Holiness equals Perfect Love
The Beauty of Holiness Series
43 "You have heard that the law of Moses says, ’Love your neighbor’ and hate your enemy. 44 But I say, love your enemies! Pray for those who persecute you! 45 In that way, you will be acting as true children of your Father in heaven. For he gives his sunlight to both the evil and the good, and he sends rain on the just and on the unjust, too. 46 If you love only those who love you, what good is that? Even corrupt tax collectors do that much. 47 If you are kind only to your friends, how are you different from anyone else? Even pagans do that. 48 But you are to be perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect. (TLB)
INTRO:
It is time for the NFL draft, and NFL teams are about to spend millions of dollars on unknown commodities called college players. Some of them pan out and many don’t. In order to narrow the risk with so much money at stake they are now looking at the character of the players. They want some who won’t embarrass the organization or cost them a lot of money because of on or off the field episodes. Like the Bengals who had like nine players arrested one year, or Pacman Jones and his strip club fiascos, or Michal Vick’s dogfighting. To find out the character they want to know if he has been in trouble with the law, or with coaches or fellow players. Does he have a drinking or drug problem, or gambling addiction. They would never say it or even realize it, but they are looking for holy men of God. Where else do you get good character guys? Holiness is attractive but they don’t want to hear about God, Jesus or religion. They want good guys, but not God’s guys so much. Like a college friend who married another college preacher friend who was explaining to another friend why she divorced three years ago after over 20 years of marriage. “Mark is a good guy, but he is not for me...” Then goes on to moan that there arent any good guys out there. I think she was saying that she wanted a good guy who wasn’t a Godly guy. It’s Funny how attractive holiness is, but we want it without God.
Sermon in a Nutshell: Let me make a provocative statement.
"If you don’t love everyone you are not Entirely Sanctified, and maybe not saved."
Every Christian Church believes this is a desirable goal, but only the holiness churches believe it is achievable because of God sanctifying power.
-In v.48 Jesus said to be perfect just like Dad. What did He mean by that? In the language of the NT, perfect does not mean flawless or attaining perfection. It means being mature in a moral sense. It often carries the idea of being complete. God wants us to be complete in our character, lacking nothing. He wants us to be complete in our ability to give and receive love. If we only love those who love us, then the love of God is incomplete in us. Incomplete love shows that we have not received God’s love to the extent that it has changed us and made us like Him. So Jesus is really talking about the way we love others. Here is the main thought I’d like to examine today:
Prop: We can only love perfectly when we have been changed by God’s perfect love.
TS: Let’s take a look at 3 thoughts on perfect love that will help us get a sense of what God is calling us to.
I. The Twisting of Perfect Love
Love Proposes Marriage p16 Hermiz
Love is a four letter word with a lot of meanings. You may have heard of about the young man who was proposing to his girlfriend and started by saying, “ I’m not rich and I don’t have a hot sports car or a fancy boat like Jerome, But I do love you.” His girlfriend replied, “Well, I love you too, but tell me a little more about Jerome.”
Bible Love defined -
Phileo - Friendship - Strong emotion attached to it. Can’t be commanded -you have to feel it.
Eros - Sexual Love -Erotic
Agape -God’s kind, not primarily an emotional kind, but rather a volitional (willful) -spiritual
1 Cor. 13: Love chapter has all to do with acting not with feeling.
43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’”
-In Matthew 5, Jesus has been fulfilling the Old Testament by bringing out its deeper meaning. He does it again here in verse 43: He says "You have heard that it was said, "Love your neighbor and hate your enemy."
This love seeks to treat people as Jesus would weather they deserved it or not. And whether we feel like it or not.
We are told to treat others as we want to be treated that is love. (The Golden Rule)
Here Jesus goes further, and tells us to even love (treat well) our enemies.
-This does not mean we will feel warm and fuzzy about them, but through the power of the Spirit we can forgive them “seventy times seven” (18:22), turn the other cheek (5:39), and go the second mile (5:41).
- We can willfully refuse to seek revenge.
-We can seek the highest good for them.
-We can be sensitive to their needs as we are to our own.
-We can choose only to share good things about them to others. Not gossip.
