Love Givers
Notes
Transcript
A little girl sat on her grandfather’s lap as he read her a bedtime story. From time to time, she’d reach up and touch his wrinkled cheek. Then she’d touch her own cheek thoughtfully.
Finally she spoke, “Grandpa, did God make you?”
“Yes, sweetheart,” he answered. “God made me a long time ago.”
“Did God make me, too?” she asked.
“Yes, indeed, honey,” he answered. “God made you just a little while ago.”
She touched his face again, and then her own.
“He’s getting better at it, isn’t He?” she asked.
You know, time sure goes by quickly! We get older each and every day. It makes me ask the question, Are we doing all that we can for the kingdom of God?
Once we’ve given our lives to Christ, we start a journey of understanding. We learn about what it means to be a follower of Jesus. At first, it can seem overwhelming, but over time we KNOW the basic truths so well that when we hear a message we could almost say what the preacher is going to before they say it!
This year, I want our church to hit the “fast forward button” in our faith and grow up spiritually.
1 We must try to become mature and start thinking about more than just the basic things we were taught about Christ. We shouldn’t need to keep talking about why we ought to turn from deeds that bring death and why we ought to have faith in God.
2 And we shouldn’t need to keep teaching about baptisms or about the laying on of hands or about people being raised from death and the future judgment.
3 Let’s grow up, if God is willing.
Let’s grow up! For me, that means we should establish some core values as a church. If we are going to grow up spiritually speaking what test can we give ourselves to see if we’ve gone past the basics of Christian living.
My daughter Lanie decided to bake a cake for school this last week. She read all the instructions, mixed the batter, put it in the pans, and set a timer. But she made on crucial mistake - she didn’t turn on the OVEN!
She knew the basics of how to make that cake, but she missed a key component. She didn’t have any heat!
In our Christian walk, we can know all the basics, but if we never turn on the heat, we are just going through the motions.
I think we can test if the heat is turned on by asking if we are actively living out these six things in our lives:
Are we?
God Seekers
Big Believers
Truth Tellers
Love Givers
Go-Getters
Open Handers
Now, I encourage you to go online to catch up with the first three messages I have given about Seeking God, Believing Big, and Telling the truth because I think they will help you grown in your faith walk.
They are all on my personal youtube page. Just go to youtube and search my name, you’ll find these messages.
Today we are going to talk about being “Love Givers”.
It just so happens that this coming week is Valentines day!
Valentines day reminds us of romantic love, but today I want to remind us of the kind of Love that God has for us and the love we are supposed to share with the world.
In order to do that I want to focus on a Scripture that really teaches us about the reality of true undeserved love:
21 Peter came up to the Lord and asked, “How many times should I forgive someone who does something wrong to me? Is seven times enough?”
22 Jesus answered:
Not just seven times, but seventy-seven times! 23 This story will show you what the kingdom of heaven is like:
One day a king decided to call in his officials and ask them to give an account of what they owed him. 24 As he was doing this, one official was brought in who owed him fifty million silver coins. 25 But he didn’t have any money to pay what he owed. The king ordered him to be sold, along with his wife and children and all he owned, in order to pay the debt.
26 The official got down on his knees and began begging, “Have pity on me, and I will pay you every cent I owe!” 27 The king felt sorry for him and let him go free. He even told the official that he did not have to pay back the money.
28 As the official was leaving, he happened to meet another official, who owed him a hundred silver coins. So he grabbed the man by the throat. He started choking him and said, “Pay me what you owe!”
29 The man got down on his knees and began begging, “Have pity on me, and I will pay you back.” 30 But the first official refused to have pity. Instead, he went and had the other official put in jail until he could pay what he owed.
31 When some other officials found out what had happened, they felt sorry for the man who had been put in jail. Then they told the king what had happened. 32 The king called the first official back in and said, “You’re an evil man! When you begged for mercy, I said you did not have to pay back a cent. 33 Don’t you think you should show pity to someone else, as I did to you?” 34 The king was so angry that he ordered the official to be tortured until he could pay back everything he owed. 35 That is how my Father in heaven will treat you, if you don’t forgive each of my followers with all your heart.
