By Pastor Kent Hodge
Over and over again, we see that Jesus put people above law and tradition. If we’re to have the heart of God, we need to do the same.
When you go through the epistles of Paul, one of his main topics is our love for one another. I love the scriptures where he uses “one another”. He talks about us as on body, one family, and supporting one another. We get stronger in our support when we see people not doing well in some respect. When we see people in need, our love and our support ought to grow all the more. We need to get behind one another and garrison each other around.
We shouldn’t use the law to count one another out. The law is to lead us to Christ, to show us our need of Christ and of salvation. It’s not there for us to meet together and draw differences between one another. When we see someone failing in respect of Christian things, our compassion needs to go out all the more – we shouldn’t dismiss them as people who just aren’t up to it.
The people we invite for lunch shouldn’t be the people who will invite us back again. The Bible says we are to invite the unrighteous. We should reach out – not in a legalistic way, but we should be prepared to invite people who are different.
We ought to reach out to one another as brothers and sisters in the Lord, and we are a family. The thing which makes us a family is the blood of Jesus – we’re not the same in any other respect, but our differences don’t matter. It’s the blood of Jesus which makes us a family.
Titus 2:11-14
He gave himself to change our hearts and our lifestyle. He wanted a people different from the world. There’s something different about the way we live. We’re not like the world in the way we react to one another. In the world, fellowship is based on sameness – people need to have the same opinions and likes, or else we don’t like them. There’s something above all of that, above these other things – the love of God, the bond of perfection. I need to fellowship with people in the body of Christ based on nothing else other than the love of God.
Titus 2:14-15
Paul told Titus to be very clear on these things. This is what it means to fight the fight of faith, to fulfil your duty as a pastor.
Titus 3:1-2
This is our Christian behaviour and conduct.
Titus 3:3
The people in the world have malice to one another, especially over things they have done in the past. They keep records. They split people up into camps. God doesn’t like to be put in a box. His salvation is for all people. Sometimes we can put God in a denominational box. But we can’t do that. God is for all people and His love is for everyone. In the church, the family of God, we have a different way of live, and we have an example for the world to see – the love of God is working un our lives through the love we have one to another.
Titus 3:4-9
Many years ago my family and I were in a small town in western NSW, in the back of beyond. Ruth’s parents live there. We were at one of the church meetings at the church my in-laws go to. At one meeting, one brother – a young, zealous believer – who was trying to draw distinctions over water baptism. He was making a stand over the age someone has to be when they are baptised. He said he’d had a revelation from the scriptures, and he was prepared to separate from the other spirit-filled believers who didn’t see things the same way. He thought he was doing it for God, but there are other things in the body of Christ which are more important – that we are one family. If people have love and faith in the Lord, and it’s working in their lives, and they are true brothers and sisters, then we should receive one another even if we have minor difference. The most important thing in our lives is people, and what God is doing in their lives.
This brother separated himself and started to have meetings over how old people should be baptised. People like this think they are serving God. But that’s not the issue. The issue is people, that we love one another, and that we see what God is doing in transforming our lives.
John 13:3
John 13:4
He dressed Himself like the lowest person in the house. He lowered Himself below His disciples in what He was about to do.
John 13:5-15
I love the challenge of fellowshipping with believers who are different from myself – and I do all the time. I went to an Anglican church once – a good place with a good pastor. I love variety. I love different traditions. And we ought to be able to handle them, because the substance is Christ, not the tradition. He’s the one who died for us. So let’s not get bogged down by minor issues.
This Anglican church had three queues for wine. I thought they might be for different groups of people. I asked why there were three queues. It turned out one was for wine, one for port, and one for grape juice.
Churches are different. I go to lots of different churches. It’s a challenge, but we begin to look at what fellowship about. What is the family of God about? And we come to see it’s about Jesus Christ and His love for us. He loved each one of us equally, and He died on the cross and gave Himself for us as His church.
