Matthew-086

Spirituality concentrates both on God and people

Before we continue, we can turn to the next person to shake their hand. There are also new friends, so we can shake their hands to welcome them. Often, we come to church and we think we should concentrate on God, and we forget about the people around us. In fact, as we shall see in today’s message as God leads me to expound on it, there is no relationship with him that does not involve relationship with others. There is no spirituality that concentrates on God in such a way that it excludes people.

I also want to emphasize that if we know Christianity as taught in the Scriptures, it makes us very vulnerable because we have to open ourselves to other people. That is what it means to take up the cross. It is the road of sacrifice, the road to death which in turn leads to eternal life. The Christian life becomes such a remarkable challenge that it makes us almost fearful to be a Christian as we shall see.

The Christian life is always lived under God’s care and protection

Before I begin the message, let me also state that if it were not for the kindness of God, that we always live under his care and protec­tion, I would not be sharing with you today. I would have either been killed or crippled about two months ago when I was in Australia. I will share this experience with you so that you understand the Christian life is always lived under God’s care and protection.

In their love, the dear co-workers in Australia wanted me to have a time to rest. As they know I love to swim, they found a very special offer to fly from Sydney to a very famous place called Cairns in north-eastern Australia, where the Great Barrier Reef is. Swimming is one thing that I seem to always be able to do regardless what my physical condition is like. So, when I am physically tired because of the work, I still always feel so refreshed in the water. I cannot keep up with the strong co-workers on land, but in the water, even the best of swimmers have difficulty keeping up with me. However, going to the Great Barrier Reef is a problem because it is two-and-a-half hours off the coast of Australia even by jet foil. If you are not a good sailor, you would feel very sick by the time you get to the Barrier Reef, and you would be so happy just to go home. My wife does not take to jet foils too well. She had gone to the Great Barrier Reef once on one of these boats, and after a two-and-a-half hour ride, she felt quite sick, so she did not enjoy anything. What’s more, it’s very expensive. It costs at least about Australian $200, which is about the same as Canadian dollars, for a single trip for two people. So you can see we were hardly going to go out to the Barrier Reef every day. In the end, we did not even go once, but we went to a nearer reef which took only forty minutes by fast boat.

God saved me by pulling me to the side of a rushing torrent

That being the case, I thought we will find somewhere else to swim. Near the place where we were staying, we could climb up into the rain forest, and there is a gorge where the water runs down very swiftly. The water runs into a pool and slows down a bit in the pool, and again, it runs very fast down to another pool. You can swim in these pools if you would like to take the risk. There was an encoura­ging sign which warned: “People have been killed swimming in this pool.” It did not say you are not allowed to swim. It just tells you that people have been killed. I saw people swimming in some parts of this pool where the water was slower and deeper, but in other parts, you could see the water was going by rather quickly. So I thought to myself: “Oh, this is nice! I’m sweating away in the rain forest, and a dip in this icy water would be beautiful!” So I enjoyed my swim for maybe forty, fifty minutes.

A few days later, I remembered that refreshing swim in the mountain, because I could not swim in the sea. The water in the sea was not at all clean, and there were stingers at that time of year. This kind of jelly fish is dangerous because of its sting. So where else could I go but back to the mountain pool? My wife did not join me in these swims. She either listened to music in the car or went some­where. The second time I went, I was a little bit more familiar with the pool, but something unexpected happened. As I was swimming, torrential rain came pouring down. When there is a torrential downpour, the level of water will rise quickly within minutes, and that changes the speed of the water. (If you are from a tropical country, you will know what happens if there is a great downpour. The street becomes a river within minutes because of the amount of rain water that pours down.) Suddenly, the speed of the water in the mountain pool changed, and I was forcefully carried backward by the water current across the pool, at the end of which the water dropped as a waterfall. If you drop down that, you will be severely injured at the least, but you will much more likely be killed. No wonder the sign warns: “People have been killed here.” It’s not joking! So as I swam, suddenly the force of the water was carrying me backward, and I could see the drop was right behind me! I tried to go sideways behind a rock only to find that the force of the water was greater, because the water comes around the rock and concen­trates into one extremely strong current. I could not fight the tremendous current of water much as I tried with all my strength. At that moment, I said, “God, this is it! My life is over now unless you are going to stretch out your hand and do something for me.” Things can happen within seconds in life. One moment you’re fine, the next moment you’re gone! All I could do was to look to God because this was beyond human strength. There was nothing I could do to save myself. I counted to myself that I might have two more seconds, and I would go over the edge crashing down those rocks!

