Love Your Neighbor as Yourself

Eric

The Gospel of Mark • Sermon • Submitted 2 years ago

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It’s the last Sunday of January, and Lord willing the last Sunday we’ll be in Mark 12, reflecting on the command to love. The main verses we’ve been reflecting on are 30-31, where Jesus answers the question about what is the greatest commandment: “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. The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’”

As you turn there, I want to say that this text has been difficult for me to prepare to preach. And the reason is not because it’s hard to understand. It’s actually simple. It’s easy to understand. But easy to understand does not mean easy to obey.

As I meditated and reflected on these commands, I have had to repent. I have had to confess sin. I have had to ask for grace to change. And I have had to proactively seek to change.

As I’ve prayed through this passage, I have been praying for you. I have been praying Philipians 1:9 for you: “And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more…”

My prayer for you is that you would have abounding, overflowing love for God that would radically reorient your lives so your highest joy is to pour your life out for the good of people.

My prayer is that you make everything in your life oriented around loving God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and that you would delight to sacrificially love your neighbors.

That your love for God and people is the decisive factor in how you talk, how you spend your time, where you live, what career you pursue, what friends you have, how you spend your money, how you raise your kids. And that we would be a people known by our love.

This morning our focus is on loving our neighbors. Mark 12:31 “The second is this: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

This command is tied to the greatest commandment. You cannot separate them. When Jesus was asked about a single greatest commandment, he offered two commandments. In other words, Jesus wanted to make it clear that you can’t have one without the other.

The summary of the law is to love God and to love your neighbor as yourself. Romans 13:8 “Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. For the commandments, ‘You shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,’ and any other commandment, are summed up in this word: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ Love does no wrong to a neighbor, therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.” Galatians 5:14 “For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’” Love is the wind of every Christian’s sails; love is the fuel in every Christian’s engine, love drives us, love moves us, love directs us.

This is the ethic of every Christian: it is the ethic of love. “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

True believers in every age have been marked by love. They’ve started orphanages, hospitals, foster care programs, crisis pregnancy centers, homeless shelters, humanitarian efforts. But it is not a given that every church will rise up to its call to love. There are also far too many churches that, like the church mentioned in Revelation 2, have drifted from love. It is entirely possible that we drift from our calling to love. Thus, we must be vigilant to cultivate love in our hearts. And that is our goal this morning - to remind ourselves of God’s call to love and to consider what it might look like in our lives.

This morning, I want us to hear God calling us to love our neighbors. Whatever your schedule, however your calendar looks, whatever your budget is like, wherever you live - I want to help you see that God has called you to prioritize love for your neighbor.

To do this, we’re going to ask a few questions: What is a neighbor? 2) Why does it say, your neighbor, and 3) what does it mean to love your neighbor as yourself?

What is a neighbor? The Jews of Jesus day likely understood the word neighbor to be referring to other Jews. The Old Testament commands related to how one should treat one’s neighbors were given in the context of Israel. The Jews were God’s people, and they were supposed to treat one another (their neighbors) with love.

A closer reading of the OT would have revealed that while they were in fact commanded to treat fellow Jews with love, the command also extended to sojourners and strangers. In fact, Lev 19:33-34 says, “When a stranger sojourns with you in your land, you shall do him no wrong. You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.” The command to love others as yourself was not only for Jews, but for strangers and sojourners also. They were to extend neighbor love to strangers who were among them.

But many Jews of Jesus day didn’t act that way, which was why Jesus told the story of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10. The lawyer knew that the greatest commands were to love God and to love your neighbor. Jesus says, “Then do it.” And he says, “Well, who is my neighbor?”

Jesus tells the story of the Samaritan - a Samaritan who would have been hated by the Jews. Jews wanted nothing to do with Samaritans. A man from Jerusalem gets beat up by robbers and left for dead. A priest comes by, and leaves where he is. A Levite passes by, leaves him where he is. Finally, a Samaritan comes and has compassion and binds him up and takes care of him and pays for his care. Then he says the Samaritan was the true neighbor - that’s how true neighbors should treat each other.

