Word of Salvation – Vol.10 No.29 – July 1964

 

God And Neighbour

 

Sermon by Rev. Jac. Jonker on Matt. 22:34-46

Scripture Reading: Matt. 22:23-33

Psalter Hymnal: 32:1,2; 199:3 (after Law)
179:5,6 (after Creed); 249:1,2,8; 411:1,2

 

Neighbours in the Lord Jesus Christ.

There were two parties among the Jewish population of Palestine in Jesus’ days: the Pharisees and the Sadducees.  These parties were enemies of each other and only became united by their joint hatred of Jesus Christ.  When Jesus was tested by the Sadducees regarding life after death, something that they did not believe in, he gained a splendid victory over them to the satisfaction of the Pharisees.  They felt nevertheless that it now became their responsibility to trip Jesus up and prove that He made mistakes.  One of them, a man learned in the Law, came to Jesus with a question to test Him, to try to defeat Him.  He asked: What is the great commandment of the Law?

We all know that the Law meant – in this case – the Ten Commandments.  Among the people of the Law there was always discussion going about this point: how to handle this Law, how to view it, where to start with it – while this would be clear cut if one only knew what the most important of the commandments was.  What is the greatest commandment; what does the Law hinge on?  How should one manipulate the Law?

And Jesus answer makes one thing clear: That we should never mishandle the Law… we should not manipulate it but we have to love the GOD of the Law: love THE LORD YOUR GOD: Our first interest should not go to the separate words of the Law but to Him who is the speaker of those words.

This can only be done if we realise that our Lord, the giver of the Law, is GOD.  That is simple, it is our first thought… but is it really?  We are not concerned with just words but with a reality: GOD.

If you want to have some idea of what this GOD may be like, begin with going outside and: looking!  Lift up your eyes and see…!  View His works that are around you: creation, nature.  Look at the ocean and the birds… look at the mountains and the moon… try to realise what is flowering in the bush and in all the beautiful gardens.  How vast is the universe where the millions of stars are twinkling far away..  a sun, each one of them and many times bigger than the sun that warms our hands and brings life to our earth.  And when you want to meet one of His greatest works of art, look in the mirror and realise that you yourself are one creature conceived and constructed and brought to life by Him.  You with your hands and your eyes, your heart and your kidneys, your blood and your glands, your brain and your language, you, man yourself, are made by Him.  If you want to love God you had better start by having a look at what He is doing, to get to know the wondrous works of His hands, To love you must first SEE and enjoy and admire, for we know Him from the things He does and we can admire Him for all the things done by Him and not even just for the minor parts understood by man – although for generation after generation man has made it his job to investigate them, describe and analyse them.

Do not be too busy with yourself and with what you can do or have done.  On the contrary allow yourself be impressed by God and by His majesty.  Give Him a chance to be more than a mere name of but three letters.  He is God, that means that He embraces the universe and more than that, that He is omnipotent in nature and more than that, that He is the wonderful Person who has shaped you in His image!  The world is more than what we do in it and make of it.  The world is more than cities, houses, cars, aeroplanes, radiograms and TV sets, more than jobs and roads, furniture and money.  There is also a sky and an ocean, there are clouds and mountains, trees and flowers, there is the miracle of an eye that sees, an ear that hears, of lovers that get a baby of their own and a child that learns to walk and to speak.  Do you take time and pay attention to realise all of that so that you know what to praise your God for when you pray to Him?  You might use your Sunday to pay attention to all those things that so often during the hectic hours of a working week escape you?  Do not be immersed only in the actions and faults of man… for what you have to give to your God is: all of your heart and your soul and your mind!  There is nothing excluded, it is all of your personality, your entire self that you should use to know God and to love Him.  And even when you would do this He, in His majesty, still escapes your senses and thoughts.

