Jesus Loves Haters - Part B

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. Maya Angelou said, Hate, it has caused a lot of problems in the world, but has not solved one yet.

Today on Connect with Skip Heiting, Skip shares how you can break free from any hate that may be built up inside you. Right now, we want to tell you about a resource that will help you know God's love more intimately. The Bible makes it clear that Jesus loves the devout and the doubters, priests and prostitutes, the diseased and the depressed. Jesus just loves people, all people, no matter what's their past or their present. Sadly, sometimes it's the people who need love the most, who feel the most rejected, even by the church.

But if Jesus loves all people, shouldn't we? We want to help you grasp God's relentless love for people by sending you the complete four-booklet Jesus Loves People collection by Skip Heitzig. These booklets look to scripture to demonstrate Jesus' love for people from every walk of life. Get all four Jesus Loves People titles, including Jesus Loves the Broken and Jesus Loves Addicts when you give a gift of $25 or more today to help expand this Bible teaching outreach.

To give, call 800-922-1888 or give online securely at connectwithskip.com slash offer. Now we're in Matthew chapter five and Luke chapter nine as we get into the message with Skip Heitzig. 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 let's think about it. 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? 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, 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 as scientific the old biblical injunction, which says a soft answer turns away wrath. 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, it was 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 are showing what family you belong to. You've heard the old adage, like father, like son. Sometime ago, I was talking to a young man in our church. I'd watch him grow up, but now I'm talking to him as a grownup. 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 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 have 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 believers 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 ought to 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. This to me is one of the more human and even more humorous stories in the New Testament. Two of his disciples, in fact, inner circle, apostles, James and John, the repeater James and John. And what's surprising to me is that, you know, this isn't Thomas or Judas saying this. It's James and John, the apostle of love. It's sort of like when you discover that sweet aunt Susie of yours swears.

And you go, Susie? I go, James and John? You know, they're sort of like on the God squad. But now they're like the Galilean mafia. I believe it's because of this story that we read that Jesus gives them a nickname. Some of you know what it is. It's in Mark chapter three when a list is given of the apostles and they are given the nickname, the sons of what? Thunder. Sons of thunder. Why?

Because of this suggestion. Hey, let's nuke the village in Jesus name. You do need to know a little bit of the background. There had been for centuries a prejudice against the Samaritans by the Jews and vice versa. There had been a long-standing rivalry, all going back to the time of King Solomon when the kingdom split and Jeroboam put a golden calf in Samaria and way up north, further up north. And then that was compounded years later in 722 BC when the Assyrians took over the land, repopulating it with foreigners from other captured countries so that those leftover Jews would intermarry with those foreign people and the bloodline was now polluted. Complicated more by the fact that when the Jews returned down south to Jerusalem to rebuild their temple and the Samaritans offered to help, the Jews in Jerusalem said, no, you're not going to help us.

That was the great divide. So what happens is the Samaritans build a rival temple. Think of it like cult worship on their own mountain, Mount Gerizim. And so Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem, the center of Jewish worship. He is not staying much there. He has a goal to fulfill, but the Samaritans pick up on the body language. Hey, he's not here to worship at our place. He's going to Jerusalem like the Jews do.

So they snubbed him. Picking up on that, the two disciples said, let's kill him. How does Jesus handle it? And how must we handle it?

Or how should somebody handle us? If we are haters, there's three ways that I see in this text. First of all, your words must be rebuked immediately. Jesus, here's what they said. And he said, he turned around and he rebuked them. Revelation three, Jesus says, as many as I love, I rebuke and I chase him.

Now think about this. Samaritan worship was false worship. It was cultic worship. It was dishonoring to God, but the disciples' words were destructive to the people God loves.

So they get rebuked. You can't force people into your belief system. And just saying those words would influence and infect the other 10 apostles who were there. Yes, rejecting Christ is sinful. Rejecting Christ is shameful, but hating people for it is reprehensible. And so their words were rebuked.

And your words must be as well if this comes from you. I found something in a journal I was looking at from the British Royal Navy. They have a regulation in the British Royal Navy that says, and I quote, no officer shall speak discouragingly to another officer in the discharge of his duties. In other words, if somebody violates by speaking something wrong, they are rebuked by somebody else in the Navy. And hateful speech should be met with rebuke. If somebody says something who's a believer, a brother, a sister, and it's wrong, it's hateful, stop them and say, it's not okay for you to say that. Maybe they've never had that happen before, but it's not okay to do that. That's okay for you to say that if that happens. In Leviticus chapter 19, I quoted just a portion of it.

