Cigarette packages come with a warning, but do people heed the caution? Jesus has also warned us of deadly things in our lives. Do we ignore Him, too?

June 24, 2009

Makarios Living – Loving Your Brothers and Sisters

A president signs a bill imposing stricter regulations on tobacco companies. You have to wonder if things like stronger warnings on the package really make a difference.
Welcome to Haven Today. I’m Charles Morris telling the great story that’s all about Jesus with a program called “Makarios Living – Loving Your Brothers and Sisters”. Jesus warned us about what is killing us but do we treat his warning like the warning on a cigarette package? Do we take heed or do we ignore? The President of the United States knows how hard it is to quit. He struggles still with a cigarette addiction that started when he was a teenager. Right now nearly a fourth of all young people in America smoke. That little warning on side of the package doesn’t seem to carry much weight. It’s too easy to ignore. I wonder if sometimes we treat the words of Jesus that same way. We just don’t pay enough attention. In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus warned us about the things we do that are killing us, things that are seriously full of death. And he not only warned us, he commanded us to stop doing them, but do we listen? Do we take him seriously? Have we tried to quit? Are we able to love our brothers and sisters in the way that Jesus loves us.

Song:
Performed by: Babbie Mason

Babbie Mason with a song I love and haven’t heard in a little while as we’re here on a Haven Today called “Makarios Living – Loving Your Brothers and Sisters”. Let’s just start in with the word of the Lord, from the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5:21-26,
“Have you heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘Do not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment’?” Again this is Jesus talking to us, “But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to a brother, ‘Raca,’ is answerable to the court. And anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell.”

Now that’s the word of the Lord Jesus Christ in Matthew 5. Not a little warning like that on a pack of cigarettes but a warning issued as a command, from the Lord to his people. OK Lord, I’m listening. Help me to understand what it is you’re saying to me and help me to put this into practice in my life today. I think there are 2 questions we need to ask as we hear these words of Jesus. One is, what is he saying and how do we put it into practice? So first, what is Jesus saying? He starts by saying that he has full authority to give us these commands. This teaching is part of the Sermon on the Mount and the whole sermon is spoken with great authority. Jesus always amazed the crowds because he spoke not as the teachers of the law but as one having authority, we’re told. You know, the Postmodern ear just doesn’t like to hear authoritative teaching. Anyone under 40 or so just automatically tunes it out and partly for good reason. Too many authorities have proven themselves to be false. Why listen to them anymore. But Jesus is no fallible authority. This is our Creator. This is God speaking words of life to us. We need to hear the authority he claims for himself and let his words have weight in how we live our everyday lives. “You have heard it said in the past but I say to you,” that little word “I” should carry all the weight of the universe, “I, the Lord am speaking to you. I have words to say to you.” Jesus is talking about the law and the prophets when he says, “You have heard it said in the past.” He’s talking about the word of God when he says, “Thou shalt not murder.” “That’s what you heard in the past but I, Jesus say to you.” Jesus says he didn’t come to do away with the law but to fulfill it, to make it full, to flesh it out. He does this with the authority of God himself. “I say to you.” He starts by establishing his authority. And then he explains that the command not to murder is actually much closer to home than most of us think. I haven’t murdered anyone lately, have you? But Jesus says that the things that we do every day, as naturally as breathing, they are like murder and they are subject to God’s judgment. The things we do without even thinking, without even noticing are that serious, as serious as murder. That’s what Jesus wants us to hear. Lord, would you help us to hear it! So what are they? Being angry with your brother or your sister, saying, “Raca” he says, to your brother, “You fool!” the positive way that Jesus puts it is, “Love your brother,” and that of course includes sisters. Love one another. But here Jesus is telling us what it means to not love our brother or sister. He is talking not just about our biological family but about our spiritual family, about other believers, our true brothers and sisters. What does it mean to not love them? He says it means carrying around bitter feelings of anger, holding onto resentments. It means treating others with contempt, looking down on them, saying unkind words to them and about them. God hates murder. He hates the contempt we have for one another. He hates it when we are angry with one another. It would be more accurate to translate this, “Whoever is being angry, whoever is carrying anger, whoever is remaining angry.” There’s an ongoing element to it. “Whoever is nursing a grudge,” we do it all the time without even thinking a thing about it don’t we? We hold on to our resentments and there’s no, “without a cause,” in the oldest texts even though you’ll find that in some English translations today. Jesus did not say, “Whoever is angry with his brothers without a cause,” that would nullify the whole thing because there is always a cause. No, Jesus simply said whoever is staying angry with his brother or sister is the same as murder. Even if we act civil, even if we put on a nice face, Jesus is telling us to examine our hearts and look at what’s there. One way we recognize what’s in our hearts is by listening to the words that we say even in our minds, as well as those words spoken out loud to others and sometimes even to the person themselves. Words like “raca”, raca means something like fool or stupid. I think we do this more often than we think. We just feel it. It’s a superiority that allows us to look down on others as if they just don’t get it and of course we think they do get it. The second word is “fool”. It’s like saying, “You jerk!” It’s a way of dismissing someone, brushing them aside with contempt. It’s labeling a brother or sister in a way that makes them worthless. Again, I think we do this more often than we realize. It’s there in our hearts even if we don’t say it. We imply it in the way that we talk about people. We do it simply by disregarding them because we have labeled them as fools or jerks, not worth considering. Jesus is telling us to stop doing this. Stop it now.

