A Loving Heart Part 1

Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith. Perhaps you've made many friends along life's road. Jesus told us how true love is manifested, that a man lay down his life for his friends. Is this the kind of love seen in your life and in mine?

If not, stay with us. From the Moody Church in Chicago, this is Running to Win, with Dr. Erwin Lutzer, whose clear teaching helps us make it across the finish line. Pastor Lutzer, we're moving now into John Chapter 15 in our journey through the Upper Room Discourse. Give us a look at today's message on having a loving heart.

Well, you know, Dave, in your intro, you quoted the words of Jesus Christ. Greater love has no man than this, but that a man is willing to lay down his life for his friends. The question I think that we have to ask ourselves is, is this the kind of love we really have? Love is not natural to us.

Selfishness is. But it's the work of the Holy Spirit of God in our hearts. I've written a book entitled Prepare Your Heart for an Uncertain Future. It's actually based on the words of Jesus Christ in the Upper Room. And I wrote the book that you can have as a devotional so that you are encouraged through the words of Jesus and through the exhortations that he gave to them. For a gift of any amount, it can be yours.

Go to rtwoffer.com or call us at 1-888-218-9337. A man who committed suicide left this note. This is my only way, he said, out of this hell of loneliness. But I want you to know today that loneliness does not just exist in the world, it also exists in the church. Let me quote an older woman who said, I sit in the pew next to a warm body every week, but I feel no heat. I'm in the faith, but I draw no active love. I sing the hymns with those next to me, but I hear my own voice. When the service is finished, I leave as I came, hungry for someone to touch me, to tell me that I'm a person worth something to somebody.

Just a smile would do it or perhaps some gesture, some sign, but I'm not a stranger. Loneliness in the church. I want you to know today that all of us really do need friends. I mean, we need friends. Even those of you who have been betrayed or burned by friendships and therefore are very guarded in your relationships, you need friends too.

We all do. You say, well, Pastor Lutzer, how can I tell who my friends are? Well, there are many ways that you can do that, but I'll tell you there's nothing like this one. Make one big public mistake and then you find out who your friends are. But we all need them, don't we? What's astounding to me is that Jesus elevated his disciples to the position of friends just before he was crucified, the night before he was crucified. The text of scripture is found in John chapter 15, John chapter 15, and I'm reading verse 15. I no longer call you servants because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I've called you friends for everything that I learned from my father I have made known to you. Famous people usually don't have friends because they can't trust those around them.

They're concerned lest they be taken advantage of. And here Jesus looks into the eyes of his disciples and says, you are no longer servants, but you are friends. What a statement. A number of years ago, some atheists wanted to ridicule the Christian faith. What they did is they wrote a tract based on the thesis that you are to be judged by your friends.

That was the basis of what they were going to say. And then they looked into the Bible and they said Abraham was a liar, and yet he's called a friend of God. Jacob was a cheater, and yet he's called a prince with God. David committed murder and adultery, and he is known as a man after God's own heart. And then the atheist said, what kind of a God would have these people for his friends?

Now, in a kind of strange way, they had a point, didn't they? What kind of a God would have us sinners that we are as his friends? What kind of a Jesus would say to disciples who were filled with their own weaknesses and shortcomings? You are my friends. Of course, the fact is that Jesus was about to give his life as a sacrifice, that those who believe on him would be saved, and therefore God took that barrier between us and him, the barrier of sin, and he set it aside legally so that he could now be our friends because our sin has been put away.

What marvelous news. Well, what I'd like us to do today is to look into this passage of scripture and to see three facts about friendship. Three facts about friendship. First of all, the badge of friendship is love.

The badge of friendship is love. I'm picking up the text now, actually, in verse 13 or verse 12. My command is this, love each other as I have loved you. How many commandments are there in the Bible? You say, well, there are the 10 commandments.

Yes, that's true. But in the 13th chapter of John, Jesus said, a new commandment I give you that you love one another even as I have loved you. There are 11 commandments. We're to love one another. Now, in the Old Testament, it said love one another. That's true.

But the standard is a new one. Love one another even as I have loved you, as Jesus, again, repeated in this passage of scripture. What can we say about this kind of love that is spoken of here in the text?

How do we characterize it? Well, obviously, it's a love that obeys. It's a love based on obedience.

Look at what it says in chapter 15, verse 10. If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my father's commands and remain in his love. You say, well, you can't have this conflict between obedience and love. You say, I thought that love was supposed to be spontaneous.

We just love because we want to love with no other reason. Nobody can command you to love. And if you're thinking that today, it's because we are more influenced by Hollywood in our understanding of love than we are the Bible. Of course, one can command love, scripturally speaking. A man can be commanded, love your wife, the scripture says. We can be commanded to love one another. Jesus said, of him it is said, I came down from heaven not to do mine own will, but the will of the father which sent me. I loved through my obedience and my obedience proved my love.

No contradiction there. And the reason is because biblically love is sacrifice. Love means sacrificial action. You may know someone today whom you are finding it difficult to love.

In fact, there may be someone whom you hate. Jesus said these words. He said, love your enemies. It's a command.

