The
nicest people
Can I take a quick survey
this morning? How many of you like voice
mail?
Voice mail is that electronic
device that you get when you call a
business and everybody is on an extended
coffee break. The voice then tells you to
punch 1, 2 or whatever.
Well I want to give you an amusing
example of bad voice mail:
Thank
you for calling 911. In order to serve you
better, your call is being routed to the
police department, fire department,
hospital or mortuary best able to help
you.
If
your home is being broken into, press 1.
If
the intruder is armed, press 2.
If
the intruder is in the room from which you
are making this call, press 4.
If
you are attempting to avoid detection and
have turned off the lights, press
233920029372, followed by the pound sign.
That
is not a valid number.
Please try again.
If
you have been attacked since your last
choice, are dazed and unable to recall
long strings of random numbers, press 1.
If you are bleeding, press 4.
If
you are bleeding all over the rug, press
5.
If
you would like the number of a good carpet
cleaner, press 7.
If
you want more options, press
1776‑star, in honor of the American
Revolution.
To
repeat this message, press 2.
If
you are still bleeding, press down hard on
the wound.
Life in a modern world can
get to be more than a little frustrating,
wouldn't you agree?
This is the reason
that this morning's message is so
important.
It is as relative as today's Janesville
Gazette.
This morning's sermon again takes us back
to Ephesians 4:22-32. Once more we will
see that the Apostle Paul is giving us
directions on growing up into a mature
person in Christ Jesus.
So far in this
series I have noted that these verses
encourage us to put off such things
as:
·
lying,
·
anger,
·
stealing,
·
and
unwholesome talk,
TODAY,
WE'LL LOOK AT PUTTING ON THE
traits of the NEW SELF.
Ephesians 4:24,32 reads: “And
put on the new self, created to be like
God in true righteousness and holiness.”
“Be kind and compassionate to one
another, forgiving each other, just as in
Christ God forgave you.”
A companion passage
is found in Colossians 3:12-14,
“Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy
and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with
compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness
and patience. Bear with each other and
forgive whatever grievances you may have
against one another. Forgive as the Lord
forgave you. And over all these virtues
put on love, which binds them all together
in perfect unity.”
Here, again, the emphasis is on putting off
certain sinful practices -- and PUTTING ON
CHRIST,
In both passages the writer tells us to PUT ON KINDNESS
Similar words would be,
gentleness, pleasantness, and mellowness.
Philippians 4:5 says, “Let
your
gentleness be evident to all. The
Lord is near.”
The Living Bible
has this: “Let everyone see that you
are unselfish and considerate in all you
do. Remember that the Lord is coming
soon.”
The New Century Version
notes: “Let everyone see that you are
gentle and kind. The Lord is coming
soon.”
While JB Phillip’s
translation commands: “Have a
reputation for gentleness and never forget
the nearness of your Lord.”
Kindness is a fruit
of the Spirit, according to Galatians
5:22.
It has also been called
the identifying trait of a
"Spirit-filled personality."
The great love chapter – 1 Corinthians 13 – notes in verse
4, “Love is patient, love is kind.”
In fact, kindness has been described
as love wearing a hard hat;
"love at work."
The whole idea of kindness
is a goodness which is flavored with an
extra dose of sweetness.
Psalm 63:3-4 notes
((King James Version), “Because
thy loving kindness [is] better than life,
my lips shall praise thee. Thus will I
bless thee while I live: I will lift up my
hands in thy name.”
A Sunday school teacher
once asked her class of young boys the
meaning of the words “loving
kindness.”
Everyone seemed to struggle until
one lad nailed it. He said that kindness
was when his mother gave him a slice of
bread with peanut butter on it. Loving
kindness, though, was when she put both
peanut butter and jelly on the bread.
Simply put, kindness
is a quality in one's self that makes the
individual as concerned with the feelings
of other people, as he or she is with his
or her own feelings. The Greeks of Jesus'
day described this trait as caring equally
about one's own and one's neighbor's
problems and worries.
Sound crazy? Of
course it sounds crazy in today's selfish,
greedy, ego-driven world.