John 13:34-35
When we speak of “all men”, we begin at Brentwood. We’re a witness. But what do we witness of? It’s not that I got baptised on the right day and in the right way. Our witness starts in Brentwood, not by ranting and raving and campaigns and good artwork. People will know we are disciples by our love for one another. The world has all these things, but the one thing it doesn’t have is unconditional agape love, family. We have family, and that family is shown by love.
John 15:10-14
We have a friend who has laid down his life for his friends. He was in a cinema when there was a fire. He came out with two friends, but one friend remained inside, and he went back to help, and died. Even in the church today, many would say that was a waste of his life, but not according to Jesus. He was a good friend to us.
I told Ruth these scriptures were too challenging – talking about the love of God and what He says about our lives. I don’t always feel I’m up to doing it. But this is what the scripture says.
Jesus would not allow anyone to put God in a box. He came for the Pharisees, for the publicans, for the sinners. He wouldn’t let people put expectations upon Him because of their traditions. He wouldn’t allow that to happen.
Mark 3:1-2
Here we have someone who needs to be healed. He has a withered hand All the Pharisees were concerned about was whether it was the sabbath day or not – they had their traditions.
One of or brothers is in Egypt currently, preaching at many different kinds of churches. We went there not knowing what to do, and God has opened doors. I believe the Gospel is the only answer. There must be a move of God in those nations.
This man preached at a widows meeting on Jesus from John 3, and there was a lady there who came out for prayer. He said he knew God was going to do something. He stuck his fingers in her ears, and she began to hear. When the meeting was finished, he went out and people began to rush to him. Sometimes they’ve been so enthusiastic, he’s been afraid they’d draw attention to him. The people took him to a house, and an impromptu house meeting began. Then he went to a pastors’ meeting and he spoke to 13 pastors. Then he was taken to a Presbyterian church – all on the same day. He said they wanted to start a five-day meeting immediately. And the only meeting actually arranged that day was the first meeting for the widows.
I tried to encourage him to go to the Coptic church too, but he said the Pentecostals were unsure about that, because you had to kiss the priest’s hand. But there are good Christians in Coptic churches too, and if you have to kiss the priest’s hand to get in there, then do it!
Take the woman who was a prostitute. What someone has done in the past doesn’t matter. What have I done in my past? I’d be counted out on that basis. The challenge for us as Christians is to love one another regardless, and leave room for God to move in their lives.
When we receive one another as Christians and love one another, that gives God’s love space to transform a life. The thing which gets me most is God’s unconditional love for us, that while we were sinners, He died for us. That’s why I serve God – His unconditional love has got my heart.
If others around us don’t seem to be serving the Lord as much as we think they should, we shouldn’t hit them with the Law. When the unconditional love of the Lord gets hold of them, it’ll make the difference.
What I want to draw from Mark 3 is that the person mattered more to Jesus than did the law, the tradition, the sabbath, the issue that the religion people were standing on. The person, the family, the fellowship ... that this person was a child of Abraham mattered more to Jesus than the tradition. Are we not children of God in one family, and isn’t that the issue amongst us a people, and as brothers and sisters in Christ.
In all of the Gospels, it was people that mattered to Jesus, not the law. The two commandments are that we love the Lord with all of our heart – not to check up on how someone else is doing in that respect; and to love my neighbour, people, people, as myself. People are brought to the top. It’s not our traditions and laws and our righteousness which matter. My stand isn’t my righteousness – the blood of Jesus is my righteousness.
In Ephesians 2, Paul is talking about division between Jew and Gentile, which was based on the law. “They don’t eat the food we eat, don’t worship on the same day, don’t have the same traditions.” And so Jew and Gentile were separated under the Old Covenant. But under the New Covenant, its’ not the tradition, but the blood of Jesus which matters.
