Jesus Put His Love for You First!

When you first take a hot pocket or something like it out of the microwave, you need to wait for it to cool down before biting into it. Your parents, friends, commercials and the packaging all make it clear that the hot pocket must cool down before you bite into it or else you will burn your mouth.

In many cases, the order in which you do something affects whether you will be harmed by something. When you follow the order of heating up a hot pocket, waiting for it to cool and eating it, then you avoid pain and enjoy a nice snack. In our Old Testament reading from Exodus 32, Aaron mixed up the order of God’s importance causing tremendous harm to himself and Israel. It happened when Moses left his older brother, Aaron, in charge of Israel while he went up on Mount Sinai to speak with God. Moses was gone for forty days causing the Israelites to grow restless and eventually ask Aaron to make them a new god, so Aaron made them a golden calf idol. When Moses came down the mountain and saw what the people had done, he was angry. We read in Exodus 32, 20 And he took the calf the people had made and burned it in the fire; then he ground it to powder, scattered it on the water and made the Israelites drink it. The gritty gold infused water may not have physically hurt as much as biting into the boiling insides of a hot pocket, but spiritually it hurt as the seriousness of their sin was revealed. Then Moses asked Aaron, 21 … “What did these people do to you, that you led them into such great sin?” Aaron blamed the people for being evil, but also admitted that he made the calf. Finally, God commanded a punishment for the people as we read in Exodus 32, 27 Then [Moses] he said to them, “This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: ‘Each man strap a sword to his side. Go back and forth through the camp from one end to the other, each killing his brother and friend and neighbor.’” The faithful in Israel rallied to Moses and followed God’s command to punish those who turned away from God, even their own family.

God takes love seriously. When asked what the greatest commandment was, Jesus affirmed it as love in Matthew 22,

37 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’

Clearly love is the greatest commandment. And where there is love there is peace, which makes what we hear in our Gospel reading from Matthew 10, difficult and confusing because Jesus said,

34 “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. 35 For I have come to turn “‘a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law—36 a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.’ 37 “Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.”

This is difficult to hear because if we expect God to want us to love anyone, it would be our family. And it is confusing because Jesus tells us his second greatest command is to love everyone, which includes our family.

Two things help us understand Jesus’ point about love. First, the “love” Jesus spoke of in our Gospel reading from Matthew 10 is different from the “love” that he spoke of in Matthew 22. Jesus was talking about unconditional love when he said, 37 … “Love the Lord your God” and 39 … “Love your neighbor.” It is the same kind of “love” from John 3:16, when Jesus said, “For God so loved the world…” The “love” Jesus referred to in our Gospel reading from Matthew 10 is an emotional, friendship kind of love. This is the kind of love Jesus warns us about, which leads to the second factor to help us understand Jesus’ point about love in Matthew 10. Jesus was careful to tell us to first love the Lord our God and love our neighbor second. So, the temptation Jesus pointed out in Matthew 10 is that our emotional, friendship love for our family tempts us to love our family more than God; we are tempted toward a wrong order of who we love most. It is a similar temptation to the one Israel fell into when they turned from God to worship a cold, lifeless calf made from their jewelry. You can understand Jesus’ warning about loving your family more than God, but this is hard to live out when your own family turns away from you because you love Jesus.

There would be peace with the right order of love. If everyone loved God first and people second, then our families, and the whole world for that matter, would be at peace. The sinful reality is that our emotional, friendship love tempts us to put earthly relationships before our relationship with God. This destroys peace because we ruin our relationship with God when we do not love him first, which is the first of the Ten Commandments. Not loving God most leads to our emotional, earthly relationships pushing God out of the way to love sinful people whose sinful lives we begin to accept rather than call to repentance because exposing sin puts tension on the relationship. This leads you down a path of embracing sins, and soon you and your family are left with lots of love for one another and lots of love for sin, while God is moved down the list of things you love, eventually redefining who God is which might as well make God a little golden calf. When you remove God from first in the order of who you love most, there is no more peace here or in the world to come.