The second question I mentioned is how do we put what he’s saying into practice? There’s only one answer to that and the answer is grace. If we pull back and look at the bigger context of this command what we see is that Jesus started his Sermon on the Mount with great promises of blessing. Makarios, it’s the Greek word for blessing and at the beginning of his sermon Jesus promised great blessings on us if we simply admit that we’re weak. Blessed are the poor in spirit, the needy, those who don’t have the resources in themselves to obey his commands. If we freely confess that we need help to live this way he will bless us. That’s his promise. Jesus will pour out his blessing on us. He will empower and change us. He will fill us with a rich life of love that comes from above. “Blessed are those who mourn,” if we mourn for our sin, if we long to be delivered he will bless us. We can’t change ourselves but he can change us. ”Blesses are the meek,” if we repent of our prideful resentments and assessments and humble ourselves, if we lay down our arms and ask Jesus to help he will help us. Jesus said he didn’t come to do away with the law, he came to fulfill it and he fulfilled it with his own life. He lived out what it means to love and he did it for us. He fulfilled the law in himself. But you and I need to realize that he also sent his Spirit to fulfill the law in us. Romans 8:3 and 4,

For what the law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did, sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin. He condemned sin in the flesh so that the requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who did not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.

Isn’t that hopeful? Isn’t that wonderful? Jesus is not like the law. He took the condemnation we deserve for breaking the law and then he sent his Spirit to fulfill the law in us. It’s always good to have an example of how these things work and Florence Alshorn is a lovely example. We’ve done a number of days this summer on Christians you should know and Florence is one of them. Florence arrived as a missionary in Uganda in 1920 a young, unmarried English woman full of zeal for the Lord. She expected culture shock. She expected the climate to be a hard adjustment. She was prepared for primitive living conditions but she wasn’t ready for her fellow missionary. When Florence arrived she was told by this woman that the house they shared was divided down the middle by an imaginary line. Florence was never to trespass on the other woman’s side or to touch her things. She didn’t want to talk to her. She didn’t want to have anything to do with her. You can imagine Florence was very disappointed but she set to work teaching the young women of Uganda about Jesus and his love and she tried to ignore the situation she was living in. But she couldn’t. She was plagued by feelings towards this other missionary. She resented her. She was bitter towards her. She just could not love her. Finally she told her students sadly, “I’m going to leave.” One of them came to her in tears, “Everyone always leaves us. You teach us that Jesus saves but so far we haven’t seen him save this situation.” What a blow that was! It hit her like a ton of bricks. It brought her to a state of deep repentance. Here is a quote from the diary that she kept, “Repentance is not a mere feeling of sorrow or contrition for an act of wrong doing. Repentance is contrition for what we are in our fundamental beings, that we are wrong in our deepest roots because our interior government is by self and not by God.” Frances admitted her sin with contrition, a word we don’t use much today which just means “sorrow”. She stopped justifying her attitude and admitted with sorrow that in her fundamental being she was being controlled by self and not by God. It didn’t matter what the other woman was doing. “Blessed are those who mourn.” And then she started reading 1 Corinthians, the love chapter, 13. Every day she prayed for change. She read daily for one year, “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy. It does not boast. It is not proud. It does not dishonor others. It is not self-seeking. It is not easily angered. It keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects. Always trusts. Always hopes. Always perseveres. Love never fails.” During that year she started to change on a very fundamental level. She had a break through, a realization that it really didn’t matter what happened to her, what mattered was the Lord and the other person. What mattered was whether the Lord was glorified in her life and what mattered was the other person, the other missionary who didn’t want anything to do with her. She began to notice what this other woman liked. She gave her a book she thought that the other missionary would enjoy. She did little things for her and eventually the woman’s heart began to melt. The barrier came down and they became friends and together they brought the Gospel to those around them. “Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the Kingdom of God.” “Makarios Living – Loving Your Brothers and Sisters”.


