LOVE THE SINNER
Terra Bella United Presbyterian Church August 8, 2010
Luke 11:14-28 1 John 3:11-15 James 1:5 Proverbs 22:6 I Samuel 17:45-46 Romans 12:9
I’m aware that speaking of demons and demon possession isn’t very popular in the Presbyterian Church. I’m also aware that preaching about divine healing and miracles is equally frowned on. Yet, I’m called to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ risen. That Gospel happens to be found within the covers of the Bible where we also find much said about some unpopular things. So why are they unpopular?
In his book, “Miracles”, C. S. Lewis says, those whose faith is in science and experiments will learn “what regularly happens in Nature; the norm or rule to which she works. Those who believe in miracles are not denying that there is such a norm or rule; they are only saying that it can be suspended. A miracle is, by definition, an exception.”
In today’s Scripture from Luke 11, there’s no denying that the story tells of Jesus confronting demons. If the man Jesus healed were simply mute and Jesus healed only that condition, the Greek dictionary contains plenty of medical terms which Luke – being a physician and a man of science himself – could easily have drawn upon, but he didn’t. Rather, he said the demon was “mute” and that the demon was what made the man “mute”. He was making what he considered to be “an observation of fact.” In his professional opinion, it was a divine miracle that healed a spiritual sickness manifested in our physical realm.
Were there other mute people in Israel at that time? Of course there were. Did Jesus heal them all? Of course, he did not. Why? Well, that’s a mystery isn’t it; a mystery known only to God. Just as some who are dying are miraculously revived and others are not, only God knows why. What we do know is that God does answer prayers – but not always as we would like. God reveals Himself and His love for the purpose of glorifying His name. He does not ask for our understanding . . . only our faith.
Our knowledge and our faith should always be growing, expanding, as we look daily “as through a ‘glass darkly” until that time when God will reveal the answers to all our questions.
Life is a learning process. Some of it we learn from home, some from church and school, and some from life in general. Personally, I’ve always found that I learned the most after I graduated from school.
Schools can give us the tools with which we can apply life’s lessons. But it’s actually through God in our daily life that we truly learn. Willard Griffin said,
• “It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts.”
Was it Mark Twain who said something like, “When I was 16, I couldn’t believe how little my father knew, but when I was thirty, I was amazed by how much he’d learned.”
Have you discovered yet that the more you learn, the more you realize how little you really know? James 1:5 reminds us, “If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him.”
James’ advice applies, not only to our understanding of our physical world, but it also applies to the spiritual world around us. If you’re uncomfortable with studying the spiritual world, then you must be very uncomfortable with God. Isn’t it written that, “God is spirit and must be worshipped in spirit and in truth.”
If we understood everything, then why would we need faith? But we do need faith because that’s what gets us through those painful times when we don’t understand what God’s doing. We see God intervene to save one person but not another, and we’re tempted to cry out, “That’s not fair!” Yet, even as we cry out, we must know that “fair” has nothing to do with it. God’s love is constant, and if we have faith, we know that God is still showing constant love.
Do you lack wisdom? If you answered “Yes”, that’s a good thing; because that’s the first requirement for acquiring wisdom. The second requirement is to realize that God is the only source of true wisdom.
The person who seeks knowledge is generally the person who realizes his/her need for more learning. We may have learned about what’s good from our parents, and that’s good if our parents taught us about Christ and the Bible. But until we actually sit at the feet of the Master and listen, until we do that, we’re not really learning wisdom. Jesus said to Martha, “Mary is doing what is needful.” He didn’t say that she understood all things; but she was learning.
Proverbs 22:6 says, “Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it.” Someone wrote: “Secular education can make men clever, but it cannot make them good.” As we heard from 1 John 3, “This is the message you heard from the beginning.” And what is the message? “We should love one another.”
Maybe that sounds pretty easy to you, but just ask anyone who’s actually tried it. It’s not easy, but, it’s a message straight from God, and we need to get it!
Let’s consider that message, which by the way is actually a Two-fold message.
1st: WE SHOULD LOVE PEOPLE
Think about what the Apostle John is saying in 3:11. He tells us to “love one another”, but then he gives us an opposite example. He says, “Don’t be like Cain, who belonged to the evil one and murdered his brother.” Abel was identified as “a child of God”. Cain was identified as “a child of the devil”. Why? Because he murdered his brother. It was the evidence of his actions that condemned Cain. Cain’s act was the epitome of hatred, and such hatred is spiritually evil. It’s a sickness in the one’s spirit. So John says, “Don’t be like that.” Let go of all hatred – no matter how long you’ve had it.
