Compelled By Love – The Easter Experience

Matthew 23 (The Message)

^1-3 Now Jesus turned to address his disciples, along with the crowd that had gathered with them. “The religion scholars and Pharisees are competent teachers in God’s Law. You won’t go wrong in following their teachings on Moses. But be careful about following them. They talk a good line, but they don’t live it. They don’t take it into their hearts and live it out in their behavior. It’s all spit-and-polish veneer.

^4-7 “Instead of giving you God’s Law as food and drink by which you can banquet on God, they package it in bundles of rules, loading you down like pack animals. They seem to take pleasure in watching you stagger under these loads, and wouldn’t think of lifting a finger to help. Their lives are perpetual fashion shows, embroidered prayer shawls one day and flowery prayers the next. They love to sit at the head table at church dinners, basking in the most prominent positions, preening in the radiance of public flattery, receiving honorary degrees, and getting called ‘Doctor’ and ‘Reverend.’

When it comes to following Christ we are more about ourselves. We have made following Christ about following a list of rules. Following Christ would be a lot of easier if it were a bunch of rules. We could just check them off and say we are following Christ. That couldn’t be further from the truth.

It would be easier to follow Christ if that is all we have to do. We could create our own list. Once we accomplish a task we check it off. When we don’t accomplish our task we simply confess it to God and move on. This doesn’t mean you are following Christ it means you know how to follow rules.

The pharisees created a list of rules beyond God’s laws. They were heaping rules on the people. They had rules to where you could not take a bath on the sabbath –  you could not move a chair from one place to the other. The expected the people to follow these rules. They were making the Sabbath about following a bunch of rules rather than a time of spiritual rest.

Jesus came and he changes the rules on rule keeping. He tells the people  what they are teaching about Moses is good but don’t follow them. The religious leaders of that day made it hard for people to come to God. They made following God about outward appearance and rule keeping rather than inner transformation.

The pharisees taught the people that they had to earn God’s favor not by just keeping God’s law but by keeping a bunch of made up laws.  They weighted people down with rules – the scripture says they “packed them down” .

They were so caught up on keeping the rules that they forgot to love the person.

Jesus came and changed all that. He came and he loved the person. He looked at their heart and not how well they kept the religious rules. Because they knew he loved them they willingly confessed that they broke the rules, asked for forgiveness and was forgiven.

We are still doing the same thing today in the church. We have a lot of unwritten rules. Rules that having nothing to do with helping a person follow Christ. It’s the rules we made up so that we can control what people do in here. We would  never say it is a rule but people read our body language and know when they are doing something wrong.

We spend more time judging others than we do loving others. The first thing we do when we see a person is judge them. We compare ourselves to them. Judging others gets in the way of loving others. We can’t love those people we judge. It is impossible.  We are called to love others and let God make the changes in them. Not change them and then help them discover that God loves them.

All the pharisees saw was them breaking the rules. They didn’t see their heart.

We need to understand that Jesus didn’t come and break all the rules. Nor did he give his followers permission to break the rules – he simply went beyond the rule that was being broken and looked at their heart. He was compelled by his love for them to look beyond the rule and look at the heart.

So why do we create these rules? We create the rules because the outside appearance of the person is more important than the inside. No rule has ever changed the inside of a person. Only the love of God can do that. We are called to love others because He (God) first loved us.

Kumar (click  here to read newsletter on Kumar) – was compelled by God’s love for him to do what he did. The 100,000 of thousands of people who have come to know Christ followed Christ not because they had a good church but because they loved Christ. They were willing to give their life because they loved Christ. They wanted others to know that Christ loved them.

They were compelled by Christ’s love for them to give their life for the sake of others knowing that Jesus loved them so much that he was willing to die the most cruel death and be raised on the 3rd day.

Kumar was asked why he thought it grew so fast. He could only weep and say: “People were willing to die for him … and they did.” They were compelled by love.

They were compelled by a love not for the church

Not for a rule

They were compelled by what Christ did on the cross.

The story Kumar told is the Easter Experience. He loved you enough to die for you. Do you love him enough to live for Him?

I am not very critical of the church but I am so glad he didn’t get brainwashed by the church because his love was for Jesus and not a program, a building, a pastor, a favorite worship song, or having a nice sanctuary. He went to church to be with Jesus. It wasn’t a rule that he had to get up on Sunday morning to go to church. All he wanted to do was worship Jesus.

He loved Jesus.

We say we don’t have any rules in the church. We say anyone is welcomed here. We say we are full of grace. We are lying. Because if we love Jesus then we love others. Not judge others. Love others.

We are more concerned with growing up in church than growing up in Christ. A lot of people have grown up in Church and never met Christ. We learn all the rules. We memorize a few verses. We do a few things really well. So when people look at us we look good.

For 17 years I grew up in church. I did a lot of good things – servant things. But when I turned 18 I began to grow up in Christ because I made a commitment to follow Him the rest of my life. As I read the Bible I began to notice certain rules were in place. I looked in the Bible to find if the rule wasn’t there. I couldn’t find it anywhere.

We have been teaching our kids the rules and the unwritten rules of the church. We teach them you have to follow the rules in order to be loved. As long as you follow the rules, “kids you will be okay. As long as you act right and look good on the outside and not mess up in front of these church people. If you mess up they are going to think I am a bad parent.”

We have made church about rule following rather than Jesus following. We have convinced ourselves that as long as someone looks good at church that they got to be a follower.

Please don’t get me wrong. I am not against keeping rules. I am against worshipping the rules. I am against the idea that just because I follow all the rules of the church I am a Jesus follower. That is the furthest from the truth.

When I was a youth pastor (for 16 years) many of the kids were taught that following Christ was about following a bunch of rules. I watched parents raise their kids in church and not in Christ. The result was that they eventually walked away from the church. I am convinced that these parents didn’t know what it meant to follow Christ.

Parents thought following Christ was about following the rules and coming to church. It is just about following HIM!

We think that Christianity is about going to church. It is about growing up in Christ.

We teach our kids how to be good church members

We teach our kids how to be good Sunday School class kids.

We teach them  how to not act up in church.

We teach them how to follow the written and unwritten rules.

Following Christ is not about being a good church member

We need to teach that

Following Christ is about honoring and pleasing the Father.

Following Christ is about allowing Him to change us from the inside out.

Following Christ is about honoring Him the way we live our life.

If we make following Christ about keeping all the rules we will grow bitter towards God and others because there is no way we can keep all the rules. We will mess up.

Rule followers grow bitter toward God and others.

Christ followers love God and others.

Ruler followers are very judgemental

Christ followers are very understanding.

If we took the time and thought about how much Jesus loved us. He was compelled by love to die for us. He loved the rule followers and the rule breakers. He didn’t care who you were – He just wants to know will you follow Him.

What compels you to follow Christ? Rules or love?