Focused on Loving One Another

Thank you very much. My name is Mark, one of the pastors here. So glad that you are joining us here on what I think after a warm week is a welcome fog that we have. Feels awesome and it's awesome that you're here. I want to welcome all of you that are joining us on Facebook Live or on our website or next door and venue. Welcome to all of you and we're glad that you're here.

Part of a series that we're in called Focused, which is based in Paul's letter to the Colossians, which is found in the New Testament. And today we're going to be talking about relationships, which is why I brought this box. Because into every relationship we bring our own set of hopes, dreams, and desires. And the more significant that relationship is, the more these things come into play. So in relationships like marriage or with parents and kids, our close friends or colleagues, these things, hopes, dreams, and desires are huge.

Now we're gonna look into this box in just a moment. But first of all I want to set the stage for today's scripture. Because you will not get what Paul is saying today unless you view it within the broader arc of Colossians. In fact, you will not get what Paul says today unless you view it within the broader arc of the gospel itself. Who Jesus is, why he came, what he has done for us. And in Colossians, Paul just keeps driving home the seismic impacts of how this influences our lives, our relationships, and everything else.

So allow me to set the stage. I want to take you back to the night before Jesus is to be crucified. He gathers together with his disciples and he strips off his outer garment, wraps a towel around his waist, and looking every bit like a slave, he begins to wash their feet. Peter blurts out, "You can't do this, you cannot wash my feet, you're the master." To which Jesus says that's right. But I am leaving you an example that you should follow.

In Luke's account of this event, chapter 22, he says, "The greatest among you should be like the youngest and the one who rules like the one who serves." And then in John's account, chapter 13 of his gospel, he says, "A new command I give you," and to that you would expect to go, "Whoa, whoa, time out Jesus. Moses is the one that gave us the commands and he got those commands from God." So it's kind of like you're putting yourself in the place of God and it's like, "Exactly. A new command I give you." He's not really giving a new command, he's compressing over 600 commands of the Old Testament, which really flow out of 10, which he's already condensed down to two when he says, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself."

And now he's going to compress that down to one command, "A new command I give you, love one another, as I have loved you so you must love one another." A pastor named Andy Stanley calls this the Platinum Rule and I got to say, I get some great ideas and insights for this message from Andy Stanley, so I just want to acknowledge that and thank him for that. But he calls it the Platinum Rule because the Golden Rule you're supposed to treat others as what? As you would like to be treated. But Jesus is raising the bar here, isn't he? He's saying, "That's not good enough. I want you to love one another as I have loved you." Wow.

And he could have gone around the room in that moment, he could say, "Hey, like for instance, Matthew, remember the day that I met you? You are a disgrace to your family, to your nation, as a tax collector. You are taking money from your own people and giving it to the Romans, our oppressors. But what did I say to you? You said, 'Follow me.' And when you did, we went to your house and you had a big old party with all your tax collector friends and all sorts of sinners. Peter thought it was the worst party he'd ever been to in his life, but not me, because I love sinners. I want you to love them like I do." Or how about you, Nathaniel? Remember the first thing you said because of where I grew up? When you heard about me, you pretty much insulted my family, my town, our food, our soccer team. When you said, "Nazareth, what good thing could come out of Nazareth?" And here you are, you're one of my followers. I love you. I'm serving you. I'm about to lay down my life for you.

Wow. Now, fast forward to the book of Colossians. Everything that Paul says when he tells us how to live, how we should treat other people, he always ties back to Jesus. Last weekend, if you were here, René covered the first part of Colossians chapter 3, which is really about how we are called to love one another in church or as part of church. And just to give you a little bit of a review, here's a few key verses from last weekend's message, but starting in verse 12, Paul says, "Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on what? Love, which binds them all together in perfect unity."

Now, watch him tie this right back to Jesus, verse 17, "And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus." That's God's vision for how we love each other in church as part of a church, His body. And now, Paul's just going to move on to the next biggest subset of the church, the home. And talk about what it means to love one another at home.