But as far as He is easily worth all this one might feel inclined to say that this loving of God is wonderful and easy.  Here it is that we should be well aware of the fact that Christ said that we should love THE LORD your God!  The LORD – that is He who OWNS us, who is our MASTER, who rules this world and all of our life.  That is easily accepted as long as the sun of prosperity shines, as long as we are in good health, as long as things with us are as right as rain.  It’s easy enough to be happy when life goes by like a song…  but the man who is worthwhile is he who can smile when everything goes dead wrong!  What do people say when there is a war on?  How do they feel when they are in prison or in hospital or when they had to say goodbye to a darling child that was taken from them?

How often one hears that then they start to complain about God: why did He do this or why did He allow it if He is as almighty as you say?  People say: there cannot be a God… or things would be different…. and if there were one… I would curse him…! How would that be?  Would WE, really… would WE CURSE Him?

We the weak and often hateful people, that cannot even live in peace with each other?  We, the degenerate ones, who cannot even curb our own lustful desires?  We who are only able to cut down a tree and cannot make it grow one single inch?  Should WE order God around to do our bidding?  Is HE a waiter in a restaurant to hurry when we press the call-button?  And even if He does not do our bidding and does not run on our ringing… .what will we do to Him?  Would we empty His ocean?  or level His mountains?  Could we extinguish His sun and toss away His stars?  You cannot DO the first thing to Him… your arms are just too short and your voice only too weak.  It is only the fool that says in his heart there is no God, dousing the light of his own reason!

Beware of this Lord.  Your GOD might curse you instead!  We know that once He put His curse on proud King Nebuchadnezzar, who went out of his mind and ate grass like a cow!  But would He do this?  Is God persecuting us in life?

No, He certainly does NOT!  But He uses all things for our own good!  He uses even the bitter and hard things that nearly always are done to us by other people so that they benefit us and to open our eyes for Him and His majesty, for Him and His mercy.  Our tears and anxieties are just so many means used to bring us home.  And if ever we might be in doubt about His love let us remember that He even gave His own… His only SON… to come and help us.  Jesus speaks about that in our text when He uses a line out of David’s psalms in His counterattack on the Pharisees.

How can David call the Christ his Lord while the Christ is his son?
What do you think of Christ, whose son is He?

This question put by Jesus has its meaning not only for the old Pharisees of Jesus’ day but also for us.  We learn from that wonderful book the Bible, that in history the person of Jesus once came.  He was, according to everybody, the son of David, a prince and as such also the Messiah, the Christ, the anointed one.

What do you think of Him?  The answer to that question will be decisive for your opinion about God.  If this Jesus is the son of God and as such God Himself, then we know how much God has done to save us!  He is not only around us and not only inside us but He even became ONE OF US – of the blood and the flesh of the virgin Mary.  The son of God BECAME the son of David.  Here in one flash we see the meaning of the history of Israel, and all the wonders worked by God for and in them.

The Pharisees did not fight back anymore.  They could not for the words of Scripture were against them.  But that did not mean that they accepted Jesus!  One can believe the literal words of the Bible and still be an enemy of Jesus, an enemy of God.  They again came together, they plotted how they could silence this voice that testified so undauntedly and they could not find another way than the killing of this prophet.  Their answer to God in history is a curse as they call Jesus a liar, who blasphemed against God by calling himself the Son of God.  Their curse becomes the cross for God’s Son.  There then when Jesus goes to be crucified and where He accepts the death from the hands of man, is born that boundless miracle of God: bearing our sin, dying our death and praying for those who murder Him.  There He gives Himself as a sacrifice to bring us peace and life and to make us His children.

There where He let Himself be killed by us on the cross is where the Lord our God became our father.  This cannot be seen by us with our own eyes but many witnesses were prepared that could tell us about it as all the more reason why we should love the Lord our God, to love Him as our Father.