-We can choose to believe the best about them, as we want others to do for us.(1 Cor. 13:)
-We will be loving those we don’t even like very well. We may not like their personality, temperament, lifestyle, habits, or the things they say and do, but by God’s grace it is possible to treat them right. To their back as well as when they are present.
Love is patient and kind. Sometimes we need to be careful what we say and learn to think on our feet to say positive things about people. The story is told about a 6’ 10 “ Texan who walked up to the counter at McDonalds, slammed down his big fist and said to the girl behind the counter, “I want half a Big Mac.” She said, “What?” He said again, “I want half a Big Mac and I want it now!”
Not being sure what to do, she said, “Excuse me for a minute.” And she headed back to her manager without realizing that the man was following right behind her.
She got back to the manager and said, “There’s a big klutz out there who is dumber than lead and he has ordered half a Big Mac.” And just then she suddenly realized the 6’ 10” Texan was standing right behind her. She quickly added: “And this gentleman wants the other half.”
The part about loving your neighbor is in the Old Testament. Leviticus 19:18 says "do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one of your people, but love your neighbor as yourself" [or who is like yourself]. The rabbis taught that this verse only applies to loving other Jewish people. Therefore if a non-Jewish person didn’t treat you well, then it was okay to hate that person because he wasn’t Jewish! Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.
- Every human being was made in the image of God. It may be hard to see God’s image in some people, but it is there, even if it is being covered up by other things. We should love our neighbor because he or she is just like us – made in God’s image. There may be a lot of differences between you and your neighbor, but one thing you share is the image of God.
-Unfortunately, many of the Jews had misinterpreted this verse to mean that they were only required to love fellow Jews who were like them. You can find these words written in the Mishnah: “A Jew sees a Gentile fall into the sea, let him by no means lift him
out; for it is written, Thou shalt not rise up against the blood of thy neighbor:-but this is not thy neighbor” (Mishneh Torah, Laws of Murder 4:11). They understood their neighbor to be only a Jew; one who was of the same blood and religion as themselves.
-One day when Jesus reiterated this command to love your neighbor who is like you, someone asked, “And who is my neighbor?” Jesus then told the story of the Good Samaritan. From that story we find that we should be a neighbor to anyone in need, regardless of their race, religion, or personal hygiene.
-It is pretty easy to get down on the Jews for twisting God’s words about love. But we would be amiss not to take a look at ourselves. What kinds of people do we excuse ourselves from loving? If someone mistreats us do we become bitter and hateful toward them and say that turnabout is fair play? If someone speaks evil of us do we start tearing them down with our words? As Jesus said, there is no reward for that kind of twisted love. Do we consider certain people beneath us and not worthy of the effort to even acknowledge them?
Well, we’re getting a sense of what perfect love is not like. Now let’s take a look at the example of what perfect love is like.
The Next Motel Room p19 Holiness -Hermiz
Dr Tom Hermiz in his book on Holiness tells of being in a motel room in columbus Ohio before preaching three times on Sunday at a missionary conference. The people in the next room had a loud party, and at 1pm he called the front desk, and they called the room. But it was after 3pm before they quieted down and he got to sleep. At 4:45 his alarm went off. He said he was tempted to turn on the TV and make lots of noise, but that wouldn’t be loving them like Jesus. So he was quiet and even closed the door quietly when he left, although he was tempted to slam it. He said I felt good in my soul, and God gave me the ability to preach without any tiredness at all.
II. The Example of Perfect Love
45 …”your Father in heaven … causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.”
-What if God was only nice to those who were nice to Him? Think of how many mean and twisted things a powerful God could do to those who rubbed Him the wrong way! In fact, all He would have to do is let everybody have what they want.
In the movie, Bruce Almighty, God decides to let a man named Bruce be God for a little while. Bruce can’t keep up with all the prayer requests, so he sets up an email database to get himself organized. He gets flooded with millions of prayer requests, and in his effort to catch up he hits Reply to All, and says YES to what everyone has asked. What a mess! The economy goes crazy. Thousands of people win the lottery, but get only a few dollars a piece because there are so many winners. Crime skyrockets, riots break out – all because people got what they thought they wanted.
