Sermon Nuggets Mon May 30 A New Kind of Love
Verses
Matt 5:43-48
43 "You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.'
44 But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. 45 He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.
46 If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that?
47 And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that?
48 Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect. (NIV)
A New Kind of Love
Otto von Bismarck says, "When a man says he approves of something in principle, it means he hasn't the slightest intention of putting it into practice."
Jesus is confusing more and more people when makes practical the results of heart changed by God. Last week we looked at the impossible challenge to exchange good for evil. Jesus told them to do what is contrary to our human nature. He told them to turn the other cheek, to walk the extra mile, to give to someone who wants to borrow.
If our rights are given over to the Lord and He chooses to use us, so now when our hearts are given over to the Lord, he wants us to be witnesses of super human love. Such love is contrary to human nature to love, bless, and pray for our enemies, and for those that persecute us and are against us. It's fine in principle but Lord, do you seriously think we should practice that?
One historian of the early church wrote, "These Nazarenes propose to beat the world with two important weapons- love and a blameless life." We know that the best way to handle an enemy is to beat him or run from him. I have made the statement, if every time you pet a dog and it bites you, you soon stop petting the dog. Jesus didn't handle his enemies that way. He loved them to win them over to Himself.
Pastor Dale
Sermon Nuggets Tues May 31 A Godly Love
Verses- Matt 5:43-44 "You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.'
44 But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven.
Godly Love
The OT law say, Love your neighbor and it was ok to hate your enemy. The world says, Love those who are your friend and have nothing do with the one that is your enemy. That isn't godly love; it is a human natural love.
Jesus said to love your enemies and some versions have the added words, “Bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you.” The NIV adds “pray for those who persecute you.”
There was a story in the Sunshine Magazine about a professor of psychology who had no children, whenever he saw a neighbor scolding a child for some wrong doing he would say, "You should love your boy not punish him".
One hot summer afternoon the professor was doing some repair work on the concrete driveway leading to his garage. Tired out after several hours of work, he laid down the trowel, wiped the perspiration from his forehead and started toward the house, Just then out of the corner of his eye was a mischievous little boy putting his foot into the fresh cement. He rushed over grabbed him and was about to spank him when a neighbor leaned out the window and said, "Watch it professor. Don't you remember? You must love the child. " At this he yelled back furiously, "I do love him in the abstract, but not in the concrete."
Jesus is commanding us not only to love our enemy in the abstract, but in the concrete. You bless, do good and pray for others that is asking almost more than what our emotions can take. Returning good for good toward others is commendable, returning good or evil is Christ like. Love is an action of good toward others, not necessarily a feeling. Doing good to those who do evil does bring change if not in others then at least in yourself. It changes people from being a enemies into being friends.
One person wrote a poem, "He drew a circle that shut me out -Heretic, rebel a thing to flout. But love and I had the wit to win. We drew a circle that took him in."
When I was at MSU I was told that normal a person has a personality conflict with 10-20% of other people. There are certain personalities that clash, and it is easier to understand that there are certain kinds of mixes that just do not fit very well. Some are blessed in they can get along with most people and other are of the type they get along with very few. Some people are very people oriented and others very task oriented. Some very conscious of time others time doesn't mean a thing. Some people have to be doing something all the time, others can be very content watching waiting and relaxing. Some of those traits are taught some of them are part of someone’s personality.
At the sorority house where I worked while in college there was one particular gal that just rubbed me the wrong way. Normally, I just avoid her kind, grin and bear it and seek to have little to do with just such a person. But this particular gal was getting under my skin so that I noticed I would start worrying about running into her before I even came to work. When I read this passage I thought of her. I prayed, "Lord, I cannot love this person she drive me up a wall. I can't stand her. But I will try to obey you because I know that my attitude toward her is not pleasing to Christ. I will promise to pray for her." So I started to do that as often as I thought of her I prayed for her. Not because I wanted to, mind you, but because it was in the Bible and I felt it was an act of obedience to the Lord.
I remember praying for her and going to the house and seeing her and nothing changed. "Lord, you're not changing her. What's wrong? It doesn't work." But I continued to pray for her and then for my attitude.