Suddenly, I was somehow shifted out of this current. I am not very clear what exactly happened. All of a sudden, I was away to the side, and water was rushing past me, and I was suddenly secure by the side of this rushing torrent. So I say, we live our lives under the mercy and protection of God at all times. I paused in the water for some time wondering, “What exactly happened? How did God pull me out of this?” It’s still a wonder! As I look back, there are many things I don’t understand. I cannot figure out what exactly happened, but God decided that I still had a little more work to do. It was not time yet for me to go over the edge.

Life can suddenly, tragically end unless God watches over us

In fact, within the last fifteen months or so, God has saved me at least two other times, but I won’t go into that right now. Once was in a car, and that episode would have wiped me out as well but God protected me. I will share it some other time, but I just want to show that we live our lives at all times under the mercy and protection of God. Life can suddenly be terminated out of the blue.

I still remember very vividly before my eyes one afternoon in England, when I stopped my car at a pedestrian crossing, and I looked at a further pedestrian crossing where two ladies, each pushing a pram, were going across it. Traffic had stopped for them, but suddenly, a car went straight into these two women, who were just having a nice afternoon stroll in the sunshine, pushing their babies in their prams side-by-side! The car went out of control, took one pram right onto its bonnet, swerved onto the pavement, and smashed into a shop window driving the baby and its pram right through the glass! The mother was knocked off sideways. Another baby was just thrown up, flying straight out in the other direction. All onlookers were paralyzed by shock! It was a relatively new driver who apparently lost control because of stepping on the accelerator instead of the brake, which accounted for the car sud­denly shooting across the pedestrian driveway. I thought to myself: “A Sunday afternoon walk ends in a tragedy!” It was a scene of total chaos and shock. These ladies just went out for a nice afternoon stroll. Would they ever have dreamed that things would end up in this way?

Life is like that unless God watches over us, which is why Psalm 91 tells us that we dwell in the shadow of His wings. In my case, God had mercy. Like these ladies and their babies, my life could easily have been terminated, or my body crippled in those few seconds. But God watched over me. That is the only way we live our Christian lives. I sometimes wonder how many crises we have gone through, and we were not even aware that we were in mortal danger, but the hand of God had covered us. The shadow of His wings had protected us.

Before I continue, let us now commit this time to God in prayer.

Opening prayer

Gracious Father, we live by your grace alone. We owe it to your mercy that we are alive at all today. Countless dangers could have destroyed us long ago, but you have watched over us and safe­guarded us to this day. God, we pray that we will live in gratitude before you, and be ever eager to live in a manner that glorifies you, that pleases you. For what purpose is there in life unless it is lived for your sake and for yourself, and that there is fullness in our hearts, there is meaning in our lives? God, we commit the remaining time into your hands and pray that you will instruct us according to the truth of your Word, that we may live in the center of your will, and continue to experience daily how great you are, how good you are, how wise you are, the living God, our God and our Father. Hear our prayer and accept our thanks as we commit this time fully into your hands. Amen.

The nature of the Christian life: Love God and your neighbor

I was looking to God to know what he would have me to share with you today, and somehow he kept bringing this passage back to my mind. Even last night, I thought, “Maybe I’ll preach something else. This message is too difficult to preach.” But God would not let me turn aside, so I am going to deal with this passage that He lays on my heart, which summarizes for us the answer to the question, what is the nature of the Christian life? We are going to study the important passage, Mark 12:28-34, which covers both the Old and New Testaments. The wording is very familiar to us, and I’m sure you already know it by heart:

A certain scribe or Bible scholar, you can say, asked the Lord Jesus what is the greatest of the commandments? And the Lord Jesus said, “The greatest commandment is this: You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength. And a second is like it: you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” We must not suppose that these command­ments simply belong to the Old Testament because they occur 8 times in the New Testament (Mt. 5:43, 19:19, 22:39; Mk. 12:31; Lk. 10:27; Jam. 2:8) with the apostle Paul quoting it 2 times directly (Rom. 13:9; Gal. 5:14) and 2 times indirectly. (Rom. 15:2; 1 Cor. 10:24) That is how important it is.