Now, I don't know what kind of flashes into your mind or stirs in your heart when I say the word "home." You may have had a great home, you may have had a not so great home, but I can guarantee you this. You did not have the kind of home that existed when Paul wrote these words. Allow me to explain, because the typical Roman family was much bigger than what we envisioned for a family today. There was, of course, the husband and the wife. And by the way, Roman girls, it was legal for them to marry at age 12. And so, typically, there was a gap in both education and age between the wife and her husband. And her number one job was to bear children.

Well, along with the kids, there would also be hired servants and slaves. And in this household, the father, the husband, had absolute rule. He was king. In fact, if you look in this ancient picture, he's actually wearing a crown, which is kind of like the one I wear around our house, but this kid. But only the father could own property. Get this. His children were subject to his absolute authority until the day he died. So you could be 40 years old. You still have to do everything your father says. He arranged his children's marriages. And if his children got divorced, he got custody of the grandkids. There was no disputing that. Not only that, he could sell his own families into slavery. He could even, in some instances, have them executed if they displeased him.

Now, that kind of power had waned a little bit by the time Paul was writing this, but you get the picture. I mean, how in the world do you start talking about loving one another like Christ has loved us in that type of, you know, hyper-authoritarian structure? Well, Paul in his genius, he does a couple things. First of all, in so many words he says, he says this, he says, "Loving couples put each other first." I want to write that down. "Loving couples put each other first." Now, not before Jesus, of course, but between human beings there is no other relationship where the stakes are higher than in marriage.

And that brings us back to our box of hopes, dreams, and desires. Because I got to be honest, and by the way, if you're single, stick with me here because, number one, you may not always be single. But also, like I said, even if you are, we bring our hopes, dreams, and desires into every relationship. So this is still going to apply to you. But I got to be honest, when I was a single guy, I did not spend a whole lot of time daydreaming about the type of perfect husband that I would someday be to some other woman. I mean, I'm just being honest here. No, no, I thought of quite a bit more about how the perfect woman was going to fulfill what? My hopes, dreams, and desires. And am I right? I'm not alone in this, am I? We all do this. Okay?

And so the day I got married, in this very spot, by the way, I brought my wife, Laura, not only a ring, I brought her this box. Okay? Wasn't here physically, but it was here. And so with that, I brought in all sorts of hopes, dreams, and desires about things like money, right? Like, you know, how much money are we gonna have? How much money are we gonna need? Are we gonna have enough money to buy one of these in Santa Cruz? I don't know. We better get a lot more of this, right? And I thought, you know, I had thoughts, hopes, dreams, and desires about children, right? Like, how many children will we have? And what's gonna happen to my cool little car when she comes along? I'm gonna have to ditch this thing for the minivan.

But even before, we're blessed to have children, even before they arrive, we already have hopes, dreams, and desires for them, don't we? Like, you know, he's gonna be an athlete, or she's gonna be a doctor, or in the case of my daughter, she's gonna be the prettiest nun in the convent. I'm not really kidding, either. No. But I mean, who's gonna cook, you know? Or who's gonna clean? Who's gonna decide? I don't know. I guess it's the person that gets to wear these, right? Now, what looks like perfectly reasonable hopes, dreams, and desires to me? You know what they look like to my wife? They look like expectations. To me, hey, it's all perfectly reasonable. But to her, it's all about my expectations.

And couples do not thrive when it's basically husbands and wives foisting their expectations on one another. I mean, there's just got to be a better way. And not only that, but what we might think of when we talk about expectations in our day, in the first century for wives and children then, these were just like expectations. These were total non-negotiables, absolute duties. And so watch how Paul addresses this. Because this is genius. Because he starts really with common ground, kind of a slow pitch right over the plate. And then he's gonna follow it with a pitch like they've never seen before. A total fastball.