• A young man finds the woman of his dreams and asks her to marry him. He tells his mother and wants her to meet his fiancé, but he wants to make a bit of a game out of it. So he says he'll bring the girl over with two other women and see if his mother can guess which one he wants to marry. His mother agrees.
That night, he shows up at his mother's house with three beautiful young ladies. They all sit down on the couch, and everyone has a wonderful evening talking and getting to know each other.
At the end of the evening, the young man asks his mother, “OK, Mom, which one is the woman I want to marry?” Without any hesitation at all, his mother replies, “The one in the middle.”
The young man’s astounded. “How in the world did you figure it out?” “That’s easy,” she says. “I don't like her.”
The kind of love that God is calling us to is not typical of this world. It doesn’t require “liking someone”. It’s a spiritual love that supersedes this world’s logic. It’s a love born in the spirit and made possible only when we’re able to walk “in the spirit”. So if the spiritual realm makes you uncomfortable, maybe it’s time to reexamine your own walk with God.
You may not like someone, but that shouldn’t be the issue. If someone is sweet and has a good personality, it makes them a lot easier to love, doesn’t it? Well, God isn’t calling us into an easy way. He’s calling us to walk “in His way”.
Consider King David of the Old Testament. Was he perfect? No. Did he do something wrong or sinful? Yes! Plenty of times. Yet, here was a man, loved by God, who defeated the giant Goliath in the name of the Lord.
He said to Goliath in I Samuel 17:45-46 “You come against me with sword and spear and javelin, but I come against you in the name of the LORD Almighty, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. This day the LORD will hand you over to me, and I'll strike you down and cut off your head...” Whoa! That doesn’t sound much like love!
Yet, God loved David. Why? David arranged to have Uriah, Bathsheba’s husband, killed in battle. How could God love such a man? But He did, and He even forgave David of his sin. Don’t you think God will do the same for you?
David truly suffered for his sins, but God did not abandon him. God loves us in spite of all our wrongdoings, bad attitudes, and poor choices. He even loves us when we trivialize His miracles and deny His spiritual truths. He wants us to change, to be transformed. He wants us to have FAITH!
As it’s written, “We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love our brothers. Anyone who does not love remains in death.”
And the other part of that love is learning that,
2nd: WE SHOULD LOATHE EVIL
Young David loathed evil, and Goliath epitomized such evil. That’s one reason God loved David. And this is what John is explaining in verses 12 and 13: “Do not be like Cain, who belonged to the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own actions were evil, and his brother's were righteous. Do not be surprised, my brothers, if the world hates you. We know that we have passed from death to life because we love one another.”
Does any person automatically belong to the evil one? I don’t think so. I think that it happens gradually, although we all do have our evil desires. I Peter 5:8 warns, “Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.”
Satan is out to devour or destroy us anyway he can. He’s a murderer and the author of all murders. Make no mistake about it. He’s not a figment of our imagination. He’s not a hangover from more primitive religions or some imaginary creature. He’s very real and very evil, and he loves anonymity. So long as we’re busy attacking only the physical symptoms, we’ll never defeat the cause of so many of our problems in this world.
Jesus prayed, “Deliver us from evil” – also translated “the evil one”. Was Jesus being primitive and uneducated? If you answered “Yes”, then you may also belong to the 30% of Presbyterians who don’t believe in the resurrection or the Second Coming.
The Word of God tells us that we should “loathe evil” – not just look the other way or pretend it’s insignificant.
Romans 12:9 says, “Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good.” If you hate what’s evil, you’ll be hated by those who do evil. If no one hates you, you may be politically correct . . . but spiritually dead.
I’ve heard it said and believe it’s true that, “If we don’t have any hatred for evil, then we won’t have any passion for that which is good! If you don’t hate evil, you won’t do anything good to counter it!”
I realize that it’s become a cliché, but then most truths are clichés. “We must love the sinner and hate the sin.” The truth about sin is that it’s a choice.
We’re all inclined to sin many times and in many ways in our lives. The sinner is the person who makes a choice to give in to whatever the temptation may be. It’s never God’s will for anyone to sin.
The Word of God is never out of date for those who believe in the Authority of Scripture! It’s precisely because it is the Word of God that there’s so much about it we struggle to understand. But in God’s time, understanding will come to those with the patience and faith to pursue it . . . in Jesus Christ.
