Our Purpose: To Love All Those Who Enter Our Doors
Luke 10;25-37 John 13:1-20
I want you to hold the following people inside your head as I describe them.
He found out that the cancer he thought was gone had come back and the doctors didn’t know what should the next step should be. This time it was far more serious.
This couple were having a terrible time in their marriage, they could barely speak to each other, and if you could have listened to their last fight, your would know there was little hope for their marriage surviving.
She had been arrested so many times for prostitution and now with her cocaine habit, she could barely stay in control of her mind. She could switch personalities at the drop of a hat.
He was sleeping in a vacant building down the street, and he was hungry. You could tell by the scent of the smell traveling behind him, that he hadn’t taken a bath in a long time. She found out she was pregnant again, even though she swore it was not going to happen to her again. She’s confused and doesn’t know what to do.
The last thing she expected to have happened that week was that her husband would die unexpectedly, and all the plans they were making would come to an abrupt end. She’s wondering what do I do next.
He found out from his lawyer that he should expect to spend some time in jail at the sentencing that is coming up on Tuesday. He had already been out on probation on several other serious charges.
She didn’t want to be there, and she let it be known. Her language was fowl, and that outfit she had on was not appropriate. She was just daring you to say something about it.
We are in the final message in our series on our purpose statement. What do all these people have in common? New Life At Calvary. These are the people that we have claim to be part of our purpose.
Each time we I say, “I will love all those who enter our doors, and accept them in our midst we should examine our hearts.” Do we really want to accept in all these people and love all of them or just some of them? All of these people who enter our doors are not going to be easy to love and accept.
If you are sure that your love everybody already, one of the most humbling things you can do is to take a Life Connect class on what it means to love one another, or to take a class such as loving like Jesus. You discover very quickly how much you are missing the mark.
Is there anyone here like me who has one of those imaginary last nerves. It goes something like this, “You are about to get on my last nerve.”
Usually when we say that , the next prayer we need to offer is not for the other person even though we think they surely need it, but we should be praying for ourselves, because we are preparing to step outside of the will of God for our lives.
Do you want to here some really bad news. Jesus told us to love each other as he has loved us. This does not mean we are to simply like people and be nice to them.
Some people are under the false assumption, that if I leave you alone and haven’t done anything to hurt you, I have done all I need to do , to show you that I love you and accept you.
In order for us to grow in love, Jesus intentionally sends people that are going to get on our last nerve. Our last nerve is the place we either grow in Christ or fail in Christ.
When a very respectable teacher came up to Jesus to find out who it was he was obligated to love, Jesus went to the place of the man’s last nerve. He knew this guy had a problem thinking he was better than others and that he had a problem with racism.
Jesus chose to tell the man a story to let him answer his own question. He said a Jewish man was on his way to a place, when a group of robbers beat him, robbed him, stripped him of most his clothes and left him half dead. A little later a Jewish priest came by and when he saw the man, he crossed on the other side of the road and kept going.
Next a Levite, a Jewish temple worker, came by and crossed on the other side.
Finally a Samaritan came by, saw the man, went to his aid, bandaged his wounds, and took him on his donkey to an inn. He paid the inn keeper to give the man food and shelter and offered to pay all the man’s expenses on his way back through the town.
Now the Samaritans were a different race of people than the Jews. The Jews treated the Samaritans as a mongrel race and wanted nothing to do with them. The Samaritans in response didn’t think too highly of the Jews either.
Jesus puts a twist in the story when he asked the man, who was a neighbor to the man in need. This man never thought he would be commending a Samaritan’s behavior over that of a Jewish leader, but he has little choice. He couldn’t say, the Samaritan was the hero, but he did say the one who had helped the man.
The person talking to Jesus, knew that he would have never gone out of his way to help a Samaritan no matter how bad e was beaten. The animosity between the two people was very great.
This would be like an African American commending a person from the KKK, or a person from Israel commending someone from Hamas, or a Jew in a concentration camp commending a German soldier.
Jesus knew that most of us want to know who is suppose to love us. We will go into a place and declare those people were not that friendly. Jesus emphasizes who are we willing to love. How friendly did that group find us.
Love is willing to cut across racial, social, economic, political, sexual, and all other kinds of boundaries. Are we really ready to love all those who enter our doors and accept them into our midst? As Cleveland becomes more international, we are going to face issues we never faced before.
We asked the question in Life-Connect, what should be a response if a Muslim came into our church from an African country who had two wives and he wanted to give his life to Christ.
How should we treat him? The big issue was, how do we treat both of his wives, and what do we tell them is the Christian thing to do.
Jesus gives us an example of what love looks like when on the night of his arrest, he washes his disciples’ feet. The custom at the time, was to show hospitality to people by offering to wash the dust and dirt off their feet when they entered your home.
Now the person who was assigned the job of foot washing was the servant who had the lowest position in the household. It was customary for a person in a lower position to wash the feet of a person in a higher position, but never was the person in the higher position to wash the feet of a person in a lower position.
Jesus, the Son of God, full of the Spirit of God, takes on the position of a servant to begin to wash his disciples’ feet. What’s even added in this situation is the full knowledge that Jesus has about the feet he is beginning to wash. He humbles himself before a group of guys that should have been getting on his last nerve.
He knows that within the hour, Judas would be hooking up with the religious leaders in order to betray Jesus so that they could come and arrest him but he washed his feet. He knows that in a few more hours, the disciples would rather sleep than follow his request to pray, but he washes their feet.
