Living God’s Love, Part 2 -- "The Stranger in Your Gates"
Living God’s Love
(The Stranger in Your Gates)
Part II
Scheduled for October 30, 2021
Shared in Class November 13, 2021
The late Charles Colson often asked, “What is Christianity?” He said about half of those he asked responded with, “A relationship with Jesus.” Would you agree? What does that relationship look like?
Colson went on and answered his question this way,
“That is wrong. The gospel cannot be merely a private transaction. God didn’t break through history, through time and space, to come as a babe, be incarnated, and suffer on the cross just so you can come to him and say, ‘Oh, I accept Jesus and now I can live happily ever after.’ That’s not why he came. . .. Jesus came as a radical to turn the world upside down. When we believe it is just about Jesus and yourself, we miss the whole point…. Christianity is a way of seeing all of life and reality through God’s eyes.” (David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons in Unchristian, p.87)
As one Christian leader said, “Our primary role as spiritual leaders isn’t to make people see eye to eye. It’s making sure our eyes are focus on Jesus.” (Barna, Ibid., p.175) Another leader defined spiritual leadership as, “moving people on to God’s agenda.” (Henry and Richard Blackaby in Spiritual Leadership, p.20)
Earlier, in Part I, we spoke about “Living God’s Love” and emphasized a few principles that make living withGod possible. We spoke about the second commandment which tells us not to make any graven images and we asked the question, “Why?” We talked about how some have a misconception of God as an angry policeman while others see Him as a cranky old judge. Graven images are wrong because they misrepresent God! We agreed, that “graven images” can also be false perceptions of God and can be “graven” into our belief system. Many of us, if not all of us, have some misunderstandings of God. We will have much to learn about God in heaven.
We moved from talking about not worshiping images to God being a “jealous God.” After class someone raised a very important question. “I thought being jealous was wrong, so why would God be jealous?”
QUESTION: Do you think that is a legitimate question? How would you respond to the question?
The Jealousy of God
God is a jealous God. Notice what is said in second of the 10 Commandments
“You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.
Like ‘love’ and ‘hate’ in the Old Testament (Mal. 1:2, 3), ‘jealousy’ does not refer to an emotion so much as to an activity. In this case an activity of violence that springs from a breakup of a personal relationship like a marriage bond. It’s not a matter of intolerance but one of exclusiveness. The context shows that God’s people had agreed to be one with Him, but they broke the covenant or promise they had made with God. They tried to be married to God while flirting and worshiping other gods. They treated God, Jehovah, as one of many gods. There cannot be any polygamy with God. No husband who truly loved his wife could endure to share her with another man: no more will God share Israel with a rival. God created us with a special purpose and He know, He becomes jealous, when he sees the work of Satan pulling His people from Him. The jealousy is for our protection and fulfillment.
The love and hate referred to in this passage can best be illustrated by how God described Himself in the book of Hosea. Hosea was married to a prostitute, yet he did everything he could to win her back. Love, hate, and jealousy reflect not so much emotion as a zeal or activity by God to keep His people safe from Satan’s plot to destroy God special people. That is true throughout the Bible and is still true today.
Rescuing the Dignity of God’s Creation
How we relate to others is not always easy, but we must be careful that the political issues of today do not cause us to forget that all are created in the image of God (Gen. 1:27). People have a difficult time letting go of being treated badly. People need recognition for what they have suffered regardless of the reason. Jesus was a master at listening and understanding. How we respond may differ but “the strangers within our gates” are nevertheless “within our gates.” We are all “feeling beings” and how we or others speak of the strangers in our land can leave lifetime scars. Sometimes those scars take a long time to heal. They can come back to haunt us, our community, our church, our nation with a vengeance.
A clear indication of God’s sensitivity to our feelings is found in the instructions given for treating someone who is indebted to you. Deuteronomy 24:10-13.
When you make a loan of any kind to your neighbor, do not go into their house to get what is offered to you as a pledge. Stay outside and let the neighbor to whom you are making the loan bring the pledge out to you. If the neighbor is poor, do not go to sleep with their pledge in your possession. Return their cloak by sunset so that your neighbor may sleep in it. Then they will thank you, and it will be regarded as a righteous act in the sight of the LORD your God.
QUESTION: Why do you believe God said not to go into the house to get the money owed? Why should the cloak not be kept until the payment was received?
Me must not forget that dignity is a birth right. It comes with being created in God’s image. It must be the starting point or the baseline of our interactions with others. Respect on the other hand, is earned through one’s actions.