Nonetheless, Jesus said in Matthew
22:37-40, “Love
the Lord your God with all your heart and
with all your soul and with all your
mind.’ This is the first and greatest
commandment. And the second is like it:
‘Love your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus
didn’t just talk the talk; He walked the
walk. Jesus loved His neighbor – to
death!
He wasn’t just
kind, He was kindness wrapped in the robes
of flesh.
·
He
felt with the leper,
·
He
cried with the grieving,
·
He
had empathy for the adulterer,
·
He
identified with the rejected little
children.
·
He
never put Himself above the needs of
others -- NEVER. HE WAS ALWAYS AND FOREVER
FEELING THEIR PAIN!
You don't hear much
anymore about Roberto DeVincenzo. He was
once a tough but far from champion
Argentine golfer. Some years back he surprised
everybody by winning a tournament. As
usual, they gave the winner his check on
the eighteenth green. Roberto flashed a
smile for the cameras and walked alone to
the clubhouse. In back, where his car was
parked, a sad-eyed young lady walked up to
him. "It's a good day for you,"
she said, "but I have a baby with an
incurable disease. It's of the blood, and
the doctors say she will die." The
golfer paused. In slow English, he said,
"May I help your little girl?"
The woman's face froze. He took out a pen,
endorsed his winning check and pressed
it into her hand. "Make some good
days for the baby," he said.
A week later, he was
having lunch in a country club when a PGA
official approached. "Some of the
boys in the parking lot told me you met a
young woman after you won the
tournament." DeVincenzo nodded.
"Well," said the official,
"I have bad news for you. She's a
phony. She has no sick baby. She's not
even married. She fleeced you my
friend." The golfer looked up.
"You mean that there is no baby who
is dying without hope?" he said. The
PGA official said, "that's
right."
DeVincenzo grinned and said,
"That's the best news I've heard all
week."
That's kindness!
Someone, I do not
know who, wrote:
"When we are given
our rewards, I would prefer to be found:
·
to have erred on the side of
grace rather than judgment:
·
TO
HAVE loved too much rather than too
little;
·
TO
HAVE forgiven the undeserving rather than
refused forgiveness to that one who
deserved it;
·
TO
HAVE fed the parasite rather than to have
neglected one who was truly hungry;
·
TO
HAVE been taken advantage of rather than
to have taken undue advantage;
·
TO
HAVE believed too much in my brothers
rather than too little;
·
HAVING
been wrong on the side of too much trust
than too much cynicism;
·
TO
HAVE believed the best and been wrong,
than to have believed the worst and been
right."
Oftentimes we think
of kindness in terms of good deeds; gentle
deeds – such as helping an older lady
across the street. Kindness, though, as
seen here is much much more than that.
Kindness is as much an attitude of heart
as it is anything else. It is an attitude
that governs our actions. Just as white
covers snow and green covers grass, so it
is that kindness covers the words and
actions of those who have put on Christ.
Jeremiah 9:24 says
of the Lord, “But let him who boasts
boast about this: that he understands and
knows me, that I am the LORD, who
exercises kindness,
justice and righteousness on earth, for in
these I delight, declares the LORD.”
What do you delight in
this morning? If you are like God, then
you delight in kindness, justice and
righteousness. In short, you are a nice
person.
NEXT
THE APOSTLE PAUL TELLS US TO PUT ON
COMPASSION
One of the sad facts of
modern day American is that people of
today have forgotten how to feel.
·
They
are fast becoming desensitized!
·
They
are becoming emotional icebergs.
·
Many
criminals show absolutely no twinge of
feeling or conscience.
Sad!
Not
so with the people of God. Psalm 103:2
says, “Praise the LORD, O my soul,
and forget not all his benefits.”
The
passage then continues on in verses 3-5 to
give certain benefits or virtues the Lord
passes on to His children. Notice:
1.
Who forgives all your sins and
2.
heals all your diseases,
3.
who redeems your life from the pit
and
4.
crowns you with love and
compassion,
5.
who satisfies your desires with
good things….”
