CONTAGIOUS FAITH
GOD’S CONTAGIOUS LOVE
DR. JIM DIXON
1 CORINTHIANS 13:1-13
APRIL 17, 2011
“Bah humbug!” Those words were made famous by Ebenezer Scrooge in Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. The words are actually far older than the middle 19th century. They come from centuries earlier. Etymologists tell us that the word bah is an expression of contempt, and the word humbug, etymologically, means nonsense. So, when you say, “bah humbug” you are rejecting something as nonsense and you are rejecting it with contempt. “Bah humbug.”
We live in a bah humbug world. We live in a world where a lot of people respond to the Gospel with, “bah humbug.” They reject the Gospel as nonsense and they reject it with contempt. People reject the claims of Jesus Christ as nonsense, and they reject it with contempt. They reject his coming into the world, they reject Christmas itself. Bah humbug! So how do we reach people for Christ in this world where there is so much bah humbug? Sometimes we reach them with logic, with argumentation and with apologetics. Sometimes we reach them with a testimony or with a story of a changed life. But sometimes, we can only reach them with a contagious love. That is what we look at this morning, contagious love. What I would like us to do is first of all to look at his love, the love of Jesus Christ, which is indeed a contagious love. Then, after that, we will take a look at your love and mine.
We begin with his love. I would like to look at Luke’s Gospel, the 19th chapter. In that Gospel, we see the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem. This is, after all, Palm Sunday. We read that after these things, Jesus went on ahead going on up to Jerusalem.
“As he drew near to Bethphage and Bethany and the mount that is called Olivet, he sent two of his disciples saying, ‘Go into the village opposite, where upon entering you will find a donkey tied, or colt, upon which no one has ever sat. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone should say to you, ‘Why are you untying it?’ You shall say this, ‘The Lord has need of it.’’ So those who were sent went, and they found it as he had told them.
“As they were untying the donkey, its owner said to them, ‘Why are you doing this? Why are you untying the donkey?’ They said, ‘’The Lord has need of it.’ They brought the donkey to Jesus. Throwing their garments upon it they put Jesus on it and as he rode along, they spread their garments on the road. As he drew near, at the descent of the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of disciples began to rejoice and to praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works which they had seen, saying, ‘Blessed is the King, who comes in the name of the Lord. Peace in heaven, glory in the highest.’
“Some of the Pharisees who were in the multitudes said, ‘Rabbi, rebuke your disciples.’ Jesus said, ‘Truly I say to you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out.’ As he drew near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, ‘Would that even today you knew the things that make for peace, but they are hidden from your eyes. And I tell you, the day is coming where your enemies will surround you and cast up a bank about you and hem you in on every side and dash you to the ground, you and your children within you, and not one stone will be left lying on another in you because you did not know the time of your visitation.’”
What is that all about? All four Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, record the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. What is it all about? In the Christian world, we call that event the Triumphal Entry. For the secular world, when they think of the Triumphal Entry, they don’t think of the entrance of Jesus into Jerusalem, they think of the entrance of Caesar into Rome. That is what the secular world, the historical world, thinks of when they think of the triumphal entry. On past Palm Sundays, we have sometimes compared the entrance of Caesar into Rome and Jesus into Jerusalem.
You know that when Caesar went down the Via Sacra after his triumphs. He would ride on a chariot of gold, pulled by a team of white horses. There would be trumpeters in front of him, there would be the royal guard, there would be the Roman legions, there would be prisoners bound in chains, the spoils of war. They would go down the Via Sacra to the Roman Forum and crowds would line the street. “Veni, Vidi, Vici.” “I came, I saw, I conquered.” The crowds would shout, “Hail, Caesar, Hail Caesar, Hail Caesar!” and the crowds were energized. It was about victory and it was about power.
When Jesus came into Jerusalem, the crowds were also energized and they were massive in number as he came down that road, down the Mount of Olives towards the Kidron Valley, looking across at the Holy City and the Golden Gate. As the crowds lined the roads they were shouting, “Hosanna, Hosanna, Hosanna! Blessed is the King!” Hosanna means, “save us now.” They were energized and it was kind of about anticipated victory. It was about power; they were anticipating divine power.