The Pharisees asked questions of Jesus, that is one thing but the question that He asked of them is quite another thing.  What do you think of the Christ?  To hear that question is our future, so prepare yourself: What will be your answer?  Nobody can evade the issue by staying out of church, by saying that he does not like the way in which is being preached.  There is but one God our LORD and He directs all things of our life, the place where we live and the sermons we hear, the children we have and the friends we make…  What one day will be our answer will have to be shown today.  Eternity will be nothing but the seal on our life on earth.

We hear this in Jesus’ words where He answers the Pharisees.  The first and the great commandment is to love the Lord Your God.  That may look easy as long as you do not realise that it is equal to the second one: you shall love your neighbour as yourself.  These two commandments belong together, are of the same value as for instance a pound-note is just like twenty shillings.  A pound-note is paper and shillings are silver but the value of that one note is the same as of those twenty coins.  You might perhaps even ask: how do we spend the love of God?  Only by loving our neighbour.  As it is said by John: “He who loves his brother is in the light and in it there is no cause for stumbling.  But he who hates his brother is in the darkness, and does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes.”

Some people like it to bath in the richness of God’s love, they want to talk about it and to praise His name in conversation and hymns.  And it at times it looks as if there is nothing more in the world than that.  But Jesus asks more!  Your love of God is in vain if it is not joined by your love to your neighbour.

Now here we strike a point of major interest!!

The love of neighbours is something that people are used to ASKING for!

They expect to get it in a church and they certainly want to receive it.  If not, they are disgruntled and complain, they feel disappointed about the communion of the saints.  How tragic a misunderstanding is here.  These people act as if Jesus had said that you should love God but your neighbours should love you!  How easily here this word is turned around to have the opposite of its true meaning.  How clever the devil is and how easily we are led into temptation!  For what Jesus actually said is nothing but this: that you should love your neighbour.  It has to start with YOU.  Whatsoever your neighbour may do does not matter: you have to love him.  Now it is clear from the way in which Jesus conversed with people that this does not mean that you should always agree with him or pat him on the back.  Genuine love may mean that you are straight-forward and even at times sharp with him.

But it has to start with YOU.  You do not have to wait to receive it – but to GIVE it, to DO it.  Even when we will experience that nothing is so hard as to love your NEIGHBOURS.  Far-away people, children in Hong Kong that you have never seen, are easily loved.  But to love those next to you, people of whom you know every trick and every weakness, that is hard!  It is not so hard to love your friends (as long as they are friends).  It’s not hard to love those that always agree with you, or who came out in the same migrant ship as you, people who have the same views on the affairss of life and the same attitude to difficulties.  To love the chosen few that come to your birthday party.  But Jesus does not ask us to be choosy and seek out our friends.  No, He just asks us to show that we love God by loving our neighbour, the man who lives next door to you, the man that you bump into.  The person that sits next to you in church and is always sniffling or that other one who sits next to you at the Lord’s table so that you have to drink after him from the cup.

Yes, to love God above all would be quite all right if we did not have to show it in the little things of everyday-contact with our neighbour.  We have to respect their authority, honouring our parents even if we think them stupid or at any rate outdated.  We have to respect those that have authority on the road and behave as disciplined drivers and pedestrians.  We have even to respect the office-bearers in church also those who did not have our vote when there was an election.

We have to respect the neighbour’s life and livelihood, their possessions and their business.  And last but not least we have to protect their good name in every way.  Talk to him, not about him.

To serve the Lord our God in love may sound easy but as soon as we realise that we have to do it by loving His children: all those often difficult characters that He puts next to us, we may find out how great a love God has bestowed on us as He loved us when we were still enemies!

But you may be what you are: a Sadducee who does not accept that there is a resurrection of the dead and a judgment day, or a Pharisee who wants to use the Law as a set of rules explained by him alone, this is sure, that the day of reckoning will come in which the Lord will ask you what you have done and the righteous will answer Him: “Lord, when did we see thee hungry and feed thee, or thirsty and give thee drink?”

And the King will answer them: “Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my (brethren, you did it to me. (Matt.25:31-40.

Amen.