Love Like God

We are spending the next few weeks having the Gospel of Luke help us look at what it means for us to “Follow God.” So far we have seen how we should choose to follow God and focus on god. You can find these on our You Tube Channel.

This week we discover something that shouldn’t be surprising.  We need to “Love Like God.” Our scripture comes from Luke 6:27.36.

27 “But to you who are listening I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28 bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. 29 If someone slaps you on one cheek, turn to them the other also. If someone takes your coat, do not withhold your shirt from them. 30 Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. 31 Do to others as you would have them do to you.

32 “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them. 33 And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do that. 34 And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, expecting to be repaid in full. 35 But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. 36 Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.

Please pray with me…

“God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son so that who so ever believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.” This is from John 3:16 and it tells us about how much God loves us. So much that he would do anything to allow us to be able to be free from the power of sin and to reside with him forever in Heaven.

Jesus in today’s scripture explains what this type of love means. What does it mean to be willing to give up our own power and to choose to follow the will of God in our lives?  We begin by loving people for who they are.

It does not matter if someone believes in God through Jesus or not all of us can become children of God. God is not picky. We get to decide if we want to be adopted by him. God loves us enough that anyone who desires to do so can become a part of the family of God.

God loves each person that walks the earth so much that he wants us to let him adopt us. He wants us to allow him to become our father. A father who will save us from the power of sin and death.

Some of us have recognized his desire for us to be his children. We have accepted his adoption. We know that we were lost and unable to live the life that we deserved to live without God being a part of it. But there are many who God is attempting to lead into a relationship with him.

They are walking through life, maybe even enjoying life, but still unaware of how much better their lives can be. They have been unwilling to accept being called the son or daughter of God. God doesn’t love them any less. They just haven’t decided that they want to love him back.

(Transition)

Jesus shows us how to love like God. We love like God when we don’t focus on who someone is. We are to choose to love people as they are, and maybe most importantly because they are created by the God that we have chosen to follow.

We should choose not to focus on who someone is. We can read throughout scripture the shock that people had when Jesus shows his love for someone they didn’t expect. The Samaritans who many of the Jewish people disliked. Jesus showed love to them. In fact, he uses the love a Samaritan shows to someone who was Jewish as the best example of loving your neighbor.

Gentiles, he loved them. These were people that believed in many gods and didn’t believe in the Jewish God. They were different and considered unworthy of even being in the presence of someone like Jesus. But Jesus would speak to them and even heal them.

The unclean, he loved them. These were people that many Jewish leaders believed were unloved by God. Their ailment or condition wouldn’t have happened to them if they were right with God. It was against the law for a Jewish person to touch someone who was considered unclean.

But this did not stop Jesus. Jesus spoke to them. Jesus touched them. Jesus healed them. Jesus showed them the love of God by allowing those that may have felt unlovable (pause) to feel loved and worthy. He allowed them through healing them to return to their Jewish community.

Scripture should be our example. We should be willing to love people for who they are. We shouldn’t care if they don’t look or act like us. It shouldn’t matter if someone is looked down upon by the rest of society. We follow a God that loves all people, and we should make the same decision.

(Transition)

Jesus took this a step farther by who he chose to be his disciples. It is true that Jesus was not a normal rabbi who was trained in Jerusalem. But he could have still had a choice on who he wanted to teach about his ways and the ways of God.

He chose people that would have been considered unworthy of such a role. We discover how the Jewish religious leadership felt about them when in Acts chapter 4 we have Peter before the religious leaders.

They begin speaking about Jesus and it says that the religious leaders “saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated, common men, they were astonished.”

Why were they astonished? because fishermen and tax collectors and the rest of the riff raff that had followed Jesus should not have been able to speak so boldly and know so much. They were not supposed to be the cream of the crop.

God doesn’t care about your level of education. God doesn’t care if others look down upon you because they don’t think you are good enough. God will always love you and view you as good enough to follow him and to let others know about him.

What allowed those early followers of Jesus to amaze the religious leaders with their boldness and knowledge? It was the Holy Spirit, God within us. We have that same ability that was used by those early disciples.

The same Holy Spirit that helped the disciples is the same Holy Spirit that we have available to us. The Holy Spirit can help us be able to say what God wants us to say and do what God desires for us to do.

We are who can get in the way of what God desires for us to do. We have to be believe that what God desires is possible. We have to listen and be willing to respond to what the Holy Spirit tells us is desired from God.