You don't say it isn't a suggestion. Jesus didn't say this suggestion I make unto you. He said this command I make unto you, love your enemies. You say, yes, but how?

He said these ways. First of all, bless those who curse you. You have someone who's cursing you, you bless them. Say good things about them and pray God's blessing on them. Don't say, Lord, I pray that you might vaporize them. I pray, O Lord God, come and descend and destroy them.

You bless them. Jesus said, do good to those who mistreat you and pray for those who spitefully use you. That's sacrificial action that is biblical love. It isn't just this warm feeling. We look on the news and we see tragedies all over the world and we say, you know, those children in Bosnia, I just love them.

No, you don't love them. You feel sympathy for them, but you don't love them until you've acted, until you've done something, until God loved the world and God gave. There is sacrificial action. It is a love that is based on commands. This I say, love one another as I have loved you. There's another characteristic of this love and that is it is a very generous love. Jesus was constantly giving my peace I give to you, my love I give to you, my life I give for the life of the world. It is a love that has great generosity. Look at what it says here in verse 13. Greater love has no one than this, that he laid down his life for his friends.

And you are my friends again, if you do what I command you. But greater love is no man than this, that you die for somebody. Wasn't it in the tale of two cities where you have that story about an Englishman going to France during the French Revolution and because of the hatred of the French for the English, he was going to be put to death, executed. And the night before the execution, if I remember the story, two men came to see him. One was a guard and the other was a Frenchman who was standing along with that guard who also was French. So two of them came and after the guard left, the Frenchman said, let's exchange clothes. And the Englishman said, no, I can't do that. He said, yes, do it because you have a wife and family and I want you to live. And so they exchanged clothes and then the guard came in and took the Englishman to freedom and the Frenchman was hung. Greater love has no man than this, that he laid down his life for his friends.

Now follow this very carefully. The love that Jesus is talking about is not what we generally call compatibility. Most of our friends are those people with whom we are compatible because it may well be that the color of our skin is the same, our economic income is about the same, our interests are the same, that which glues us together as friends is the same. And Jesus said, if you love those who love you, what great thing is there about that? He said, even the wicked do that. Even the mafia love one another in that sense.

You do something for me and I do something for you because of shared interests. Oh, Jesus said, this isn't a love that's based on compatibility. That wouldn't be the badge of being my disciples. Because remember, Jesus did say that the world has the right to judge whether we are Christ's disciples by whether or not we love one another. Jesus is saying that the kind of love that I'm speaking of is so supernatural. It is so contrary to our natural inclinations that it even includes those who are unlovable and even should include our enemies.

More than 100 years ago, Edwin Markham wrote this poem. He drew a circle and left me out, a heretic, a rebel, a thing to flout. But love and I had the will to win. We drew a circle and took him in. Listen to the words of Tertullian going back to the early centuries of the church. He said the impact of the church, he explained it this way, it is our care for the helpless, our practice of loving kindness that brands us in the eyes of many of our opponents. Look, they say, behold how they love one another and are willing to die for one another.

You know that if you study the early church in North Africa, the reason that Christianity conquered North Africa was because of love. Sometimes Christians were given bad jobs in those days because they were Christians. It was called discrimination and they would be garbage collectors and they would pick up some dead bodies also that died during the days of the plague. And instead of burning these bodies, they would actually wash them and give them a decent burial, arguing that even the wicked who have a resurrection coming have a right to a decent burial.

And the world noticed that and said, where is all this love coming from? And because in those days they didn't have abortion, but babies that were not wanted were just left on the step to die. If somebody wanted them, they could be taken. If not, they would cry there until they died and they would organize the church organized baby runs to run to the different areas of the city looking for abandoned babies. And they didn't have baby bottles in those days.

So nursing mothers would accept these children as their very own and adopt them. And the world said again, where is this love coming from? Listen, the badge of friendship is love, but it's a love that is based on commands. The scripture commands us to love one another, and it's a love that is based on committed, deep generosity and sacrifice. Now, I doubt very much that someone is asking you to die for them, but someone might be in great need that is sitting next to you today.

There may be someone whom you know about is in great need. And in order for you and I to love them, it means that we cannot just stay within our same clicks and comfort zones. We must be willing to indeed include that circle, even at great personal sacrifice, because Jesus said love one another as I have loved you. And the commitment that that makes is a commitment that the world notices. Well, if the badge of love is friendship, the reward of friendship is intimacy.

It's intimacy. I'm going to read verse 15 again. I no longer call you servants because a servant does not know his master's business.

Instead, I have called you friends for everything that I learned from my father, I've made known to you. Jesus makes a contrast here between servants and friends. What is it about a servant? Well, a servant comes and he does what he has to do and he isn't really privy to his master's desires or intentions.

There's no real conversation that's going on that is significant. The servant just serves, no questions asked, unless it's a question about clarification of a command. That's it. Many years ago, I was in a GM plant in Michigan where they make all these cars that roll off the assembly line, and I was standing there watching one man whose responsibility was to put on the left back tire. That's all that he did all day. He put on that left back tire and then he had that little gadget, that machine, to put in the screws, the nuts, and that's what he did as this car rolled along the assembly line.

