Scott Wiley here, the executive director of Wisdom International. We're celebrating our 25th anniversary this year. What began as a radio program in a single city has grown into a global ministry now in 16 languages. We're hosting a banquet to celebrate all that the Lord has done, and you're invited. Please visit wisdomonline.org/25.
That's wisdomonline.org/25. There's a link in the show notes. And now here's Stephen with today's message from Wisdom for the Heart. We are brothers and sisters by inclusion in the family of God through faith in Christ. We have the same Heavenly Father.
We have the same indwelling Holy Spirit. We have the same salvation. We have the same book. We have the same new nature. We have the same inheritance.
We have the same profession of faith through baptism. We have the same family name, Christian. We have the same Great Commission and. We have the same final destination. Because of that, pursue brotherly love.
Well, he served as president of the United States, but as soon as he was elected. He faced national criticism, rather vicious attacks by the media and his political opponents. Not only his policies, but his appearance was mocked, ridiculed. One news article wrote that his appearance was grotesque, his manners uncouth, his voice harsh, and his grammar worse. After his election.
The Chicago Times wrote, and I quote: "He has no more capacity for statesmanship than a monkey. We are now governed by the village clown. Over time, he would be accused of trying to destroy the Constitution, to trample on the liberties of U.S. citizens, starting a war to advance his own political ambition, and more." In newspapers across the country, every day, he was referred to with names like butcher, imbecile, or a dictator drunk with power. One newspaper concluded, "Abraham Lincoln is the author of all our suffering." Most historians agree today that Lincoln was the most criticized president.
In American history, attacked by the world, never a moment of privacy, daily mocked, openly called names like monster, baboon, tyrant. He would receive hundreds of death threats during his presidency. Six weeks into his second term, one of them became reality. When Lincoln and his wife arrived at Ford's Theatre on the night of April fourteenth, eighteen sixty-five, to watch a play, the last words he whispered to her before the assassin's bullet found its mark were these: "We must visit Jerusalem soon and travel in the footsteps of the Savior." Now, having read several biographies. Of Abraham Lincoln, which I have been delighted to do over the years.
If you thought that Lincoln only had one or maybe two close friends in his life, you would be correct. Nearly everyone kept their distance from him. But if if you thought Lincoln responded. In the same manner that he lashed back, or that he avoided people, or that he, you know, sort of retreated in in solitude and resentment, you would be you'd be wrong. His wife Mary was mystified and sometimes even appalled by his openness with people and his care.
She once remarked to Noah Brooks, a newspaper editor. This statement, and I quote: "I sometimes wonder if he knows he is the president. He will see anyone, office seekers, household servants, washerwomen, mothers of sons lost in battle. The more ragged they are, the longer he will sit with them and listen." Lincoln is demonstrating a quality of character that we're about to. Dive into that we as believers are to demonstrate.
It's it's a supplement that will keep us from wasting away in resentful solitude.
Now, before I take you there by using Lincoln as an example of of this, rather than the Lord, I can I can just hear my critics saying. I don't have any critics, which is wonderful, but I can sort of hear them saying that I have aimed too low, that I should have used the Lord, who demonstrated it perfectly, and that would be true. I thought, as I worked through this supplement of Jesus in John four, where he met with that Samaritan woman, his Request was for a cup of water. His disciples returned from the village to find him talking to a woman, which was rather surprising. That went against cultural norms, but that he would be talking to a Samaritan woman—that was shocking.
Yet there he was, turning a cup of water into a conversation about her, her thirst, her need. I thought about the Lord healing a politician's son. Who was miles away geographically? Just a word, and that boy was healed. And yet, I also thought about the time where he stopped everything, and he spent some time with an elderly woman who'd risked everything to touch his garment, or the time he stopped, you know, the circus, and he reached out and he touched a leper.
You touch a politician, son, not a leper. As he healed him, yes, he responded with mercy and compassion. But his compassion and concern for others—well, we're tempted to think that's just something the Son of God does. Yea, for Jesus, we could never pull it off. I think our problem could be that we.
Are quick to assume that since we're not Jesus, we get a free pass, which is why I use Lincoln. We can defend our our cold shoulder attitude toward people we don't know, or people who are not like us, or people who don't like us. At some point, we give ourselves permission to just sort of retreat. In resentment, and say, "Well, that's enough from you." Peter, inspired by the Holy Spirit, would disagree. And with that, we arrive at number six in the sevenfold list of supplements.
They guarantee us, Peter writes, a fruitful and effective life, meaningful life. If you're new, we're in Second Peter chapter one. Your Bible's automatically open there now. Let's refresh our memory. Let's go back, especially for those who are new to verse five.
Here's where he starts. He says, "For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness." Here it is, number six, and godliness with brotherly affection. Your translation might read "brotherly love." It's one word, a compound word in the original language. It begins with the verb phileo, to love with warm affection, and combines it with adelphos, which is the word for brother. Brotherly.
