Living by Your Convictions — Part 2

SPEAKER 01 : 0:02

Hey everyone, this is Pastor Rick’s Daily Hope. You know, sharing your faith with the next generation, well, it’s one of the most important things you can do. And we’re so glad you’re here because today Rick is continuing in his Leaving a Lasting Legacy series. Rick gives you some very special tools to help you share the biblical principles of faith, hope, love, and generosity with the next generation. Okay, let’s get right into it. Here’s Rick with part two of a message called Living by Your Convictions.

SPEAKER 02 : 0:35

The fact is, love is more important than anything else. When you’re family, you stick up for your family. You don’t criticize them out in public. You stick up for your family. Now, I don’t know this, but why, but it’s sad. Some Christians and even some preachers spend all their time criticizing other Christians. or spend all their time criticizing other churches. And it seems to me that a lot of them tend to congregate on the radio. I don’t know if you’ve noticed this or not. But they get on the radio and all they do is spend all their time criticizing other Christians or criticizing other churches. Well that’s not right. That’s not right at all. You see love is more important than personal differences in the family of God. Love is more important than political differences. I know some people who are Christians and their first question to you is not are you a Christian but are you a Republican? And actually your personal view on politics is more important than your view of Christ to them. The Bible says that style is not as important as love, personality is not as important as love, even doctrinal differences aren’t as important as love. If you love Jesus, we’re on the same team. We’re not in competition with any other church. If they love Jesus, I don’t care what the label is, we’re in the same family, and we’re all together, and God hates it when we argue with each other. In fact, look what the Bible says here in 1 Timothy. Don’t let people waste time in endless speculations over myths and spiritual pedigrees. He’s talking about minor doctrinal differences between this group of Christians and this group of Christians and this group. Don’t waste your time on that. For these things only cause arguments. They don’t help people live a life of faith in God. Then Paul says, the purpose of my instruction, now Paul’s gonna tell you the reason for preaching. He says, here’s purpose-driven preaching. The purpose of my teaching, my instruction, is that all the Christians would be filled with love. That’s what the purpose of preaching is, to fill Christians with love. That comes from three things, a pure heart, a clear conscience, and a sincere faith. Paul says, the purpose of teaching the word of God is not knowledge, it’s that you learn how to love. and that that love comes out of a pure heart, a clear conscience, and a sincere faith. He goes on to say, but some teachers have missed the whole point. They’ve turned away from these things and spend their time arguing and talking foolishness. He says, don’t do that, don’t do that. When you were a kid, did your parents enjoy watching the kids argue? No. Did they encourage you to fight among yourselves? Not hardly. Those of you parents, do you enjoy it when your kids fight? No, and neither does God. In fact, did you know, this is gonna blow your mind, that five times in the New Testament, Christians are forbidden to argue with each other? Not once. Five times in the New Testament, Christians are forbidden to argue with each other. He said, don’t do it. I want you to be unified. I want you to be harmonized. I want you to be in one love together. Let me just give you one example. 1 Corinthians 1.10. Brothers and sisters, I appeal to you by the authority of the Lord Jesus to stop arguing among yourselves. Let there be real harmony so there won’t be any divisions in the church. No divisions. I plead with you to be of one mind, united in thought and purpose. You see, we’re never gonna get everybody to agree on style, get everybody to agree on music, or even get everybody to agree on doctrine. He says, be of one mind in purpose. It is the purposes of God and the purposes of the church that will unify the church. Now God loves unity because he gets glory when his children get along with each other, when they love each other, when they’re in harmony with each other. And God hates disunity. In fact, he judges people that cause division and conflict and criticism and arguing within the church. He makes it very clear through the New Testament. Do you know that when Jesus was betrayed by Judas, the night before he went to be crucified on the cross, he’s in the garden praying. He’s thinking about the cross the next day. You know what he prayed about most? Not the suffering he was going to go through. He prayed what he cared about most. And that prayer is in John 17. It’s an entire chapter. And the prayer is a prayer for unity. He says, Father, I want my people to be one. I want my family to be one. I want the church to be unified and one and in harmony and not criticizing each other, not arguing with each other. May they be one. The world will be one, W-O-N, when the church is one, O-N-E. And he prayed that. It was the most important thing on the heart of God. was that his family be unified. Now what is the opposition on this second conviction, that it is the church that must be unified together and must be in harmony? What is the opposition? Well, it’s anybody who criticizes other Christians and creates conflict. The Bible says this in Romans 16, verse 17. Look out for those who cause people to be against each other and who upset other people’s faith. They are against the true teaching That you learn, so stay away from them. In