In Matthew 17-18 we find Jesus giving lots of instructions to His followers. He taught them about faith, His coming death, our responsibility to our earthly government, humility, how to deal with people who cause offenses, how to discipline those who don’t accept responsibility for their offenses, and then we come to the portion that I just read to you where Jesus teaches about forgiveness.
Chapter 17 it starts when Jesus revealing to Peter, James, and John that He was the Son of God.
2 As the men watched, Jesus’ appearance was transformed so that his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became as white as light.
Peter has just had this crazy moment with Jesus where it was very evident that He was the Messiah. THEN Jesus healed a young boy, and started giving all these instructions. All this happened and then Peter asked a question that he thought was pretty clever.
Have you ever wanted to ask the “right” question? You know what I mean, you ask a question that you THINK you already know the answer to just so that you LOOK good to the person you are asking the question?
If I want to get on Kristens good side, I might ask her such a question. Especially around Valentines day. It could ask her, “I was wondering, since you’re such a wonderful wife, would you be willing to go out to your favorite restaurant tonight?” You see, I already KNOW the answer, I am just trying to tee her up to make her impressed with my suave manly abilities.
Peter thought he was asking a great question to make himself look good to Jesus.
What did he ask? Matthew 18:21
21 Peter came up to the Lord and asked, “How many times should I forgive someone who does something wrong to me? Is seven times enough?”
Peter thought he was “extra-spiritual” for offering to forgive seven times, because the Jewish rabbis said that three times was enough. But he was about to figure out that his superior question only revealed his limited understanding of Jesus.
He didn’t know what you and I can know today. That Christ is calling us to be “Love Givers”.
Jesus put no limitation on forgiveness, because TRUE forgiveness comes from a heart of love.
4 Love is patient, love is kind. Love does not envy, is not boastful, is not arrogant,
5 is not rude, is not self-seeking, is not irritable, and does not keep a record of wrongs.
That last little part - love does not keep a record of wrongs is what Peter hadn’t anticipated. He thought, surely there must be a point where love limits our responsibility to forgive.
Let’s pull out two lessons from the story that Jesus gave to help us become “Love Givers”.
God is the Ultimate Love Giver
God is the Ultimate Love Giver
In our scripture Jesus, tells a story to help us understand our relationship with God and His love.
Let’s read it again in a paraphrased translation:
23 This story will show you what the kingdom of heaven is like: One day a king decided to call in his officials and ask them to give an account of what they owed him.
24 As he was doing this, one official was brought in who owed him fifty million silver coins.
In Jewish parables, a king symbolizes God and to settle accounts symbolizes divine judgment. Fifty million silver coins was equivalent to a billion day’s worth of peasant wages. This was more money than was circulating in all of Palestine. The “talent” was the largest unit of currency (equivalent to approximately 6,000 days’ worth of wages) and 10,000 is the highest single number that can be expressed in Greek. We can see that Jesus was showing such a massive debt to represent the sinner’s hopeless debt to God.
You an I can identify with the debt owed because we have all sinned against God. No person is perfect. God IS perfect and He demands justice for what has been done wrong. He must have a payment for our sinful rebellion.
Jesus was that payment. Grace is when God gives us something that we don’t deserve, and Mercy is when God withholds the punishment we deserve.
We are like the man who was begging for grace and mercy
26 The official got down on his knees and began begging, “Have pity on me, and I will pay you every cent I owe!”
27 The king felt sorry for him and let him go free. He even told the official that he did not have to pay back the money.
Just as the king felt sorry for the man, God, in His love, felt sorry for us. But God requires justice. Which is why He BECAME flesh and paid our debt.
When Jesus came to earth for us it was God’s grace in action. When Jesus died for us we recieved God’s mercy because He took our punishment.
Love paid our debts because when we trust in Jesus, we are forgiven!
God is the ultimate Love giver.