In doing this, Jesus makes it clear that your neighbor is not some technical word, narrowly defined as a certain group of people. No, your neighbors are the fellow human beings God has put into your life who are in need. They are sitting all around you this morning, and they live all around you when you go home, and they’re working all around you when you go to work. Whether that’s physical need - like the brutalized man on the side of the road, or spiritual need, like your non-Christian friends and family - they are your neighbors.

Your neighbors might be kind, they might be cruel, they might be Christians they might be Buddhists, they might be activists or atheists. But they all are made by God, they all bear his image, and they all are worthy of dignity and respect, and even self-sacrificial love.

Why does it say, “your neighbor”? The command includes the word “your” neighbor. Certainly, there is a kind of love we ought to have for everyone, since all people are made in the image of God. But the word “your” localizes the love; it becomes real, right here - right now.

It is possible for us, with our incredible ability to delude ourselves, to convince ourselves that we love people, without actually loving any real flesh and blood people. We love people in theory, we love a vague, amorphous, nebulous idea we call people. But we don’t love any actual, messy, broken, irritating, people. That’s why this word “your” is so important.

In other words, this command doesn’t command us to simply feel loving thoughts about all people everywhere all the time. That’s not what this means. What this means is that you have a specific obligation to your neighbors. The verse doesn’t say, “Love the king’s neighbors.” It does not say, “Love their neighbors.” It says “Love Your neighbor.” In other words, you have a unique and special obligation to your neighbors because God has specifically and strategically put them in your life. I cannot love your neighbors like you can, I cannot fulfill this obligation like you can. You’re close to them, you see them, you can meet their needs. I can’t.

In other words, you are uniquely commanded to love the specific neighbors God has put in your life. Acts 17:26 says that God determined the boundaries of every person's dwelling place. In other words, God is sovereign over when you were born, where you were born, what family you were born into, what house you purchased, what street you live on, and what neighbors he put around you, what coworkers you see every day. There is no such thing as luck. These people were sovereignly and strategically placed around you, on purpose. They are your neighbors. And you are to love them.

One pastor put it this way: “When we feel that our job is to witness to everybody, then we tend not to witness to anybody.” You can’t possibly demonstrate real, tangible, sacrificial love to every person on the planet. That’s unrealistic, and that’s actually not what God requires. But you can love your neighbors - the people God sovereignly and strategically puts in front of you.

Think about this. Each one of us is a grain of salt scattered by God into his world to flavor and preserve the neighbors around us. And the beautiful thing about it is that when we understand this, we come to grasp the brilliance of God’s strategy.

Think: You have your neighborhood. That’s a handful of people. You have your workplace. Another handful of people. Family members and friends. Another handful of people. I bet each one of us could name at least 20 people who fit into those categories. And I bet if we each made a list, not a single one of our lists would be exactly the same. In other words, God, by spreading us out, by putting us in different neighborhoods, by putting us at different schools, by putting us in different fields, different careers - he’s reaching a broad swatch of our community.

Perhaps the most cited verse here at Grace Rancho is Eph 4:11, which states that Christ gave church leaders not to do all the ministry, but to “equip the saints for the work of ministry.” In other words, Grace Rancho wants to equip you to be a good neighbor, so that you can have a vibrant ministry with the neighbors God has sovereignly, and strategically given to you.

Rosaria Butterfield opens her book The Gospel Comes with a House Key - think about the title - by telling a story about a neighbor moving in next door - some of you will find this funny - named Hank. Hank played loud music. Hank sometimes received phone calls that got him so angry he could be heard screaming obscenities. Hank didn’t cut his grass, and owned a hundred pound pit bull - named Tank - and let him run the streets with no collar.

When he moved in, Rosaria took her family, rang his doorbell, and introduced themselves, and hoped to spark a relationship. In response, Hank dismantled his doorbell so that no one else could disturb him. He was a recluse.