Ephesians 2:1-10
We are His workmanship – the one who went away and the one who remained. In ancient church history, there was a persecution in Egypt. Some people stood and died in the persecution. Others didn’t. They confessed what they were told to confess, and they survived. After the persecution was over, those who compromised wanted to come back into the church, and those who had stood firm said no. That was a big issue in church history. I don’t have an answer, but we have to give place for God to work, and God can transform and save a life, because He’s done it with me. I’ve compromised, and He’s saved me, so I know He can do it. I have to let God have space to do it.
Ephesians 2:11-12
The wall of the Jewish traditions has been removed out of the way because God wanted to make one family, making Jew and Gentile one.
Ephesians 2:13
He is our righteousness – not our stand on something. I’m not talking about abandoning our standards. I’m talking about the Gospel.
Ephesians 2:14
If God has broken down the wall, how dare we build it up again? How dare we behave as though that wasn’t done by Christ?
Ephesians 2:15
To bring that which was divided by the law ... by fulfilling the Old Testament law, and fulfilling the conditions, He removed those conditions, and His blood became the righteousness of those ordinances. So we now come to Him as one man, based on His body. It’s not our cultures which draw us together, but the blood of Christ.
The enmity was the stand, the divisions. His blood becomes our righteousness and therefore he can make one body based on peace, on agape, on His love for us.
Ephesians 2:16-17
“Far off” – the Gentile, the outsider, the one we reject; “nigh” – those within the church.
Ephesians 2:17-18
The spirit of God who comes to live in us. I don’t have access to God because I’ve done enough good things. If my access was based on that, I wouldn’t have access. But my access is based on grace.
Ephesians 2:19-22
Not through the law, but through the spirit.
Paul is an apostle to the Gentiles, and he’s talking about one body united. We have to forget the laws and traditions, but talk of the blood of Christ instead.
The publicans and sinners ... the publicans were the “church people” – those who were doing His will.
Luke 15:1-3
Jesus gives various parables. He speaks of the lost sheep, as an example of what God’s heart is. He speaks too of the woman who loses a coin, and had a heart for the lost one – and that needs to be our heart too.
v11 gives the parable of the prodigal son. Some people say the parable is concerned more with the prodigal’s brother, not the prodigal himself.
Luke 15:11-21
This must be our passion – to forget about the hundred and go for the one.
Luke 15:22
There’s been a real change of God in the heart. There was a complete turnaround, a change of heart, of nature. It was full and genuine, and the man was filled with God’s spirit.
Luke 15:23-29
The brother recounts the things which the prodigal has done in the past.
Luke 15:30-32
If the brother is really concerned for the Father’s heart, he’d know it was the Father’s heart for the two brothers to be one. It’s not pleasing the Father for us to insist on doing everything just so – what pleases Him is when people are brought together in His love.
In Hosea, it talks of the sins of Israel. Once I was about to exclude someone because of their immaturity and behaviour. And the Lord spoke to me from Hosea, and said “Don’t exclude them, but love them.” My love won’t change someone, but God’s love can work through us. We have all of us gone prostituting away from God.
Hosea 2:16-20
They have gone astray from Him totally, and His heart had been wounded deeply. And yet out of this comes the full love of God, speaking of the rejoicing and salvation to come. He would change their heart and make us lovers of God.
Hosea 3:1
God tells Hosea to take a harlot to wife. This is against the law, I think. But redemption fulfils the law – our guilt under the law. “People who have had problems in their past ... I will love them and change them.”
Ephesians 4:1-2
Forbearing one another in love. Yes, Christians have faults. They’re people. There are hypocrites in the church, but there are more outside.
Philipians 2:1
If there be therefore any consolation in Christ, if any comfort of love, if any fellowship of the Spirit, if any bowels and mercies,
We’re all fellows on the same ship. You may say there’s something wrong with it. Well, fix it! Be part of the solution, not part of the problem.
Philipians 2:2
“Likeminded” doesn’t mean we agree on the same things. Some people have been taught that if we don’t agree exactly, we can’t have fellowship, but our fellowship lies in the love of Christ.
Philipians 2:3-4
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