Now after a few months, I wish I could tell you what happened but I cannot. I was sitting down having coffee with some of the other busboys and some of the girls in the sorority house and we talking and laughing about something, and like a lightening bolt from the sky the sudden awareness came to me, the girl is at the table I don't feel that animosity any anymore. I wasn't even aware of the change. In fact she was even tolerable. When I finally left the job after graduation out of 60 sorority sisters, she was among 5 that I would have called a good friend. I thanked God for answering a prayer and also changing my heart even when I didn't know what was happening. It does make a different. Now there are a couple more I might need to be praying about.
Pastor Dale
Sermon Nuggets Weds June 1 Gracious Love
Matt 5:45 He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.
A Gracious Love
A godly loves is first a gracious love. Kindness is shown to all regardless of who they are or what they do. In this passage God demonstrates what some theologians call a common grace. It is a graciousness given to all people. All people experience the benefits of sun and rain. We experience air to breath and food to eat. We see God’s thumb print on our lives. People who have rejected God or are His enemies experience is kindness anyway in the things we enjoy in this world.
A gracious love is given not because it is deserved but because of the quality of love by the giver. We begin to treat others the way God treats the evil an the unrighteous, with grace.
Is our enemy a non-Christian? Then that person stands under the condemnation of God and needs to be pitied. It is horrible for them not to know God. If we are the ones who have sinned and caused harm to another, then we need to pray that God would change our hearts, repent, seek forgiveness, and ask that we might be the instruments of his peace and love. Christ's love is given it even it isn't deserved. That is the way Jesus did, "While we were yet sinners Christ died for us. He was the just for the unjust, the godly for the ungodly.
Why should we give gracious love? Because that type of love is also a godly love. The previous verse reads, "that you may be sons of your Father in heaven.”
Now that does not mean that is how to be saved. You are not converted by showing love to enemies. You are saved by God showing his love to you. You came to realize your sin and short comings and confessed them to God and by faith trusted Jesus to save you.
So what does it mean to be children of the Father, or sons of the Father in heaven in this passage?
It means you will be identified as his sons by demonstrating the same kind of love he has. Children of peace, or sons of peace, is an adjective meaning peaceful people. In that sense we might say here sons of God, means Godly people. We who have God as our Heavenly Father should so be identified as Godly, having the similar kind of love that only he can give.
All people good or bad received air, sun, rain, stars, food, and the benefits of what he made in this world. We might also argue that the fall also affects all people Christians and non Christians alike but also includes Hindus Buddhists, atheists, and Satanists. In our case everyone regardless of color or creed is getting too much rain at one time. When a tornado hits, which is part of the curse of the fall, storms and chaos in weather, it hits everyone in the town, and doesn't just skip over the Christian's home. The sun shines on the thorn, on the rose, it shines on the pig and the glamorous movie model it shines on the beggar and the rich man.
Just like we all are affected by the general grace of God, so are we all affected by the fall of man. Therefore there is a sacrificial love needed to change our hearts forever.
Pastor Dale
Sermon Nuggets Thurs June 2 A Greater Love
Verses Matt 5:46 If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that?
47 And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that?
A Greater Love
People understood what is meant to love, but restricted their love to family and friends. This concept of loving ones enemy seemed so foolish. All throughout the Old Testament the prophets told of the enemy and how they were to be hated and separated and killed.
Jesus is going around and telling of a different type of love. It is a greater love than what the tax collector demonstrates. It is a greater love than the pagans show to each other. It goes beyond to see God I a different light who so loves the world, not just his family, the Jews, or those godly who go to temple and synagogue, but even the unlovely, even the sinner. So many people do not believe God really loves them.
D.L. Moody tells in his biography of returning from his preaching engagement when his wife encouraged him to come to a special meeting that An English preacher, Henry Moorhouse was having. She told him Moorehouse preached 2 sermons from John 3:16 one God's love, “although he preaches a little different from what you do. He tells sinners that God loves them.”
"Well,” Moody said, “He is wrong." His wife continued, “I think you will agree with him when you hear him, because he backs up everything he says with the Word of God. You think if a man doesn't preach as you do, he is wrong."
Moody went and noticed people brought their Bibles. He turned to John 3:16 and preached an extraordinary sermon and turned from Genesis to Revelation to prove that in all ages God loved the world that he sent prophets and patriarch and holy men to warn them, and last of all sent His Son. After they murdered Him, He sent the Holy Spirit to live within mankind, to all who believe in Christ.
Moody, wrote, "I never knew up to that time that God loved us so much. This heart of mine began to thaw out, and I could not keep back the tears. It was like news from a far country. I just drank it in."