But they began praying for him - that’s one element of love, isn’t it? If you love your neighbor, you pray for them. So they were. When one day Tank ran away. And that’s when they jumped in to help. The family offered to help: posted “lost dog” signs, prayed for him to find the dog, and when finally Tank was found - Hank opened up. They began sharing meals. He shared his battle with severe depression, anxiety, fear of being around other people. A man who had been starved for real love was finally being loved like no one had ever loved him.

Some time later, Hank went to prison - he and his girlfriend were cooking meth in the basement. But the Butterfield family stayed in contact. Prayed for him, wrote him letters, and while in prison, he became a brother in Christ.

How often does fear prevent our love? Love casts out fear. How often do we live our lives, bowing down to the idol of convenience? You can’t love a Hank - and we all have them - without it costing you. But when we meet Hank in glory, he will say, “I am so thankful, that when I tried to shut them out, they loved me.” Will any of your neighbors say that about you?

It’s easy to say you love people - as long as by people you mean an amorphous, undefined, theoretical group. But what about actual flesh and blood people? Your neighbors?

Now what does it mean to love your neighbor as yourself? First, let’s consider what this doesn’t mean. Now, some people pull from this that Jesus is teaching that in order for us to love our neighbor, we need to love ourselves. And so neighbor love starts with self-love.

This is wrong. Only in our time has self-love been painted as a virtue. Jesus is not teaching that we need to love ourselves better. He is teaching that we already love ourselves, and that we need God and self to displace our preeminent love of self. Christians aren’t striving to love themselves more. They’re not concerned about themselves. They understand that by the grace of God, they are what they are, they are sinners made saints, they are humbled ones who have been exalted, and in their immense gratitude and love they pour out for others. The last thing you want to tell a Christian is that he or she needs to spend more time in front of the mirror learning to like what’s there. Break the mirror. Who cares? Get busy loving God and people.

To love your neighbor means that “we want for them the same treatment we would want for ourselves, if we were in their place.” Church, we would be the best neighbors in our communities because we actually love the people God has put around us.

Neighborhoods should be better, more humane, more life-giving, when Christians are living in them. Here are some biblical ways God calls us to love our neighbors.

1- Concern about them. This is where it begins. So simple, but necessary to mention. You need to actually care about them. If you are going to love your neighbor, you have to care about them. You have to have some vested interest. You have to value the fact that they bear the image of your Father in heaven, just as you do. Your care for them cannot be contingent upon how much they fit into the kind of people you like to care about. Demonstrate that care by introducing yourself and learning their names.

2- Pray for them. In Matt. 5:43-48 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven.” Jesus makes it clear, you’re not supposed to hate your enemy, you’re supposed to love and pray for them. And if you’re supposed to do that with enemies, what about your neighbors?

This may sound harsh, but I want you to hear me: If you’re not praying for your unbelieving neighbors, I think you’re failing at one of the most basic, fundamental aspects of following Jesus. Moses pleaded for God to spare the lives of those who complained against him, Jesus prayed that the Father would forgive those who killed him, Stephen was martyred praying for the souls of those who murdered him, Paul agonized in prayer constantly for the people he encountered. It’s something so basic to Christianity, so basic to what we’re doing here, so basic to the reason we exist - that if you’re not praying for your neighbors, reconsider whether you’re a disciple of Jesus Christ. In what sense are you following him?

It cost money to pray. You don’t have to leave your room to pray. You don’t have to drive anywhere. And yet, I wonder how many of us are not asking God to save our neighbors?

Samuel said to the people of Israel, 1 Samuel 12:23 “ Far be it from me that I should sin against the Lord by ceasing to pray for you.” Samuel understood that he would be sinning against God if he stopped praying for the people.

Do you have that conviction - that it is sinful for you to refuse to pray for your neighbors? Can you, like Samuel, see how repugnant it is to be sovereignly and strategically placed in a home, in a neighbor, in a job, with specific people, for God’s glory, and to be so off-mission that you won’t even do the most basic of Christian virtues: to pray for a lost soul?

