Jesus Loves Haters - Part A

So what do we do when hatred is directed towards you? Well, it's simple.

It's not simple to do, but the answer is simple. We are to respond with love. And in so doing, we are representing. We are reflecting a God who loves. We respond in love, and in so doing, we represent a God who loves. The command to love your enemies makes Christianity stand out.

The question is, do you stand out for obeying it? Today on Connect with Skip Heitzig, Skip shares how you can respond in love when hate is directed toward you. Before we begin, here's a resource that will give you fresh insight about God's extraordinary love. People everywhere have a deep God-given need to be loved. But sadly, sometimes the people who need love the most are the most rejected.

Here's Skip Heitzig. We all crave love. We will do sometimes almost anything to get it, to know that we are loved by somebody else unconditionally. No one did that better than Jesus. He loved the worst of sinners. He loved the best of saints. Jesus showed the love of God in human flesh. We want to give you a glimpse of God's relentless love for all people, including you, by sending you the Jesus Loves People four-booklet collection by Skip Heitzig. All four Jesus Loves People titles, including Jesus Loves the Broken, are our thanks for your gift of $25 or more today to help connect more people to God's love through His Word.

Visit connectwithskip.com slash offer to give online securely or call 800-922-1888. Okay, let's get into today's teaching. We're in Matthew 5 and Luke 9 as we begin our study with Skip Heitzig. Is there anything you hate? Let me name a few things and see if you resonate. Brussels sprouts. Okay. I love them, but some people just loathe them.

What about peas? You like them? You hate them.

You hate them. Repeated television commercials. Any television commercial.

What about when you open a bag of chips and it's 80% air? Did you hate that? Tax season. Yeah, we all kind of hate that unless you work in that industry, then it's great season. I thought this week of a few things that I hate. I hate traffic. I mean, a real traffic jam.

You really don't get much of those around here, honestly. We invented where I'm from, traffic. And, you know, sitting on the 405 freeway in gridlock, nothing worse.

When somebody is in the passing lane and they're going slow, I get in the flesh. Hate that. Bad coffee. I really hate bad coffee.

I know I'm a coffee snob, but I'd rather just have water, thank you. Pigeons. Pigeons. I'm sorry. I'm not a fan. One newspaper did a top 100 list of things that people hate the most. Here's just a sampling of what people said. When people drive too closely behind you, people who smell, people who eat with their mouths open, foreign call centers, slow internet connections, paper cuts, running out of toilet paper, and mobile phone obsessors. Ooh, they're just always looking at those little screens. Now, having said all that, is there someone you hate?

Be careful. You're answering that only in your own heart, and it is a much different question than is there anything you hate, which is really an annoyance, but is there someone that you can think of one that you can think of that you have hateful feelings toward? Because after all, we are doing a series called Jesus Loves People. I think some people are confused about love and hate. One little girl was, she was sent to her room, five-year-old, and she pouted, she was so angry, and she wrote a note, Dear Mom and Dad, I hate you.

And then she signed it, Love, Nicole. I even found Truth, a hater's app for your phone. Speak about being obsessed with mobile devices. It's an app. You can download it.

I did just to see what it was. It's a free app. I'm recommending you don't download it, because essentially, the people who decided to build this app decided that in the social network community, you only have an option usually, and that is to like someone or like something. You can't voice a dislike. So it is an entire mobile community built around dissent, what you don't like. It gives people who want to vent a chance to vent. The makers of this app say, Hey, this is an app that allows you to share the things you hate. Hate on celebrities, politicians, bad service, too much traffic, classmates, or annoying Facebook friends. So I got on and I looked at what people were posting, and you see things like a line around a restaurant, and it says, waiting for service.

Or I saw a post, a picture of a car that took two parking spaces. We hate that, right? But beyond just an app, the Bible takes the idea of hating very, very seriously. So much so that the word hate or hatred or hating in all of its various forms appears 183 times in the Bible.

