many things I disagree with that guy about and yet he still treats me kindly." Would they be able to say things like that about you, or would they answer that survey very differently?

Brothers and sisters ask yourself, are you living in the age of outrage? Is there any contrast between your life and the life of a culture filled with anger and turmoil? Remember, we are citizens of a place of peace, the kingdom of heaven. And even though there are moments where we must be prophetic, the offense should be the message, not the conduct of the messengers. That's the first way Paul tells us to do this.

Second is to work hard to bear burdens and not to be a burden. He says it three times in these verses that Christians are to work productively. They are to be busy doing hard work and not be busy bodies budding into other people's business. He says it first positively, tells them to work with their hands. Then at end of 12, to be dependent on no one. He says that you are made to work. God has made us in such a way that we honor him and we bless ourselves and others when we work. He has given us bodies and minds designed to work. And we only fulfill our purpose in this world if we are productive.

That means we should desire to work and we should desire to be able to support ourselves. That our work would provide enough means that we would not require the assistance of anyone in order to keep the lights on and to keep food on our table. Paul, he took his own medicine at this point. He had the right as an apostle to receive financial compensation, and at times he did. But more often than not, he worked with his own hands as a tentmaker. Why? So he would not be a burden anyone.

There's a wonderful moment in the movie Cinderella Man. It's set during the great depression, work was hard to come by at that point, which meant a lot of people who never would have thought to take a handout were forced to. The main character played by Russell Crowe, found himself in that position. He hates the fact that he has to take welfare to keep the heat on for his family. And yet he desires so badly to be able to stand on his own two feet, that when his fortunes turn around and he's able to provide for himself again, there's this short scene where he goes back into the welfare office and he gives back all the money that he has received.

Now, let's be clear. There are seasons where receiving assistance as Christians is the right thing to do. When we are sick or infirmed or unable to work, receiving love and assistance from other concerned Christians is part of the community God has intended for us to be a part of. We should not be too proud to accept help when it's warranted. But let's be clear, Paul here is talking to people that are able bodied and perfectly capable to work. If we are in need because we are lazy or unwilling to work or so consumed with fruitless endeavors that we cannot support ourselves, then something has gone horribly wrong.

Paul says it another way. He says the negative side of the coin. He says, "To mind your own affairs." See when you're not busy working for yourself or to be able to help support the work of your local church and other Christians, when you're not busy doing the things you should be doing, you find yourself busy sticking your nose into other people's business. I heard one pastor say it well that particularly to men, said, "Men are like pickup trucks. They do better when they're carrying a load in the back. They drive straighter. They don't swerve as much."

When you have too much free time, you are more prone to some particular vices. To the vice of gossip, to the vice of slander, to the vice of wasting time on fruitless speculations. Just going down rabbit holes that really don't matter. With the Internet and smartphones at our disposal, we can stick our noses into matters all the way around the globe at 5G speeds. There's no end to the time we can waste being about other peoples business. You realize when we give in to that sort of a mindset, we waste ourselves that way. We are harming ourselves and we are greatly discouraging other Christians, and brothers and sisters beyond that, we are harming the witness of Christ in the world.

And believers see the behavior of how we post on social media, how we boss each other around and they say, "Man, I don't want anything to do with that." What's Paul's solution? It could not be more practical. It is find something productive to do. Get a part time job, go rake leaves for your neighbor. Take up wood working. There are ministries that would love to have you helping to serve. I know Life Centers is always looking for people to help reach out to mothers at risk of choosing abortions. You could give yourself to promoting the sanctity of life if you would just use that same time to serve instead of budding into other people's business.

So brothers and sisters, let's aspire to live quietly, but let's also aspire to not be a burden to anyone, but to help to bear the burdens of the body of Christ. God wants for when an unbeliever looks into the lives of Christians, for them to see a vision of a place very different from this world. He wants them to see people that are loving, hardworking, and peaceful. He wants them to see it in contrast to a tumultuous sin filled age. An age of outrage in which we live. Brothers and sisters, when we love each other this way, how it empowers our witness.

Now, maybe you're listening to this sermon this morning. Maybe you find yourself longing for something like I'm describing. Maybe the things you're seeing on the news or even the things you're experiencing in your own life can be described as anything but loving and peaceful at this moment. If that's the case, I hope that you will follow the prompting of God upon your heart today, that you will come and join us as citizens of a place very different than this world. That you'll come join us as citizens of the kingdom of heaven.

God has intended for us to find love and peace in relationship with him. But there's something that stands between us and God, our sin. We've rejected God, we've lived for ourselves and in so doing, we deserve God's punishment. But that's why God sent his son Jesus. He sent him to come into a world to bring peace from heaven itself, to show us what love really was, to take the penalty of our sin by dying on the cross, and to create a new people. A people marked by peace and love.

Friend, if that sounds good to you, then what you need to do is turn from your sin. Turn from the way you have been living and instead trust Jesus as the only one that can give you this relationship with God. If you don't know how to do that, you can ask a Christian, "How can I become a Christian?" They would love to help you to become the newest member of the Kingdom of God. A citizen that knows kingdom living 101, knows what it means to love other people the way God has loved them.

And to all of us that are Christians, I hope you want to live the life that Paul describes here. I hope you want to live differently than the age of outrage swirling around us. I hope you want to be productive with your time. Let the motivation of what it'll do for your witness carry you forward. You can encourage other Christians. You can teach your neighbors about what Jesus is like if you will do these things by the power of the spirit.

I remember when I was a student pastor, there was a wonderful culture of loving the global church in this place I was serving. So there were regular short-term trips that we'd be sent. And in fact, students were invited to come and join these trips. The church was generous, and so very often these students could get most of the money needed to go on a trip just by sending out support letters to members of the church.

But it was striking one summer, one of the students I had been discipling decided he was going to go on one of those trips. And he told me, "I'm not going to send out support letters instead I'm going to get, not just one part-time job, several part-time jobs, and I'm going to pay for the trip myself." I told him, I said, "No one's going to be offended if you send out support letters. It's fine." He said, "No. I'm convinced. I can work, maybe other people can't. Let that money be used for people who need it." I was floored by his maturity. I was floored by his love. This was a kid who was using his summer to earn money so he could spend it to go on a trip to serve Christians in a place other than the place he lived.

Well, I was floored by it. It helped instruct me. I wasn't the only person that noticed though, his neighbors did. One particular youth group meeting, we had a visitor, it was one of his neighborhood students that he had befriended. And the parent came to check it out and they took the moment to come and talk with me. And they said that he had asked if he could mow their lawn and they'd heard about this whole thing. I'll never forget what the dad told me. He said, "Man, where do you find a kid like that? I Love the fact that my son wants to hang out with him."

Do you see that sort of impact your love for other Christians can have on the watching world? What if that was not an outlier? What if that was the way we all loved each other? What might God do in our witness to our neighbors? What might he do in encouragement toward each other? If we would just practice what we already know, kingdom living 101, to love each other just as he loved us. God wants the world to see citizens of his kingdom loving each other. May we do that more and more in the days ahead.

Let's pray. Oh, father, we long to be the sort of church that does these things increasingly well. We long to love each other, to grow in that year after year. To sacrifice for each other even when it costs us something. We know we can't live up to these things ourselves, we know we need your help. Would you by your spirit and your word, would you allow us to live this out in greater and greater measure? Help us to love each other so the world around us sees that Jesus must be the answer for this age of outrage in which we live. We pray these things in his mighty name. Amen.