God’s Love make US Love Givers
God’s Love make US Love Givers
It changes us because we now understand what it means to walk in grace. In fact, part of our mission in life is to recuse other people just like God used someone else to rescue us! People who sin against us are generally immature believers or lost souls who don’t really know truth.
32 And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you.
Or how about this one:
13 bearing with one another, and forgiving one another, if anyone has a complaint against another; even as Christ forgave you, so you also must do.
Peter asked Jesus if he should forgive seven times, remember that was 4 times more than what was being taught by the spiritual leaders that the time. Peter thought he was being VERY generous.
Jesus’ reply was that forgiveness needs to be exercised to a much greater extent. Not just 7 times, but “70 times 7”, that is, 490 times.
Jesus meant that no limits should be set on Forgiveness
But I do need to point something out here: Jesus isn’t teaching us to ALLOW others to abuse us or for us to continually stay in a terrible situation that might cause us physical or emotional harm, but He IS telling us to forgive because we’ve been forgiven.
3 Take heed to yourselves. If your brother sins against you, rebuke him; and if he repents, forgive him.
Forgiving a person is really for us, reconciling with that person can only happen if there is repentance. Do not allow yourself to be a victim of a hostile relationship. We forgive because we’ve been forgiven, but we don’t stay in a bad situation if there is no genuine repentance.
Since we’ve been forgiven we should forgive!
Back to our main scripture:
28 As the official was leaving, he happened to meet another official, who owed him a hundred silver coins. So he grabbed the man by the throat. He started choking him and said, “Pay me what you owe!”
29 The man got down on his knees and began begging, “Have pity on me, and I will pay you back.”
30 But the first official refused to have pity. Instead, he went and had the other official put in jail until he could pay what he owed.
One hundred silver coins was about three months of wages. This was negligible compared to the first slave’s debt to the king. The contrast between the 10,000 talents and the 100 denarii shows that the sins of others against us are trivial in comparison to the enormity of our own sins against God.
What Jesus was saying then is relevant today: Since God has shown believers such great mercy by pardoning our sins, we should in turn forgive the sins of others.
How do we grow up spiritually? We must learn to become “Love Givers”.
One last thing I want to share. Jesus was willing to give His life because of His love for us - are we willing to do the same for another?
Isn’t that the ultimate test of Love?
I was reading through Exodus the other day and same across something that Moses said and it really struck me as an example of Love:
31 Moses returned to the Lord and said, “The people have committed a terrible sin. They have made a gold idol to be their god.
32 But I beg you to forgive them. If you don’t, please wipe my name out of your book.”
Moses was an example of a true “Love Giver”. He said, God, I know these people have really messed up, but I love them so much that I would be willing to take their punishment.
Think about this type of love. Are we willing to take another person’s punishment? What are you willing to do to become a “Love giver” in this life?
I’ll leave you with one final story about a regular man who understood the Love he had been given and it drove him to be a Love giver even though it cost him what he valued most. He name was William Carey. He was a shoemaker. In 1787, he suggested that all Christians had a duty to share the gospel around the world. He was told: "Young man, sit down. When God pleases to convert the heathen, he will do it without your aid and mine."
That didn’t stop him. He founded the Baptist Missionary Society five years later in 1792, preaching a message during which he said one of his most famous quotes:
"Expect great things from God; attempt great things for God".
The next year, he travelled to India with his family, but his struggles continued. He saw no conversions for seven years, his son Peter died of dysentery and his wife's mental health deteriorated rapidly. "This is indeed the valley of the shadow of death to me," Carey wrote at the time. "But I rejoice that I am here notwithstanding; and God is here."
But in 1800, he baptised his first convert to Christianity, and over more than 20 years went on to translate the Bible into dozens of major Indian languages and dialects. He also founded Serampore College to train local ministers. He became known as the “father of modern missions” and millions have been touched because he was willing to be a “Love Giver”
On his death bed these were his final words: “When I am gone, speak less of Dr. Carey and more of Dr. Carey’s Savior.”
He was just a shoemaker who was determined to be a “Love Giver”.
What about you? Do you need to receive the Love of Christ or do you need to give the Love of Christ who doesn’t deserve it?