It is listed by Paul in Galatians five as one of the works of the flesh. And all the way back in the law in Leviticus chapter 19, God said, You shall not hate your brother in your heart. Hatred takes on many forms in scripture, all the way from mocking, yelling, foul language, persecution, all the way to avoiding and shunning people.

But I don't want to stand here and give you a biblical theology of hatred as much as I want to talk about loving haters. So I want to look at two forms of hatred. One that is directed to you, and the other that comes from you.

The first kind you can't avoid. The second one you can avoid. The first one really as an occupational hazard of being a believer.

The second one is really all about selfishness, personal selfishness and hypocrisy. So we're going to begin with the first in Matthew chapter five. This is the Sermon on the Mount.

Our Lord is teaching his disciples some very important lessons. So this is if hatred is directed to you. Let's read beginning in verse 43. Our Lord says, You have heard that it was said, you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say to you love your enemy. Bless those who curse you. Do good to those who hate you and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you. That you may be sons of your father in heaven, for he makes his son to rise on the evil and on the good and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward have you?

Do not even the tax collectors do the same? So these are people who will curse you, who will use you, who will hate you, and who will consider you an enemy. I know some of you are saying, I don't have any enemies. First of all, that's not true.

Second, you're going to have a lot more if you keep lying like that. According to Webster's dictionary, the word enemy means someone who is antagonistic toward. Same basic idea in the Greek. One who is antagonistic toward you. Do you have anybody in your life that fits that description?

I bet you do. Jesus even said that your enemies could be those of your own household if you live according if you live according to the gospel. There's one thing that Jesus promised over and over again to his followers and that is persecution. That is when the world vents hatred towards you.

What do you do in that time? It's going to happen. Jesus said the whole world will hate you. When our Lord was speaking to his disciples in the upper room, he said, if you were of the world, the world would love its own. But you are not of the world because I've chosen you out of the world. Therefore, the world hates you. Now think about this series.

What are we calling it? Jesus loves people. And this in particular is Jesus loves haters. So just think about this. Do you mean Jesus calls me to love people and some of those very people that I love will hate me?

Yeah, it's the pits, isn't it? But Jesus said, love your enemies. Do good. Pray for those who are against you. You see, it is basically an occupational hazard of being a believer to incur the hatred from a worldly system that does not share your values, that does not share your ethics, that views you as bigoted and narrow minded because you preach the gospel. It's sad, but it's true that you could be an atheist, you could be an agnostic, you could drink a lot, you could use foul language, you could be promiscuous and the world will think you're okay. But the minute you tell them, I am in love with the Lord Jesus Christ and I follow him with all of my life. Isn't that great?

Don't expect them to go, yeah. You're basically painting a target on you when you do that. No wonder John the apostle wrote to his audience to give them encouragement and comfort in 1 John chapter three verse one. He said, behold what manner of love the father has bestowed upon us, that we should be called the children of God. Therefore the world doesn't know you because it didn't know him. Marvel not, brethren, if the world hates you. That's why so often it feels so weird here. Now that you belong to heaven, now that you belong to a foreign country, now that you have sworn allegiance to the king of kings, it feels like you're an alien sometimes walking around this world.

Marvel not, brethren, if the world hates you. Sometimes we sort of feel like the missionary who noticed one of the cannibals staring at him and he said, what are you looking at? He said, I'm just the food inspector. We sometimes feel when the world watches us that there's an ulterior motive. They, they want to gobble us up.

They're not interested in our wellbeing. So what do we do when hatred is directed towards you? Well, it's simple.

It's not simple to do, but the answer is simple. We are to respond with love. And in so doing we are representing, we are reflecting a God who loves. We respond in love and in so doing we represent a God who loves. Look at what the Lord said, but I say, do you love your enemy?