Love it refers to treating other people as if they were members of your family, and that's where Peter is going to take us. In fact, several times in the New Testament, the believers referred to as a member of the family of God. In fact, Paul told young Pastor Timothy over in. That first letter, chapter five, he said, Timothy, I want you to treat older men as your father. I want you to treat older women as your mother.
I want you to treat younger men as your brother and younger women as your sister. In all purity. One New Testament scholar writes that this supplement doesn't permit any Christian to live a solitary life. Christianity is not a life of solitude; it's a life of community. This is no coincidence in the mind of God for the development of the believer together in community.
We are to demonstrate warm affection to those who happen to be our spiritual relatives in the family of God. Brotherly love is how you treat then your relatives, and you got a bigger family than you knew. You're reminded how big it is today.
Now remember, Peter's telling Christians to diligently pursue adding this supplement to their lives, which reminds us this is not going to happen automatically. This isn't going to happen naturally, any more than growing up in a household of brothers and sisters. Maybe you did, I did. I grew up with three brothers who were impossible to get along with, until I went to college. Got better after that.
Well, family life isn't an easy life. You can't even decide where to go for lunch after church. The family of God is not any easier. Imagine a thousand brothers. Imagine a thousand sisters.
It just got two thousand times harder. You probably heard that little poem. That says it so well. To dwell in heaven with saints we love, that will indeed be glory. But to dwell below with saints we know, well, that's another story.
In his commentary on Second Peter, Sam Gordon added, "Here, there are some believers with whom you hit it off, and some you just want to hit." I didn't say that; he did, but you get the point. Our friend is our world. Is no friend to developing this characteristic. We live in a world where success means you are less interested in others, you are less involved in the lives of others, you are less available to others. Our generation emphasizes personal space, personal promotion, personal ambition.
Personal trainers, the list goes on. The first question people ask in our world today is, "How will that affect me? How will that make me feel? How will that be good for me?" This runs counter to this supplement. Brotherly love asks the question, "How will this affect you?
How will this make you feel?" How will this be good for you? Brotherly love encompasses the life of the local church. It oils the gears, the machinery of so many moving parts, so they run more smoothly. When we consider each other more important than ourselves, Philippians chapter two and verse three. That's brotherly love.
Now, if you track this word through the New Testament, you might be surprised; it only appears five times in all. Second Peter. I would give you just a few more. One of them is in Romans chapter twelve, in Paul's letter to that church, where he writes in verse ten, "Be warmly affectionate with one another in brotherly love." Now, the apostle Paul is specifically referring to the local church as members of the same family, the same body. Over to the Corinthian church, Paul is going to use the metaphor, actually, of a human body.
A local church is like a human body. Got hands and feet, eyes and a mouth and nose, and everybody fits in that body in order for the body to move forward. We're all different. But somehow, by the Spirit of God and our commitment to this unified word, this doctrinal truth, we we fit together, even though we're very different. In our I didn't know, but think of our our most recent membership class.
We call it the greenhouse, where we grow together those early stages. We finished it just two weeks ago, and we had individuals whose native tongues in this class were Greek, Afrikan, Romanian, Telugu, Hindi, Korean, Mandarin, and Spanish. Of course, English. We had people joining our church. In this class, from foreign countries—Canada, Honduras, El Salvador, Colombia, Ghana, India, China, and Fuquay Varina—we are brothers and sisters by inclusion in the family of God through faith in Christ.
We have the same Savior. We have the same Heavenly Father. We have the same indwelling Holy Spirit. We have the same salvation. We have the same book.
We have the same new nature. We have the same inheritance. We have the same profession of faith through baptism. We have the same family name, Christian. We have the same Great Commission, and we have the same final destination.
And on the foundation of all of that is built, then this call, this urgency. He says, "With all diligence, now, because of that, pursue, add to your life, brotherly love." According to the implication of Peter's list, it's not going to be easy. That's why he says, "Give it all you've got." With all diligence. That's because we are diverse in our backgrounds, ethnicities, educations, histories, interests, even tastes. You who come from South America, you you like cilantro on everything.
I want sugar on everything. You're from the North. You drink your tea. Bitter, like the region you left. Cold.
No, no, no, no, no. Here you boil it in with it, right? That's biblical. You boil it. Starts with B.
If you moved here from Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love. Anybody here from Philadelphia? One person. There's another one over there. Are you not getting along?
It's interesting that that Paul is using the word. That's why it came to my mind because he's using it almost as if he's asking us to start cheering for each other, like we're on the same team. Here's the paragraph. He says, "Be devoted to one another in brotherly love." What does that look like? Give preference to one another in honor, not lagging behind in diligence.
Fervent in spirit, serving the Lord, he sounds like he's on a cheering squad with a megaphone in his hand, saying, "Cheer and encourage each other along." You're the cheerleader. The word appears again in Paul's letter to the Thessalonian church. He writes in chapter four and verse nine, now concerning brotherly love. You have no need for anyone to write to you, but we urge you do this more and more.
