The transcript of the service is below
Psalm 119: 169-176
169 May my cry come before You, Lord;give me understanding according to Your word.170 May my supplication come before You;deliver me according to Your promise.171 May my lips overflow with praise,for you teach me Your decrees.172 May my tongue sing of Your word,for all Your commands are righteous.173 May Your hand be ready to help me,for I have chosen Your precepts.174 I long for Your salvation, Lord,and Your law gives me delight.175 Let me live that I may praise You,and may Your laws sustain me.176 I have strayed like a lost sheep.Seek Your servant,for I have not forgotten Your commands.
Matthew 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,45 that you may be children of your Father in heaven. 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 own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that?48 Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
Psalm
119: 169-176/ Matthew 5:43-48
THE BLESSING OF LOVING AS GOD
LOVES
Springford Baptist Church: November 22, 2020.
Where did we get the idea that “LEARNING THE WAY OF BLESSING” would be easy?
It often seems to be our expectation and even our prayer that God will smooth the way and make everything easy, not complicated or demanding.
When Jesus says, “But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5:44), we can quickly recognize that this is not going to be easy. Yes, loving our friends and family who respond with love and appreciation is relatively easy and brings us pleasure. Then Jesus introduces a much deeper dimension of love that requires loving our enemies. Could He really expect this of us? Yes, yes He does.
I mentioned a few weeks back that I had been rereading a book by Corrie Ten Boom, The Hiding Place ,recounting the experiences of she and her family in World War 2. She and her sister were taken from their home in Holland to a concentration camp in Germany. Her sister died there. After the war was over, Corrie Ten Boom made it her life mission to travel all over preaching and sharing a message of forgiveness and love that only God could make possible. Here is an experience that she shares toward the end of the book:
“It was in a church in Munich that I saw him, a heavyset man in a gray overcoat, a brown felt hat clutched between his hands. People were filing out of the basement room where I had just spoken, moving along the rows of wooden chairs to the door at the rear. It was 1947 and I had come from Holland to defeated Germany with the message that God forgives. It was the truth they needed most to hear in that bitter, bombed-out land, and I gave them my favorite mental picture. Maybe because the sea is never far from a Hollander’s mind, I liked to think that that’s where forgiven sins were thrown. “When we confess our sins,” I said, “God casts them into the deepest ocean, gone forever. The solemn faces stared back at me, not quite daring to believe. There were never questions after a talk in Germany in 1947. People stood up in silence, in silence collected their wraps, in silence left the room. And that’s when I saw him, working his way forward against the others. One moment I saw the overcoat and the brown hat; the next, a blue uniform and a visored cap with its skull and crossbones. It came back with a rush… this man had been a guard at Ravensbrück concentration camp where we were sent. Now he was in front of me, hand thrust out: “A fine message, Fräulein! How good it is to know that, as you say, all our sins are at the bottom of the sea!”
And I, who had spoken so glibly of forgiveness, fumbled in my pocketbook rather than take that hand. He would not remember me, of course–how could he remember one prisoner among those thousands of women? But I remembered him and the leather crop swinging from his belt. It was the first time since my release that I had been face to face with one of my captors and my blood seemed to freeze. “You mentioned Ravensbrück in your talk,” he was saying. “I was a guard in there.” No, he did not remember me. “But since that time,” he went on, “I have become a Christian. I know that God has forgiven me for the cruel things I did there, but I would like to hear it from your lips as well. –again the hand came out–“will you forgive me?” And I stood there–I whose sins had every day to be forgiven–and could not. Betsie had died in that place–could he erase her slow terrible death simply for the asking? It could not have been many seconds that he stood there, hand held out, but to me it seemed hours as I wrestled with the most difficult thing I had ever had to do…
And still I stood there with the coldness clutching my heart. But forgiveness is not an emotion–I knew that too. Forgiveness is an act of the will, and the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart. “Jesus, help me!” I prayed silently. “I can lift my hand. I can do that much. You supply the feeling.” And so woodenly, mechanically, I thrust my hand into the one stretched out to me. And as I did, an incredible thing took place. The current started in my shoulder, raced down my arm, sprang into our joined hands. And then this healing warmth seemed to flood my whole being, bringing tears to my eyes.“I forgive you, brother!” I cried. “With all my heart!” For a long moment we grasped each other’s hands, the former guard and the former prisoner. I had never known God’s love so intensely as I did then.”
We can see from this moving recounting that loving our enemies is not something we are capable of ourselves. We must rely on God.
This is what I understand to be the key to loving our enemies. We cling to God to help us for this to be possible.
I continue to pray that God will give me the ability to see people as He sees them.
Notice Matthew 4:45, “that you may be children of Your Father in heaven. He causes His sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.”
Only as we view people as God our Father in Heaven does, will we be able to begin love each one as He does and in loving to learn more of God’s way of blessing.
Some people will say, “I don’t have any enemies.” We all have people who we do not find ourselves so inclined to respond warmly to and to care about. We all have people who we find hard to love.
God calls us to love without making exceptions.
The final verses of Psalm 169 are an honest calling out to God in prayer. Our Psalm writer prays, “May Your hand be ready to help me, for I have chosen Your precepts.” (vs. 173)
And God’s hand is ready to help us as we choose this precept of loving our enemies. We are to “let our enemies bring out the best in us, not the worst.”
In
the very last verse of Psalm 119, we read, “I
have strayed like a lost sheep. Seek your servant,for I have not
forgotten your commands.”
This
individual has made God’s laws and God’s ways His guide and life
long pursuit, but like a sheep who sometimes loses its way, he has
wandered off the path and needs to be brought back by God the loving
Shepherd.
In our pursuit of LEARNING THE WAY OF BLESSING, God consistently challenges us to love as He loves and to have that affect everything about us.
Jesus concludes His teaching on loving our enemies with these words, “Be perfect therefore as Your Father in heaven is perfect.” Matthew 5:48)
This is a high standard of perfect love. We could be inclined to give up on it as impossible. Jesus wants us to strive for this kind of love that reflects God’s perfect love. In the account of Corrie Ten Boom’s experience of relying on God to fill her with love that was impossible for her to feel, she maintains, “I had never known God’s love so intensely as I did then.”
We will LEARN THE WAY OF BLESSING, when we know the intensity of God’s love in the relationships and experiences in which we would have thought it beyond our ability to love. It absolutely is not easy, but loving as God loves will open the door to an incredible way of blessing that comes from depending on God totally and completely!