He says this starting at chapter 3 verse 18, saying, "Wives, submit yourselves to your husbands as is fitting in the Lord." Well, what could be more clear than that? Let's close in prayer, shall we? All right, kidding aside, for some of you, this is a verse that you just assume tear out of your Bible. For some of you, this is a verse. This is a reason why you stopped going to church. For some of you, this is a verse that was used to justify an abusive, tyrannical relation in your house. That's how this hits some of us. And if that's you, I'm just so glad that you are here today. All I ask is that you just give me a few moments to unpack what I think Paul is saying here.

First thing we need to understand is this. No one in Paul's day would have been surprised by what Paul had to say. I mean, not in the least. The only thing that's surprising about this is that Paul addresses the women in the first place because when other leading voices, people like Aristotle and other Greek or Roman writers, when they wrote about the household rules, they only wrote to the men and told them how to control the people in their household who they consider to be inferior to them. So the fact that Paul addresses other members of the household like they're absolute, like their actual persons, is the beginning here.

And not only that, but again, when we say, "Huh? How can he say that?" You know what they would say? When we say, "Huh?" they say, "Duh." Duh. Like, tell us something we don't already know, Paul. It's not like we haven't any other option. No one's thinking anything differently than that. But then here comes the fast pitch. Here comes the surprise. Because to the men, he says in the next verse, "Husbands, love your wives and do not be harsh with them." Now, if you find this kind of underwhelming, it's because we expect this of husbands. This is the least that we would expect, that they would love their wives and not be harsh with them.

But love and marriage did not necessarily go hand in hand when Paul wrote this. In fact, a Greek writer named Demosthenes, he wrote this, "We have wives for the purposes of bearing legitimate heirs and having a household manager, but we have prostitutes and concubines for pleasure." He was not ashamed to say that. And of course, it was a double standard because Roman writer Cato says this, "Roman husbands have the right to kill their wives for adultery." Never mind what the husbands are doing. So when Paul says, "Love your wives and do not even be harsh," this was revolutionary.

And then he even expands on it in his letter to the Ephesians when he says something similar, but there's a little bit more there for us. When he says in Ephesians 5:21, "Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ." All of you submit to one another. We all need to practice submission out of reverence what? Out of reverence for what Jesus has done for us. And then continuing in Ephesians, which is all part of the same long sentence, verse 22, he says, "Wives, submit to your own husbands as you do to the Lord." Again, there's that tieback to Jesus.

And you have to think that one, you know, he says that the husbands are kind of like, "Yeah, preach it, Brother Paul. That's what we were waiting for you to say." And then he turns to them, Ephesians 5:25, "Husbands, love your wives just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her." Now who wouldn't want to be loved like that? And I have to think some of those guys are thinking, "Wait a minute, Paul. We know how this story goes." Okay? It did not end well for Jesus. He gave everything. He gave more than we can even begin to fathom for his bride. And when this awareness, when this sinks into my heart and my soul, it spills over into my relationships, especially my marriage.

And I'm focused on Laura's needs and Laura's focused on my needs. And listen, I don't do for Laura so that she will do for me. I do for Laura because of what Christ has already done for me. And when couples, when they put each other first, it becomes what you might call a submission competition. We're gonna race in each other the back line, deferring out of love for the other. It's not a chore, it's a joy. Now this doesn't mean that we don't have different roles or different strengths or different gifts or abilities. What it means is that we deal out of one box. Not his and hers, not yours and mine, our box. It's about us. I don't think me, I think we.

This is what happy couples discover. This is what Christian marriage is all about. Putting each other first because of what Jesus has done for me. Now if you're thinking that maybe, you know, it's 21st century, they're in Santa Cruz, Mark's just trying to make, you know, the Bible a little bit more palatable to our audience. I want to take you back 1,800 years and introduce you to a guy named Tertullian. And now let me tell you why you should care about what Tertullian has to say. And it's because Tertullian was one of the early church fathers, a prevailing voice in the church, and no one would have ever accused Tertullian of being a feminist. Not even close.