-Aren’t you glad God cares enough about us not to give us everything we ask for? Instead, this verse tells us that He gives sunshine and rain (good things) to those who are right with Him and to those who are not. There is no deserving God’s love! He loves us perfectly before we ever do anything worthwhile for Him.
1 John 4:10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.
“The love of God is greater far Than tongue or pen can ever tell, It goes beyond the highest star and reaches to the lowest hell; The guilty pair, bowed down with care, God gave His Son to win; His erring child He reconciled And pardoned from his sin.”
“Could we with ink the ocean fill And were the skies of parchment made, We’re every stalk on earth a quill And every scribe by trade, To write the love of God above Would drain the ocean dry, Nor could the scroll contain the whole To stretched from sky to sky.”
“O love of God, how rich and pure! How measureless and strong! It shall forever more endure – The saints’ and angels song.” Frederick M Lehman
-So God Himself is the example of perfect love. It is when we receive His grace and forgiveness into our own lives that His love begins to flow through us and out to others who need it so desperately. That leads us to the final point…
III. The Call to Perfect Love
44 ”But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. 48 Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
-Corrie Ten Boom shares this true story in her book, The Hiding Place: It was a church service in Munich that I saw him, the man who had stood guard at the shower room door in the processing center at Ravensbruck. He was the first of our actual jailers that I had seen since that time. And suddenly it was all there -- the roomful of mocking men, the heaps of clothing, Betsie’s pain-blanched face. He came up to me as the church was emptying, beaming and bowing. "How grateful I am for your message, Fraulein," he said. "To think that, as you say, He has washed my sins away!" His hand was thrust out to shake mine. And I, who had preached so often to the people in Bloemendaal the need to forgive, kept my hand at my side. Even as the angry, vengeful thoughts boiled through me, I saw the sin of them. Jesus Christ had died for this man; was I going to ask for more? Lord Jesus, I prayed, forgive me and help me to forgive him. I tried to smile, I struggled to raise my hand. I could not. I felt nothing, not the slightest spark of warmth or charity. And so again I breathed a silent prayer. Jesus, I cannot forgive him. Give me Your forgiveness. As I took his hand the most incredible thing happened. From my shoulder along my arm and through my hand a current seemed to pass from me to him, while into my heart sprang a love for this stranger that almost overwhelmed me. And so I discovered that it is not on our forgiveness any more than on our goodness that the world’s healing hinges, but on His. When He tells us to love our enemies, He gives, along with the command, the love itself.
-See, Jesus is calling us to show some Family Resemblance. He is calling us to love the way He loves (and the way Dad does), but He doesn’t expect us to do it ourselves. He is the source of perfect love. We cannot produce it ourselves.
Our Love is to define us 1 John 3:14 We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love our brothers. Anyone who does not love remains in death.
1 John 4:8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.
1 John 4:20 If anyone says, "I love God," yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen.
Our Love is our Proof -1 John 4:12
No man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us.
Biblical Perfection or Perfect Love is not faultlessness but Blamelessness. It is perfection of heart, not of “head” or “hand”. It relates to intention (or motives), not intelligence; to love not life (action); to purity not performance. It has to do with deliverance from sin, not from ignorance, mistakes, infirmities, temptations, or constant need for watchfulness and prayer.”
(From Exploring Christian Holiness, vol. 1, Purkiser, page 85)
My brothers and I collected Baseball cards as kids and we would play with them. How do you "play" with baseball cards? We would sort through them, divide them into teams, build our own all star team, and sort out the duplicates for trading in school the next day. My brother was a BIG collector and, being younger, would tell me I could play with them but not these "special" cards that he had. One day I decided to surprise my older brother by putting all his "special" cards into a three ring binder for him. So I carefully cut out the heads of the players from the card and glued them to lined paper with holes punched in the sides and presented the binder to my brother as a gift. I still can see his face as I showed him what I had done with his "special" or HOLY items. I particularly thought the Hank Aaron rookie card looked good glued to the cheap lined paper. I think it is going on ebay right now for over $100,000. His motives were from perfect love, but his performance would not have made his brother feel loved, would it?