Think about all the prayers you prayed last week: If God answered all of them, would any neighbors be saved? Would any coworkers be saved?

Are any of us like Jonah, pouting about the neighbors God has given us, refusing to love and pray for them?

Church, what if we all were like that persistent widow in Luke 18, who just would not stop asking the judge for justice? Your Father hears you. Don’t give up. We’ve seen neighbors saved, friends saved, coworkers saved. God hears. Love your neighbor - pray for them.

3- Do good for your neighbor. Take a look at the book of Titus. One theme running through Titus is the theme of good works. In 1:16, false teachers are unfit for any good work. In 2:7 young men should show themselves to be a model of good works. Look at 2:11-14. We were redeemed, and we are purified, to be a people who are “zealous for good works.”

3:1 we should be “ready for every good work.” 3:8 “The saying is trustworthy, and I want you to insist on these things, so that those who have believed in God may be careful to devote themselves to good works.” 3:14 “And let our people learn to devote themselves to good works, so as to help cases of urgent need, and not be unfruitful.”

Redeemed for good works. Zealous for good works. Devoted to good works. Love for neighbor means that you are actively considering how to do good to them. When the Good Samaritan found the bloody man on the road, he made some costly decisions. It cost him time, it cost him energy, it cost him money, and it may have cost his reputation to care for a Jew as a Samaritan.

Be prepared for good works. Make sure you have margin in your calendar and space in your budget. And think ahead. Can you Bring a meal? Cut the grass? Lend a tool? Drop off cookies? Give a ride? Babysit? Listen to them?

4 - Open your home We talk about this a lot here - Because we feel that hospitality, opening your heart and opening your home to visitors, strangers, and neighbors - is a critical way we live distinctly. It is part of the elder qualifications listed in 1 Timothy 3, meaning that elders should set an example for the whole church, so that the whole church would grow in hospitality.

We regularly emphasize Romans 15:7 “welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you.” Or 15:13 “Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality.” Or 1 Peter 4:8 “Above all, keep loving one another earnestly and, since love covers a multitude of sins. Show hospitality to one another without grumbling.”

In Luke 14, Jesus says that when we throw a feast, we should not invite the people who can pay us back, but instead to invite “the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind.” That is, invite people simply to demonstrate God’s love to them, not to get anything in return.

Inviting your neighbors into your home. How’s that sound? The typical American response to this kind of thinking is to say, “My house is for me. I work all day, and my house is my kingdom. It’s my personal and private fortress.”

Now, I thank God that my house is a place I can rest. No guilt or shame in that. But have I also seen that my house can be strategically used for the gospel? In all of redemptive history - from Noah to Abraham to Moses to Paul - God’s people are blessed to bless. Never simply blessed. The blessings you receive are onramps for you to start blessing others, not cul-de-sacs for you to stay comfortable. If you’ve been blessed with a home, you have been given one of the most strategic weapons for gospel advance.

Dustin Willis and Brandon Clements wrote a short book called The Simplest Way to Change the World. I just started it. In it they write, “The secret weapon for gospel advancement is hospitality, and you can practice it whether you live in a house, an apartment, a dorm, or a high-rise…it takes only your willingness to open your home and life to others.”

Could you host a neighborhood meal? Could you do an Easter Egg hunt at your house? I was reading about one church member who would bring his BBQ into his front yard, send a text to all his neighbors that he was making burgers, and then he’d invite a few families from church, and right there on a Sunday afternoon he was using his house as a strategic beachhead for gospel advance.

5- Sharing the gospel with them. Christians, we need to be evangelistic. Spurgeon said, “A Christian without a missionary heart is an anomaly.” If you love your neighbors, you will care for their needs, their physical bodies, but you will dare not neglect their souls.

