All You Need Is Love - Part A

I believe that instead of focusing on politics or Christian rights, the message of John 13 verse 34 to 35 is that all you need is love, because if there is one thing that should characterize the Church, it's love. I want to tell you about a resource that shines light on the rapidly shifting landscape of the Middle East and why this impacts you. New York Times bestselling author, Joel Rosenberg, is now based in Jerusalem, and he's releasing the new non-fiction book, Enemies and Allies.

I've traveled with Joel to Middle East cities to meet with kings and crown princes. We sat together on the east lawn of the White House for the signing of the historic Abraham Accords, and I previewed his new book, Enemies and Allies. I can tell you it contains never before published quotes from behind closed door meetings with some of the most powerful and mysterious leaders in the Middle East. You will want to read this book. Enemies and Allies by Joel Rosenberg includes insights and analysis from the author's conversations with some of the most controversial leaders in the world.

This is the first book of its kind. Almost nobody's ever had that chance to not just meet one of these major leaders, but to meet almost all of them. And then to get to tell the story in first person language, come with me into the palace, into the motorcading, and come meet the most interesting, consequential, and controversial leaders in the entire Middle East. Enemies and Allies by Joel Rosenberg includes insights and analysis from the author's conversations with some of the most controversial leaders in the world. We'll send you a hardcover copy of Enemies and Allies as thanks for your gift of $35 or more.

To give, visit connectwithskip.com or call 800-922-1888. Okay, we're in John Chapter 13 as Skip's son Nate Heitzig starts today's study. The song Give Peace a Chance when John Lennon wrote it was really kind of an anti-war protest song. You know, this was the era when Vietnam War was happening and the Beatles and John Lennon and a lot of the people of that era were revolting against the war and were kind of protesting and rioting against what was happening around the world.

Not really any different from what we've seen in 2020. You know, a lot of marches and protests and riots. And I think it really shows something innate to the human nature and that is all of us want to be a part of something, right? We want to be a part of a cause. We want to be a part of something bigger than us and really when it gets down to it, we want to change the world. We want to change society. It seems like in our culture, every group has some kind of a revolution or uprising.

Like you can just pick one. There's a march happening every day for something different. I mean, just in the past several years, think about the ones that we've seen. The 99% occupying Wall Street. You know, with all that's gone on in 2020, you probably forgot about that one, didn't you? The LGBTQ community has their gay pride days. In 2020, BLM marched in protest of the killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. And just recently this year, a group of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol protesting the election results.

And many of you are probably even watching the news trying to figure out what's going to happen today with that. But even the Oscars and Hollywood are all about causes now. Does it drive anyone else nuts to watch the Oscars now? I'm like, just shut up and take your award. Get off stage. I don't want to hear your political views and all the things that you think are wrong with the country.

Just be happy you got a little golden guy and go home. Like, why? As a matter of fact, even NBC News recognized this and they wrote an article entitled, Academy Award winners speeches are all about causes, saying everybody with a statue seems to have a cause. Over and over, the winners of the Academy Award use their acceptance speeches to call attention to social injustice, mental health and political debates. The world is obsessed with making a difference. The problem is they don't know how.

The tools that the world has to offer don't make the change and the difference that we really want to see in society. Every celebrity is a part of some charity now. I found a few celebrities and the charities that they were involved with. Alec Baldwin, Pamela Anderson, Pink and Woody Harrelson are people for the ethical treatment of animals. Jennifer Lopez, Kelly Clarkson and Nicole Kidman stand for the March of Dimes. Mariah Carey is behind the Fresh Air Fund. Muhammad Ali founded Celebrity Fight Night Foundation. Bono and Nicholas Cage are big advocates of Amnesty International. And Chuck Norris founded Kickstart Kids, which let's be honest, it should have been Roundhouse Kickstart Kids because it's Chuck Norris. And Lance Armstrong obviously founded Livestrong, or maybe now with everything that's come out, Livestronger with steroids.

Every celebrity has some cause they're attached to, something that they want to champion. And we are trying to make a difference. My question is, as a society, are we really succeeding in changing the world? Have we eliminated poverty? Have we eliminated murder? Have we destroyed hunger? Is disease magically gone? Well, ask Covid.