He knows that all of them are going to forsake him, when he’s arrested, and he knows that his number one disciple is going to deny him three times yet he still washes their feet.
Jesus is telling us, when they get on your last nerve, humble yourself and walk in humility and choose to love them. It cost us to love each other. It really costs us ,to love all who enter who enter our doors and accept them in our midst.
What are some of the cost? It means coming to the church to serve, ready to wash the feet of those who enter. We come asking the question, what is best for others, not what is best for me.
Remember, we have all kinds of people that are entering our doors that we are to be ready to love. Remember too, that some of those people came to church with you. The ones you came in angry and upset with.
Are you going to humble yourself and choose to love them before you leave, after all they did come in our doors?
What about the person that somehow offended you last week, will you choose to love them when they enter our doors? We make the mistake of thinking we are only talking about guests when we quote “I will love all those who enter our doors and accept them in our midst.”
No the phrase is for all of us. “When Jesus said, a new commandment I give to you that you love one another as I have loved you” he’s talking about all of those people coming through the doors including you and me.
It’s the love we have for one another that will convince people that we are disciples of Jesus. How many of us are waiting for someone to come and love us rather than choosing to go forward in love? How many of us take the time to introduce ourselves to people we don’t know?
We don’t do it because of pride. “What if they reject me, what if they think something is wrong with me, what if they think I’m up to something. The real what if is, what if I take the first step in doing the foot washing or in being the good Samaritan, will it help me to grow in love.
We can’t let fear keep us from becoming the disciples we are called to be.
1 John 4:18 There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.
So where are we. We’re moving from love being a “if you are nice to me then I’ll be nice to you,” to a place of service and humility. We are going to make a conscious decision to do something that costs us something. It may mean that we may have to look small in what we are called to do.
When Jesus got ready to wash Peter’s feet, Peter could not stand for Jesus to look so small in his eyes. It did something inside of him to watch Jesus washing the other disciples’ feet.
Peter would not allow Jesus to humble himself in such a manner before him and boldly told Jesus, “You will never wash my feet.” What Peter didn’t understand was that if we can’t accept the lowliest act of service from Jesus, then we are thinking too highly of ourselves.
If Jesus could put himself beneath us, surely we should be able to put ourselves underneath each other.
If Peter could not accept to see Jesus voluntarily washing the feet of others, how could he accept Jesus being completed humiliated in the way he died on the cross. The same humility displayed in the foot washing, was the same humility displayed on the cross.
How many people reject a Savior because he looked too weak and too mild. “He saved others, let him save himself, if He is the Son of God. Let him come down from the cross so that we might believe.” Jesus looked to small in their eyes, someone to be ridiculed or pitied.
Jesus didn’t mind looking small in the eyes of others. But then, did he really mean it when he said, “I have done this as an example for you to follow. No servant is greater than his master, nor is the one sent, greater than the One who sent the person. Jesus says, “now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them.”
When we think of being blessed, we don’t usually think in terms of doing actions that make us look small in the eyes of others. The message of our day is that we are somebody of importance who deserves respect at all times.
Yes we do deserve respect, but Jesus is facing us to deal with the situation in which we do not get the respect we think we deserve. That’s where humility has the opportunity to shine. That’s when we discover how brave, courageous, and selfless we are called to be in order to be a follower of Christ. It takes for more courage to stand with Jesus than it does to lean with the world.
When we warn someone they are about to get on our last nerve that’s when the Holy Spirit wants to bring into focus what love truly is. Let’s take the love test and see if we have reached the goal that Christ is calling us to mature to in our individual lives. You can respond with a that’s me or a that’s not me yet ,either verbally or in your head.
4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.8 Love never fails.
Now just think of how many areas you free acknowledged that you still need some work on learning how to love.
Those living with us may have changed some of our responses if they had the chance. Now add all your shortcomings with the shortcomings of all the rest of us and you see that God is not through with us as a church.
New Life At Calvary is a place for us to get on each other’s last nerve so that when others see us, they can see Jesus in a way they have never seen him before. But the good news is that we can be proactive and choose to love others, before they even get the chance to get on our last nerve.
We are to intentionally look for opportunities to love one another with a greeting to let someone know we’re glad they are here, with a cleaning up of a spill as we take the role of a servant , with a listening ear to the hurt of others to be a comforter, or with a sacrificial gift to help someone in need.
Our purpose statement began with Love. It started with God. In response to God’s Love. Our first declaration as a purpose was to love others.
Everything else was really an expanding on the idea of what it means to love others. We get to the final sentence and we find ourselves once again declaring, I will love all those who enter our doors and accept them in our midst.
Saints if we could be so committed to Jesus, that everything else comes after Jesus, we could show this world a radically different kind of love. Jesus knew that we had the capacity to love. He just wanted us to refocus where we were sending it all.
He said, “love your neighbor as you love yourself.” We know what we want for ourselves. Jesus is saying, choose to pour that out on those around you.
Be a little less self oriented and open your eyes to the situations God has placed you in. Make up your mind to extend grace to more people, especially those who don’t deserve it.
How many people will you choose to introduce yourself to today, or for the coming month or year? Will you allow our purpose statement to become alive in you, so that Jesus can come alive in others.
We do a lot of good things for people all over the world. But if we are not reaching them in such a way to change their hearts for Christ, then we still have some more loving to do.
I want people to say of our church, that’s the place I came to know Jesus Christ as my lord and Savior. They really did love me when I entered their doors and they accepted me in their midst.
We have one message that we need to get to the world and that is this, John 3:16-18 (NIV2011) 16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.
18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.