There is no way to love God totally unless we love the neighbor as ourselves

There are a number of things that we need to notice. First, I am sure that if you are a serious Christian, you would have often thought: “How do I love God with my whole heart, with all my mind, with all my soul and with all my strength? How is this fulfilled in practice? Do I keep on saying to God, ‘I love you with all my heart, my soul, my strength’?” We can say that, but is the command fulfilled just by repeating, “I make my commitment to love you with my being”? Is it enough that we love God with our total being? No. That is why the Lord Jesus said, “And the second is like”, that is, the second commandment is equal to the second explains the first. What is the relationship between these two commandments? The second is so completely related to the first, that you do not fulfill the first without fulfilling the second. That is, there is no way to love God in total love unless we love the neighbor as ourselves, and so complete is the identification of the two – the second is like the first – that if you fulfill the second, you automatically fulfill the first. It is remarkable, isn’t it? But I have no time to expound this in detail today.

The Lord Jesus refers to this in Matthew 7:12,

The apostle Paul quotes this in Romans 13:8-9,

You might say: “What about the first commandment?” It is by doing the second that you have fulfilled the first. That is the amazing thing.

Paul repeats this in Galatians 5:14. Galatians is concerned with salvation by grace through faith, and it is in this very book that he says,

He who loves his neighbor as himself has fulfilled loving God with his all, and all that God requires of him, and there is no way to fulfill this except by grace through faith.

Love your neighbor as yourself is: Remove barriers – with God’s enabling

Then what does “love my neighbor as myself” mean? We get out of one problem only to end up with another one! If we are serious about loving God, we know we must fulfill this. The great problem that has exercised my mind for a long time is what exactly love the neighbor as oneself means. I have looked through commentaries to see what they have to say, and I must say they have not illuminated my mind at all, which means that they don’t understand what that means either. You have to love your neighbor like yourself. What does ‘like’ mean?

I got a book by a famous philosopher called Paul Ricoeur called Oneself As Another. Try reading that book and you will be totally befuddled. At the end of it, you don’t even know what he is talking about. I thought that I had studied philosophy, but he is so philosophical that when I read his book, I had a hard time figuring out what he was trying to say. Surely, God does not intend us to read through 300 pages of philosophy to figure out what loving the neighbor means! If we depended on that, we would have a hard time ever fulfilling what God and his Christ have called us to do.

One day, as I sat there and pondered this, the Spirit of God enabled me to see what it means in a flash, and this is what I would like to share with you. On the one hand, it is a tremendous challenge, and on the other hand, we realize that it is impossible for us to live this kind of life without God’s enabling.

“You shall love your neighbor as yourself” is first mentioned in Leviticus 19:18 but it is central to the New Testament teaching. The Lord Jesus said, “Hereby shall all men know that you are my disciples because you love one another.” (Jo. 13:35) The church has failed miserably in doing this very thing, and if we fail in this, we fail in being Christians at all. So, it is essential for us to understand what “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” means. As I said, it came to me in a flash as I tried to ponder this. It suddenly dawned on me – barriers!

We live under the power of sin so we cut off ourselves from others with barriers

What do we mean by barriers? The whole nature of life as we live it in the world under the power of sin is cutting off ourselves from our neighbors. There is a veil between us. You can say we talk to each other through closed doors. Most of us have doors with a chain on it. If someone knocks on the front door, you don’t just open it because you don’t want some vicious fellow to come rushing in. So, you put the chain on when you open the door, you look out and say, “Yes? What can I do for you?” And the man says, “Can I sell you this?” And you say, “No, I have no time for this.” Then you slam the door. This chain protects you, and we seem to relate to each other in this way. We talk to each other through the chained door. The chain protects us and makes sure that person will not harm us or take advantage of us in any way. This is the reality of life as we live it in the world, isn’t it?

Isn’t that also true in the church? We try and we try, but we still talk to each other through a screen. I talk to you, and you talk to me, and you are not sure whether the person you are talking to is the real me. You look out of the chained door with one eye, and you wonder: “I can only see half of the face. I haven’t really seen the person. I wonder how that person looks if I could see his or her whole face.”

Imagine a church in which we all relate to each other through barriers, through doors, through fences. We dare not open our hearts to the other completely. Perhaps we have something to hide. The chain is latched on to keep people out of our untidy house with unwashed dishes, and an un-vacuumed floor for the past five weeks. The point is we put up doors or screens to prevent other people from seeing us as we really are. We talk to each other through barriers. My beloved brothers and sisters, if you live in this way, you are not living the gospel.