Yet, when Jesus came into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, he was all about love. He didn’t come to defeat the Romans and to cast off the shackles of Rome. He came to save them. He came to save the whole world. He was all about love. If you read Josephus, and I know you all have, he claims at the time of Palm Sunday as Jesus went down that road there were four political religious groups in Jerusalem. There were the Essenes, the Sadducees, the Pharisees, and the Zealots, and they all hated Rome. The crowds that Sunday were filled with hate. They hate Rome and oppression. They were shackled by Rome, and they had been oppressed by many nations. They had been oppressed for more than 500 years. They had been oppressed by the Babylonians, by the Medo-Persians, by the Greeks, by the Seleucids, and by the Romans, and they were tired of it. There was a lot of hate.
The Sadducees, the Pharisees, the Essenes, and certainly the Zealots all had hate. Even the Sadducees that had entered into compromise with Rome hated Rome. The Zealots were in the crowd. They had daggers and short swords and they were ready for war and they wanted Jesus to lead them, but he had come for love. Really when you look at the events of that week, it was all about love.
On Palm Sunday he came into Jerusalem, and then you have Passion Week. On Thursday night you have the Passover with Jesus and his disciples in the upper room. John 13, 14, 15,16, 17; all of those chapters are Thursday night of Easter week. Jesus institutes the Lord’s Supper, “My body broken, my blood shed.” It was all about love, and Jesus girded himself with a towel that night and began to wash his disciples’ feet. It is all about love. “I have given you an example that you might love as I have loved. A new commandment,” he said that night, “I give unto you that you love one another.” A new mandatum, a new mandate. Maundy Thursday that night was all about love.
The next day he would go to the cross and it was all about love. “God so loved the world he gave his only begotten Son.” “Greater love,” Jesus said, “has no man than this that he lay down his life for his friends.” It was all about love. Death could not hold him, and he rose in power and that was all about love. That victory over death was all about love because Christ hates death, and he loves people. That is why Jesus wept outside the tomb of Lazarus. And they said, “See how he loves him.” He wept because he loves people and he hates death. So for love’s sake he rose from the dead. He ascended into heaven and that is all about love because he has gone into heaven to intercede forever for us. He will come to receive his church and it is going to be about love. So that Sunday he rode into Jerusalem for love’s sake.
There is a verse that I think is often times misunderstood, and that is John 12:32. I have heard this quoted so many times in sermons and talks and Bible studies. “If I be lifted up, I will draw all men unto myself.” I have heard that verse quoted again and again pulled out of context. I think a lot of people, when they hear that verse think, “We need to lift him up, we need to praise him, we need to exalt him, we need to give him glory and if we do that, he will draw all people unto himself.” There is truth to that. We do need to lift him up. We do need to praise him. We do need to glorify him. He is Son of God, Son of Man, Lion and Lamb, King of Kings and Lord of Lords. But when you look at the verse contextually, that is not what it is explicitly about. It is about the cross.
When he said, “if I be lifted up,” he is talking about the cross. “If I be lifted up on a cross, if I be crucified, I will draw all men unto myself.” This is the heart of the gospel: The cross. I just cringe today when I see some people in the emerging church say that we don’t need the cross, that it was an act of violence. They don’t believe in substitutionary atonement. They don’t believe that he died vicariously for us and they are taking away the heart of the gospel, which the Bible clearly affirms. It is on the cross that we see his love. He came into the world to die for us. That is where we see his incredibly incomprehensible love. He died in my place. He died in your place. He died for your sins, he died for my sins, and he died for the sin of the world. He did it because he loves us. It is the heart of the Gospel. It is all about love. He is Christ victor, he rose from the dead, but don’t forget Good Friday, don’t forget the cross. I think supremely we see his love there.
Let’s take a moment and look at your love and mine and whether or not our love is contagious. I know that his love is contagious. There are 2,300,000,000 Christians in the world today, nominally, because his love is contagious. What about your love? The will of God, the will of Christ, is that his love would shine through his people and that it would be contagious. We live in a world where everybody celebrates love, so many different kinds of love. This past week our son Drew just got engaged on Wednesday night. Thirty-three years of prayers answered! Our son is 33, his fiancé is 29, her name is Rachel, and we had the joy of meeting her and she is wonderful. They love each other, they love Christ, she is a nurse in ophthalmology and he is an ophthalmologist. What a perfect match! We thank God. He proposed Wednesday night in Palm Springs. What a wonderful deal!