Jesus
was certainly crowned with love and
compassion.
Again, remember His:
·
Feeding
the 5,000?
·
Crying
with the sorrowful at Lazarus' Tomb?
·
Opening
the eyes of the blind beggar?
·
Dying
on the Cross for a world of lost and dying
sinners?
·
Praying,
“Father,
forgive them for they do not know what
they are doing.”
To be honest, we can never
be truly Christ-like until “love your
neighbor as yourself” compassion
grips us -- compels us -- and drives us to
get involved in the healing of a hurting
mankind; until OUR words and actions are
crowned with God’s love and compassion.
Fully 75% of our
Lord's recorded ministry centered around
His ministering to the sick, the needy and
the hurting.
·
He
turned no one away.
·
He
healed everyone who came to Him.
·
Compassion
was His life-style!
If we have put on Christ,
it will be our life-style too.
Someone once wrote: "Sinners
can set themselves against:
·
the most eloquent preaching,
·
stubbornly resist all logic,
·
stay away from revival meetings,
·
and scorn all truth.
But true, heartfelt compassion on the part of the Christian releases a
power that in time proves
irresistible."
To bear this out, I
want to take you to a story found in Jerry
Cook's excellent book,
Love Acceptance and Forgiveness:
"A pastor in our town
whom I knew only slightly became involved
in adultery. As a result, his marriage
went on the rocks and his ministry was
destroyed. Since he was a strong Christian
leader in our area, this brother's fall
came with a resounding crash. His church
splintered into a dozen fragments and
hurting, confused people were scattered
all over the
city.
A
year and a half after all that happened, I
received a phone call at 7:30 AM one
Sunday. It was this former pastor. He
said, "Would you mind if my wife and
I came to church this morning?"
I
said, "Why would you even call and
ask that question? Of course we wouldn't
mind."
"Well,"
he said, "you know this is my second
wife and I am divorced from the first.
Are you aware of this?"
I
said, "Sure, I'm aware of it."
"Well,"
he said, "I'll tell you Jerry, we've
been trying for eight months now to find a
place to worship. The last time we tried
was a month ago. That morning we were
asked from the pulpit to leave. We've been
met at the door of other churches by
pastors who heard that my wife and I were
coming. They asked us not to come in, said
we would cause too much trouble. Still
others have heard that we might show up
and called in advance to ask us please
not to come."
He
said, "Frankly, I don't think we
could handle it again if we were to come
and be an embarrassment to you and be
asked to leave. I just don't know what
would happen; my wife is close to a
nervous breakdown." By now he was
weeping. "I know that you have video
for overflow crowds," he said.
"If you want, you can put us in a
room where no one will see us and let us
watch the service."
I
said, "Listen, you be there and I'll
welcome you at the door." He came
with his wife and their little baby. They
came late and sat in the back. The compounding
thing was that many of the people who had
been hurt through his fall were now a part
of our congregation. Nevertheless, we extended
fellowship to that man and the Lord did
a cleansing and a healing. We shed so
many tears together. I never will forget
how he grabbed me and buried his head on
my shoulder, a man 15 to 20 years my senior.
He wept like a baby and held tome like a
drowning man. He said, "Jerry, can
you love me? I've spent my life loving
people but I need someone to love me
now."
In
the weeks and months that followed, he met
with our elders regularly and wept his way
back to God through a most intense,
sometimes utterly tearing repentance. If
ever in my entire life I've seen godly
sorrow for sin, I saw it in that man. He
literally fell on the floor before our
elders, grabbed their feet and implored
them, "Brothers, can you ever forgive
me?"
God
healed that man and restored him to wholeness.
I say to you, that brother was restored
only because God enabled us to love and
accept and forgive him.
Love, acceptance, forgiveness --
those three things are absolutely
essential to any ministry that will consistently
bring people to maturity and
wholeness."
That is a story of
compassion in action.
