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THE SINLESS FRIEND
OF SINNERS #5
DEFINING "LOVE" ALL OVER AGAIN
One of our favorite stories the last couple of years
and a marvelous source of radio material has been the book, In the
Footsteps of Jesus, written by Hollywood actor Bruce Marchiano. A few
years ago he played the part of Jesus in a four-hour film being shot in
the heart of Africa. For this unique young actor, it became an experience
in not acting; God gave him an incredible gift for sensing just how Jesus
felt, the emotions, the burdens, the passion.
After it was over, he found himself involved in many "goodwill"
tours on behalf of the film, and he was also motivated by just plain missionary
zeal. Back in Africa again, he was slated to speak to a group of inmates
at Victor Verster Prison, where Nelson Mandela had once been incarcerated.
And Bruce had no idea what to say. He'd never been in prison before; he
didn't know prisoners or understand their mindset. But as he sat there
on the platform, waiting his turn, and praying hard, Jesus seemed to whisper
to him:
"You don't need to know them, Bruce I
know them. I know every name, every struggle, every hurt, every hope,
every dream. . . . I know them."
And those two words crystallized in his mind: He knows.
He realized that Jesus understood these convicts: their fears, their frustrations,
and even their sins.
We don't usually share such a long quotation, but let me simply read to
you the core of Bruce Marchiano's testimony that day. And by all means,
I urge you to purchase this wonderful book: In the Footsteps of Jesus.
But his talk that day went like this:
You think you had it rough as a kid? This Guy was born in a barn. His
first bed was a feed trough. He wasn't even two years old and people were
trying to kill Him. He had to hide out with His mom and dad on the run,
and just a baby. And that went on His entire life. Folks were always plotting
to kill Him eventually they did.
Did you grow up being laughed at and kicked around? Imagine Jesus hearing
the laughs about His mom being pregnant before she was married, getting
teased and spit at by other kids because of it.
Did you grow up without a father or mother? Divorce, death, or maybe one
just walked out on you? You know, Joseph is never mentioned after Jesus
is 12. Nobody knows for sure what happened to him, but most experts figure
he must have died when Jesus was just a kid. Yeah, guys, Jesus knows that
heartbreak. Imagine Him standing at His dad's grave. And as the eldest
son, He'd have to carry on and support the family. See Him in His dad's
workshop that first day, reaching for His father's tools, tears streaming
down His face and just a kid.
Ever had no place to sleep? "Foxes have holes and birds of the air
have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head" the
words of Jesus. He even knows what it's like to have no place to live
sleeping around campfires or on people's floors.
Ever had anyone beat your face in? You guessed it the Bible says they
beat Jesus so badly you couldn't even tell He was a human being.
Friends run out on you? Jesus had a couple choice buddies named Judas
and Peter.
And He even knows what it's like to be in a place like this. He knows
because they locked Him up once.
Yeah, Jesus knows, guys. He knows every struggle, every heartache. And
not just because He's God and God knows everything; but because when He
was a man, He went through the same things you and I go through and more.
He knows because He lived it. He's been there.
That's a powerful sermon right there, isn't it and remember, this comes
right from the lips of a seasoned member of Hollywood's Screen Actor's
Guild. So when I repeat again this week's radio series title, THE SINLESS
FRIEND OF SINNERS, these words really resonate with biblical truth. "Jesus
KNOWS our every weakness; Take it to the Lord in prayer."
Marchiano had people ask him later: "Bruce, what's THE most significant
thing you learned through the whole adventure? What discovery stands above
the rest?" Do you know what his answer is? It's eight words long.
"He loves you. He loves you SO MUCH."
That's it. Bruce Marchiano discovered a Savior who
knew absolutely everything about us, and then loved each and every person
He met with an overpowering, compelling, driving love. Love pierces through
on every page of this wonderful story. The tears of Jesus reveal love.
His hugs show love; His stories; His miracles; His long conversations
with the really bad people of His era. And of course, we have a lonely
cross on a faraway hill.
When we talk about the love of Jesus, we have to almost abandon the "love"
word we know, stained as it is by a lot of cheap novels and the lyrics
from MTV, and imagine an entirely new genus of emotion. I mentioned an
observation by Philip Yancey, where he describes the intensity of Jesus'
love. It's miles beyond, light-years beyond, anything we know.
"In a nutshell," he writes, "the
Bible from Genesis 3 to Revelation 22 tells the story of a God reckless
with desire to get His family back."
And really, that's Jesus too. Reckless with desire.
Almost frantic in His love for people like Peter and James and John and
Judas and you and me.
As we consider the superhuman intensity of this love, this reaching out,
how do we respond? Do we stay on our same, weary, jaded low level of usual
response? "I'll think about it"? "Maybe later"? In
his book, The Weight of Glory, C. S. Lewis addresses our half-hearted
response to heaven's offer of love.
"If we consider the unblushing promises
of reward," he writes, "and the staggering nature of the rewards
promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires,
not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling around
with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like
an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because
he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea."
Can you understand this dilemma? Jesus says to us,
"I love you. I want to give you Myself." And we respond: "Well,
maybe You do love me. But I've got these friends right here who say they
love me, and that's all I need. I've got this bottle that brings me comfort,
and these TV shows that make me laugh a little bit when I'm tired, and
this little vial of white powder that helps me forget how lonely I really
am most of the time." And we cling to the pale forms of flawed human
love; we hold onto the counterfeit, because we can't envision the glory
of the genuine.
We've wondered all week how a sinless Jesus could embrace and love and
fellowship with vile sinners . . . and never be stained by them. You and
I are constantly knocked off course by the bad steering wheels of our
friends. Why didn't the wickedness of Jesus' friends rub off on Him? Well,
friend, maybe we've found the answer right here in this intense love.
The raw, unmatched potency of Jesus' love simply overpowered the corrupting
influence of our anemic, listless sins. Here's a quote from Yancey:
"When Jesus touched a person with leprosy,
Jesus did not become soiled the leprous became clean. When an immoral
woman washed Jesus' feet, she went away forgiven and transformed. When
He defied custom to enter a pagan's house, the pagan's servant was healed.
. . . As Walter Wink puts it, The contagion of holiness overcomes the
contagion of uncleanness.'"
And you know, this can be our witnessing secret too.
I mentioned on Monday the story of Pastor Bill Hybels, who goes out sailing
with the most worldly guys on Lake Michigan. And Hybels himself gives
a warning about their beer and sex-laced humor:
"We must follow Christ's command to love others without falling into
the sin of loving or participating in the bad things they do. As James
1:27 puts it, we need to keep ourselves from being polluted by the world.'"
Then he adds: "We need to make certain we're the one whose influence
is prevailing. Another way of putting this is that we need to be on the
offense rather than the defense."
In a nutshell: Our love has to be stronger than their
sin. Our holiness which is really the holiness of Jesus inside of us
needs to overpower and subdue the corrupting influence of that person's
sinful past.
You know, Jesus once sat down at a well next to a woman who'd been through
a lot of "love." She probably dressed like a lady who'd already
had five husbands, and was now just living with her boyfriend. And she
had a juicy vocabulary, I'm sure; the kind most Christians would shy away
from. She knew how to influence a man, how to bend him down to her desires.
But she and this Stranger began talking, and she found out that this different
kind of Man loved her too. Not like her five ex-husbands loved her, or
like her current lover. He loved her for her; He seemed to see in her
a purity, a kind of hidden Eve. Right there by the well, she sensed it.
And for the first time, instead of her selfishness changing and bending
Him, it seemed like His love was changing her.
She'd never experienced that before, but she kind of liked it.
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