Love makes the world go round, and everyone believes in love. There are so many different kinds of love. In the Greek language, you have “eros,” and you have “agape” and you have “phileo” and “storgeo.” In the Hebrew language you have “dod,” “ahabah,” and you have “hesed.” There are so many different words for love. The greatest love is God’s love and his love is more powerful than all. It is God’s love that is meant to shine through the people of Christ. It is his love that is meant to flow through us and be contagious in this world. I don’t think there is any doubt that when we love people it is contagious.
This past year a man named Jim Richards died. Jim passed away. He committed suicide. That was really hard for me. When Barb got the news, I was really just shocked and so was Barb because Jim was our friend. I know that he took his life because of a misguided understanding of love. He meant it to be compassionate, I know he did, because he had been diagnosed with some serious medical stuff and he didn’t want people to have to take care of him. Jim’s wife, Kathy, was very ill at the end of her life, and night after night, week after week, month after month, he was by her side. You see, Jim was our next-door neighbor for many years. When Kathy died, we knew because we were there many nights with Jim, and we were praying with Jim and Kathy and sang songs with Jim and Kathy.
He was there every night and he was such a faithful caregiver. He poured his life out. Then the last few years of Jim’s life, he was so faithful to go to Craig Hospital twice a week and he would feed quadriplegics who could not feed themselves. Month after month and year after year Jim went there and he just fed those who could not feed themselves. He had that kind of compassion, but he didn’t want others to have to do that for him. He didn’t understand he was really denying people the chance to show the beauty of their love for him.
I would say, certainly, suicide is a sin and it is to be condemned, but I have no doubt Jim is with Christ. I remember the day I really first met Jim. He was my next-door neighbor and early on we had a dog that was a great irritant to the whole neighborhood. This dog, whenever you would let her outside, would just bark incessantly, so you could only let her out briefly. But you had to let her out to do certain duties and she would immediately start barking. She would just bark loud and it irritated Jim. So, Jim came over mad. That is the day I met him. He came over really mad. He started yelling and our kids were outside and they were kind of afraid and they came running into the house and I went out to see Jim.
I could see he was very angry and he said, “I don’t like your dog.” Everything changed when I said, “I don’t like my dog either.” Immediately the anger dissipated and I could see a smile and he said, “Really?” We started talking and we had this really neat conversation. Then he told me about Kathy and how she had cancer and how she wasn’t expected to live. That is when we began to be friends and that is how Barb and I got to know Kathy and Jim. We were there to pray; we would talk about Christ and they fell in love with Christ. They loved the music that Dick and Marcia sang and we got the cassettes, back then they were cassettes, and brought them so that Kathy could hear Dick and Marcia’s music and sing along each night. I mentioned some years ago I used to be in a “Jim” group, where everybody in the group was named Jim. It was Jim Richards who invited me into that group. They were all of the Jims that he knew. It was kind of fun going somewhere where you said, “Hi Jim! Hi Jim! Hi Jim!” For so many years, Jim came to our church and he loved this church and he gave faithfully, but it is love that did it.
It is his love but it is also our love. Love is contagious. It really is a powerful thing. While I acknowledge, and I think that Christ wants us to acknowledge that love is contagious, I think we all believe that. I think that Christ wants us to understand that love is not always contagious. It can be resisted. It can be rejected. Remember the love of God was rejected by a third of the angels. Remember that the love of God was rejected by Satan and the demonic host. Remember that Satan was an angel high and lifted up who corrupted his wisdom for the sake of his splendor. He had been in heaven. He had seen the face of God. He had experienced the love of God and he turned and walked away. Many of the angelic hosts went with him.
