Do you have what it takes?

0:00Thanks for tuning in to Mana, a short daily meditation to feed hungry souls with God's Word. These episodes were prepared by our Dean Ministers for a radio broadcast called Voice of the Church and are now republished by the Reform Perspective Foundation, a Canadian charity that applies biblical truth to the issues of our time, here's today serving. Hello dear listeners! Have you ever written an NSF check? Maybe you thought there was money in the account. Maybe there I say you knew there wasn't, but wanted to keep someone off your back. At any rate your check was returned to you marked not sufficient funds, with an extra fee too. It can happen in life, and it's tough enough to deal with, but here's a more troubling thought. It could happen spiritually too. Where more, far more, is at stake.

1:00We all like to think we have something in our spiritual bank account, something that will get us into heaven one day, but one day God will turn away what many offer him as insufficient. What is the life God wants? In the Bible Jesus gives us a summary of God's law. The rules God has made for humanity to live by. The whole law he says can be captured in only two commands. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself. At the time Jesus gave this summary, there were other ideas of what God wants. A lot of religious people put the emphasis on rituals, like handwashing, observing special holy days, tithing, etc. That Jesus addresses much more, our hearts, our lives, He says, must be given to God and to our neighbor, in love and devotion.

2:00How do we measure up against those standards? We're quick to measure ourselves against other people, or we measure ourselves by our own standards. Am I a nice decent person? It's much easier to answer yes to that kind of question. I haven't murdered anyone or something like that, but Jesus tells us we were made for so much more and so we need to be concerned with so much more. First, humans are to love God with all their being. Do we do that? Isn't it true even the very idea of this is foreign to us? Maybe even repudnant? We hear this and we think God sounds like some sort of tyrant demanding we love Him with everything we've got. Love and God must be the two greatest things in the world, but yet we bristle at the command to put them together. There just don't seem to be that many people who talk about loving God.

3:06And if I can speak for myself, loving God is not my natural bent either. We need to further define this command as well. After all, there are lots of ideas about just what love is. What does Jesus mean? What is love? Something like what you see on your favorite soap opera? Love in the Bible is a very rich thing. It's an act of surrender and commitment that binds itself to someone else in delight and honor. And that seeks their joy and well-being. Love's first cousin is loyalty. Now how do we fare against that standard? Love is more than feelings. Love delights to delight another. Is that how we wake up in the morning? Do we pray or think, how can I today, my God, bring you joy? Love takes whatever to be loved, loves and halos it.

4:07Is it? Are we busy loving the things that God loves? Is that our concern, our passion? Love feels someone's pain and sorrow. Do we feel gods? That kind of love is foreign to us, isn't it? Just look at the way we're born. I agree children are born innocent in a way. They're innocent of big or mature sins. But what's their bent? By nature they are self-willed, proud. Even more they are bent on living apart from God. Isn't this the truth that by nature we want to live for ourselves? Something like it may even be enshrined in founding documents as one of our rights. And yet real love would never take on that shape. Real love would never permit that kind of lifestyle. Will you be able to stand before the Lord one day and say to him, Lord, I truly loved

5:08you. I gave my life to you in surrender, in honor. It was my joy to bring you joy. None of us will ever be able to say that. By nature we are prone to the exact opposite. Second, Jesus says we are to love our neighbor as ourselves. Here we might think, well, this I can do. But remember what love, true love, involves. Surrender. Commitment. Loyalty. It's easy to help someone out, easy to get along with someone with a bit of give and take. But real love is more than that. It means you take responsibility for others. You bind yourself to them. In the early chapters of the Bible we see the consequences of our rebellion against God. We hear of Kian who killed his own brother, Abel. And when God approaches him he replies with some disturbing words, am I my brother's keeper?

6:10That is the opposite of real love. Are we each others keeper? Is that how we lead our lives? Jesus tells us that we are to love our neighbor as ourselves. That's not a command to love yourself. We can do that quite well. But Jesus means is that we owe those around us the same level of care as we give to ourselves and our things. How do we love ourselves? Well, we put up quite a bit. So that we put up with quite a bit. So that things are good for us. We are pretty sensitive about what we need, what is owed us. When we are short-changed, we are quick to speak out. Because ourselves we have a love that weathers storms that doesn't give up, that takes things very seriously. We have a love that sacrifices all sorts of things. Now we are to have that same kind of love for others. It means when others are glad we are to be glad.

7:14When they cry we are to feel the pain. We are to be just as passionate that they find a good life as we want that for ourselves. When you are I say that we truly love those around us, I will confess it with you. Even those I say I love, I don't love in this way. So those are the standards. This is the password to paradise. Will we be able to enter? God wants, God demands much more than we think. This is part of His own love and goodness, of course. True love does not lower standards for oneself and for others. Now the single one of us can meet these standards. Now the single one of us can enter heaven on our own and walk with the God who is love. Our way is completely opposed to His. But there was one, Jesus Christ. The loving God sent His Son into this world to live the life that none of us can live

8:17in our own. Look at the life of Jesus. He loved His God. He loved His fellow man like no one else. He loved even when it meant His death. He bound Himself so much to us that He bound our sin, our hatred upon Himself and carried it to a cross where He endured God's wrath for it. And so He also bore God's grief, God's righteous anger over our sin. So there is a way. You and I can enter heaven in Him. We can trust in Him and trusting in Him means being tied to Him, His life becoming your life, His love becoming your love, your life, my life. If we try to present that to God one day, He will reject it. NSF, that's not what it means to be human. You were made to love, to give yourself away, but all I see God will say is a life wrapped

9:21up in itself. Nothing but elaborately crafted selfishness, hatred in fact, but Jesus has come into our world, a world filled with such hatred, to offer His love, to put on our account, to be worked into our lives. Believe in Him, declare you are bankrupt before God, embrace Christ as your life. He came from heaven and so He and He only can lead back to His world to heaven. He's the way to paradise, to that life where every bit of life again is love, complete surrender, delight and joy towards God and towards others. Amen and thank you so much for listening.