fact, not only do you stay away from them, here’s what God tells pastors to do. Look at the next verse here on the screen. Titus 3.10, warn a divisive person once and then warn him a second time and after that, have nothing to do with him. That’s how serious God takes Christians who criticize other Christians and are creating conflict and division. You see, instead of criticizing each other, God wants us to be thanking God for each other. He wants us to be thanking first that we’re saved and second that we’re in his family. Paul says it like this on the screen, Romans 1.8. I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you because the whole world is hearing about your faith. Now here’s the first conviction, I must love God with all my heart. Second conviction, I must love every Christian regardless of what they believe or say or whatever because they’re part of my family. Number three, God expects me to love everybody else too. Now I don’t know if you see the pattern here, but it’s all about love. You see, life is not about the acquisition of things. It’s not about achievement. It’s not about popularity. It’s about learning how to love. And if you miss that, you’ve missed the lesson of life. God is love. And he says the most important thing is love me. The second most important thing he says is this. On your outline, Mark chapter 12. The second most important commandment is love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment more important than these two, loving God and loving other people. Now he says, love your neighbors yourself. Now, the natural question is, who’s my neighbor? Well, that’s not a new question. It was asked right after Jesus said this. And Jesus told a very famous story called the story of the Good Samaritan. That story was told to answer the question, who’s my neighbor? Who is my neighbor? Well, I’ll tell you, the short answer is everybody. Everybody. Everybody’s your neighbor. There’s nobody you’re not allowed to not love, you’re allowed to not love on the earth. But there’s a specific answer, and that is when he told the story of the Good Samaritan, the person who was least likely to love showed the love to the person most least likely to get it. So here’s the point. Your neighbor is the people you are least likely to love. Now who is that? You probably never thought about this. Who am I least likely to love? Well I’ll tell you, there are three categories. You might write these down. These are the three categories of people you’re least likely to love and yet God says you gotta love them. Number one, people who are different. We don’t tend to love people who are different from us. Different background, different language, different religion, different faith, different culture, different beliefs. We don’t naturally tend to love people who are different from us. Second, people who are difficult. Difficult people are difficult to love. People who are rude, people who monopolize the conversation, people who are selfish, they’re impatient, they’re disrespecting or demeaning or maybe you’ve got a boss who’s arrogant and takes advantage of you. It’s difficult to love difficult people. And number three, people who are dangerous. When I talk about dangerous people, I’m talking about abusers, rapists, molesters, Terrorists, criminals, people who want to hurt you. And the Bible says though, this is radical, the Bible says God so loved the world. Now who is left out in that phrase? The world means everybody. Even the people who are difficult and people who are dangerous and people who are different. God so loved the world. God’s love is the most radical kind of love in the world. He loves everybody because his love is not based on their performance, thank God. It’s based on who God really is. Now, it’s easy to love people who agree with you. It’s easy to love people who are cool. But God says, I want you to take it even further. And Jesus always pushes the envelope in teaching us about love. In fact, he says this, next verse. Love your enemies. Oh, come on, Lord. You gotta be kidding me. He didn’t just say love God, love the church, love your neighbor. He now says love your enemies. Oh, come on. Isn’t this pushing it a little bit too far? Love your enemies and do good to them. Lend and expect nothing back. You gotta be serious. Come on. Lord, lend and expect nothing back. He says, you will then have a great reward and you will be children of the most high for he is good, that’s God, to the ungrateful and the wicked. Did you know that God is good to the wicked? Did you know that God is good to the ungrateful? He’s good to me and I’m ungrateful and he’s good to me and I’m often wicked because God’s love isn’t based on what I do. Now, let me ask you a very important question. Who are your enemies? So I don’t have any enemies. Oh, of course you do. Who are your enemies? They are the people who have different values and different views than you do and don’t like your views and values. You’ve got plenty of enemies who totally disagree with what you believe or the way you live. Your enemies are the people who want to hurt you. the people who hate you, the people who wanna harm you or harass you. I’ve been around the world and there is real evil in the world. There is, and you do have enemies, but God says love your enemies. Now notice two results of that. Look there on your outline. What happens when you love your enemies? Well, first it says you get a great reward. It says you will have a great reward. Every time you love on earth, you get a reward in heaven. Because God is wanting you to learn how to love. It’s easy to love people like you, as I said, but when you love the unlovely, God says, you get a reward in heaven. The second thing, not only a great reward, he said, you get a good reputation. He said, you will