Meaning, we have to believe in ourselves. We have to believe that God would use someone who is as bad of a person as we are. God knows that there are no perfect people. We have to believe that he is able to use someone like us.

That is what held me back from being a pastor for many years. I didn’t believe I was good enough. I didn’t think that I was the right person to be in a position to let others know what God desired from them.

It was through God reminding me that none of us are good enough that led me to be willing to accept this calling. I made God convince me that he would be with me and that he would help me be the leader that he desired for me to be.

(Transition)

The second way that we love like God is when we love people as they are. Christians are often viewed as people that think they are better than everyone else. They are viewed as people that look at themselves as holier than the rest of society.

Jesus offers us the opposite example. Jesus was clearly better than everyone who was and is walking the earth. He didn’t allow that to stop him from hanging around and talking to those that he meant along the way.

Examples would include the lady caught in adultery. By law, her and the man she was with should have been stoned. The religious leaders focus only on her and ask Jesus what should be done.

He points out to them what all Christians should remember before we interact with those around us. “Whoever is without sin cast out the first stone.” He reminds them and us that we are all sinners. We are no better or worse than anyone else. All of humanity are united together in and through our sin.

Another example would be the blind, the deaf, and the mute; Jesus loved them even though their infirmities would have meant in Jewish society that they or their parents were not blessed by God.

Jesus still talked to them, healed them, loved them, and forgave them. He didn’t let what Jewish society said about them dictate his relationship with them.

We find the ultimate example with the person known as the woman at the well. Not only was she female and a Samaritan but she was so looked down upon in society that she was forced to go to the well when others were not around. She was an outcast amongst outcast people.

This does not prevent Jesus from talking to her. This does not stop Jesus from being alone with her. This does not stop Jesus from telling her that he is the Messiah. This interaction leads her to tell those that hated her that she had meant the Jewish Messiah.

(Transition)

How we treat those that expect admonishment, and mistreatment can often show others that God loves them. We should not decide how God may feel about a certain person. We should instead believe that our God loves all people despite their faults and insecurities. We have a God of love.

We love like God when we love people not for any reason other than the fact that they are. We love like God when we love people because they are. It didn’t matter to Jesus, and it should not matter to us.

Today’s scripture is a continuation of what is called “The Sermon On the Plain.” It begins with the phrase “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you.”

The opinion someone has of us should not impact on the way that we treat them. It shouldn’t matter if they are mistreating us, maligning us to others, persecuting us. We are called first and foremost to love no matter what life’s circumstances throw at us.

Our first reading speaks of this as it reminds us that “Do not be surprised, brothers, that the world hates you.” Hate is a strong word, and I hope that there are not many people out there that truly hate Christians because they are Christian, but I am sure there are some.

Often the best way to react when someone expects a certain reaction based off of who they believe you are is to do the opposite. Show them that they don’t know you and should choose to not judge people, or in our case all Christians into one group.

(Transition)

We should choose to love our enemies. Love the oppressed. Love the hurting. Love the rich. Love the poor. Love no matter what race, gender, or sexual orientation because our God first loved us.

Our first reading again offers us a reminder “By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.”

Verses 32 through 34 of our main reading tell us why. We are to be different than the rest of the world. We are to choose not to worry about the benefit serving others and showing love to others could has for us.

Our focus should be on benefiting those around us. Showing those around us love not because of what they can do for us but because God first loved them and us.

When we look again to our first reading we have a message of love to share with the rest of the world. 1 John 3:16 tells us that “16 This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us.”

John continues on with these words “We ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters.” We have been called by God to be there for those around us. We have a message of love to share. We should be willing to give our all for God because God gave his life for us.

We have chosen to show love to others at The Church of the Good Shepherd. Our mission statement reminds us that we should desire to form relationships with those in our communities and love all people.

Living out those aspects of our mission statement may mean that we will have to be patient with those around us. They may be interested in what it means to follow Jesus, but they will also probably have questions.

We are to be as patient with those around us as Jesus was with his disciples. We find him attempting to get them to understand him over and over again. He continued to teach them even though it seemed they struggled understanding what he was trying to say to them.

We don’t want to tell people how to specifically believe but we want to guide them so that they will be able to figure out for themselves if they believe, what they believe, and why they believe it.

Jesus during his time on earth showed us how to love like God. He showed us the importance of seeing people as God sees them “children of God.” He showed that we are to treat all people the same even if there are major differences between us and them. Scripture shows us and now we have to decide if we are going to “Love Like God.”

Please pray with me…