The next night Moorhouse turned again to John 3 16. Moody saw how he used the Bible to explain the Bible and God’s great love. "I used to preach that God as behind the sinner with a double edged sword, ready to hew him down. I have got done with that I preach now that God is behind the sinner with love, and he is running away from God of love. "
Each night came and they thought surely Moorehouse had exhausted the text, but he preached all 7th night "My friend, for a whole week I have been trying to tell you how much God love you, but I cannot do it with this poor stammering tongue. If I could borrow Jacobs ladder and climb up into Heaven, and ask Gabriel who stands in the presence of the Almighty, if he could tell me how much love the Father has for the world, all he could say would be God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life.”
In the face of blasphemy hatred, revenge, slander and abuse, Jesus stood at the crucifixion and said, "Father forgive them for they know not what they are doing." He prayed for them.
Stephen was so filled with the Holy Spirit in his life that even those persecuting him looked upon his face which shone with God's glory like an angel. Then he saw Jesus and his prayer demonstrated the love likes Jesus love. Listen also to his words. "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. Then he fell on his knees and cried out, "Lord do not hold this sin against them." and when he had said this, he fell asleep.
It was the greater love the world had seen not only in Jesus, but his followers.
Augustus said, "Many have learned how to offer the other cheek but do not know how to love him by whom they were struck". Jesus calls us to go beyond forbearance to service. It is one thing to take it. It is a greater love to return good for evil. True love is not sentimental, it is service and it is sacrifice. There is no reason in the world for God to have his only begotten Son suffer abuse and heartache, to take on the form of mankind and walk around like one of us. But he did. That is greater love. It is God's love. It was the love demonstrated to each of us while we were still sinners.
Pastor Dale
Sermon Nuggets Fri June 3 Perfect Love
48 Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect. (NIV)
Perfect Love
As is the case with all of the instructions of the Sermon on the Mount we fall short, but Jesus fulfills perfect love. To love enemies is also a perfect love. We certainly can’t do that on our own. Christ's answer is be the first to look for an opportunity to do good to the offender.
I think the Amplified translation picks up better the Greek word meaning. 48You, therefore, must be perfect [growing into complete maturity of godliness in mind and character, having reached the proper height of virtue and integrity], as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
This perfect love, that is growing maturity of godliness and character goes beyond our humanness and draws upon God's power to witness by loving in return for evil.
Someone said the only nice thing about being imperfect is the joy it bring to others.' Well, let me bring some joy into your life for as I read this verse confess I do not have that maturity based on my works. I am not perfect, nor will be until I get to glory. But by grace we are made perfect by the blood of Jesus and now are told to walk in that new nature.
But the Greek word for perfect “teleios” doesn’t mean sinless perfection. Since it means complete, sound, and full grown, I believe Jesus is telling us to love like God loves, and that is a growing assignment. That is why I need Jesus.
Our efforts to interest others in a Christian life are sometimes unconvincing. All too often we ask them to accept Christ but there is no difference in our life than anyone else’s. Are you letting God work within? Show mercy to your enemy. Do good when it's not expected. Be kind when it is undeserved. Give the world a taste of one higher-price brand that far perfect love. It will not come naturally it comes with prayer and yielding to the Spirit of God.
Bob Lupton mentioned volunteering with disadvantaged youth. He brought many home and two watches soon disappeared. One was expensive the other sentimental. Into his church walked a young mother with 3 dirty scantily clad preschooler at her feet, who told a heart rendering account of their abandonment, hunger and cold rejection at welfare office. Compassion and righteous anger compelled the man to act immediately with a supply of groceries and clothes, only to discover a little later that this same women has used the same false story on churches and individuals all over that city. He had been taken advantage of.
Why help people and show them love when he continues to get hurt? What do you do? What would Jesus do? When they wanted bread and fish but no discipleship; when they came for healing of leprosy but only one returned to thank Jesus; when he cared for Judas who in turn turned him over to the soldiers for arrest?
We realize how conditional most of our acts of kindness really are. How much we expect to be paid back for our love, at least in changed behavior or polite thank you or appreciative smiles. Then we are presented with a unmistakable opportunity to learn to love without strings attached. It may also be the beginning of understanding how dependent we are on good feelings to motivate us to serve. The goal of Bob Lupton's work is same of Jesus Christ to change lives, both in the servant and in the ones being served.
Pastor Dale