be the children of the most high God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called the children of God. Now, the implication of this, if I’m supposed to love everybody, including my enemies, the implication is I must show respect to everyone. Even the people I don’t think are worthy of respect. I must show respect and dignity to everyone. It’s commanded over and over in scripture because respect is one way of showing love. First Peter 2.17, I’d like for you to read this verse aloud with me. Show respect for everyone. Love your Christian brothers and sisters. Fear God. Show respect for the king. That’s pretty clear. By the way, that last phrase, he’s just talking about leadership. Show respect for the king. That doesn’t mean only if he’s a part of your party. It means you should honor authority whether it’s your party or not. By the way, when Peter wrote this show, The Respect for the King, do you know who the king was? He was a wacko named Nero. Nero, that’s the guy who’s hanging Christians on stakes and putting them with tar and burning them and lighting Rome with the bodies of Christians. And Peter says, oh, and by the way, show respect for the king. The guy who’s killing us, yes, because this is a test. I’m testing, are you gonna love like Jesus? Now I gotta be honest with you, friends. This isn’t easy. There are a lot of people in the world I don’t wanna respect. There are a lot of people I have a hard time respecting. I’ve been invited to some of these big enclaves of so-called intelligent people, and they’re talking, and I’ll hear an idea propounded and set forth, and I’m going, that is the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard. And I’m going, come on, you cannot possibly believe that. It’s not rational. It’s not logical. It doesn’t make sense. Follow it to its logical conclusion. And I mean, some people are so open-minded, their brains fall out. You know, and they think they’re being open-minded. It’s just like they lost their brains somewhere back on the track. And you want to go, how could you be so dumb? When people are running from God, it’s amazing the mental gymnastics they go through to avoid him. And there’s some people I just don’t want to respect. But God says, you got to, Rick. You got to treat them with dignity. You got to treat them with respect. And you’ve got to love them. In fact, even when you don’t agree with them, even when you disagree, you disagree without being disagreeable. Notice what the Bible says. First Peter, be ready at all times to answer anyone who asks you to explain the hope that you have. In other words, you need to be able to share your convictions. But do it with gentleness and respect. He’s not saying, now what this means is to go out here and everybody just say, oh, we’re all the same. We’re not. When you have convictions, there are some things that are always right and there are some things that are always wrong. And to just paste over all of our differences in the world, say, well, let’s all just believe the same thing. Well, that’s not gonna happen. He’s saying, even when you oppose somebody, you oppose them with respect and dignity. You don’t demean them. Just because somebody believes something different from you does not give you a right to demonize them. You don’t have, if you call yourself a Christian, you can’t resort to the politics of destruction and just put people down and call them names. That’s wrong, friend. Now he’s saying you don’t have to deny your convictions, but do it with gentleness and respect. What we need is a coalition of civility. A coalition of civility. Civility means that I treat you with respect even though I totally disagree with you. And I may say, I disagree with you on this, this, this, this, and this, but I’m not gonna call you names, and I’m not gonna put you down, and I’m not going to demean you because you were created in the image of God. Does that make sense? That’s civility. And you know what the problem is today? Our civilization has lost civility. We’re not very civil anymore in our civilization. There are people just yelling at each other and screaming at each other and calling each other names, and the media has made it worse. It’s great fun to watch, but it’s creating a culture of incivility, and if it’s ever gonna be brought back, it’s gonna have to be Christians who do it. By treating people we disagree with, even when they totally disagree with what we believe in the word of God, with respect. See, here’s the point. If you can only work with people on a problem that you agree with 100%, you’ve just ruled out most of the world. Because your wife doesn’t even agree with you. In fact, nobody agrees with you completely. Nobody. And so if you can’t work with people who disagree with you, you’ve just ruled out the world. Can people get together and say, we don’t agree on this or this or this, but let’s agree on raising illiteracy so less fewer people are, the literacy rate around the world. Can we agree on ending poverty? Can we agree on working toward diseases like AIDS and things like that, which is the leprosy of the 21st century. Why are we doing a conference on AIDS? It’s what the church is least expected to care about, that’s why. In the first century, the AIDS of the first century was leprosy and people were scared they were gonna get it and they didn’t know how it was and they ostracized them. And the lepers of the 21st century were people with AIDS. And if Jesus were here today, I guarantee you he’d be walking around with people who had AIDS. And we wanna show love in this situation. And so we say we’re gonna work together whenever we can. And I want us to be known as the church that loves the most. I don’t want us to be known for our size. I want us to be known as that’s the church where people love.