Several years ago I
had a similar experience take place in my
church. This time though, it was a
pastor’s wife who had fallen. Eventually
she decided it was time to start back to
church. Some didn’t want her. She
didn’t feel comfortable at
others. One day she showed up at my
office. She ended up staying for over
three hours. She came another time and
again she was there for over three hours.
She went through a process of repentance
that I have rarely if ever seen. She not
only asked God for forgiveness, she begged
Him. She didn’t have to be convinced
that her actions had offended a holy God,
she knew it and oh was she sorry. Finally
she found the peace that her soul longed
for. God forgave her loved her back to a
place of wholeness.
God specializes in
reclamation projects like these two that I
have told you about this morning.
You see, he would never approve of
a sign over our door that read, “Sinners
not welcome.” “Adulterers not
wanted.” “Gays, go away.” While we
might hate the sin, the sinner must never
doubt our love for him or her or our
commitment to him or her. Compassion not
only makes us feel the sinners lostness
and pain, it also compels us to try to do
something to remedy it!
Let's look at another such
account.
Read with me John 8:3-11:
“The teachers of the law and the
Pharisees brought in a woman caught in
adultery. They made her stand before the
group and said to Jesus, ‘Teacher, this
woman was caught in the act of adultery.
In the Law Moses commanded us to stone
such women. Now what do you say?’ Jesus
bent down and started to write on the
ground with his finger. When they kept
on questioning him, he straightened up and
said to them, ‘If any one of you is
without sin, let him be the first to throw
a stone a her.’ Again he stooped down
and wrote on the ground.
At
this, those who heard began to go away one
at a time, the older ones first, until
only Jesus was left, with the woman still
standing there. Jesus straightened up and
asked her, ‘Woman, where are they? Has
no one condemned you?’
‘No
one, sir,’ she said.
‘Then
neither do I condemn you,’ ‘Go now and
leave your life of sin.’”
The religious leaders of
that day thought the woman needed to be
killed. That would settle matters once and
for all: Kill her! Stone her! Jesus
though, had compassion on her and restored
her.
Don't you love that story?
I do.
As a forgiven sinner, as a
minister of the Gospel, as one who claims
to be Christ-like, I need it. I need to
hear it repeated every so often.
Someone found a
handwritten note in Bob Pierce’s Bible
after he died. Bob was the founder of
“World Vision”. The note read: "Let
my heart be broken with the things that
break the heart of God."
Can you pray that
prayer? Is that your honest and sincere
desire?
Is it mine?
·
Do
we really feel with the adulterer?
·
The
down and outer?
·
The
person dying of cancer?
·
The
child who knows nothing but cruel
rejection?
·
Are
our hearts truly broken with the things
that wound the heart of God?
Have WE put on
compassion?
Several years ago a
study was made of some Princeton Divinity
School students in order to determine how
closely they followed the teachings of
Jesus in the Parable of the Good
Samaritan. Each student was sent across
campus to give an impromptu speech. Some
were actually told that their speech would
have to be on that very Parable.
Along the way an actor
staged a heart attack in direct sight of
the students. In a majority of the cases
the scholars just walked by the gentleman.
In one case a student -- remember, he was
on his way to give a talk on the Good
Samaritan -- literally had to step over
the man feigning the attack in order to
get to his meeting.
Think about it!
I
conclude
with
Philippians 2:5-8,
“Your attitude should be the same as
that of Christ Jesus: Who, being in very
nature God, did not consider equality with
God something to be grasped, but made
himself nothing, taking the very nature of
a servant, being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man, he
humbled himself and became obedient to
death -- even death on a cross!”
To be like Christ, to have
His same mindset, Paul tells us to PUT ON
KINDNESS; PUT ON COMPASSION.
Do it.
·
Daily,
·
conscientiously,
·
prayerfully,
·
and
purposefully.
You
see, Jesus died for people. He cared more
about mankind than He did for anything
else in the whole of the universe.
·
Jesus
didn't die to free Willy,
·
He
didn't give His life on the Cross to save
old-growth timber,
·
He
didn't go through His agony because of the
spotted owl.
NO! God gave His Son,
Jesus gave His life, for men and women,
boys and girls, for people!