So how do you do that practically? Well, he tells us, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you. Let's consider those. Bless those who curse you. We know what that means. It means don't retaliate. Don't think of something nice and juicy as a comeback to throw their way. What does Proverbs 15 one tell us? A soft answer turns away wrath, but harsh words stir up anger. So the choice is yours.

What do you want? Do you want the wrath to be turned away or do you want it to be stirred up? Well then choose a tone of voice, a comeback that is commensurate with that end result. A soft answer turns away wrath, harsh words, stir up anger. It is our natural inclination whenever we are verbally attacked to attack back. It's amazing, isn't it? We can think in a millisecond when we get attacked verbally, we can think clearly of the best comeback. Oh, this would just cut them off at the knees and it's right there.

It's right on the tip of the tongue. I just could release it. Don't do it.

Don't do it. I found an interesting study from Kenyon College and they, they admitted to the fact that when somebody shouts, the person who is shouted at will almost always respond with a shout as loud or louder than the first. And that the tone of voice in response can be measured by the tone that was initially given to it. So they did all these just fun little studies and they said at the end of it, that the tone of voice is just a tone of voice. And they said at the end of it, you can use this scientific knowledge to keep another person from becoming angry. Control the other person's tone of voice by your own voice. Studies have proven that if you keep your voice soft, you will not become angry.

Psychology has accepted a scientific, the old biblical injunction, which says a soft answer is a path. So I tried this a few years ago. Somebody had called me on the phone, very angry, very irate, not just attacking things, but attacking me personally. And he was, his voice was raising.

So I just decided I'm going to try this. And I tried to speak in a very soft, humble tone, apologizing if I had offended him in any way. And by the end of the conversation, absolutely amazing. He said softly, you're right. You've been right all along in this issue. You have acted honorably and I have not.

I hung up the phone and I thought, amazing. What the Bible says does work. So you bless those who curse you.

That's how you respond with love. Notice the second thing the Lord says, do good to those who hate you. Now just think about this. Can you think of somebody who's antagonistic towards you who just, every time you're around them at work or in the family, that's that person. What if you were to do good? Let me throw something at you. What if you were to send them a gift?

I know you're thinking, are you nuts? Send them a gift. I actually gave this advice to a dear woman in our church. She has a coworker who's very antagonistic and says, she told me what she said. And I said, send her a gift.

And she looked at me like, what? I said, send her a gift with a note that says, you know, we got off on the, on the wrong foot. Let's, let's try this from the start. Let's, let's do this again.

Let's do it over. And I've actually made this a practice when there have been people in my life where there's deep tensions that mount. Sometimes I will just send a gift with a note of encouragement or congratulations, or I'm thinking about you and praying for you. It is amazing what that does. The Bible in Proverbs 18 says, a man's gift makes room for him.

I love how one person thought. He said, love your enemies. It'll drive them crazy.

It will. And you'll also turn them around. The final thing Jesus said is, pray for them. Pray for them. He says, pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you.

This is what I've discovered. It is very, very hard to keep someone on your hit list once you place them on your prayer list. You just can't harbor ill feelings when you're praying for them on a regular basis. You may not change them. You may not change their attitude towards you, but it will change the way you feel about them.

It'll change the way you feel. If you don't do this, if you don't love, if you don't forgive, if you don't bless your enemies, if you don't pray for them, what you will find is you have an enemy now inside of you. Worse than the enemy outside. Enemies like anger, resentment, bitterness, unforgiveness, and those things will grow and you'll find that the enemy on the outside is nothing compared to the enemy on the inside. And then you're filled with all of this bitterness and hatred and anger because you've been hated on. Now you've become just like them.

No difference. So Jesus' response is respond with love. When hatred is directed to you, respond with love. And in so doing you represent the God of love. Verse 45, that you may be the sons of your father in heaven, for he makes his son to rise on the evil and on the good. He sends rain on the just and on the unjust. You know, when you love a hater, you're not going to be a hater.