But even so, he says something about Christian marriage here that is stunning for his time and context. From around 200 AD he says this about marriage between two Christians. He says, "What a union of two believers, one hope, one vow, one discipline, and one worship. They are brother and sister, two fellow servants, one spirit, and one flesh. They pray together, fast together, instruct, exhort, and support each other." I'm telling you this was unthinkable in this time. This type of mutuality between husbands and wives because they are putting each other first.

And not only do loving couples do that, but loving kids and parents recognize God's heart for their relationship. They recognize God's heart. Now like I said earlier, Roman father had incredible power over his children. Could sell them into slavery, could execute them, and yet in chapter 3 verse 20 Paul continues. He says, "Children obey your parents in everything for this pleases the Lord." Now just to be clear, he's not saying, you know, if your parents tell you to go rob a bank that you should obey them, that will please the Lord. It's assuming that these instructions are within the moral boundaries of Christian ethics.

But when children obey their parents, it pleases the Lord because his heart is... he's the one who's designed this process. He has given parents the job of having the primary influence, the primary power to shape who their children will become. And when you think about this, it's terrifying for both kids and parents. This process of this generational transfer, and it's so powerful. It reminds me of those progressive insurance commercials. Have you seen that where the kids are kind of becoming the parents?

Let me remind you with one of my favorites. Watch this. Well like most of you, I just bought a house. Now I'm turning into my dad. I text him full sentences. I refer to every child as chief. This hat was free. What am I supposed to do? Not wear it? The next thing you know, I'm telling strangers, defense wins championships. Well it does. Why is the door open? Are we trying to air-condition the whole neighborhood? At least I bundled home and auto on an internet website, progressive.com. Progressive can't save you from becoming your parents, but we can save you money when you bundle home and auto.

I mean why would I replace this? It's not broken. My favorite thing are the little sandals with the socks. That's definitely a dad look. The point is, dads, we have amazing influence. And because of that, Paul says, "Fathers," and you see how he's kind of going around the table here? He's pointing to the weaker one in their structure. He keeps coming back to the ones with all the power. And he says, "Fathers, do not embitter your children, or they will become discouraged." In other words, if we're too stern, we're too easily angered, if we're too distant, they will lose heart. They will be discouraged. They will not see God's heart in this process.

In fact, they just might conclude that dad, their Heavenly Father, is just like their earthly father, stern, angry, and distant. And again, this is daunting. This is daunting. I don't know a single father who does not have regrets, including me. When I think about God's heart, from my relationship with my children, it tries me to my knees. I mean, this is not a calling you want to live out in your own strength. I promise you that. There's just too much grace required, and in both directions.

Reminds me of a story that I told years ago here, and happened years ago. I was building a fence around our property. It was gonna be a pretty long fence, get around the property line. And Jack was three years old at the time, my firstborn son Jack was three years old. He very much wanted to be daddy's little helper on this fence project. And so Laura even made him his own little custom size 10 waist tool belt with all his own little tools. And it was all cute and all at the start, but might not be surprised to hear that Jack actually wasn't a whole lot of help on that job.

Because if he wasn't sticking nails all over the place in the fence, worse, he was going for my skill saw and he just kept interrupting me. I'm like, "No, no, no, Jack, that's daddy's saw. Gotta leave that alone and stuff." And the cuteness really wore off and I started to get frustrated because I'm thinking, "I'm never going to finish this fence because Jack keeps getting in my way. He keeps slowing me down." And then came the moment, these moments happen rarely I think for most of us, where God just puts a very clear thought in your mind and you know it's from him. And the thought that came to me in that moment was this, "Mark, you're not just building a stupid fence, you're building a boy." I'm building a boy.

