How To Love God:
Acts of Service
Matthew 25:31-40
After
seeing in Luke 10 that the one thing that God longs for from us is that we love
Him with all of our heart, soul, strength and mind, we have been looking at how
to love God using the five love languages described for us in the book “The
Five Love Languages” by Dr. Gary Chapman. So far have we looked at Words of
Affirmations, how to say to God how much we appreciate what God has done and is
doing for us, and Quality Time, spending time with God. Last week we looked at
the language of Gifts and what is on God’s list. Today we look at the love
language of Acts of Service.
On
Monday, as I drove to church, a discussion came on the radio about an article
with a list of things that men and women do when they want to show their love
for their spouse. The top item on the list for women was to “resist the urge to
nag and be grateful for the things that their husband has done.” top on the
list for men was ????, they vacuum. Both of these items are an example of how
this love language works. The person who vacuums is serving another by doing a
chore that improves the home and frees up time for their partner. The person
who chooses not to nag opts to allow the person who will do the chore in their
own time and receive that as an act of love.
These
acts of service can range across the spectrum. They can be doing someone else’s
chores for them, like emptying the dishwasher, cleaning the bathroom, or
washing the car. They can be doing a project that makes someone’s life easier,
like building shelves in the basement for better storage or painting a room.
They can be doing something for someone that they do not have the skill to do
themselves, like when Kim makes me a rhubarb pie or loads songs on my ipod.
One
of the important things to remember in this is that these acts of service that
we do for another need to be something that they actually want. We all know the stories of a relative
that comes for a visit, maybe to help after the birth of a child and decides to
reorganize the cabinets in the kitchen so that things will be more efficient
and easier to find, leaving major work and frustration when they leave. Or the
story I shared with you a while back of the man who had spent the morning
cleaning the kitchen, left for a short time only to return to a big mess, flour
everywhere, eggs broken on the counter, and in the midst of it stood his young
daughter who looked up and proclaimed “I’m makin’ somfin for you Daddy.” She
could get away with that, because she was young an cute, but say - I - did the
same thing for Kim, leaving the kitchen a mess, she would be underwhelmed with
my act of service.
I
can tell you that we know this is one of God’s love languages because, like
last week, we have a list of those acts of service that God would like for us
to do. In our passage, Jesus sets the scene as the end of time when we are
brought before him for our final reckoning. It is here that we will come before
him and learn how well we demonstrated our love for him. In our passage we see
the criteria that he will use to evaluate our actions.
Notice
what is not there. He does not say that they -were members of the right church,
or voted for the right political party, or lived in the right neighborhood, or
went to the right schools, or joined the right clubs, or kept all the rules or
have the right view of the atonement. These are all criteria that we use to try
to keep out the people we don’t want to be in heaven. Other people do the same
to us. The great news is that those other people are not going to be the judge
on that day. It is Jesus. So we should pay attention to what is on his list,
not ours.
The
thing we notice about his list is that it is all about how we treat other
people. Why do you think that is? It is because when we love another person, we
want others to love them too. For example, I love Kim. She is such a wonderful
friend to me and partner in this life. She has so many great qualitites and I
know if you get to know her, you will love her as well. I feel the same about
John and Tim and Chaney and Regina and Lucy. I feel the same about my in-laws
and my brothers and their families. I feel the same about you, thus, I want you
all to love each other.
Jesus
loves every single person on this planet, past, present and future. He loves
you and me. He loves all of the people that we love. He loves all of those
people that we have yet to meet and he even loves the people that we have met
and don’t like. He even loves the people that we despise. Granted Jesus is not
happy with the behavior of some of those people. But then he is not happy with
some of your or my behavior at times, yet He still loves all of us. And nothing
would make Him happier than for us to love each other.
What
that means is that when we look to serve Christ by serving the “least of these
of these” it is important why we do it. Both my boys joined the National Honor
Society when they were High School. At each of the induction ceremonies, the MC
stated that he was going to read the list of rights and privileges of their
members and then proceeded to stand silent for about thirty seconds. He then
went on to explain that the reason there are no rights and privileges is
because NHS is a service organization. Each year they were required to
volunteer in service to others for a certain number of hours. Now if my boys
had simply set out only to fulfill the required number of hours and no more so
they could put NHS on their college applications, they would have missed the
point of it all, that life is about service to others. Like wise if we approach
this list as a kind of check list to make sure we get into heaven, then we have
missed the point of what Jesus wants us for us. Our Acts of Service toward
Jesus as we reach out to the hungry, thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the sick
or imprisoned need to be motivated by love. Love for Jesus AND for the people that He loves.
But,
the NASV translates verse 40 Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it
to one of these brothers of Mine, even the least of them, you did it to
Me.’ What this means is that while certainly we should care for “the least of
these”, we are not limited to them. There have been times in my life when I
have been hungry and thirsty - not in the physical sense but in the spiritual
sense. When I needed a kind word from someone or an act that told me that I was
not alone. (Dave in Seminary - inductive Bible Study) There were times when I was imprisoned, wondering if
I would ever be free again. (J and Stephen Ministry Training)There were times when I was a stranger and given a
welcome as I moved into a new life. (The lunch) For the stories which are in bold, please refer to the audio version of the sermon.
There
are people all around us that need us to offer them spiritual food and water,
that need a kind word or act, and that need someone to visit them in their
prison, a place where they feel they will never be free of, to them the love of
Christ. As you do to one of these, my brothers and sisters, you do it to me,
Jesus says.
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