You're a hater. You are showing what family you belong to. You've heard the old adage, like father, like son. Some time ago, I was talking to a young man in our church. I'd watched him grow up, but now I'm talking to him as a grown up. And what struck me is how much like his father, he was in a good way. Tone of voice, the way he gave eye contact, body mannerisms. I thought he's like a spitting image almost.

Maybe not physically, but in other ways, personality. I can see the resemblance. I love the idea that we could be around people and they could say, you must be a believer in Christ. I had a man tell me that last night. He said, I'm walking through my work and a couple of people stopped me and said, are you a Christian? They could just tell.

He said, by the way I've acted, I suppose, or my demeanor, I suppose. I've always loved the story about a woman who was walking in a downtown section of a large city and she noticed a little boy peering through the window. He was obviously very poor, ill-clad, shoes are all beat up. So she took the young man inside. She got a bucket of water and a towel and washed his feet and bought him not one, but six pairs of shoes with socks and was about to send him on his way.

When she was about to leave, she felt a tug at her coat. And it was that little boy looking up saying, are you God's wife? There just has got to be some relation between you and God, the way you have acted.

Love gives you away. It lets people know, it tells people that you are related to God. Jesus said, by this shall all men know that you are my disciples by the love you have for another. I know this is not new information to you. I know I'm captain obvious right now. You have heard all of this stuff before, but sometimes in Bible study, it's not just about heard that before.

I want some new information. Sometimes we need transformation by just doing the old stuff. And Jesus said, by this shall all men know you are my disciples by the love you have one for another. See the world doesn't care what bumper stickers you have. I've never yet ridden in a car with an unbeliever who said, Ooh, look at that Christian bumper sticker. I'm impressed.

Never had that happen. I've heard him mock it, but I've never had them like, wow. See, those things are for us. They tell us that a believer is driving the car, nothing wrong with bumper stickers, but they don't impress the world. And our cool, clever sayings on our Christian t-shirts don't impress them either. But I'll tell you what will impress them is once you let them know you're a disciple and you show genuine love to them. See, even the unbeliever understands enough of the Bible that Christians out of love. And one of the biggest complaints toward Christians is that we don't always live out our faith.

We are to live it out by love. So if hatred is directed towards you, respond with love and thereby represent the God of love. Now let's turn the page.

Now let's look at Luke's gospel chapter nine. Now we look at a whole different kind of hatred. It's not at you. It's not towards you. It's from within you.

You are developing attitudes toward others that are unhealthy and hateful. If hatred is developed in you, Luke chapter nine, beginning in verse 51, now it came to pass when the time had come for him to be received up. He, Jesus, steadfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem and sent messengers before his face. And as they went, they entered a village of the Samaritans to prepare for him.

But they did not receive him because his face was set for the journey to Jerusalem. When the disciples, James and John, saw this, they said, Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them? Just as Elijah did.

But he turned and rebuked them and said, you do not know what manner of spirit you are of. For the Son of Man did not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them. That's Skip Heitzig with a message from the series, Jesus Loves People. Now here's Skip to share how you can keep these messages going strong to connect more people to God's truth. Jesus gives us the ultimate example of how to love people. And as we read and study the scriptures, the Lord moves in our hearts to love others like Jesus did.

That's why we share these messages full of God's truth. When you give a gift today, you help more people know about his incredible love. Here's how you can give today to share the good news of Christ. Visit connectwithskip.com slash donate to give a gift. That's connectwithskip.com slash donate or call 800-922-1888.

800-922-1888. Thank you for your generosity and come back tomorrow as Skip Heitzig shares how you can break free from any hate that may be built up inside you. You got the scripture in your head, but no love in your heart. Could that be said of some of us? You have the scripture in your head, you know that Bible, you quote it, you read it, you even know the original language. Is there love in your heart that accompanies that knowledge? See that Jesus' attitudes are more important than aptitudes. Connect with Skip Heitzig is a presentation of Connection Communications, connecting you to God's never changing truth in ever-changing times.