So that became my mantra for the rest of that job. You know, Jack's sticking his tenth nail in the exact same spot like, "I'm building a boy. I'm building a boy. He's going over the skill saw. No, no, no, no, Jack, I'm building the boy. I'm building the boy." Well, I blinked and that boy is now 18. He's a man and I found myself in the last couple months a grieving at times. Grieving over the end of his childhood years. Grieving over the fact he's going to college in less than two months. Proud of him but kind of wish I keep him around a little longer. I'm sure he'll be back. If he's anything like his dad. But yes, also grieving over what I wish I had done differently as his dad.

But you know what? You can't go back. All you can do is embrace God's heart for your relationship going forward. Now, I'm just going to go out on a limb and say, "Your relationship with your parents or with your kids, they're not perfect. They may be good but they're not perfect. Some of them may be in terrible shape and I wish I had a quick fix for you. I don't." All I can say is part of recognizing God's heart is recognizing that God's got a heart that is redemptive. That heart that loves to heal and restore. And so embrace what God wants to do.

If you're a child, be praying about how you can continue to honor God and please him through how you relate your prayers. Even if you're in your 50s, maybe there's a chapter in that relationship that's better than any other that's gone before. Or if you're a parent praying that God would give you the grace and the wisdom so that when you look back, you will be pleased at the legacy that you're building with your children. Remember God's heart in that.

And finally, after telling us how to love one another as couples and as children and parents, Paul turns to the most lopsided relationship in the whole household when he talks about loving one another at work. And I put it under that heading because praise the Lord, we don't live in a slave state anymore, a slave society anymore. And there's a couple things we need to understand about Paul's context again because slavery in Paul's day was very different than the slavery that we had here in America.

For instance, Roman slaves were of no particular race. They were colorblind when it came to that. Slaves were either prisoners of war, they might have been abandoned as children or sold by their parents, they might have sold themselves into slavery because they had too much debt. Slaves could be set free at age 30, but if you wanted to marry your slave, you had to set them free first in order to marry them. That was the law. And if you're a Roman citizen, once you set your slave free, they became a citizen too. Now that doesn't mean that it's all good and fine. What it means is that it's not as cruel and wicked and evil as a slavery that took place in our country.

And for Paul, even in that type of society, to call for the immediate end of slavery, that would have resulted to two things, a lot of chaos and a lot of dead slaves. And so Paul does something more, a little more subversive here. In what he says here and what he will say elsewhere in the New Testament, he starts to undermine the institution of slavery from within. It's like he releases the termites into the edifice of slavery. And just like in the first two relationships, he starts with the person at the low end of the ladder. In fact, in this case, the lowest before he turns to the one with all the power.

And he says starting at verse 22, slaves, and by the way, that word slave in Greek, doulos, of slavery, that was Paul's favorite way to refer to himself. Slaves, obey your earthly masters in everything and do it not only when their eye is on you and to curry their favor but with sincerity of heart and reverence for the Lord. Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart as working for the Lord. Not for human masters since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a result. It is the Lord Christ you are serving. Anyone who does wrong will be repaid for the wrongs and there is no favoritism.

He's saying, you know, the playing field is not level in our society but it is level in the eyes of the Lord. You notice how many times he refers back to Jesus in this passage because he's making the point it is the Lord that you are serving and the same is true for us today. You know, I don't know where you are on the org chart in your work. You know, you may be way down at the bottom of it but it doesn't matter because you are serving the Lord. What you do matters immensely to him and if you happen to be at the top of the org chart, well that's certainly true as well. What you do and how you treat your employees matters immensely to the Lord as well.

And so turning one more time to the guys with all the power he says, "Masters, provide your slaves with what is right and fair because you know that you also have a master in heaven." You know the setting of where this was first read? It would have been in a Roman household. Not a building like this. It would have been in the household of someone in Colossae who had a house big enough to host the church. In other words, just like the guy Paul is talking about here and you have to think in that moment it got kind of quiet in the room because this is just radical.

But here's the application for you and for me today. Loving employees and bosses remember who they are serving. It's as simple as that. Whether you're at the entry level or you're an executive, remember who you serve. Because like we saw earlier, Colossians 3:17, it says, "Whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of who, the Lord Jesus." Well, I'll close with this.

