Love demands more of us than a warm feeling. It often demands sacrificial actions towards those we declare to love.  

To declare love is to act sacrificially.

For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. (John 3:16)

To show love is to act sacrificially.

“If you love Me, keep My commandments.” (John 14:15)     

God has challenged us to live a sacrificial life where our desires are sacrificed to His commandments. Our declared love of God must be  demonstrated through our actions. We can choose what we want or what God wants.

Although keeping God’s commandments will require earthly sacrifices it will yield heavenly rewards.  

He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me. And he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him.” (John 14:21)

If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love, just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love. (John 15:10)

In 1936, Albert E. Brumley wrote the following words:

This world is not my home, I’m just a-passing through;
My treasures are laid up somewhere beyond the blue;
The angels beckon me from heaven’s open door,
And I can’t feel at home in this world any more.

Many years earlier Matthew wrote the following words (Matthew 6):

¹⁹ Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: ²⁰ But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: ²¹ For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

When we read the words of Matthew or sing the words of Albert Brumley it is clear that Christians are just a-passing through this world to a better place. Earthly wisdom tells us to seek comfort and security in the physical wealth of this world. Heavenly wisdom tells us the physical wealth God has provided is just a-passin through our hands. Our hands must be seeking a heavenly wealth that will be ours for eternity.

God does not measure our earthly treasure in dollars as does man but in the place they occupy within our heart. Our earthly treasures can be as expensive as gold or as cheap as dirt. If our heart constantly longs for earthly treasures our heart will be challenged to also seek out heavenly treasures. Gold and dirt are just a-passin through our hands and as Jennie B. Wilson wrote in 1906:

Time is filled with swift transition,
Naught of earth unmoved can stand,
Build your hopes on things eternal,
Hold to God’s unchanging hand

The Greek word anthrakia meaning “a heap of burning coals” appears only twice in the New Testament:

John 18:18

¹⁸ And the servants and officers stood there, who had made a fire of coals; for it was cold: and they warmed themselves: and Peter stood with them, and warmed himself.

John 21:9

⁹ As soon then as they were come to land, they saw a fire of coals there, and fish laid thereon, and bread.

To learn more of how these two scripture passages tell a story of reconciliation listen to the sermon for February 3, 2019.

In Acts 2 we read Peter’s message to those gathered in Jerusalem for the Day of Pentecost. In verse 14  Peter begins a powerful message that everyone needs to hear:

¹⁴ But Peter, standing up with the eleven, lifted up his voice, and spake forth unto them, saying, Ye men of Judaea, and all ye that dwell at Jerusalem, be this known unto you, and give ear unto my words.

Peter ends his message in verse 36 with this heart wrenching claim:

³⁶ Let all the house of Israel therefore know assuredly, that God hath made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom ye crucified.

Peter’s message is timeless. In the scripture there is a powerful message that the world still needs to hear. While we think of Jesus’ crucifixion as a historical event of the past we must remember that sin is timeless.  

In first John 2:1-2 we read that the crucifixion of Jesus was necessary not only the sins of the whole world but for my sins as well.

 ¹ My little children, these things write I unto you that ye may not sin. And if any man sin, we have an ^a]Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous: ² and he is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for the whole world.

On the Day of Pentecost when Peter proclaimed “whom ye crucified” he was talking to you and I thousands of years in the future. My sin put Jesus on that cross.

Sin is indeed timeless. 

In the parable of the sower, Matthew 13:22, Jesus warns us not to let the world cause us to lose our focus on the Word:

²² He also that received seed among the thorns is he that heareth the word; and the care of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, choke the word, and he becometh unfruitful.

In his letter to the church at Philippi, Paul tells of his focus on the prize set before him (Philippians 3:14):

¹⁴ I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.

The Greek word translated mark is skopós – the root of our word “scope.” To bring something off in the distance into clearer focus we often rely on a scope; for example a sighting scope to better view the beautiful creatures of the air.

As we run our race we must stay focused on the cross lest we become bogged down in the thorns of life.