If you are me, there is no barrier between us

If I am afraid to open myself to you because I’m afraid you might take advantage of me, it means that I don’t treat you as myself. I don’t expect myself to take advantage of myself, and even if I do, I don’t mind. If you are me, it means there is no barrier between us. You cannot still be me if I put a barrier between us.

Schizophrenics put a barrier in their own minds. They don’t even know themselves. They cannot communicate with themselves. That is supposed to be a definition of schizophrenia, a serious mental illness. If we cannot even relate to ourselves, we have a barrier within ourselves, we become a split personality. That is a terrible situation to be in! Now, not many of us have this kind of problem but we do have another problem: we cannot relate to others. That is why relationships break down.

Doors for protection become a problem of locking us in

We can only imagine a church in which there are no barriers between us. There are no defensive moves between us. I don’t have to play chess with you. Why do we learn martial arts? If we don’t have a door, we have martial arts to protect us. If you give me any trouble, I’ll show you my color – the color of the belt I have in karate. We live defensively. In England, we are told to drive a car defensively because there is some nut who might come charging down the road and crash into you. You may not be in the wrong but somebody else is going to be in the wrong, so drive defensively.

All of life is defensive. That is why we have to live with doors and chains and fences. Did you realize that doors lock people out but they also lock you in? You become a prisoner in your own house. Many people are prisoners because of that defensive posture, and you feel very, very lonely within that prison.

A billionaire becomes prisoner of his own bodyguards

I was reading about this billionaire who had to be so protected that in the end, he became the prisoner of his own bodyguards. It’s very tragic! What’s the use of being a billionaire and become a prisoner? Doors are the problems, and we have them all around us.

I was locked into a washroom on the Swiss Alps!

I was once in Switzerland, again, thanks to the kindness of the co-workers who encouraged me to go up the Alps to have a rest. I went to school in Switzerland in my teenage days when my father was at the United Nations in Geneva, so I know Switzerland very well, and I know the beautiful places to go to. I thought of going to Murren to have a few days of delightful rest. There I can take the cable car to go higher up into the mountains where you have a fantastic view, and you can walk around to breathe the fresh air. That air revives me in just a few days. When I first arrived, I was slogging along, then after a few days, I started jogging a bit, and after a few more days, I actually started sprinting uphill! That was a few years ago, of course. So that air did wonderful things for me!

One day, I took the cable car up the mountain to take a walk in the fresh air, and I was intending to take the last cable car back to the town below where I was staying. With ten minutes to go before the last cable car, I went to the washroom. It’s a very big public washroom which is about three or four minutes’ walk away from the cable car terminal. While I was in there, I heard some sound, and suddenly, the lights dimmed. When I was ready to leave, I discovered that I had been locked in! The caretaker apparently just took a casual glance through the washroom, and did not make sure whether there was anybody still inside or not. So, I found myself nicely locked into this washroom on the mountain top several thousand feet up! Can you imagine that? The whole toilet was made up of tiles and stone, which meant that it would be very cold at night! In the mountains, it may be very hot in the day time, but at night, the temperature just drops and I would be a piece of frozen meat by the morning! I noticed the door was made of very solid metal. The Swiss make everything very solid. Nothing is flimsy. Stone walls, a metal door, and the windows were high up, so there was no chance of climbing out of there! I looked at the watch -- six or seven minutes to go. Even if I got out, and did not make it in time to go down in the cable car, I would be frozen on the mountain because I had very light clothing on me. The whole place would be deserted when everyone had gone down. We are like people locked in. In all of life, either other people lock us in or we lock ourselves in. It all has to do with locking in and locking out.

I had to think fast. What am I going to do? I’m going to be frozen in here overnight! There’s no way I can punch or kick my way through a metal door. So I had to look to God. I took a good look at the metal door, and again, it’s wonderful how God gives wisdom. I looked at the hinges, and decided to knock them out, and I had two minutes to do it. So I took the key of the rented apartment out of my pocket, and I tried knocking the pin out and I managed to knock one pin out. I tried the lower hinge and managed to knock the lower pin out as well. With both pins knocked out, I was able to lift the door off the hinge, and I managed to get to the cable car just before it left! Have you ever had the feeling of being locked in? It’s a bad feeling!

