God's Heart for the Vulnerable
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Introduction
Introduction
[READING - Psalm 94:1-7]
1 O Lord, God of vengeance, God of vengeance, shine forth!
2 Rise up, O Judge of the earth, Render recompense to the proud.
3 How long shall the wicked, O Lord, How long shall the wicked exult?
4 They pour forth words, they speak arrogantly; All who do wickedness vaunt themselves.
5 They crush Your people, O Lord, And afflict Your heritage.
6 They slay the widow and the stranger And murder the orphans.
7 They have said, “The Lord does not see, Nor does the God of Jacob pay heed.”
9 The Lord protects the strangers; He supports the fatherless and the widow, But He thwarts the way of the wicked.
19 Therefore love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.
[PRAYER]
Today is Sanctity of Life Sunday in the Southern Baptist Convention. On this day we typically focus on the preciousness of the unborn and the evil of abortion, but the sanctity of life is under attack on multiple fronts.
To be sure, people are still calling for the murder of babies in the womb.
Alabama State Senator Vivian Figures, D-Mobile, introduced a bill in Alabama’s last legislative session calling for a repeal of Alabama’s abortion ban. Ironically, as she decried the state of healthcare in Alabama, she also said, “Our mortality rates for infants is too high.”
If Senator Figures could see clearly, she would see that abortion is not going to help the mortality rate for infants go down.
But, as I said, abortion is just one front in the war on the sanctity of life. Another is gambling. Even if we think that gambling isn’t ending lives, it is certainly ruining lives. Know matter how cool the culture makes it look, it is just another thief that comes only to steal, kill, and destroy.
Yet, Alabama State Representative Chris Pringle, R-Mobile, said, “We are inviting a very bad criminal element we can no longer allow this illegal gambling to continue in the state of Alabama unchecked because it is inviting a very unsavory crowd of people.”
What’s the solution? To once again vote once on gambling in Alabama. That way, if gambling is legalized, the ‘unsavory crowd’ are suddenly transformed into law-abiding citizens.
This kind of logic is not only an attack on the sanctity of life but also an attack on common sense.
But among the many attacks on the sanctity of life today, the one that I want us to think about this morning is the plight of the stranger, the sojourner, the refugee, the alien, the foreigner.
Those are all words that English translations of the Bible use to describe “resident alien(s) living among a people of another nationality,” (Lexham Concise Bible Dictionary).
Some argue that the clearest translation for our day would be the word immigrant — “a person who migrates to another country, usually for permanent residence.”
This is, of course, a highly politicized topic as our country experiences record numbers of people pour over the southern border.
Some come seeking asylum.
Some come seeking a better life.
Some come with nefarious intentions.
Some come legally.
Some come illegally.
But all come.
And all are created in the image of God.
[INTER] What then should our Christian response be as we find those who come living next door or across the street?
[ILLUS] In our neighborhood, we have a mixture of homeowners and renters. We have a rental house next door to us, and since we’ve been in our home, we’ve had four or five different neighbors move through that house.
Once, we had a couple from Iran. That was in addition to our neighbors across the street from Egypt and Yemen, and the neighbors on the backside of our neighborhood from India and Germany.
I was excited when our Iranian neighbors moved in, but when I told a fellow Christian that we had some new Iranian neighbors, her immediate response was, “Oh no!”
Is that how we should respond as Christians when God brings the nations to the house next door?
I don’t believe it is.
[PROP] I believe as followers of Jesus we must view the immigrant, not through the lens of partisan politics, but through the lens of God’s Word.
[TS] When we do that, we see God’s heart and our responsibility.
Major Ideas
Major Ideas
Q. What is God’s heart for the immigrant?
Q. What is God’s heart for the immigrant?
18 He ensures that orphans and widows receive justice. He shows love to the foreigners living among you and gives them food and clothing.
[EXP] Throughout Scripture, we see these three vulnerable groups mentioned together: the orphan, the widow, and the alien—i.e., the resident-foreigner or immigrant.
We understand the vulnerability of the orphan and widow.
The orphan is a child with no parental protection. Either the child has been abandoned or the parents have died, but the result is the same in either case—the child is all alone in the world.
I think God that we have Christian couples who foster and adopt to care for orphans. And I thank God that we have place like the Alabama Baptist Children’s Home that also cares for children in need.
The widow, biblically speaking, has lost her husband and has no other relatives to depend on. Think of Naomi from the book of Ruth who lost not only her husband but also her two sons while living as an immigrant in Moab. Her situation was dire because she was all alone in the world—or so she thought.
I thank God that the church has many Ruths that care for the Naomis. And I thank God for those Christian homes for widows where those women with no one are well taken care of in the name of Jesus.
However, we may not as instantly understand the immigrant’s vulnerability. But just as orphans and widows find themselves alone in the world, immigrants often find themselves alone too.
They don’t speak the language.
They don’t know the culture.
They may have trouble securing work or transportation.
They may have trouble signing up for public services.
They may feel helpless as they watch their children struggle to keep up in a new, English-speaking school.