SPEAKER 01 : 18:56

Such a great message by Rick today and every day. I sure hope you were just as encouraged as I was. And now here’s Rick with a special message.

SPEAKER 02 : 19:05

I know I tell you this all the time, but again, I want you to know how much I thank God for you and appreciate your support of Daily Hope. We couldn’t do this without your prayers. And we can’t do it without your financial gifts. And I know that for many of you, this is a real sacrifice in order to be able to support the ministry of Daily Hope as we take the message of Christ literally around the world into places that nobody else is going to. As you consider your year-end giving, I want to ask you to consider about sending your greatest gift to Daily Hope that you’ve ever given. You know, the great news is that in this month, your financial gift will be doubled because a generous friend is offering a $100,000 matching grant. And they’ve challenged all of the rest of us to give as much as we can, and they will match it up to $100,000. That means that every dollar you give to Daily Hope in December, up to $100,000, will be doubled. You give $25, it’s like giving $50. And if you give $100, it’s like giving $200. And if you’re able to give $1,000 or more, it will be doubled. Your generosity, and of course, Christmas is all about the spirit of generosity. God so loved the world that he gave. Your generosity makes this ministry possible. It allows us to reach into refugee camps. It allows us to reach out around the world, overseas. It allows us to reach people who could not ever afford to pay for any discipleship tools or materials. So your donations matter. Let me ask you a personal favor. Don’t forget to pray for us during this season. We’re praying for you. Let me know that you prayed. It really blesses me to hear from you. I love the letters, the emails, the cards, the stories that come in, because it helps me realize we truly are partnering together in this ministry. It’s not about me. It’s about the Word of God, and it’s about what we can do together that none of us could do on our own. We are more effective together.

SPEAKER 01 : 21:19

We’re better together. This matching grant is only available until midnight on December 31st. So please act now by going to pastorrick.com. That’s pastorrick.com. Or you can just text the word HOPE to 70309. That’s the word HOPE to 70309. And thank you so much for your support. Be sure to join us next time. as we look into God’s Word for our daily hope. This program is sponsored by Pastor Rick’s Daily Hope and your generous financial support.