My father used to lock me out

It’s also a bad feeling to be locked out when you want to get in. I have had that kind of experience too. My father and I used to have a battle of wits. Father and son often have a great time with a battle of the wits. He would say to me, “You’ve got to be home by 11 o’clock at night.” I had this good friend of mine, and we just loved to talk and talk, and talk, you know how bosom friends are. There is no barrier between us. We could open our hearts to one another and talk deeply and freely, and whoever remembers 11 o’clock at night? I would get home and my Dad had locked the door securely so that I could not get in even with a key. He wanted to teach me the lesson: you get home by 11, or you stay out all night. So, there had been many battles of wits when I figured out ways to make him open the door eventually, but that’s a long story in itself. I won’t tell you about all these exciting episodes.

One day, I ran out of tricks to get him to open the door. This time, I think he was wise to all my tricks, so I said to my friend, “How am I going to get into my home?” I thought about it and decided: “There’s only one way left. I’m going to have to climb in through the bathroom window on the third floor.” This was a risky business because in these older style buildings, the ceiling is very high, so three floors are quite high to fall from. Those who built the house already thought about the security aspect. I had to climb over the backstairs of the house, over a wall, and get in through the window which had a metal bar on it to adjust the size of the opening of the window. So, once I get over the wall, I still have to unlatch that bar in order to open the window wide enough to get in. My friend took off his belt and put it around my belt so that if I slipped, he would hang on to the belt. Come to think of it, it was a risky venture. I remember I even­tually climbed over the wall into the bathroom window. Then I put the metal bar of the window back into the same hole, tiptoed to my bed, and went to sleep. In the morning, my father must have thought: “Where did he come from? How did he get in? The front door was completely locked.” After that, he decided never to lock the door again or to insist that I come back by 11 o’clock.

Our relationship was very interesting, but there was a barrier between Dad and myself. Isn’t that so true between parents and children? It’s so hard to communicate so that it is a battle of wits. This locking me out and locking yourself in business is simply an external expression of the same problem of the internal relationship that is complicated by barriers.

Love as yourself is a command to remove all the barriers – we are afraid

Now isn’t that also so true within the church? Can we really put away these barriers? But barriers are so important. We feel secure behind them. We don’t feel secure without any protection, without barriers between us. What is the nature of the command? “Love your neighbor as yourself” is a command to remove all the barriers. That leaves us very vulnerable, and makes us a bit scared. I don’t mind opening the door wide enough to talk to you, but I don’t like opening the door so wide that you are going to take advantage of me. That is the way you relate to people, and that is also the reason why relationships eventually break down. We can’t get past this barrier mentality. The command here is this: your neighbor as yourself means the neighbor is your alter ego, your other self. “As yourself” means he is another self of yours. You treat him as though he were yourself. We don’t know how to love anybody like that! That kind of love is too dangerous for us. We are too scared to love people like this. We are even scared to love ourselves too much sometimes, never mind love somebody else.

What does it mean? What happens when you are hungry? You get something to eat. If another person is hungry, that’s his problem. No, “as yourself” means if you are hungry you feed yourself, and if he is yourself, if he is hungry, you feed him. You say, “I’ve got a problem feeding myself, do I have to feed him too?” That is the command. What do you do when you are thirsty? You help yourself to a drink of course, and hopefully, a nice drink. What happens when he is thirsty? You help him to a drink. You say, “What about him helping me to a drink?” That part isn’t in the command. There is the problem! You have to love him without reciprocity. Do you see how difficult this command is? Now you can see that unless you love God with all your heart, you are not going to bother to love him. I want to have my drink. Why give him a drink? I can have two drinks. John the Baptist taught the same thing. Let him who has two cloaks give one to the one who doesn’t have. You will say, “Hey, do you know how much a cloak costs?” Yes, he knows how much a cloak costs, but you have two, so you give him one.

Christianity: Taking up the cross to die to self – self-sacrifice

Oh, Christian life is very difficult! It immediately attacks the old self. The other person becomes another self you have to care for, and how many selves do you have around you? This one is your neighbor, that one is your neighbor. You will say, “I’ve got problems just looking after myself and my drinks. How many drinks do I have to take care of around me?” I told you that the practical side of the Christian life is very difficult. Who said that Christianity has to do with sitting in the clouds? Who said that Christianity is just gazing upward and forgetting about responsibilities on earth? The truth of the matter is that the true Christian lives in a way that is revolutionary, that treats another person as though that person were yourself. What do you do if you are hurt? You nurse your wound. Then if he is hurt, you nurse his wound because he is yourself. This goes on and on from one such example to another. Whatever you would do for yourself, you would do for him. Can you cope with this kind of Christianity? This is the end of self. In the loving of another self, you actually bring your old self to an end – the crucifixion of the self. That is the power of this teaching. What is surprising to me is that the commentaries don’t know how to understand the passage, which, as you come to think about it, is perfectly clear. The truth of the matter is that we don’t want to understand the passage. It is too difficult to handle. But imagine for a moment, what would happen if we did live like this? That would be revolutionary!