(Author unknown, sermon central)
Conclusion: How are you doing with God’s perfect love? Have you experienced it in your life? How is it working for you? Has it begun to flow through you to others yet? That’s what God wants. The love doesn’t stop here. It keeps flowing downward so that it reaches those who have been beaten down by life, beaten down by the world, and in some cases, beaten down by religious people. God’s perfect love that restores is the answer they’ve been looking for, but they haven’t seen it in action. Folks, it is our job and calling to show God’s perfect love. But again, we can only show and tell what we’ve seen and heard and experienced for ourselves.
-Will you let God love you today? Will you take down your defenses and let His powerful love penetrate your heart? It will mess you up! It will change you! His love won’t allow you to stay the same – Thank God! His love can take a heart of stone and turn it into a heart of flesh. He will breathe life into you that you never thought was possible. That’s the power of His love!
-If you need this today, would you be willing to come and ask for prayer? I can’t change anyone’s heart, but I can show you God’s love and that can change you.
-Let God speak to your heart and mind as we close this time in prayer.
Illustration p22 “Holiness” Tom Hermiz
There was once a missionary on furlough with her husband and family after an unusually tiring stint of service. She had been looking forward to this time with great anticipation. For the first time she was going to have a place of her own, a new, large townhouse-styled apartment with a patio. She is very creative and made the patio the focus of her decoration. After a few months some new neighbors moved in. The best word to describe them would be coarse. There was loud music day and night along with a constant flow of obscenities. They urinated in the front yard in broad daylight. They totally disrupted her peace. She could see nothing good in them. She asked the Lord to help her be more loving. All she got back from the neighbors was disgust and rejection. The crisis came when she returned home to discover that her neighbors’ children had sprayed orange paint all over her beautiful patio—the walls, the floors—everything! She was distraught and furious. She tried to pray but found herself crying out, “I cannot love them. I hate them!” Knowing she had to deal with the sin in her heart, she began to converse with the Lord in her inner being, and a Scripture came to mind: Colossians 3:14 [14]And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. (ESV) In her heart she questioned, “Lord, how do I put on love?” The only way she could picture it was like putting on a coat. So that is what she determined to do—she chose to wrap herself in the love of God! As a result she began to experience a deeper life of Christ within her. She made a list of what she would do if she really loved her exasperating neighbors, then did what she had listed. She baked cookies, she offered to baby-sit for free, she invited the mother over for coffee—and the most beautiful thing happened! She began to know and understand them. She began to see that they were living under tremendous pressures. She began to love her “enemies.” She did good to them. She lent to them without expecting anything back. The day came when they moved—and she wept! An unnatural, unconventional love had captured her heart—a supernatural love—the love of Jesus. (Hughes, R. K. (1998). Luke : That you may know the truth. Preaching the Word (223). Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books.)
Love is patient and kind. Sometimes we need to be careful what we say and learn to think on our feet to say positive things about people. The story is told about a 6’ 10 “ Texan who walked up to the counter at McDonalds, slammed down his big fist and said to the girl behind the counter, “I want half a Big Mac.” She said, “What?” He said again, “I want half a Big Mac and I want it now!”
Not being sure what to do, she said, “Excuse me for a minute.” And she headed back to her manager without realizing that the man was following right behind her.
She got back to the manager and said, “There’s a big klutz out there who is dumber than lead and he has ordered half a Big Mac.” And just then she suddenly realized the 6’ 10” Texan was standing right behind her. She quickly added: “And this gentleman wants the other half.”
Love is much more than a feeling. Love is a commitment. Pop songs talk about love as a feeling. “I can’t help falling in love with you.” “You’ve lost that loving feeling.” “I love you. Please tell me your name.”
In the comic strip Peanuts, Linus says to Charlie Brown, “She was so cute. I used to see her in Sunday school every week. I would to just sit there and stare at her, and sometimes she’d smile at me. Now I hear she has switched to another church.” Charlie Brown responded, “That’ll change your theology in a hurry!”
Love is a commitment; We can choose to love. Love is a choice.
(adapted from Perfect Love by Mark Opperman)