For many, many years we had a wonderful, wonderful man in this church named Ben Murata. He was a pastor from the Philippines. I had the privilege of doing his memorial service earlier this year, but Ben was one of the most winsome human beings you could ever possibly meet. He was so kind and generous and because of this, when he turned 80, he invited me to come to his 80th birthday celebration. Well, it happened to be a very busy weekend, so I thought to myself, "Well, I'll just go by the house and I'll say hi, maybe hang out for 30 minutes and wish Ben a happy birthday."

Well, that shows you how much I know about Filipino hospitality. It took 30, 40 minutes just for Ben to take me around and introduce me to every single person there, treating me like I was the guest of honor when it was his 80th birthday. And then he takes me over to the table, he grabs a plate for me, and there's... it's amazing because there's chicken and there's beef and there's fish and in fact there's a whole pig on this table. There's probably 15 different entrees and he's helping me get a sample of everything there. He hasn't eaten, but he's helping me out and I... we get to this pig and I'm kind of eyeing like what looks like the pulled pork section of it and he goes, "Oh, Pastor Mark."

He goes, "We have a special part of the pig for you." Don't get ahead of me here. But just then, I don't know if it was Wycora or someone else, but a woman swoops in and with a knife she just slices this piece of skin right off the back of that pig. It was kind of a slice of skin with a little layer of fat and he put that on my plate and I wanted to say, "Oh, Pastor Ben, you have honored me far too much here today. I am not worthy of this, but you know when in Rome you eat what you're served." And I do have to say as far as like skin slices go, it's the best I've ever had.

But I mean, he's going around and he's just serving everyone and everything and celebrating everyone that's there. Three and a half hours later, he's walking me out to my car and he's got me loaded up with food and with the guys, "Give this to Laura and give this to your kids." And I'm going, "My goodness, Ben, on a day..." Take this in. He's the patriarch in a very traditional culture on a day that should be all about celebrating him. What's he about doing? He's about serving everyone else. In fact, I found out that he also loved to do the housework as well.

In fact, Ben's standing joke was this. It was that marriage involves a division of labor. My wife does the division and I do the labor. Now, I'm sure I know it went both ways, but what a great example of someone who lives out the Lord's command to us as, "I have loved you so you must love one another." May we all be a little bit more like Ben because in doing so, we'll be a little bit more like Jesus. Amen?

Well, as we close in prayer, I'm gonna actually ask you to keep your eyes open for just a second because if you notice down at the bottom of your notes, there's a little suggested prayer there that begins, "Heavenly Father, I pray that the love of Jesus Christ would be expressed in my relationship with..." and you fill in the blank. Who comes to mind right now? Write their name in or imagine their name in because here's the thing, when it comes to relationships, we need more than just information, we need transformation. We need the power of the Holy Spirit.

So be praying about that relationship even as we do so now. Lord Jesus, thank you so much for loving all of us more than we can even begin to imagine. We just thank you. We receive your love today. And Lord, I pray that you would teach and empower us all to love one another as you love us. And Lord, I'm aware that when we're talking about relationships, we're talking about the stuff of life that matters most to us and so some of us here are celebrating wonderful relationships and the joy that they provide, some of us here are grieving because of a broken relationship or a wound that's lasted many years.

And Lord, I just pray where something is broken, you would mend it, where something needs healing, you would heal it, that you would give us wisdom and humility and grace to do what we can do to be about that process. Father, I pray that you would bless our church and the relationships that are represented in this room. I pray that you bless our homes, marriages, relationships with our children, our parents, our grandkids. Bless our relationships at work and in our neighborhoods, in our world, so that through us and the love that we have, people would see who you are.

They would know that indeed Jesus Christ, you were sent from the Father because there is no greater love than that, than the love that God has for us in Jesus Christ. And we praise you and thank you for that again. Praying this in the name of the great lover of our souls, Jesus Christ. All God's people said, Amen.