If I can talk to you with no barrier in between, I’m not afraid of you hurting me, I have taken up my cross. Go ahead and crucify me. If crucifying me means your salvation, go ahead and do it. That is the mentality behind turning the other cheek which we also cannot handle. If by striking me, it somehow releases the problem in your life, go ahead. I don’t mind. But what if people are taking advantage of you? Indeed, if in taking advantage of me, you are going to be saved in the process, you go ahead. That is what taking up the cross really means.

This kind of life is frightening! It means I am without protection. People are going to slap me left and right and say, “It helps me to get saved.” Am I going to be a pin cushion, a target for practice? If you dare to live the Christian life, you will say, “Go ahead, use me for target practice and see how long you can deal with it.” Which is going to overcome the problem? I can tell you nobody can use you for target practice for very long before he runs out of ammunition and say, “I can’t do this anymore,” and he is changed by the power of God. This is the sacrificial life of the Christian. This is Christianity in its raw reality, in the depth of its power, in the character of its revolutionary nature. This is Christianity, and it’s most powerful!

Being lukewarm: Will not pay the cost to love “as yourself”

We live some “wishy-washy Christianity”. We have toned it all down. We keep our walls up. When we do not fulfill God’s command to love the other as ourselves, we also don’t experience God. How many Christians do you know experience God on a regular basis? Very few. How many can testify, “I experienced God today in this and that way”? Very few.

Sometimes, I feel very uncomfortable. I seem to be always testifying to what God does in my life, and I’m waiting to hear somebody else say something, but nobody seems to have too much to say. I am determined to live according to the Word, or I will stop being a Christian. Either I live the way God commands, or I might as well pack my bags and say, “I’m not a Christian at all. I don’t intend to live this life. Forget it!” Let us at least do God one service that we don’t call ourselves “Christians” when we don’t live according what he and his Christ command.

Why do you call me, “Lord, Lord and do not do the things that I say?” the Lord Jesus said, Well, what did he say? “Love your neighbor as yourself.” The scribe asked, “Who is my neighbor?” The Samaritan was the neighbor to the injured man, the Jew in the Parable of the Good Samaritan. (Lk. 10:25:37) The Lord Jesus carefully crafts the Samaritan as the man who loves his neighbor, the Jew, when Jews traditionally despised Samaritans. The reason is we find excuses for not being a good neighbor to someone we cannot forgive or accept. Or we are religious and say we already have this and that commit­ment, or we have to preserve our cleanliness, like the priest and the Levite in the parable. We have a kind of Christianity that locks out the neighbor from our hearts. Do you know what happens when we do that? You lock God out of your heart.

The surprising thing we read in Revelation 3:20 is that the Lord Jesus is outside the door of the Laodicean Church, and he says, “Behold, I stand at your door and knock.” The Laodicean Church locked out he who is sent by God. (Jo. 17:3) Barriers! He continued, “If any man will open that door, I will come in and sup with him, and he with me.”

He says to the Laodicean Church that they will have wonderful fellowship together with him, but they must open that door first. How did they lock him out? The Laodicean Church is famous for one thing: wishy-washiness, lukewarmness, like most of us in churches today. We go some distance, but not too far. We are always told, “Be a Christian but don’t be too extreme.” We are neither hot nor cold. We are very moderate Christians. The result is we are Laodicean Christians. Moderation means “I open my door, but not too wide. I’ve got my chain on. I’ll be nice to you if you are nice to me.” We work on a very polite basis at arm’s length. Confucius said, “The relationship between the superior men is as plain as water.” This means you behave moderately, and I behave moderately, all within the provisions of proper rituals and rites. I open my door a little bit, you open your door a little bit, and we can talk a little bit. Then when five minutes are up, we close our doors. Lukewarm Christianity is what we have today.