In Acts 8, a bunch of Christians are forced to flee for their lives. Saul is hunting them down, and the Christians scatter all over. “Oh no!” you might think. “Poor church, it’s going to die if everyone leaves!” But 8:4 says “Now those who were scattered went about preaching the word.” Ordinary Christians - like you and me - spread the word to their neighbors, wherever they went. That’s how the gospel exploded in the first century. It wasn’t a few select gifted men. It was a whole company of Spirit-indwelt men and women, living like salt and light, loving their neighbors, and sharing the good news with those around them.

A noted church historian puts it this way: “The chief agents in the expansion of Christianity appear not to have been those who made it a profession or a major part of their occupation, but men and women who earned their livelihood in some purely secular manner and spoke of their faith to those whom they met in this natural fashion.”

We have excuses. But love compels us. Love for God. Love for neighbor. We must tell them the most glorious news we’ve ever heard. And we must warn them of the most dangerous threat anyone could ever face.

God is holy, and will not put up with our sin. But he has made a way of salvation through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Jesus' death paid the penalty for our sin. Jesus rose from the dead to prove his claims. Those who die without Christ die without salvation, and must face God’s holy wrath on the Great Day of Judgment. But the good news is that anyone, even you this morning, great sinner, can be saved by trusting in Jesus Christ!

This is the message we must tell people. I was reading about a man driving an interstate highway outside of LA, late one night. As he drove a significant earthquake rumbled so that he felt it in the car and pulled over. After it was over, he jumped back in the car and approached the bridge he was about the cross. As he got closer to the bridge, he noticed there were no headlights in front of him, and the eeriness of it made him slow down, and that’s when he realized the bridge was gone. He pulled over just as a car behind him, driving full-speed, went on ahead and plummeted into the water below.

Several more cars were coming. He began to wave his arms. But people didn’t notice him in the darkness. Four cars drove straight past him and plunged to their deaths.

And that’s when he saw a large bus coming, full speed ahead. He decided staying on the side would not work, and that he would go straight in the middle of the highway and wave his arms, and that if it went down, he was going down with it. The bus hinked, flashed its lights, but he wouldn’t move. Finally the driver slammed his brakes and saw the danger ahead. The man risked his life, but in doing so saved many more. The bus then angled itself so no more cars could pass.

What if that were you. What would you have done? You discovered life-saving information. And flying past you are people who will die unless you get their attention and let them know. I doubt you would simply get back in your car, turn around and drive home, and let everyone in that bus perish.

How much more important is the gospel that you have? Is it worth the occasional awkwardness? Is it worth being made fun of? Is it worth it? Every single Christian here is a Christian because someone, someone, was bold enough to tell us the truth.

Love your neighbor means “Tell them the good news!” There is an urgency. We don’t need to start massive prgograms, humanitarian projects. Those things are great. But so often, the Incredible, life-changing, eternity-altering work for the Lord often looks ordinary and insignificant - it looks like you and me loving our neighbors as we love ourselves. I love this quote from one author:

We've fallen into the conventional thinking that a big mission demands big tactics, but we forget that in the economy of God's kingdom, big does not beget big. It's precisely the opposite. The overwhelming message of Jesus' life and teaching is that small begets big. Consider, God's plan to redeem creation (big) is achieved through his incarnation as an impoverished baby (small). Jesus feeds thousands on a hillside (big) with just a few fish and loaves (small). Christ seeks to make disciples of all nations (big) and he starts with a handful of fishermen (small). Even Goliath (big) is defeated by David with a few stones (small). This pattern is also repeated in Jesus' parables about the nature of his kingdom. He said, "The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his field. It is the smallest of all seeds, but when it has grown it is larger than all the garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches. All of this affirms the counter-intuitive nature of God's kingdom.”

Here, we’ve called it “Incremental revival.” God is working through ordinary Christians, like us, as we take ordinary steps of faithful obedience. We love our neighbors. We offer them meals. We care about their lives. We listen to their concerns. And 9 times out of 10 we don’t see anything significant happen. But when we get to heaven, we’ll see that everything we did for Christ - even something so simple as hosting a neighborhood dinner - was worth it.