Have wars ceased? As much as we want to change the world, we can't if we're using the world's tools. And sometimes I think as Christians, we have the tendency to buy into this and believe that the way to change society is through the things the world tells us we should do to change society. And so we get bought in to boycotts and protests. Let me ask you, as a church, should our focus be on bringing about social change? Is that the role of the church today? In 2020, we've had a lot of people who think that it is.

And some people have gotten mad at us and told us we should talk more about political things. We should be more political, get more involved, that our focus should be on marches and boycotts and protests. I'll let you know, you will not find that pattern in the New Testament. Many people today say, if you want to change society, change society and men and women will get better. But Jesus, in essence, says all throughout the Gospels that if you change men and women, you will get a better society. The focus isn't on creating political or environmental changes and hoping that people will get better with those changes.

The goal that Jesus has is to change people, change men and women, change their hearts, change their eternal destinations and their souls. And that's how we'll see the change we want to see in society. That's how the moral fabric of society will grow and get better. And I believe that if Jesus were here today, if he saw the state of the world with all of our boycotts and protests, if he was walking this earth, he would tell us that all you need if you want to see society change is love. But not the kind of love and peace that Paul McCartney and John Lennon talked about.

All you need is God's love to change the world. I believe that instead of focusing on politics or Christian rights, the message of John 13 verse 34 to 35 is that all you need is love. Because if there is one thing that should characterize the church, it's love. Jesus said, by this all will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another. And so tonight as we study this verse and the verse before it, there's one thing I want you to take away and this is my outline, but it's also a simple sentence that if you really want to see change in society, change in the world, change in Albuquerque, change throughout New Mexico, there's one simple thing that I want you to take away and leave this place with. And that is that love like Jesus changes lives.

Love like Jesus changes lives. And if we want to see the world change and get better, if we see lives changed, the world will in turn change as well. At times we speak up and we make a difference and that's good. And I'm not saying all of this to say that we shouldn't be involved politically or we shouldn't have a voice in the political arena.

I think we should use the rights that we've been given by our founding fathers and our forefathers to make our voice heard in the political arena. But I believe if we really want to see the lasting change we desire, the way to change the world is through love and a love like Jesus changes lives. Let's read our text and see our first point, which is simply love. John chapter 13, verse 34 to 35.

If you have your Bibles with you, if not, it'll be right up here behind me. It says, a new commandment I give to you that you love one another as I have loved you, that you also love one another. Verse 35, by this all will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another. I want you to notice what it says there at the beginning of verse 34, it says, a new commandment I give to you that you love one another. Now, if you're like me, you read that and say, I don't think this is a new commandment. I think I've read in other places in the Bible where it tells us to love each other, that it tells us to love people. I feel like that's actually a pretty common theme in the Bible. As a matter of fact, I seem to remember somewhere in Leviticus is saying that we should love our neighbors as ourselves. That's like the second greatest commandment, isn't it? Like love God and then love others. It's important to mention that when Jesus is bringing this up, he's not saying it's new chronologically.

That is to say, it's not new information. Rather, there's a new understanding, a new application for believers today. There's a new application to your life as a believer for Jesus to tell you that you are to love one another. See, the word for love that Jesus uses here is a word that you should all know as good Bible students. And it's the beautiful word for love, agapao or agape. Now, what's so special about this word is this is a word that isn't found in any other pagan Greek literature.

It is only found in Christian sources. It is truly a love that is unique to Christians and God. It is a love that you cannot have or possess outside of a relationship with God. It's a love that's unique from the world's love. And I think this is important because we already talked about wanting to change the world.

If we try to use the world's systems and the world's tools, it's not working. We need a higher love. We need a stronger love. We need a deeper love because the love and peace that the world talks about isn't enough. It's unique from the world's love. It's different from the Greek phileo, which talks about the feelings of love. And we're right now in the season of love, right? Tomorrow is the biggest day celebrating love. And you know, it's so wish washy though, right? I mean, in one sentence you can say, I love pizza and I love my wife. And I feel like that's such a disservice to pizza. I'm just joking.

My wife's in the front row. It's OK. She knows I'm kidding. But it just doesn't really mean anything anymore, does it? You can say I love you to somebody and then turn around and stab them in the back. People pledge their allegiance of love to one another before a pastor and then a year later divorce because of irreconcilable differences. It doesn't have the meaning that it was meant to have.

And its most full definition for the word agapao is this. A love of the will that leads to goodwill and benevolence. I want you to focus on both of those things because there's two unique aspects of that. It is a love of the will. That is to say it's a choice. That is to say when you wake up and you don't feel in love, you choose to love. It is a love of the will. But it's not just a feeling or a choice you make.