Song:
Performed by: Caroline Arends

A powerful song sung by Caroline Arends that puts the word of the Lord to practice in our hearts “They’ll know we are Christians by our love.” Haven Today and “Makarios Living – Loving your Brothers and Sisters
‘. Well, the past couple of days we’ve had Steve Ragsdale on with us and we’ve shared some music from his brand new album called “Simply Timeless”. Steve, sometimes it’s important to say back to Jesus what he means to us and I also know we can’t say enough back to him.
SR: Amen. There’s something precious about being able to verbalize our love for the Lord and one of the things I appreciate about some of these old hymns is that they do it in such a simple and yet heartfelt way like the song “My Jesus I Love Thee”. And then it leads into “Great is Thy Faithfulness” which is really Rachel and my probably all time favorite hymn. And it’s kind of been the theme of our life, is God’s faithfulness in our lives.
CM: Through thick and thin, right?
SR: Through thick and thin, through every challenge, God is faithful.
CM: We’ve been talking a lot the last many weeks, the last many months about the great recession we’re going through right now. I think every Christian needs to have that confidence, that safety net even though it looks like it’s falling apart around us it’s not if we’re in Christ Jesus.
SR: Amen. He’s our rock as you mentioned earlier and he’s our source of strength through whatever we go through. We’ve seen God’s hand in our lives and the lives of our friends and family in times of great need and we’ve seen him there proving himself so many times.

Song: Great is Thy Faithfulness/My Jesus I Love Thee Medley
Performed by: Steve Ragsdale

Steve Ragsdale and a medley from his brand new album “Simply Timeless: Classic hymns and songs of the church”, that’s “Great is Thy Faithfulness” and “My Jesus I Love Thee”. Thanks Steve for sharing with us from your brand new album that we’ve just been sharing selections from this week. You can listen to some audio samples of all the music on Steve’s new album “Simply Timeless” just by going to haventoday.org, that’s h.a.v.e.n.t.o.d.a.y, haventoday.org. Or you can call us and make your gift to the ministry and we’ll get a copy out to you right away. Our toll free telephone number in North America is 1-800-654-2836. Let us know the station you’re listening to when you get in touch. I also shared the story of a missionary to Uganda from many decades ago, a Christian you should know. And we have the brand new book still by Warren Weirsbe, “50 People Every Christian Should Know: Learning from spiritual giants of the faith”. If you want to hear how some of God’s people before you have learned how to love others, to hear how the Spirit has moved in their lives, people like Charles Spurgeon and Amy Carmichael and Jonathan Edwards and James Hudson Tailor and Fanny Crosby and A.W. Tozer, those and many more stories are in this brand new book “50 People Every Christian Should Know”. Read more about it there on haventoday.org. Give us a call for a copy of the book at 1-800-654-2836 and thank you for everyone who gives above and beyond the suggested gift amount. We are fully into summer now and that means people go on vacations and sometimes when they go on a holiday they don’t always remember to do what they intended to do. Well before you leave on a vacation this summer could you help us? Could you support Haven Ministries to keep telling the great story of Jesus to others? Thanks for doing that.
I’m Charles Morris. Would you come back again tomorrow when again we’ll still be practicing blessed living, “Makarios Living” in light of the good news that’s all about Jesus here on Haven Today.