I tell you, the world is like that. He is the Archon and the prince of this world. Sometimes love is rejected. I think sometimes love is rejected because love is not just compassion and kindness. Love also has to do with the commandments. This is the tough side of love. Jesus said, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” Jesus said, “The two greatest commandments are these. First,” and he quoted the Shema, Deuteronomy six, “You shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart, soul, strength, and mind.” The second commandment is a corollary, which naturally follows from the first and that is Leviticus 19:18, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
Now these two great commandments and the explanation of what these two great commandments mean is what the Bible is all about. What does it mean to love God? What does it mean to love your neighbor? Everybody believes in love, but what does it require? You go back to the Decalogue and you look at the Ten Commandments and the first four have to do with the greatest commandment, the first four have to do with love vertically.
“I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself a graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them or serve them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God. I visit the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but I show steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments. You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain; for the Lord will not hold him blameless who takes his name in vain. Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work; but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God.”
So, what does it mean to love God? Those first four commandments are all about what it means to love God. Then you look at the next six commandments and it is about what it means to love your neighbor.
“Honor your father and your mother as the Lord your God has commanded you, that your life might be extended in the land which the LORD your God has placed you. Thou shall not murder. Thou shall not steal. Thou shall not commit adultery. Thou shall not bear false witness. Thou shall not covet. Thou shall not covet thy neighbor’s wife, nor thy neighbor’s house, nor his fields, or his manservant, or his maidservant, or his ox, or his ass, or anything that is your neighbor’s.”
So, what does it mean to love your neighbor? That is what the Decalogue is about. You look at Torah, you look at the Old Testament, and you look at the new covenant, the New Testament, it is all about what it means to love. The Sermon on the Mount is an explanation of what it means to love. I hope you understand that love is contagious, but there are a lot of people who aren’t looking for this kind of love because it is hard and it requires sacrifice. So even though you seek to love, and you express tenderness, and you express compassion, if you tie your love to obedience the world is going to reject it often times. We are not saved by our obedience; we are saved by his obedience. We are not saved by our obedience but by his grace, by his mercy, by his cross, by his bloodshed and by his body broken. We are saved by the gospel. We are called to love in all of its fullness and it is not easy. For many, it will be contagious.
I want to close with a mention of generational memory. Have you heard of the concept of generational memory? Just two weeks ago in the Denver Post, this was actually reported throughout the world by the Associated Press, this article on the northeast coast of Japan in the aftermath of the 9.0 earthquake and the devastating tsunami. This article points out that there are memory stones, hundreds of memory stones, along the northeast coast of Japan. Some of them are 600 years old. These hundreds of stones warn the villages that every generation or two tsunamis come and not to build below a certain point on the hillside. For hundreds of miles there are hundreds of stones.
It talks about one village that took the stones seriously and did not build below that point and how they were spared any damage. Down in the valleys, there were villages and towns built by many generations over the last couple of hundred years and all were devastated or destroyed. This professor in Japan, professor Imamura, talks about generational memory as rarely extending beyond three generations. People teach their children and their children’s children and then, often times, what was taught is lost. Generally, memory is lost after three generations. “It takes hard work,” he says, “to try to make memories last over countless generations.” That is why they built the memory stones.
Now you look at the Shema and you look at its corollary, the commandment to love, you know that the people of God tried to pass it on generationally. That is why the Jews wore phylacteries and that is why they bound the Shema to their forehead and to their arm by their heart and on the lintel of their doorpost. They bound the Shema that they might never forget, that they may teach their children. “Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is one God, and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind. The words I tell you this day you shall teach them diligently to your children.”
I wonder if we haven’t somehow failed here in the Western world where our love has grown so cold towards God, and I think biblically even towards each other. The percentage of Christians is declining. By the latest census, here in Douglas County, only 28 percent of those who live in Douglas County have any religious affiliation at all. Church attendance is less than ten percent of the population. This is a vast mission field. What have we done? What have we taught our children and our children’s children?
This newest generation, our youngest people, precious to God, many of them rarely go to church. “Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy. Forsake not the assembling of yourselves together.” This is the Lord’s Day. Sunday is resurrection day; we honor his resurrection every Sunday. A whole generation of young people doesn’t give to the cause of Christ on earth because they weren’t taught that that is what love requires. Today we need to resolve that we will be more faithful and we will truly seek a contagious love and it will mean that we have tender hearts and compassion and kindness. It will also mean that we take the commandments of God seriously as we go forth into the world in his name. Let’s look to the Lord with a word of prayer.