It's something that leads to action because it leads to benevolence and good will. It doesn't focus so much on what love is. Rather, agapao focuses on what love does. See, love that Jesus talks about here is active, not abstract. Love doesn't just talk, it walks. Love is fully love only when it acts. Love doesn't just make you feel something. It makes you do something. Come on, where's my DC Talk fans at? Love is a verb, right?

Toby Mac's been spitting that jam for decades. Love is a verb. It does something.

It's active. It changes things. It changes the world around it.

It's part of why I love Love Bomb so much. We have an opportunity to physically show love to people across the world. To physically show them that we care about them. To show them that we support them.

Not just talk about it and say, oh, it's so sad, those kids, that video, oh, oh. That's what the world does. We're Christians, we do something. When we see a need, we rise to the occasion, we make a difference.

We don't just talk about it. 1 John 3, verse 18 says, my little children, let us not love in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth. Jesus then tells us who to love. He tells us to love. There's a new commandment, love. But who are we supposed to love? It says, love one another.

Let me ask you a question. When Jesus was delivering these words in the upper room, who was he talking to? The disciples. There was 11 of them in the room because Judas already did his thing and he split.

And we know where that story ends. There's 11 dudes in there and they're hanging out with Jesus. And he tells them around dinner, hey, a new commandment I give to you guys, love one another.

But I want to say this is just as applicable to us in this day and age, in this room, to our brothers and sisters in Christ. This is a new commandment to you to love the person next to you, in front of you, behind you. The person that you purposely sit 10 rows away from because you don't want to have an awkward conversation with them. The person that you walk in when you see them, you go to another entrance so that there's no awkward tension.

The person that you might have gossiped about or the person that might have gossiped about you. This is a call and a commandment upon every believer, every person who claims the name of Jesus Christ to love one another. Acts chapter 2 verse 44 describes what this love looks like in the body of Christ. If we are to love one another in the body of Christ, Acts 2 44 tangibly shows us what that looks like. It says, now all who believed were together and had all things in common and sold their possessions and goods and divided them among all as anyone had need.

Another beautiful Greek word is displayed here in Acts and that's the word koinonia. And it means fellowship, communion, distribution, contribution and partnership and simply it just means this. God's people take care of each other. We take care of each other. Again, love is not just an abstract idea, it's active.

If I tell you I love you, that means that if I see you in need, I take care of you. I take what I have and I give it to you so that God can use what I've given to you to do something with it. Again, another reason why I love Love Bomb, there's believers in another part of the world and we're taking what we have and we're seeing them, our brothers and sisters in Christ who we're going to be with in heaven and we're seeing the need that they're in and we're giving what we have to what they need so that they can do something with it to further the gospel and create more life change all across the world. It's a beautiful concept, this partnership that Jesus invites us into. The early church looked out for each other and God has a unique plan for his church in this world. Paul tells us in Romans that we as Christians are the called of Jesus Christ.

What does this mean? Well, to begin with, it means that God's people are called out. The Greek word for church is ecclesia which comes from the verb meaning to call out and that is to say God's people, you and I, are called out of this world system that is hostile to God which again, it means we need to stop using the systems of the world to accomplish peace in the world. If we're called out of this world, that means the things the world has to offer to bring about change aren't going to work.

We need to use something differently. We are called out. But God's people are not only called out, we are called together. Jesus said, I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. The word for church here is again, ecclesia, but here the term means gathering.

It adds another element to this. We are to be a gathering, a called out gathering. The church that Jesus Christ promises to build isn't a denomination or a building, it is you and I.

It is our care and our love for each other and as long as we remain together, united in love, no one, not even death, can stop us. You need to understand this, the future of the church, the future of the church that your kids will grow up in, that your grandkids will grow up in, the future of the church hangs on our willingness to be one and to be united. The way we build our gathering isn't through boycotts or protests or services or clever campaigns or events.

The way that we build our gathering is through love, unity and community. In Acts 2.44 we read, now all who believed were together, they worshipped together, they prayed together, they read the scripture together, they ate together, they gave their tithes and offerings together, they shared the gospel together. You and I are a part of the church that Jesus purchased heads and protects and we are called to be together in love and unity and community. Yet tragically so many churches today are shrinking in number. So many churches have faced horrible and divisive splits. Many are disillusioned by what has happened to them in church as well. We hear all too often today, well there's too many hypocrites at church, who's ever heard that? As a response of why you don't go to church, there's too many hypocrites there. Therefore they decide not to be a part of church at all. They say I've become bitter, I'm angry at the church now, I'm mad at the church.