The world rejected Jesus’ mission to bring peace. Jesus came to remove sin that destroys peace and love, but the world loved sin more than Jesus. So, Jesus was rejected by everyone. He was rejected by his family as we hear in Mark 3, 21 When his family heard about this, they went to take charge of him, for they said, “He is out of his mind.” He was rejected by his hometown of Nazareth as we hear in Luke

4, 24 “Truly I tell you,” he continued, “no prophet is accepted in his hometown…28 All the people in the synagogue were furious when they heard this. 29 They got up, drove him out of the town, and took him to the brow of the hill on which the town was built, in order to throw him off the cliff. 30 But he walked right through the crowd and went on his way.

He was betrayed by one of his own twelve disciples as we hear in Matthew 26, 21 And while they were eating, he said, “Truly I tell you, one of you will betray me.” Judas betrayed him, and then, after his arrest, the rest of his disciples abandoned him as we hear again in Matthew 26, 56 … Then all the disciples deserted him and fled. Jesus was condemned by the assembly of leaders of his own people, the Jews, again in Matthew 26, 57 Those who had arrested Jesus took him to Caiaphas the high priest, where the teachers of the law and the elders had assembled. He was also rejected and condemned by the secular world as we hear in Matthew 27, 26 … But [Pontius Pilate] he had Jesus flogged, and handed him over to be crucified. While Jesus was on the cross, he was still mocked again as we hear in Matthew 27, 41 In the same way the chief priests, the teachers of the law and the elders mocked him. 42 “He saved others,” they said, “but he can’t save himself! Finally, he was even forsaken by God the Father as we hear Jesus’ words from the cross in Matthew 27, 46 About three in the afternoon Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” (which means “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”). Jesus was not loved unconditionally or emotionally as a friend by the world. And for the world’s sinful hatred of God and love for evil, Jesus was sacrificed on the cross as we hear in 1 Peter 3, 18 For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. Jesus’ sacrifice brought peace between you and God. Jesus brought this peace because he loves you as we hear in John 15, 13 Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. The ‘love’ in this verse is the unconditional love. The word he uses to refer to you, his friend, comes from the same word Jesus warns against in Matthew 10, the friendly, emotional love. This means that Jesus has both unconditional love and emotional, friendly love for you. So, when you have loved your father, mother, sister or brother, more than Jesus, he loved you, he died for those sins and all your other sins, and he brought you peace with God by making you his holy, sinless family as we hear in Hebrews 2, 11 Both the one who makes people holy and those who are made holy are of the same family. So Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters.

There is an order to love. You bring peace when you love God first and your family second, but those who do not love God in your life will reject that peace. It is their hatred that makes loving God difficult. It is their hatred for God that turns family members into enemies. Their hatred causes suffering and is the cross Jesus refers to in our Gospel reading from Matthew 10, 38 Whoever does not take up their cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Following Jesus brings suffering when our family members reject us for our faith, but Jesus encourages us with his next words, 39 Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it. Jesus brought you eternal life and peace with him in heaven. When it is tempting to find your life in the relationships of this world, turn back to Scripture where you find your eternal life and eternal relationships. You have already begun your eternal relationship with Jesus and all those who share your faith, are you eternal brothers and sisters. Praise God for your earthly family members who are also your eternal family members. Cling to Jesus when the hurt weighs heavy on you for those in your earthly family who are rejecting Jesus. In our New Testament reading from 1 Timothy 6, Paul encouraged Timothy to 12 Fight the good fight of the faith. His encouragement is for you too. Paul also praised God as the one who allows us to have the strength to carry our cross and fight the good fight of faith until we reach heaven,

15 …God, the blessed and only Ruler, the King of kings and Lord of lords, 16 who alone is immortal and who lives in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see. To him be honor and might forever. Amen.

You ruin the promise of a tasty hot pocket by eating it too soon. Jesus said in Matthew 10,

34 “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.

Those who reject Jesus’ peace and cling to sin see him as a threat. They hate him and hate you for believing in him. Some of them are members of our families, and the temptation to keep the peace in our families threatens our peace, love and faith in Jesus. Jesus took away our sin through his sacrifice on the cross and restored peace between us and God. You have a new life and eternal life through Jesus who also said in Matthew 10, 39 Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it. Your life is found in Jesus. He calls you to love him more than family or friends, even life itself. Find your peace in this, that Jesus put his love for you first. Amen.