By the way, sometimes you think that as a believer, if you're going to be a missionary or a pastor, you really need the filling of the Spirit, and you do, but I'll tell you, to be able to do that kind of a job for God and for his glory takes an additional filling of the Holy Spirit. Just imagine doing the same thing in the same way day after day after day after day. And I thought to myself, that's something like servanthood. What if this man had never seen the end product, namely a car? Let's suppose that he was born in that factory and some of those men surely thought they were.

What if he began to work there and that's all he did and he never saw the completed product? That's servanthood. What Jesus is saying here is, you're not like that. Because what I have done is I have given you knowledge.

I have brought you into the inner sanctum and all things that the Father has shown me that I'm to show you, I've communicated that to you. That really is friendship. It's that growth in knowledge. It's that growth in intimacy. And Jesus said, I've called you friends.

Now let's just be honest for a moment. There are some people that we would never be intimate friends with because we can't trust them with that kind of knowledge, can we? We don't want to have the knowledge and we think to ourselves, you know, if I were to yield myself to this person and share these secrets, we don't know what's going to be done with it.

And that's why there's a second characteristic of this kind of commitment, of this kind of friendship, knowledge and trust. When you come to Jesus, the Scripture says the secrets of the Lord are with those who fear him. You and Jesus can have all kinds of secrets and you can trust him with your life.

You'd better trust him because he already knows all your secrets anyway. Now many years ago, and it was many, many years ago, I was a youth pastor in one of the churches here in Chicago. That's a bit of information that I don't think is widely known.

Well, I have to tell you, I lasted three months, or I should say the kids lasted three months. But I remember a letter that my wife and I received from one of the girls in that teenage youth group. She said, one thing I like about Jesus is I can tell him all those secrets and he doesn't tell anybody. Isn't that beautiful? That's the way Jesus is. We can tell him all those secrets and he doesn't tell anybody.

That is friendship indeed. Now you imagine what Jesus Christ knows. He knows our down-sitting and our uprising. He knows our aspirations and our desires. He knows our fantasies. He knows the secrets of our heart. And the remarkable thing is that he loves us still.

He who knows us best, does not the song go, loves us the most. You know, it's both scary and comforting, the fact that Jesus Christ knows us so thoroughly, all the intentions of the heart. This morning I prayed for myself. I also prayed for some of my grandchildren. And my prayer was, oh God, today, may the desires of my heart be acceptable in your sight, oh Lord, my strength and my Redeemer. You know, the words of Jesus are very blessed. All of them are blessed.

But in the upper room, he especially became intimate with the disciples. And that's why I wrote the book Prepare Your Heart for an Uncertain Future. The subtitle is The Final Words of Warning and Comfort from Jesus to His Followers. I believe that this book will be a blessing. It'll be an encouragement. You can use it in your devotional life.

As you look at the words of Jesus, just before he is to be crucified, and then of course following that to be raised from the dead. The title again, Prepare Your Heart for an Uncertain Future. Now for a gift of any amount we would like to send this resource to you, here's what you can do. Go to rtwoffer.com, rtwoffer.com or call us at 1-888-218-9337.

Let me give you that info again, rtwoffer.com or call us 1-888-218-9337. It's time again for you to ask Pastor Lutzer a question about the Bible or the Christian life. Many of us have relatives and friends whose behavior is not pleasant. A listener named Jennifer asks, can cussing and smoking keep people from getting to heaven?

I think it can. Jennifer, I need to clarify a couple of things. First of all, cussing and smoking may be sins, but they're not the only sins. And the real issue is not these sins. The real issue is one's relationship to Jesus Christ. And so it is very important for us to realize that when we see someone doing this kind of obnoxious, sinful behavior, it is not the behavior itself which is the important thing that we should look at as much as whether or not they've come to saving faith in Jesus Christ. Now, if they've come to saving faith in Christ, hopefully their lifestyle will follow who they have become in Christ.

And they'll stop doing some of the things that they were doing previously. But that's not really the issue. The issue has to do with one's relationship with Christ. And you see, besides the two sins that you mentioned, there could be a whole catalog of sins that we could name. And it's not the sins that we should focus on. It's the relationship with Jesus Christ. If any man be in Christ, he is a new creation. Also, the Bible says God made Christ to be what he wasn't, namely sin, that we might be made his righteousness. It's that message that gets us to heaven.

It's not stopping certain kinds of behavior. Thank you, Pastor Lutzer, for that wise answer to Jennifer's question. If you'd like to hear your question answered, you can. Go to our website at rtwoffer.com and click on Ask Pastor Lutzer. Or call us at 1-888-218-9337.

That's 1-888-218-9337. You can write to us at Running to Win, 1635 North LaSalle Boulevard, Chicago, Illinois, 614. Running to Win is all about helping you find God's roadmap for your race of life. It's great to talk with an intimate friend.

You feel safe knowing that what's said stays between the two of you. We who run life's race need friends like that, friends who love us no matter what. Next time on Running to Win, join us for thoughts from the Upper Room on being such a friend and on finding such a friend in the Lord Jesus Christ. For Dr. Erwin Lutzer, this is Dave McAllister. Running to Win is sponsored by the Moody Church.