Why? Because you suddenly discover that it's not made up of perfect people but instead people like you? People who make mistakes? People who sin? What do you think the church was? I've heard my dad say for years the church is not a museum for saints but it's a hospital for sinners. If the church was for perfect people, I hate to break it to you but you wouldn't be allowed to come. If the church was for perfect people, I wouldn't be allowed to come.

None of us would be allowed to come. If the church was for perfect people, there would be no church. I spoke to someone recently who mentioned a mutual friend that was no longer attending church.

We were talking and she said, well he's still walking with the Lord, he just doesn't go to church. And I heard that and I'm forced to look at what that person said compared to what Jesus said, that the world will know you're my disciples by your love for one another. And I'm forced to say, can you be both a Christian and have no fellowship with other Christians? I don't know that it's possible. You could maybe still have a personal commitment to Jesus Christ but the question, can you really actively live out the Christian life that Jesus has called you to do? The answer to that is a clear no.

You can't. Without being in community, in unity, loving one another. The call upon us is to love one another, that means fellowshipping with one another. That means caring for one another. This isn't a casual request from Jesus.

He's not saying, hey, if you think about it, if you have time, love each other. No, this is a new commandment I give to you. A commandment. Love one another. By this the world will know you're my disciples. Love one another.

This leads us to our second point. If we are to love, the question is, how are we to love? Well, Jesus answers that for us. We are to love like Jesus. Look at verse 34. He continues by saying, a new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, as I have loved you, you also love one another.

Just got real, right? If it wasn't already like a high benchmark to love people we don't like, now he's saying you have to love them the way that I love you. You've got to love them to the extent that I've loved you. The benchmark for our love is the love that Jesus Christ has for us. Later on in John 15, 12, Jesus repeats this idea and he says, love them as I have loved you. Let me ask you, how is it that Jesus has loved us? Jesus loved those the world hated. Jesus touched those the world shunned. Jesus went to those that the world avoided. And Christian, you don't get to determine what is good enough.

You don't get to determine how far is far enough. Jesus also said to let our light so shine before men, but I'm convinced that if we spend our lives trying to be bright, we're never going to be bright enough. Don't try to be bright, try to be Jesus. Don't try to be loving, try to be Jesus. Remember, we are to be daily conformed into the image of his son, Jesus Christ.

So every day you wake up, we need to learn how to look a little bit more like Jesus. How do I look like Jesus today? How do I love more like Jesus today? How do I go to those that I don't want to today? How can I die to myself and take up my cross today? How can I love the unlovely today?

How can I pour myself out until I have nothing left, but I'm going to get up and I'm going to love some more because that's what Jesus Christ did. That's Nate Heitzig with a message from the series Give Peace a Chance. Now, before we go, if you love Bible study, a trip to Israel is a life changer. Your Bible study will never be the same. Skip has lived in Israel and led tours many, many times. Here he is to invite you on his next tour. You know, there's always something new to see and experience in Israel, and I'm so excited to let you know that I'm taking another tour group to Israel next spring in 2022. You're in for an incredible time as we travel throughout Israel and experience the culture that's so unique to that country. We'll start on the Mediterranean Sea and head north, seeing places like Caesarea and Nazareth, the Sea of Galilee, and the Jordan River. We'll spend several days in and around Jerusalem and see the Temple Mount, Calvary, the Garden of Gethsemane, and the Mount of Olives, and much more. This remarkable itinerary is made richer with times of worship, Bible study, and lots of fellowship. Now, I've been to Israel a number of times over the years, and I can honestly say that visiting the places where the events of the Scriptures unfolded, where Jesus lived, taught, and healed, it just never gets old. I can't wait to see you in Israel. Start planning and saving now to tour Israel with Skip High Tech. Information at inspirationcruises.com slash C-A-B-Q. That's inspirationcruises.com slash C-A-B-Q. Tune in again tomorrow as Skip's son, Nate Heitzig, shares how God's love deeply planted in your heart can lead to big-time revival. Connect with Skip High Tech is a presentation of Connection Communications, connecting you to God's never-changing truth in ever-changing times.