Here's the rest. You shall not hate your brother in your heart. You shall surely rebuke your neighbor and not bear sin because of him. In other words, don't hold it in, get it out.

Don't carry it with you. If there's a rebuke that is needed, do it. Your words must be rebuked. Second, your attitude must be checked.

If you're a hater, you got to deal with the attitude. Look at what Jesus says. You do not know what manner of spirit you are of.

And let me work with this. You boys, you've got a good memories. Oh, you remember what the Bible says in second Kings chapter one that Elijah called fire down from heaven. Good memory. And you remember all of the animosity and bitter resentment and prejudice between the Jews and the Samaritans for centuries. Good memory.

You boys have a great memory, but you have a bad motive. 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. Even if you could call fire down from heaven, Jesus didn't go, wow, you can do that. Wow.

I'm impressed. Even if they had that aptitude, their attitude was wrong. Listen, your attitude is the rudder that controls everything in your life. What you say and what you do. I'm convinced that life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you respond.

I know that 10% can get gnarly sometimes, but I'm convinced that every day you and I have a choice to wake up and face the day with an attitude and we make that choice and that is all important. Check your attitude when you're dealing with somebody. Is that person just an inconvenience? Is he in the way or is she in the way or is that a bad person or are you viewing those irregular people as opportunities for you to grow?

Check your attitude. Third thing and final thing in this story, your prejudice at some point needs to be surrendered to God. Whatever prejudice you have towards someone has to be let go and surrendered to God's purpose. Verse 56, Jesus says, for the son of man did not come to destroy men's lives but to save them. Can you understand that James and John were at this point blinded by their prejudice and their prejudice blinded them from seeing what God's purpose was for the Samaritans? What was the purpose?

Jesus said it. To save them. To save them.

Like we're told in second Peter, God is long suffering, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance. God's purpose for people always, always, always trumps our prejudice toward people. Prejudice is the seed bed of hatred. Whenever we meet somebody, this is human nature. We all do this but we have to, we have to check our attitude in this. When we meet someone we usually size them up in our heads. We look at what they're wearing, how they do their hair and we make certain assessments. Well to do, not so well to do. Good dresser, bad dresser, white person, Hispanic person, black person, homosexual person, dishonest person.

How about this, strip all that away. That's just a person. That is just a person created in the image of God and God has a purpose for that life. And you surrender your prejudices to the purpose of God and you start looking at people differently. Let's ask ourselves, are my prejudices standing in the way of God's purpose for someone else? Are my words standing in the way of God's purposes for someone else?

Is my attitude standing in the way of God's purpose for someone else? Now here's what's most interesting to me. James and John make this suggestion. Jesus rebukes them, says what he says. They go to another village.

I'm going, got out of town just in the nick of time and here's why. By the time we get to Acts chapter 8, we find John and Peter in Samaria preaching the gospel to the Samaritans and a revival breaks out in Samaria. What would have happened if they would have nuked that village? There'd be no Samaritans to hear the gospel and be saved. God's purpose would have been totally eliminated.

So they had learned their lesson because one of these two shows up in this town sometime later and gives the life-giving message of Jesus Christ. So you may be hated. No, I'll rephrase that. You will be hated, but don't you be a hater.

Because if you are, you'll find a bigger enemy inside of you that is insatiable and will grow and grow and take over. Others are going to hate you, but they won't win unless you hate them back. And the moment you do, they've won. So, bless them. Buy them that gift. Pray for them. Put them on your prayer list. Take them off your hit list and watch what the Lord does in your heart.

That wraps up Skip Heitzigs. It's powerful message for you from the series Jesus Loves People. Now we want to tell you about a unique opportunity to take your knowledge of scripture to a new level. Calvary College is now open for registration. Calvary College is offering select online classes as an opportunity for individuals to take their life's calling to a whole new level with an educational emphasis in biblical studies, with our unique partnerships with Veritas International University and Calvary Chapel University.

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Thank you. Come back again tomorrow as Skip Heisig dives into two monumental betrayals in scripture to help you see what it takes to experience God's healing. Make a connection, make a connection at the foot of the crossing. Cast all burdens on His word. Make a connection, connection. Connect with Skip Heisig is a presentation of Connection Communications, connecting you to God's never-changing truth in ever-changing times.