Added to these normal struggles are the wicked people who prey upon immigrants by overworking and underpaying them, by trapping them in what amount to never-ending indentured servitude, and by trafficking them as slaves.
As one news report said, some of these immigrants find themselves “in a system of cruelty, neglect, and death,” (60 Minutes, Human Smuggling Across the Border).
For these immigrants, they must feel like they are all alone in the world.
But God loves the immigrant. Just as He ensures that the orphan and widow will receive justice, so he shows love to the foreigners living among us by giving them food and clothing. That’s what God promised His people as they made plans to live in the Promised Land in the days of Moses, but I believe this is what God promises to all His people no matter when and where they live.
How does God ensure that the orphan and widow will receive justice?
Through His people!
How does God ensure that foreigner will feel God’s love through tangible things like food and clothing?
Through His people!
But focus for the moment on the fact that God just loves the immigrant, the foreigner, the sojourner, the refugee, the asylum-seeker, the stranger, the resident alien.
Documented or undocumented, He loves them.
From Mexico or the Middle East, He loves them.
Having arrived by plane or by boat, He love them.
He loves them because they are created in His image just like me and you.
He loves them because they were created to reflect His glory just like me and you.
[ILLUS] Rabbi Jeffrey Salkin talked about the phrase “God loves you” on his podcast Martini Judaism. Salkin, who is not a Christian, lamented that Jewish people have stopped saying, “God loves you.”
He said, “…our history has bruised us and battered us and it has forced us to be deaf to our own beautiful traditions. Once upon a time, we saw ourselves as the people that God loves.”
But now Rabbi Salkin says that’s not the case.
He did a Google search for the phrase “God loves you” and instantly got 13 million hits.
He’s been slowly working his way through the search results but he said that he could safely report that every time the phrase appears, it appears on a Christian website rather than a Jewish one.
He did another Google search for the phrase “God loved the Jews” and got approximately 837,000 hits.
He said, “And all of those hits are also on Christian websites.”
Rabbi Salkin said that instead of identifying themselves as the people God loves, too many Jewish people today identify themselves as the people Gentiles hate.
[APP] When we Christians think of the immigrants crossing the border or the foreigners across the street, do we think of them with a similar type of negativity as today’s Jews think of Gentiles?
Instead of thinking of sharing the love of God in Jesus Christ with immigrants, do we only think of them as coming to take our jobs?
Instead of thinking of sharing the love of God in Jesus Christ with immigrants, do we only think of them as coming to further burden an already overwhelmed welfare system?
Here’s my point: if we are going to love others (the immigrant included) as God loves them, then we are going to have to remember that God loves us.
10 Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
Remembering that God loves us so much that He sent Jesus to die for us fills us up to overflowing with love for others (immigrant included).
Leviticus 19:34 (NASB95)
34 ‘The stranger (i.e., the immigrant) who resides with you shall be to you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself…
[TS] So, having seen that God loves the immigrant and that we should love the immigrant as our neighbor, i.e., we should love the immigrant as ourselves, what can we do to show that love?
Q. What can we do?
Q. What can we do?
18 He ensures that orphans and widows receive justice. He shows love to the foreigners living among you and gives them food and clothing.
19 So you, too, must show love to foreigners, for you yourselves were once foreigners in the land of Egypt.
The first thing we can do is identify with the immigrants living among us.
The first thing we can do is identify with the immigrants living among us.
[EXP] Deuteronomy 10:19 says that God’s people could identify with the foreigners or immigrants who lived among them because they too had once strangers in a strange land.
Famine forced Jacob (a.k.a., Israel) and his twelve sons to go down to Egypt in order to find grain. They were saved by God’s providence, but eventually became an oppressed people in Egypt before God delivered them.
They, of all, people should’ve been sensitive to the needs of the stranger in a strange land.
[APP] As Christians, we should be just as sensitive to the needs of immigrants and foreigners.
For one, we Christians always live as aliens and strangers while we live on this earth.
11 Beloved, I urge you as aliens and strangers to abstain from fleshly lusts which wage war against the soul.
We Christians know what it is to feel like strangers in a strange place.
We can identify with the immigrant.
Secondly, we Christians were once spiritually strangers and aliens, separate from God, but Ephesians 2:13…
13 But now in Christ Jesus you who formerly were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.
And Ephesians 2:19 follows up…
19 So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints, and are of God’s household,
We Christians know what it is to feel far away and in need of welcome.
We can identify with the immigrant.
That’s the first thing we can do if we would love the immigrant as we love ourselves—we can IDENTIFY with them.
A second thing we can do is WELCOME them.
A second thing we can do is WELCOME them.
[ILLUS] The comedian Jay Leno tells the story of his mother, an immigrant from Scotland, becoming an American citizen.
As an immigrant, his mother lived in constant fear of deportation. At that time, you could miss up to four questions on the citizenship test, and his Mom missed five.
The question she flunked was, “What is the Constitution of the United States?”
She answered, “A boat,” which wasn’t entirely wrong because the USS Constitution was a ship—the oldest commissioned warship—which was docked in Boston Harbor.