QUESTIONS: Can you think of examples in your life when dignity was not recognized? Can you think of examples when you or someone was disrespected falsely? How important the recognition of both dignity and respect in resolving conflict?
The Need to See Others Differently
(2 Cor. 5:16)
“Christ can look on the misery of the world without a shade of sorrow for having created man. In the human heart He sees more than sin, more than misery. In His infinite wisdom and love He sees man's possibilities, the height to which he may attain. He knows that, even though human beings have abused their mercies and destroyed their God-given dignity, yet the Creator is to be glorified in their redemption.” 7T 269.3
How the New Covenant Relates to the Stranger
Carefully note the sequence of the following:
And now, Israel, what does the LORD your God ask of you but to fear the LORD your God, to walk in obedience to him, to love him, to serve the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to observe the LORD’s commands and decrees that I am giving you today for your own good? (Deut. 10:12,14)
Then comes the following,
For the LORD your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who shows no partiality and accepts no bribes. He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the foreigner residing among you, giving them food and clothing. And you are to love those who are foreigners, for you yourselves were foreigners in Egypt. (Deut. 10:17-19)
It is no accident or coincidence that the first application of the commandment to love the Lord is to love the stranger.
QUESTION: Why did God require Israel to love the stranger? Are circumstances different today?
Living for God without His Love for the Stranger
The agnostic philosopher Nietzsche, once asked: “If Christians wish us to believe in their Redeemer, why don’t they look a little more redeemed?” It was the same Nietzsche who coined the phrase, so sadly common in our own days: “God is dead.”
In the 1920s, the philosopher of American Communism was a Jew named Mike Gold. After communism fell into general disrepute in this country, Mike Gold became a man of oblivion. In this oblivion, he wrote a book, A Jew Without Knowing It. In describing his childhood in New York City, he tells of his mother’s instructions never to wander beyond four certain streets. She could not tell him that it was a Jewish ghetto. She could not tell him that he had the wrong kind of blood in his veins. Children do not understand prejudice. Prejudice is a poison that must gradually seep into a person’s bloodstream.
In his narration, Mike Gold tells of the day that curiosity lured him beyond the four streets, outside of his ghetto, and of how he was accosted by a group of older boys who asked him a puzzling question: “Hey, kid, are you a kike?” “I don’t know.” He had never heard the word before. The older boys came back with a paraphrase of their question. “Are you a Christ-killer?” Again, the small boy responded, “I don’t know.” He had never heard that word either. So, the older boys ask him where he lived, and trained like most small boys to recite their address in the case of being lost, Mike Gold told them where he lived, and trained like most small boys to recite their address in the case of being lost, Mike Gold told them where he lived. “So, you are a kid; you are a Christ-killer. Well, you’re in Christian territory and we are Christians. We’re going to teach you to stay where you belong!” And so they beat the little boy, bloodied his face and tore his clothes and sent him home to the jeering litany: “We are Christians and you killed Christ! Stay where you belong! We are Christians, and you killed Christ . . .”.
When he arrived home, Mike Gold was asked by his frightened mother: “What happened to you, Mike?” He could answer only: “I don’t know.” Who did this to you, Mike?” Again, he answered: “I don’t know.” And so, the mother washed the blood from the face of her little boy and put him into fresh clothes, and took him into her lap as she sat in a rocker and tried to soothe him. Mike God recalled so much later in life that he raised his small, battered lips to the ear of his mother and asked: Mama, who is Christ?”
Mike God died in 1967. His last meals were taken at a Catholic Charity house in New York City, run by Dorothy Day. She once said of him: “Mike Gold eats every day at the table of Christ, but he will probably never accept him because of the day he first heard his name.”and so he died.
John Powell in Why Am I Afraid to Love? pp. 116,117
When the Stranger Can Tell You Are Living God’s Love
The 10 Commandments concludes with “You shall not covet.” It strikes at the inner self. To say that we live God’s love implies that it is a passion of the heart. It is not just an act of memory or a hope for the future. It is not just what we do, it is how we think and how we feel. The meaning of Jesus words, “If you love me,” are deeper than just a good performance or external obedience. They call for a relationship with God and with those whom He loves.
We are One in The Spirit,
We are One in The Lord.
We are One in The Spirit,
We are One in The Lord.
And we pray that all unity may one day be restored.
Chorus
And they'll know we are Christians by our love,
By our Love,
Yes, they'll know we are Christians by our love.
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