A costly secret: To experience God requires you to open your heart to one another

Is your heart wide open? The apostle Paul found the hearts in the Corinthian Church very closed, and he said to the Corinthians in a very touching passage in 2 Corinthians 7:1-3, “Our hearts are wide open to you, Corinthians. Please open your hearts to us.”

What is the matter with the Corinthian Church?! It owed its very existence to Paul! He opened his heart wide to them, but their hearts were not very open to him. Is your heart wide open, or is the door closed?

To open your heart to God, and not exclude him from your life requires that you open your heart to your neighbor. We have to open our hearts to one another. That is why, as I said right at the beginning, the first principle is that total love for God is defined in terms of total love for the neighbor. I have given you a secret, if you like, but a costly secret. If you open the door wide for God to come into your life, then you have to open your door wide to your brother and sister. There is no other easy way. If I keep the door of my heart closed to you, I cannot expect God—represented by Christ (cf. Rev. 3:20)—to be able to come in because that door is closed. If it’s closed to your brothers and sisters, it’s also closed to God. That is what the Lord Jesus said, “He who receives you, receives me, and he who rejects you, rejects me.” You will see that in Matthew 10:14 and Luke 10:16. There is no way to separate this. “I accept God but not you. It is safe to let God into my heart, but I don’t trust you. If you come into my life, you’re going to mess it up for me. So you stay out of my life, but God, please come in.” God tells us himself in the Old Testament, and through Christ Jesus in the New Testament: “No way. If you don’t accept him, you don’t accept me. If you close the door to him, you close the door to me.” You cannot have God without having the brother or the sister. I hope the Vancouver Church will be a church in which every heart is truly open to the other.

Have faith in God’s promise: He is our protection if we live as he commands

I admit this is risky. That is why I began with the story of what I experienced just two months ago, how we always live under God’s protection. We dare not live the Christian life without his protection. I risk having my life messed up by opening my heart to any brother and sister, not to mention to all brothers and sisters because I always live under this promise in Zechariah 2:5 by faith. I cannot love the brother and sister without faith and grace.

That is good enough for me! I will open my heart wide to you. You can take advantage of me if it helps you. Go ahead! You can have anything you like that I have if you can benefit from it. You have my word for it. Do you like this tie? After the service, you can have it. Just let me finish the message first. Is there anything on me you that you like? Have it because if it’s mine, it’s yours! If my neighbor is “as myself”, then clearly, what is mine is his, right? What else can it mean?

Community of goods comes from “love my neighbor as myself”

This is where the Early Church put it into practice in the form of the community of goods in the Book of Acts Chapter 2. The community of goods did not suddenly come out of thin air. It came out of the practicing of this very teaching. What is mine is yours because my neighbor is “as myself.” That means what is mine is yours. Help your­self. You can have it. Is it daring? Is it crazy? Yes, it’s crazy. It’s daring. But that is the Christian life. It is revolutionary in the extreme. There is nothing that Communism ever taught that even comes close to this.

This is revolutionary, but you will experience God in this! “I shall be to you as a wall of fire round about you.” You don’t need to protect yourself. He will take care of the protection. Anyone who wants to trample on you will have to reckon with the living God. Your safety is in Him. You don’t have to protect yourself, but do you have enough faith to trust that when you throw the door of your heart wide open, He will watch over you? That takes faith. And you are going to experience the reality of his power as indeed, I have. There is nothing to fear. What is more, not only will he be “a wall of fire round about you” so that you don’t have to build your own wall, he will be “the glory in the midst of you.” Anyone coming into your life is going to run into his glory. By the time he has slapped you a couple of times, he will soon discover the glory is too much for him to handle and he will soon be on his knees repenting before God. You will experience the greatness of God there.

Pray daily: “God, I open my heart to all the brothers and sisters today, to live together and to die together.”

I have to close here. I pray that God will help you see the true nature of the Christian life, the challenge of the Christian life, the revolutionary character of this life in the light of God’s Word. It is exciting! It is scary! But our God is real! And I can tell you if anyone doesn’t believe in God as the reality of life, he would not even try this kind of crazy teaching. You can only love as yourself by the grace of God who is real.

I can tell you what I do. I pray that my goal every day is this: “God, I open my heart to all the brothers and sisters today, that they are in my heart to live together and to die together,” as the apostle Paul said to the Corinthian Church. This is truly superb! Can you say that? Say every day: “You are in my heart to live together and to die together.” Now that is the Christian life in its beauty and its power!

Let us close in prayer.