When the judge said that she had failed her citizenship test, Jay Leno’s father, already an American citizen, marched up to the judge and demanded to know which question his wife got wrong.
The judge told him, and Leno’s father said, “The Constitution is a boat!”
The judge tried to say, “No, the Constitution is the basic governing—”
But Leno’s father exploded, “It’s also a boat in Boston! The Constitution! Same thing!”
The judge finally couldn’t take anymore, rolled his eyes, and said, “Fine. She’s a citizen. Now get out of here!”
But Leno’s Mom never felt like a citizen.
As they left the courtroom that day, she whimpered, “I didn’t pass. They’re going to come after me.”
Whenever she came near a policeman, she shook with fear.
When Leno took her to visit Scotland in 1983, she asked him, “Will I be able to get back in?”
He told her, “That was 50 years ago! They don’t remember that you said the Constitution was a boat!”
But his mother never felt safe.
Ben, a Christian refugee from Afghanistan, understands that feeling. He writes that one of the best things Christians can do for refugees is to make them feel safe. He writes…
“As refugees, they were forced to flee their country, leaving everything behind and running for safety with just the clothes on their backs. They’ve experienced much trauma. We should do whatever we can to make them feel welcome and safe. Perhaps the best thing you can do for refugees is to open your home to them.”
[EXP] God tell us in His Word that we are to show hospitality to strangers—whether they be immigrants, refugees, asylum-seekers, or other. Our hospitality can make them feel welcome; our hospitality can make them feel safe.
Hebrews 13:2 says…
2 Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by this some have entertained angels without knowing it.
In that section of Hebrews it says we have come to Jesus and His Kingdom, so we live lives that reflect the culture of the Kingdom of Heaven. That kind of living involves many things including showing hospitality, making people feel welcomed and safe.
But not only do we sometimes entertain angels without knowing it, we welcome the stranger, we also minister to the Lord Jesus without knowing.
In Matthew 25 Jesus tells about the judgement between His sheep who go to Heaven and the goats who do not.
In one part of that passage, He says to His sheep, i.e., His people…
35 ‘For I was hungry, and you gave Me something to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me something to drink; I was a stranger, and you invited Me in;
Then His people ask Him…
38 ‘And when did we see You a stranger, and invite You in, or naked, and clothe You?
Jesus replies…
40 “The King will answer and say to them, ‘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.’
In Malachi 3, God says that He draws near to His people for judgment. But why did He draw near to them for judgment?
Malachi 3:5 gives a list of their sins that includes sorcery, adultery, false testimony, oppressing the wage earner, oppressing the widow and the orphan, and turning aside the resident alien, the foreigner living among them.
However, the exclamation point to this list of sins is not fearing the Lord.
Why did God’s people do all the wickedness they did in Malachi’s day?
It was because they didn’t fear the Lord.
Why did they turn aside the immigrant, the foreigner, the sojourner, the resident alien living among them?
It was because they didn’t fear the Lord.
[APP] If we fear the Lord, we will welcome the immigrants. We will show them hospitality. We will make them feel welcome and safe.
If we don’t, then the Lord may draw near to us for judgment too.
A third thing we can do is GIVE for them.
A third thing we can do is GIVE for them.
[ILLUS] Pastor Olber Roblero lives four miles from the U.S. border with Mexico. He can see it from his house.
He spends his days giving clothing and supplies to immigrants just released from the detention centers.
Because of government regulations he isn’t allowed to go into the detention centers, but instead meets immigrants at the bus station where many are being reunited with family members.
Roblero has spent many days just waiting with children at the bus stop who are hoping their parents will be released from the detention centers as well.
Roblero and his church, Iglesia Bautista Horeb, along with 20 other local churches help with jobs, food, clothing, and whatever other needs these people may have.
Send Relief, in coordination with state Southern Baptist Disaster Relief leaders, supports churches like this and many others as they minister along our southern border.
As the website says, “Send Relief is the Southern Baptist one-stop shop for compassion ministry at home and abroad. We respond to crisis and strengthen vulnerable communities around the world by meeting physical and spiritual needs in Jesus’ name.”
Every time you give in this church, you give to the Southern Baptist Cooperative Program, which helps to fund Send Relief efforts like those along our southern border.
One of Send Relief’s areas of focus is care for refugees. If you so desire, you can go to sendrelief.org and give specifically for the care of refugees.
A final thing we can do is PRAY for refugees and immigrants.
A final thing we can do is PRAY for refugees and immigrants.
This morning I’ve printed out multiple copies of a prayer guide called, Thirty Days of Prayer for Refugee Relief.
Will a few of you spend the next 30 days praying with me for refugees both here and around the world?
If you would, just ask me for a prayer guide after the service.
Conclusion
Conclusion
“Show your love for the alien…” Deut. 10:19 NASB
“Love the sojourner…” Deut. 10:19 ESV
“…love the stranger…” Deut. 10:19 NKJV
“…show love to the foreigners…” Deut. 10:19 NLT
No matter what translation we use, God’s Word is clear on this issue.
He loves the alien, the sojourner, the stranger, the foreigner, and because He does, we should as well.