Sounds like Peter, doesn't it? Add this supplement. Make sure it's yours and that it is increasing. In other words, deepen the bond of brotherly love, which means you're looking for new ways to demonstrate it. By the way, according to the New Testament, this kind of love.
Is one of the greatest attractions of Christianity to the world, and the most distinctive, because the world out there is living for number one. They're scraping and clawing and pushing their way up to the next rung of the ladder. It's all about their personal ambition, their personal success, and then they meet you.
Somebody who actually cares about them. They meet Christians in the assembly. They attend a church service, and they can sense this. They can feel it. They don't have a word for it.
And even though we don't know everyone in here, we don't know everything about anyone in here. In fact. We only know a few things about some people in here. There is this this kinship. It's not natural.
It's mystifying. It is supernatural. Maniusius Felix was a Roman lawyer living within the first two decades of the church being created. And he made this observation about Christians. He wrote, "They love each other even without being acquainted with each other.
They hardly know each other." You found that to be true, haven't you? Flying on a plane, on a bus, at work, you find out that other person's a Christian, and immediately kinship. It's like you leap over everything into this brotherly. Love. One author writes that brotherly love is not a facade; it's not pretending.
It bears one another's burdens, accepts difficult ministry duties, makes room for other opinions and ideas. It shares with other others their joys and pains of life. Brotherly love does not happen by feeling. It happens by deciding. Let me make three observations from the passages where this word appears.
First, brotherly love is not pretending to care; it is practicing care one act at a time. In my new members class, I mentioned that just ended. One of the individuals, a college student. Wrote her testimony. I have the privilege of reading everyone's testimony and then meeting with them individually.
It happens to be a highlight of my ministry. Let me share a paragraph with you. I haven't asked her for permission. I'll leave her name out. But here's what she wrote: A few years ago, my family decided to try out a new church, and that's when we found the Shepherds Church.
And this is where the good shepherd would ultimately bring back someone like me, who had turned away. I wasn't happy with this new decision because at the time I pictured believers as judgmental and critical of people like me. But as soon as I walked through the doors, the people at the welcome desks pulled me in and even started showing me around. I remember wondering what it was about them that made them so happy. I even remember wondering how much they were being paid to pretend they were happy.
There was just something about them that was different. She goes on to say how the Lord reached her heart. She would go on to be baptized in a profession of faith, and by the way, she now serves in the welcome ministry.
Now there are people probably wondering how much she gets paid to be so nice. This is brotherly love. Secondly, brotherly love is not a natural acquisition; it is a supernatural cultivation. One decision at a time. If you think for a moment that.
You know Peter can write about brotherly love because that's just Peter. He's nothing but a warm, affectionate man.
Well, you are new to the faith and new to the Word of God. You track his life back through what we're given in Scripture, and no one was more eager to be first in line. No one was more eager to let everybody know he was the leader. He was the spokesman. His idea mattered.
Lord, you can forget about all those other guys. They're nothing compared to me. That's Peter, right?
Now, make sure with all diligence you add this supplement to your life. It's as if Peter says, "And man, did I ever have to work at it? Brotherly love." Third. Brotherly love is not necessarily great sacrifices. It is simple deposits of grace in others, one gift at a time.
In our world today, the more important you are, the less people would ever expect you to stop and talk to someone, to be kind to that clerk, the bank teller, the waitress, people. Whom the world would never consider anything other than being on the planet to serve us. It's remarkable to our world when someone reverses that selfish logic. I want to close with an illustration of another leader from the past, Ronald Reagan. If you're as old as I am, you remember how he was vilified as well in the press.
I. I think that's their job, really. But he was castigated as an evil man. He was at one point in time the governor of California, and then from there he became the president. His reputation increased only after he died.
He received, as governor, a letter from a soldier serving in Vietnam. The soldier's Wife and two little children lived in near in a nearby county, Orangevale, near where Reagan lived. He wrote Reagan, telling him about his life as a soldier and what he was doing in his service. He told Reagan that his anniversary, wedding anniversary, was approaching, and that he sent his wife a card and wondered if she would ever get it. He talked about how he loved his wife and children.
He apologized for making a bold request, but he asked that if Reagan had any time, to just make a quick phone call and see if she was okay, if she got the card, pass along his love for her. Reagan never wrote that soldier back. Instead, on anniversary day. He left his office early, picked up a dozen roses, and knocked on the door of that soldier's wife's home. She opened the door, of course, was shocked.
He gave her the flowers, said they were from her husband. Did she get the card? She invited him in, and for an unhurried hour, the author writes, he sipped a cup of coffee. Talk to her about her children, her life. You know, a phone call from the governor would have been amazing.
But flowers, a visit, unforgettable gifts that surprise us all. If he could do that, how much more should we, as followers of Christ, look for ways to show the love of God to our relatives? Look around at your relatives. I give you permission to stare. Look around.
Look around. Do you know them? Peter writes, "Let's give all diligence to showing each other, and the world is watching this undeniable quality, this unique brotherly love." That was Stephen Davy, and this is Wisdom for the Heart, a production of Wisdom International. Learn more at wisdomonline.org.
