Mars Hill Fellowship

Boldness to Love Others

SERIES |

Boldness

SCRIPTURE |

Luke 10:25-37; 1 John 4:19-21

SPEAKER |

Pastor Joseph Ardayfio

KEY THEME |

I.  In Number 13, we encounter the journey of Israelites to the promised land. Moses’ words to the people were to rise up, and to seize the land. But the people petitioned him to send forth spies first to discover the best routes for making their assault successful. This seemed a reasonable idea to Moses; so he selected twelve men, one from each tribe.

I.  Followers of Christ must live by God’s commands. Most of us are comfortable with the first and greatest command:  To love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind.

II. Intertwined in this first command is the obligation to allow our love for God to inform how we treat our neighbors.

1. The second command is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”
2. The litmus test of whether we are ‘selective’ followers of Christ or we have a wholehearted commitment to God is in how we treat our neighbors.   ^{1 JOHN 4:19} We love because he first loved us. 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. ²¹ And he has given us this command: Whoever loves God must also love his brother.

III. It takes boldness to love those around us especially those whom the world has scrutinized, marginalized, and crucified

1. Why? We are inherently selfish and conditioned to make biased judgments of the heart. Ephesians 2:3 says that at some point, all of us gratified the cravings of our flesh and followed its desires and thoughts.
2. If we don’t recognize our predispositions, then we won’t make the correct adjustments to see our neighbors in the same way that God sees them. It takes boldness to say, Lord, remove the unjust filters that we have conditioned ourselves to use.

IV.  Luke records an account between Jesus and an expert of the law. The expert wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”

1. The human heart will try to rationalize a definition of our neighbors that causes us the least path of discomfort – but Jesus circles around everyone and says – these are your neighbors!
2. A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he fell into the hands of robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. 3 different people encountered the injured man but only one man was a “neighbor” to him.
3. The use of a Priest and Levite was not to discredit all people serving in these offices, but it was to demonstrate the need for us to be neighbors to all those who are around us.
4. By using a Samaritan as the hero, Jesus disarmed the Jews. The Samaritan loved those who hated him, risked his own life, spent his own money, and to our knowledge, was never publicly rewarded or honored.

V. What blinds us from seeing our neighbors and their needs?

1. In Acts 10, Peter encountered a God-fearing Gentile named Cornelius . While acknowledging that it was against the Jewish law to associate with or visit a Gentile, God showed Peter that he should not call anyone impure or unclean that the Lord had called clean. Peter remarked, “I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism but accepts from every nation the one who fears him and does what is right. (v34-35)
2. Lack of love. Our lack of love towards others can stem from a number of reasons including: (1) a misunderstanding of what love towards others should looks like, (2) an absence of love from others that causes us to withhold our love to them, or (3) attempting to love others from our own strength. Romans 10:38 instructs us to “Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law.”
3. Unrighteous judgments. We can fail to love others when we make unrighteous judgments about whether they deserve our love.  Galatians 6:3: “If anyone thinks they are something when they are not, they deceive themselves.”
4. Lack of patience. Loving others requires patience. David described God as “compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love.” (Psalms 103:8) Colossians 3:13 (NLT) reminds us to “Make allowance for each other's faults, and forgive anyone who offends you. Remember, the Lord forgave you, so you must forgive others.”
5. Busyness. Loving others requires an investment of our time. We always will have to manage competing priorities for our time, but we have to allow God’s priorities to be our priorities. Colossians 4:5 states, “Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make the most of every opportunity. 6Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.
6. Fear. Those who make a decision to love others as God has loved us will be counter-cultural. We must have confidence in the assignment that God has called us to. Mark 2:15:
1. “And it happened that He was reclining at the table in his house, and many tax collectors and sinners were dining with Jesus and His disciples; for there were many of them, and they were following Him. 16 When the scribes of the Pharisees saw that He was eating with the sinners and tax collectors, they said to His disciples, "Why is He eating and drinking with tax collectors and sinners?" 17 And hearing this, Jesus said to them, "It is not those who are healthy who need a physician, but those who are sick; I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners."
7. Lack of humility. Loving others requires a willingness to serve others regardless of our station in life. Jesus was King of Kings and Lord of Lords, but he did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.

VI. How do we exercise boldness in loving others?

1. We pray for the Boldness to love others as God has loved us
2. We pray for God’s heart to be in us
3. We pray for the boldness to recognize divine interruptions
1. The Samaritan had to balance two responsibilities, his duty to get where he was going, and his responsibility to show love to his neighbor.  He didn’t choose one, he chose both. Bill Hybels in his book Contagious Christianity says we must be ready to allow God to COMPLICATE our life in a good way.
4. We pray for the boldness to act

Sermon: Boldness to Love Others